DavidMahler
Headphoneus Supremus
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- Jul 8, 2007
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Which gets the ultimate say? If you have heard both at meets or have owned both....which is the better IEM and for what genres and or purposes?
-Dave
-Dave
Wow, I get to be first on what should turn out to be a hotly contested "discussion"...
Before I get into it, you should know where I'm coming from: I'm a sound engineer (live and studio, but mostly live), musician (keyboards) and NOT what I would call an audiophile. I don't believe in equipment "burn-in" (it's in your mind folks) or wicked expensive cables, and don't use separate amps with my iPhone 4 -- plug straight into a mixing board, Apogee interface, keyboard, or Axiom monitoring system. I think "soundstage" is easily the most overused and abused word on these forums, and I tend to describe sound in more practical terms. And yes, I own both.
For my taste and purposes, the 16's are the ultimate. Every time I listen to them I just melt. They just sound awesome in every way.
While the 13's are flatter in general, and still sound amazing, but they do have a small peak around 6k that is noticeable to me. Normally, the engineer in me would always go towards the flatter, truer speaker...but the musician in me just loves the little bit of extra love in the low end that the 16's put out.
I purchased the 13's first and when I heard them, I couldn't believe how well they reproduced the very extremes of the spectrum, meaning above 10K and below 100hz. As I said on another thread, I believe they reproduce the high end way better than we're used to hearing it reproduced. Most speaker systems (including headphones) just don't go up that high that well. So in some ways, they may sound a bit bright to some people. The low end on the 13's is no slouch at all and it's wonderful to hear it go down so low, but because the high end is just so amazing, it seems to me that the low end could use a little extra punch. Not much, but just a little extra.
And that's exactly what the 16's have -- a little extra low end (not mid-bass like 125-250hz, but 100hz and below) that basically balances out the already extraordinary high end. (Just to be clear, it seems that from 100hz and above, the 13's and 16's are they same exact creature, so everything I said about the 13's amazing high end relates to the 16's as well)
So yes, while the 16's have a slight bump in extreme lows and extreme highs, the mids are perfect and don't get lost.
Here's another way of putting it: If I were tuning a PA system for a concert, I would start by getting it to sound relatively flat, like the 13's, but then add a little extra low end punch like the 16's, to give it more impact, sound fuller and just plain more awesome.
One last thing...every bump in the audio spectrum that I've described above is very slight and my no means overdone. Jerry Harvey has made two very musical earpieces and they are both just incredible.