[Unfie]

I'm also a bit skeptical about the burn-in on these too. It's not that I don't believe in burn-in, but I don't think I'll somehow like these later. I'll explain my situation...
 
Earlier this month, I got a Cowon J3 along with some Westone W2's and these IEM's. I decided to jump on the W2's first. They were great, but I wish they had a slight touch more bass. So I figured being a slight basshead myself, I'd try out the S4's. Now, I just started listening to these today, but hissing and veiled sound makes it sound not so tolerable to listen to. I'll burn them in later, but I guess I'm not as much of a basshead as I thought.

 

[lebomb]

Where does everyone get this hissing from?  My S4s do not hiss at all with my Clip+.  *shrugs*

 

[scannon18]

Hissing?  No.  Sibilance?  Well. . .not enough for me to turn them off.  For $80, I don't think I could be happier.  I listen to mine for several hours every day (at work, running errands, school) and I love how they completely disconnect me from the rest of the world.  It is easy to get absorbed into the music with these headphones.   Some people call this effect "colored sound."  I agree. The S4s have very colored sound, and they sound great.  And they are relatively clear and spacious, especially at the sub-$100 price range. 
 
I listen to a lot of electronic music, hip hop, and indie.  All sound very good, but dubstep and bass heavy electronic music sound the best.  The clarity allows percussion effects to sound real, and dimensional.
 
I can't say I've had success amping them.  I've plugged them into my Fiio E7, and it just seems to push a lot of the sound spectrum forward.  Almost like turning up the EQ gain across the board.  It doesn't sound bad, but it gives a "wall of sound" effect that isn't particularly enjoyable.
 
Another thing I've noticed is that when you insert them upside down and loop the wire over your ear, there is an interesting difference in sound.  I'm not sure if it is because the direction of the speaker changes (leading to small differences in attenuation and so on), but the bass backs off a little bit (really, only a little bit) and the mids seem to open up.  Since finding this out I've only worn them upside down and looped around the ear.
 
$.02

 

[jacobap100]

Klipsch s4 are great but I will probily he upgrading to the monster turbines within the next few months

 

[scannon18]

Quote:

Klipsch s4 are great but I will probily he upgrading to the monster turbines within the next few months

I'm not really a fan of the monster turbines.  My friend has a pair, and I really couldn't believe how much they cost him.  They sound great and have good soundstage, but they are terribly unclear.  Everything is muddy; sloppy.  The S4 is not as good an IEM as the Turbines in many respects, but they are more clear. 
 
I'm upgrading from the S4s as well, to the Custom 3s. 

 

[jeffmd]

Well I got my S4 (whites) this morning, it was actually a spur of the moment thing. I was asked by my parents what I wanted and I didn't really need anything for christmas but then I remembered I could really use a good pair of headphones for when I am away from home, like at work, for my ipod touch. So I did about a night of researching on reviews and came up with these.
 
I've had 2 main sets of headphones before, the grado 60 and my current set, sennhiesers 280 pros. $70-$100 range. Both of these headphones are awesome, the grado 60s were perfect but really open to outside noises (and the reverse) and the 280 pros had a great sound seal but lacked a bit in the bass (I would have gotten another set of the grados but the 60s have horrible construction flaws and the cable was awful, it broke in like 3 different places and needed to be spliced, one of them was inside the ear casing that is sealed up with glue). However nothing that couldn't be fixed with messing with the EQ (although it was a lot harder to get the 280 pros to sound good on my ipod). From what I read however, I probably wouldn't be able to find as good as IEMs in the same price range because they are smaller and would cost more to shrink quality drivers even smaller, and after all the reviews I have read from IEMs in the $70 range I wasn't far off. They all had at least a small amount of people that wern't happy with the sound of their IEM. I decided on the S4's because they seem to have gotten alot of spotlight and yet still maintained descent scores, so it was a safe bet I was going to get at least something listenable.
 
So I opened my S4s this morning and popped em in, and right away I pretty much knew everything about em.. and alot of it coincides with what people have said here. Great lows and mids, with descent highs but a very noticable distortion. I knew right off the bat that I was gonna need to break these in pretty hard, so I started by pretty much leaving them to play my top rated music tracks (so at best, it would learn to break in with my fav types of music) and left it for about 8 hours. Its a start. Just before shutting it down I sampled the audio and noticed the highs were less harsher but still a bit of distortion. After going to sleep and coming back another 8 hours (now) I picked em up and happy to note that a lot of the harshness/distortion has really gone away. The head phones really do hug the treble to the point of drowning out the mids a little bit (Although I am using the rock eq setting which if I am not mistaken is a low bell curve that I like to use so much, so I am already lowering mids and emphasing lows and highs ) but overall I am happy with the range now, and there is not enough (if any) of that distortion in the highs that really made me wince.
 
So aside from being a little moody with highs.. I am happy to note that lows and mids are really beautiful, drums and strings as well as vocals are clear and very warm (Something I loved about the grados and missed dearly on the sennhiesers). All in all I am happy to have found em, they are also very comfortable and the size is great for putting in my ipod touches pouch (dual sleaved) to carry around with me. Btw the type of music I listen to and used for testing is pretty wide, but I draw the line at rap and country. The music I favor most is the instrumental fusion types, from electronics types like Yuki Kajiura to rock/gothic like Hans Zimmer and Therion. Both types of music use modern instruments like guitars and drums mixed with orchestra strings and percussions, as well as lots of female chorus vocals.
 
ADDED: Well I found something very interesting out. When I woke up tonight I decided to try the smaller gel slips. I noticed quite abit of difference in all sound levels and wondered if the gel inserts made it... boy DID IT. I stuck the middle sized gels caps on and the annoying treble distortion was audible again, I also noticed the bass was a little louder. So it seemed that I couldn't push them in far enough with the mid sized gel slips and it emphasized the high and low sounds artificially. So the small covers are back on and I am enjoying them much better.

 

[jeffmd]

Just a bit of an update after some more time spent with them. I would like to update these from good to excellent! Switching the covers from med to small completely got rid of the high frequency distortion I was hearing on the medium plugs, but it seemed to kill the low frequencies (bass) quite a bit. I then found that if I twisted the ear plugs forward (I now wear the cord over the ear so the cord dosn't rotate the plugs down) it is sealed with full bass restored. In fact the Quality overall is so fantastic that I can see it replacing my HD 280 pro's,  ok maybe not quite.

 

[idvsego]

good to hear.  I found that I liked the comfort of these more over the ear as well.  I ordered some Phonak ear guides to match up with them and will probably use my S4s a bit more again.

 

[pufftissue]

My initial impressions of the S4 after 15 minutes of listening:
 
(I am coming from Shure SE530, which is top of the line)
 
1.  MUDDY.  That's the best way to describe it.  Not clear.  Vocals recessed.
2.  Extremely comfortable.  Even more comfortable than the Shure SE530s
3.  Less sensistive than the SE530, which I like. 
4.  Bottom-heavy--bass is just voluminous.  Sound is very thick and dense.  Bass is not as tight as on the SE530.
5.  Expansive soundstage--very wide.
6.  The details are all there in the songs.
7.  Seem to be very expressive
8.  No background hiss
9.  Small and slip in and out of the ear very nicely.
10.  Super easy to get a seal, and great isolation.
11.  Cable is on the thin side, but I'm not worried about the durability.
12.  Microphonics seem to be very little IF worn over the ear.  I can't complain about this at all.
13. Absolutely not clinical sounding at all; warm and dark.
 
 
 
If these phones would sound less muddy, they would be perfect.  But considering their low price, I think that these are absolutely a better value than the Shure SE530.  I have heard that after 100 hours, the S4s open up. What changes can I expect in the sonic qualities? I will give them that long; if they don't open up, they go back to Best Buy.  That's one of the benefits of buying retail.  Now let me contradict myself.  I am tempted to keep these based on their extreme comfort and their supreme value for the money.
 
If these impressions remain after 100 hours, can someone suggest my next IEM?  My favorite soundwise was the Triplefi, followed by the Shure SE530.  Triplefi would not fit in my ear, and SE530s are broken b/c of the cable issue.
 
As things stand now, on pure sound quality alone the S4 is behind the TripleFi and Shure SE530, but when you factor in the price, comfort, and how easy they are to slip on and off, they are #1. 
I am fully confident as things stand 15 minutes into ownership that the sound quality difference will not be noticed if walking or riding a bus, on a plane, or working out.

 

[idvsego]

pretty good impressions.  I dont know if burn in or my brain's adaptation were the cause, but some of that muddy sound you described seemed to go away.  Also, I messed with the eq a bit.  All in all, these are still my #2 IEMs.

 

[scannon18]

About the muddyness:  Before I owned these headphones, I didn't give much credit to burn in.  But these headphones need 50-100 hours.  Otherwise, they are sibilant, harsh, sloppy. . .  but after the burn in period, you will be surprised that these are $80 dynamic drivers providing such a great sound.

 

[joe24]

Hey,
 
I recently purchased monster turbines ,, though , i am impressed with soun but too much leakage and less noise isolation .. moreover ,build is not that good as housing broke easily.. so , i am trying to replace that with some other ones.. 
 
should it be a good replacement ? replacing my monster with s4?.. and what about shure se115 ? . any idea?? .. ljokerl has given only 6.75/10 point for sound??.. is it worth that much only??.. 

 

[jeffmd]

Puff, yea id prolly agree with you on the muddyness issue. Some may refer to it as a warm sound but compared to my 280pro's "muddyness" is a good way I would describe the combination of a warm sound with a small drop in clarity (from my 280pros which have been said to have a colder more accurate sound). Thankfully I can still enjoy my music on it, something impossible with the default ear buds (or any other ear buds I had gotten from my many other players) but I havn't put away the 280pro's away.

 

[dailydoseofdaly]

after my initial listening with these i decided to experiment with an extra long burning in. i used a file which can be downloaded from member Dweaver, which has alternating white and pink noise then a 10min cool down per hour. I burned in for 250hr straight. i listened for differences every 50 hours or so. ive read on here that these iem like 100hrs burn in and there was definate improvement up to roughly 150hrs. the next 100hrs had minimal sound difference.
 
The noticable differences between new and 150hrs are harshness of highs totally gone,however they remain recessed in the mix a boost at 4k-10k doesnt hurt. Bass has some more control (still huge though). Soundstage remained basically unchanged.
 
hope this helps

 

[desolateplanet]

I'll trade you? Have a pair of refurb turbines i'm willing to part with. 
Quote:

Klipsch s4 are great but I will probily he upgrading to the monster turbines within the next few months