[eclein]

....the adventure continues......I knew I had these somewhere BTW the BT receiver is very good and still works great! LOL LOL

 

[shockdoc]

Yeah, I can confirm this as well. On the AS10 and those types, they can come off. Mine usually pop off when I remove them or slip slightly and need to be repositioned further down. Not a problem on most iems though. Could try a small band of silicon tape although he probably won't be able to remove them again without alot of force..

I've had a couple of IEM's over the years that had smooth flanges. What finally worked for me was to mix up some strong epoxy cement (I like JB Weld) and "tease" a small bead of cement around the entire circumference of the nozzle with a pin or something similar. I could even shape it a little bit, give it more of a "lip" by "molding it a little with the pin, as it hit it's initial set (wasn't runny anymore) and then, once it dried it held the tips MUCH better. One time I even got out my Dremel and carefully shaped the bead even more to hold the tips better. I can't be the only one who's done this.

 

[shockdoc]

One thing I forgot to mention. It seems to help adhesion if you roughen up the surface of the nozzle a little bit right where you plan to add the epoxy. You can just use a nail file or very small piece of coarse sandpaper folded on it's edge to make a very narrow rough strip. But be sure to clean off any sanding/filing debris with a moist cloth and dry the plastic dry before you add the epoxy.

 

[Leonccyiu]

I wanted to avoid this thread being about hi-res audio as it's a KZ thread but I'll respond to the previous posts which contain common criticisms of hi-res audio to clear up some misconceptions

Before I do so, I wanted to link to this post by a professor at Queen Mary university in London who demonstrates using graphs created using Matlab what I am talking about regarding the filtering and how much easier it is with higher sample rates.

https://intelligentsoundengineering...orem-a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing/

Bob Stuart who is a co founder of Meridian and a well known expert in audio also has this to say

http://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/what-is-mqa/#

I only listen CD rips @ 16/44. 24-bit imho is pointless and it has been theoretically/mathematically proven in h-fi threads. kHz means lot more than bitrate.

I think you mean to say 44.1khz as a sampling rate has been proven to perfectly reproduce all frequencies by the sampling theorem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_filter

This wikipedia page is a good summary of why 44.1khz is not enough, because a perfect filter is only possible with an infinite delay, but our music has to play in real time, so the filters in our dac's are approximations, you may notice with Chord fpga equipment like the DAVE, there is some latency from the more powerful filters.

16/44.1 FLAC was designed to exceed the limits of human hearing. Hi Res is pointless for listening, especially given how little dynamic range exists in the average modern recording.
The quality of the headphones you use is much more important to fidelity than bitrate.

Hi-Res is about much more than dynamic range, not all modern recordings are pop music and plenty of past recordings exist with plenty of dynamic range.
The case for 24bit is harder to make than a higher sampling rate, but while the processing and editing take place in 24bit for more headroom, dither has to be applied to bring it down to 16bit, as to how much dither noise causes distortion is difficult to say. The processing/editing is a lossy process and while doing so at 32bit fp (has same accuracy as 24bit) or 64bit fp, there is still some loss hence why simply truncating the signal back to 16bit doesn't result in 16bit of dynamic range, and dither has to be applied.

16/44.1 was designed to fit an hour long concert recording on a 650mb disc

Very interesting, particularly that portion where Leonccyiu says, as he did in a previous post, that steep low-pass filters give rise to ringing artifacts. I’m making a note to try to read more about this as I’m just too busy these days—I’m having my siesta at the moment, though.

As for that comparison from the link he provided, I would have hoped that was done at least through simple blind listening (I hope I don’t trigger some flags by mentioning it) to rule out bias of sighted foreknowledge.

Hopefully without stirring up a hornet’s nest that might get us censured, allow me to assume, for a moment, that hi-res audio files indeed make an audible difference (although I tend to hew to the view that they don’t, I still have many hi-res files in my player mostly because they’re the only ones available) . With even such assumption, my thesis would still be that as regards reproduction of music the type and quality of the headphone would have a much more immediate effect on impression of music fidelity than file format, if we're talking only about these 2 specific factors.

I come from 2-channel stereo. I still make it a point to have some late-night listening sessions through my system every once in a while. From this milieu to that of over-ear headphones, even open-backed ones, I find the biggest difference lies in my perception of “soundstage”. In fact I define it as what I hear when seated at the sweet spot of my two stereo speakers properly toed in, with the various interactions of the sound waves reflecting off the topology of my listening room. Indeed, with headphones, what Leonccyiu described as the role of the human anatomy and physiology in sound perception is constrained inasmuch as the sound now directly comes from just a few centimeters away from our ear canals. I quote from the excellently managed Wikipedia article on head-related transfer function (HRTF):

“As sound strikes the listener, the size and shape of the head, ears, ear canal, density of the head, size and shape of nasal and oral cavities, all transform the sound and affect how it is perceived, boosting some frequencies and attenuating others.”

From over-ear to in-ear headphones, I find that whatever semblance of “soundstage” I hear becomes even more constricted, confined to a sort of planar area in my head intersecting my ears, such that I have yet to fully perceive that phantom center channel one readily comes across with loudspeakers, in its entirety. Whatever interactions the sound waves have with the pinnae of the ears are now absent because the nozzles of the earpieces are firmly lodged at and covering the, entrance of the ear canals. In other words, for me “soundstage” becomes illusory when listening to in-ears.

On the other hand, in this latter regard, my impressions are limited by my likewise limited experience with in-ears. The best one I’ve heard thus far (the best one I’m most familiar with is the Simgot EM3 of my husband) is the Campfire Audio Andromeda to which my husband’s friend graciously allowed me to listen for a few songs when he came to visit last weekend. What struck me immediately was its impressively expansive sound field and, with a 24-bit/192 KHz binaurally-recorded source (Stripped, Macy Gray, Chesky Records, 2016; recorded live on high resolution audio in a decommissioned Brooklyn church around one binaural microphone) gave me that virtual center channel experience, albeit momentarily. With the Andromeda, it’s like I was listening with my HE-400i, with the singer’s distinctive rasp some 2 meters away from my forehead. Much better impression than what hitherto had been my point of reference for out-of-the-head perception among in-ears, the KZ ZS5v1, could ever give. Yet, when I opened my eyes and turned to my companions thus losing my engagement with the music that voice in front of me was gone and now was back hovering there just inside the top middle of my forehead. The perception was still illusory.

Have you come across this page at rtings.com?

https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tests/sound-quality/soundstage

Their bases and description of soundstage jibe with my own thoughts, but of course explained infinitely better from a scientific viewpoint.

Have to cut this short so i'll jump forward, sorry: for me, what one has along the audio chain is each important, yes. My music however—what I make of it, the way I hear it—is still paramount. It doesn't matter if it's recorded on very early 20th century 78 rpm vinyl, or 33 rpm master-quality virgin vinyl, or 1980s cassette tape, or CD, or SACD, or Blu-Ray, or rips thereof in mp3, FLAC, APE, WAV, AIFF, DSD or MQA or whatever audio file format. Still music to my ears.

Aside from my school days I have no science background, see, just your average curious lay person who strives to learn more, in order that she may at least be conversant on whatever limited audio topic with her husband who has all those letters and abbreviations after his name.

And my own top in-ears, in order of subjective impression of sound quality and preference, are: the CCA C10; the KZ ZSN; and the KZ ZS6. I also have a self-imposed limit of $30 for in-ears, which shall be deemed inoperative until after I shall have retired in a couple of years or less.

I'll respond in more detail via pm, I have come across the rtings link where each headphone is rated for soundstage which is interesting and the in-ears perform a lot worse. I wonder how we would all perform if we had to blind test our iems and cables.

No, I rip my CD's to FLAC and they sound great. I see people here using Spotify, don't use Spotify if you want to enjoy audio quality, my wife uses Spotify and it sounds horrible, especially in combination with modern music, which sounds like it was recorded in mono. Use Tidal Hi-Fi instead for streaming.

Hi-Res audio only makes a subtle difference to me, in theory 44.1KHz at 16bit is more than you can hear. The low-pass filtering artifacts are a valid point though, otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear the difference between the filter settings on the FiiO X7 MK II, which I do.
DSD is something else, SACD loses detail above 1KHz compared to redbook CD audio, the bitrate needs to be really high to match CD and then the frequencies below 1KHz get over-defined.



Yes, I agree. The CCA earphones are mentioned a lot here and it really is the same manufacturer.

As stated above, although in theory 16/44.1 produces all the frequencies for human hearing and dither can be applied, in practice, the sinc filter which is a perfect brick wall filter required for sampling and reconstruction can only be approximated in the real world.

SACD or DSD64 does not lose detail above 1khz compared to redbook CD audio, what you mean is that sample rate has to be much higher than CD because 1 bit is much noisier than 16 bit so a much higher sample rate is required so that to extract 24bit from 0-20khz, the dither noise is shifted beyond 20khz. For DSD64 the noise starts to pile up just above 20khz hence why we have double and quad DSD.

DSD of all varieties sound a lot better to me than CD quality, a lot more natural and spacious, a wider soundstage.

I have various HiRes music files in my collection over the years.
I have the excellent Macy Gray Stripped as well as copies of Norah Jones Come Away With Me, Miles Davis Kind of Blue, etc etc in DSD, 24/196 format.
But I always enjoy listening to CD Rip copy of Rolling Stones Blue & Lonesome, even though it's of poorer recording, much more than those HiRes music.
Some CD Rip of good recording like Muddy Waters Folk Singers already sounds excellent even at 16/44.
My point is, good quality system (or a system with good synergy) is still essential for music enjoyment and appreciation.
HiRes music not so much...you may discern differences in format, but it's not going to be like heaven and earth to change your enjoyment of music.
But generally, I will avoid mp3 (even at 320k).
Expensive earphones? It really depends. Sometimes can be a waste of money and may not sound good if there's no synergy with the DAPs in pairing.
But with the right system, I can happily enjoy listening to any albums that I like just from CD Rips, even better, if the original mastering recording is good.

It's like watching boring demo footage in 8k on the latest 8k tv's but you have a wide variety of blu-rays/dvds, content is important too of course.
A lot of Hi-Res music is classical which doesn't suit many people's tastes.

Agreed, the lowest bit in 16-bit audio equals -96dB, which is impossible to hear. More bits are useful when you are going to be applying effects to the audio that degrade the precision.

Higher frequencies mostly help to move the aliasing frequencies further up from the range of human hearing and eliminate the low-pass filter side-effects. I personally hardly hear anything above 15KHz anymore.

SACD and DSD usually as well, only use a stream of single bits. Therefore the bitrate needs to be very high for frequencies above 1Khz to have the same definition as redbook CD audio. SACD falls short of that.

More on topic, my CCA C10's seem to be improving in instrument separation and the bass is becoming stronger and better. Interesting how long they take to burn in.

Human hearing goes beyond 96db but there is dither, but there are other arguments for going beyond 16bit.
As stated above, SACD has a sample rate of 2.8mhz which reproduces all frequencies up to 20khz just as well if not better than redbook CD.



Apologies for going off topic on this KZ thread, but my point was to say that I don't believe CD quality flac is enough to properly assess a headphone especially for separation and placement although it can give you a good idea of how the headphone performs.

I now have the KZ ZSN which isn't fully run in but it should be enough.

Would I prefer to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN or redbook on my much more expensive Sennheiser Open Back over-ears?
While it's much more ideal to listen to 24/192 on my Sennheiser, if I had to choose, I'll say that even taking the form factor into account, the single dynamic driver in my Sennheiser has more clarity especially in the mid-range, but I would choose to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN than redbook on my Sennheiser HD579.

 

[ronaldocapitoii]

You said the main issue (since you dropped it is sibilance), right?

Since you have nothing to lose, you can try taming the sibilance. It’s not going to make it sound like before it was dropped, but maybe you’ll get lucky and can still get some more use out of it.

There’s different ways to go about this.

1. Try different ear tips, including foam tips.
2. Place a very small piece of foam inside of the end of the silicone tips.
3. Place a narrow strip of micro pore tape across the nozzle, directly over the outlet of the BA drivers.
4. Perform the “ZST foam mod” to 1 or both of the BA drivers.
5. Using EQ to find the exact frequency where the sibilance is occurring, and tune it out by EQ cutting that area.

If you don’t know what some of those things are, I should have the links or photos saved somewhere and can dig them up for you.

Hmmm... It's been a weird experience. I've been thinking and trying to boil the issue down, it seems to me that my ears were re-adjusting and there's also the fact that the immaculate sound I remembered came from FLAC files being played on a Fiio M9 (vastly superior to my old phone). Regarding my ears re-adjusting, when I finally got a hold of the ES4's again, I noticed cymbals and other high frequency sounds a lot easier and that the ZS6's treble while more pronounced, is still superior to the ES4's. I thought the ES4's treble was although weak was pretty okay. I now think that a lot of what I was thinking was due to the combination of the lower-quality music files I was playing on a lower-quality device (which I think is quite probably damaged) and my ears re-adjusting to earphones with livelier treble. My dad gave me his iPhone 6 Plus and it definitely sounds better than the Z3 now. Everything's crispy and separation is pretty good (until bass slams appear, they just drown out the other sounds to me.) I've even put back the silicone tips and the ZS6's are now pretty good after more burn-in. I'll definitely try out the micropore tape thing soon.

 

[SybilLance]

Howdy Syb, good comments/observations What I can tell you about these $8 TRN cables is that they IMO are nice for the price but as @hakuzen says they are not stellar in build but good heavy wire and sheath. I've tested all mine and they sound great as well as look appropriate on my KZ's. As far as fit all have connected well and held but the male connectors do not seat completely on all models or get full penetration but they do secure well even with some of the housing protruding as in this photo. Look at how far this cable sticks out on the ZS6 as opposed to the insertion depth on the ZS4 and how my older bronze cable inserts on the ZS6. Even on the ZS4 the ear tip side still has a little exposure but face plate side is flush.



All in all for $8 each they are a nice cable and a worthy upgrade to these $25 to $45 KZ's (once again just Pods opinion and you know what they say about those) As mentioned and everyone by now knows I do no measurements or anything scientific to plead my cases so best case would be to just order one and try it as I spend twice this much for breakfast on most days So I did get these from Jim on AliEx and 5 pairs basically cost as much as a pair of ZS6's. Like I said I have tested all of them and both the SE and balanced sounded excellent on both my ES100 and Opus # 1. Here's the link https://www.aliexpress.com/item/TRN...691.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.c4554c4dQDCcD0

As a final note I still love my bronze cables especially for their length but still look a little anemic compared to these fatter TRN's As usual I'm never sure if I've been any help in your decision making but I just try and tell it like I hear it

yes, measured some of them.
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/kno...essions-thread.698148/page-1785#post-13964853 (cables 56)
very good conductivity thick wire for the price. but jacks and solder work aren't that good (uneven resistance).
gold version, the wire looks nice, but the jack doesn't. black version hides jack's cheap appearance better, and the combination of black and silver creates a nice shiny grey result.

That's one detailed response/explanation, Podster, and i'm quite satisfied. Much appreciated. Already placed an order for the 8-core black and white cable you featured and that hakuzen recommended. Thanks again. Btw, I did a double-take at your tube amp. Very nice!

I wanted to avoid this thread being about hi-res audio as it's a KZ thread but I'll respond to the previous posts which contain common criticisms of hi-res audio to clear up some misconceptions

Before I do so, I wanted to link to this post by a professor at Queen Mary university in London who demonstrates using graphs created using Matlab what I am talking about regarding the filtering and how much easier it is with higher sample rates.

https://intelligentsoundengineering...orem-a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing/

Bob Stuart who is a co founder of Meridian and a well known expert in audio also has this to say

http://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/what-is-mqa/#

I think you mean to say 44.1khz as a sampling rate has been proven to perfectly reproduce all frequencies by the sampling theorem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_filter

This wikipedia page is a good summary of why 44.1khz is not enough, because a perfect filter is only possible with an infinite delay, but our music has to play in real time, so the filters in our dac's are approximations, you may notice with Chord fpga equipment like the DAVE, there is some latency from the more powerful filters.

Hi-Res is about much more than dynamic range, not all modern recordings are pop music and plenty of past recordings exist with plenty of dynamic range.
The case for 24bit is harder to make than a higher sampling rate, but while the processing and editing take place in 24bit for more headroom, dither has to be applied to bring it down to 16bit, as to how much dither noise causes distortion is difficult to say. The processing/editing is a lossy process and while doing so at 32bit fp (has same accuracy as 24bit) or 64bit fp, there is still some loss hence why simply truncating the signal back to 16bit doesn't result in 16bit of dynamic range, and dither has to be applied.

16/44.1 was designed to fit an hour long concert recording on a 650mb disc

I'll respond in more detail via pm, I have come across the rtings link where each headphone is rated for soundstage which is interesting and the in-ears perform a lot worse. I wonder how we would all perform if we had to blind test our iems and cables.

As stated above, although in theory 16/44.1 produces all the frequencies for human hearing and dither can be applied, in practice, the sinc filter which is a perfect brick wall filter required for sampling and reconstruction can only be approximated in the real world.

SACD or DSD64 does not lose detail above 1khz compared to redbook CD audio, what you mean is that sample rate has to be much higher than CD because 1 bit is much noisier than 16 bit so a much higher sample rate is required so that to extract 24bit from 0-20khz, the dither noise is shifted beyond 20khz. For DSD64 the noise starts to pile up just above 20khz hence why we have double and quad DSD.

DSD of all varieties sound a lot better to me than CD quality, a lot more natural and spacious, a wider soundstage.

It's like watching boring demo footage in 8k on the latest 8k tv's but you have a wide variety of blu-rays/dvds, content is important too of course.
A lot of Hi-Res music is classical which doesn't suit many people's tastes.

Human hearing goes beyond 96db but there is dither, but there are other arguments for going beyond 16bit.
As stated above, SACD has a sample rate of 2.8mhz which reproduces all frequencies up to 20khz just as well if not better than redbook CD.

Apologies for going off topic on this KZ thread, but my point was to say that I don't believe CD quality flac is enough to properly assess a headphone especially for separation and placement although it can give you a good idea of how the headphone performs.

I now have the KZ ZSN which isn't fully run in but it should be enough.

Would I prefer to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN or redbook on my much more expensive Sennheiser Open Back over-ears?
While it's much more ideal to listen to 24/192 on my Sennheiser, if I had to choose, I'll say that even taking the form factor into account, the single dynamic driver in my Sennheiser has more clarity especially in the mid-range, but I would choose to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN than redbook on my Sennheiser HD579.

Hmm...fair enough. As I've said, very interesting.

....the adventure continues......I knew I had these somewhere BTW the BT receiver is very good and still works great! LOL LOL

Oh My! Those earbuds are like candy and really do look delicious! The orange eartips especially appear to be very crunchy.

 

[CoiL]

Was fun with all of You KZ fans and hoarders... but I`m out... found myself perfect IEM

Unsubscribed.

 

[BadReligionPunk]

D

I wanted to avoid this thread being about hi-res audio as it's a KZ thread but I'll respond to the previous posts which contain common criticisms of hi-res audio to clear up some misconceptions

Before I do so, I wanted to link to this post by a professor at Queen Mary university in London who demonstrates using graphs created using Matlab what I am talking about regarding the filtering and how much easier it is with higher sample rates.

https://intelligentsoundengineering...orem-a-little-knowledge-is-a-dangerous-thing/

Bob Stuart who is a co founder of Meridian and a well known expert in audio also has this to say

http://bobtalks.co.uk/blog/mqa-philosophy/what-is-mqa/#




I think you mean to say 44.1khz as a sampling rate has been proven to perfectly reproduce all frequencies by the sampling theorem

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinc_filter

This wikipedia page is a good summary of why 44.1khz is not enough, because a perfect filter is only possible with an infinite delay, but our music has to play in real time, so the filters in our dac's are approximations, you may notice with Chord fpga equipment like the DAVE, there is some latency from the more powerful filters.




Hi-Res is about much more than dynamic range, not all modern recordings are pop music and plenty of past recordings exist with plenty of dynamic range.
The case for 24bit is harder to make than a higher sampling rate, but while the processing and editing take place in 24bit for more headroom, dither has to be applied to bring it down to 16bit, as to how much dither noise causes distortion is difficult to say. The processing/editing is a lossy process and while doing so at 32bit fp (has same accuracy as 24bit) or 64bit fp, there is still some loss hence why simply truncating the signal back to 16bit doesn't result in 16bit of dynamic range, and dither has to be applied.

16/44.1 was designed to fit an hour long concert recording on a 650mb disc




I'll respond in more detail via pm, I have come across the rtings link where each headphone is rated for soundstage which is interesting and the in-ears perform a lot worse. I wonder how we would all perform if we had to blind test our iems and cables.



As stated above, although in theory 16/44.1 produces all the frequencies for human hearing and dither can be applied, in practice, the sinc filter which is a perfect brick wall filter required for sampling and reconstruction can only be approximated in the real world.

SACD or DSD64 does not lose detail above 1khz compared to redbook CD audio, what you mean is that sample rate has to be much higher than CD because 1 bit is much noisier than 16 bit so a much higher sample rate is required so that to extract 24bit from 0-20khz, the dither noise is shifted beyond 20khz. For DSD64 the noise starts to pile up just above 20khz hence why we have double and quad DSD.

DSD of all varieties sound a lot better to me than CD quality, a lot more natural and spacious, a wider soundstage.



It's like watching boring demo footage in 8k on the latest 8k tv's but you have a wide variety of blu-rays/dvds, content is important too of course.
A lot of Hi-Res music is classical which doesn't suit many people's tastes.




Human hearing goes beyond 96db but there is dither, but there are other arguments for going beyond 16bit.
As stated above, SACD has a sample rate of 2.8mhz which reproduces all frequencies up to 20khz just as well if not better than redbook CD.



Apologies for going off topic on this KZ thread, but my point was to say that I don't believe CD quality flac is enough to properly assess a headphone especially for separation and placement although it can give you a good idea of how the headphone performs.

I now have the KZ ZSN which isn't fully run in but it should be enough.

Would I prefer to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN or redbook on my much more expensive Sennheiser Open Back over-ears?
While it's much more ideal to listen to 24/192 on my Sennheiser, if I had to choose, I'll say that even taking the form factor into account, the single dynamic driver in my Sennheiser has more clarity especially in the mid-range, but I would choose to listen to 24/192 on my KZ ZSN than redbook on my Sennheiser HD579.

All very well and good, but only about 1 in 35 people can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and FLAC. Nobody can tell the difference between FLAC and DSD, Redbook SACD ect. Blind testing volume matched tracks proves this.

 

[Slater]

Was fun with all of You KZ fans and hoarders... but I`m out... found myself perfect IEM

Unsubscribed.

Glad you found your endgame CoiL!

We’ll miss your awesome KZ wood mods

 

[Slater]

D


All very well and good, but only about 1 in 35 people can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and FLAC. Nobody can tell the difference between FLAC and DSD, Redbook SACD ect. Blind testing volume matched tracks proves this.

Neil Young can lol

 

[PhonoPhi]

Was fun with all of You KZ fans and hoarders... but I`m out... found myself perfect IEM

Unsubscribed.

Yes, we will miss you
Let us know how long your perfection will last before a new IEM with an ideal graph will take its place

 

[Podster]

Was fun with all of You KZ fans and hoarders... but I`m out... found myself perfect IEM

Unsubscribed.

So you finally spent some money on something other than budget Chi-Fi? Hmm, guess I may not get an answer if you have un-sub'd However I'm glad you had fun hanging with all the cool kids

 

[Podster]

D


All very well and good, but only about 1 in 35 people can tell the difference between 320 mp3 and FLAC. Nobody can tell the difference between FLAC and DSD, Redbook SACD ect. Blind testing volume matched tracks proves this.

Well don't forget Batman, he has exceptional hearing too I keep hearing Sony Bono singing "And the beat goes on, nana nana na, nana nana ne" I've got some 128 MP3's that can blow some engineers 384's out the water, I've found many times it's not the format but the one behind the board who can make of break a recording The main thing I know after 52 years in this hobby (First real rig, older brother sent me his hand me down Grundig Short Wave valve head unit with two two ways and I had a DIN cable built for my Dual 1019 W/Shure V15 when I was 10 years old) is that my dad can beat your dad up

 

[CoiL]

So you finally spent some money on something other than budget Chi-Fi? Hmm, guess I may not get an answer if you have un-sub'd However I'm glad you had fun hanging with all the cool kids

Yes, we will miss you
Let us know how long your perfection will last before a new IEM with an ideal graph will take its place

I wouldn`t call iBasso IT01, Havi B3Pro1, LZ A2S, Magaosi BK50 quite budget chi-fi (they were higher priced when I got them compared to now and for me anything over ~40€ is money which I care for) and I got KP for 126€ during winter sale, which isn`t huge jump compared to IT01.
Price isn`t what makes IEM good - it`s the persons knowledge and experience about different sound signatures and what to read out of FR graphs and knowing his/her hearing response, along with tip/IEM shell fit, amping, source gear, music preferences etc. But at certain price there will be noticeable SQ jump due to technology and tuning, materials etc. ,so at same time it will contribute to sound too, still.
Certainly there IS something better for my ears too but honestly, I have certain limit with money I put into sound gear and I won`t jump over it, especially when I have found IEM that even atm (un-burned-in) sounds just right to my ears and with my gear match in every aspect, I can`t (haven`t) currently find any faults in KP.

Anyway, was fun journey with You all and I`ll start embracing music now...
Over & out.

Ps, I can still receive notifications when someone mentions my username, otherwise I`m not reading this thread anymore.

 

[Podster]

Well I can't speak for knowledge as I'm a real Dum Dum at times however I do know the sound I like, guess budget is also different for most as for me when you have $4K iem's out in the wild even $200 seems to still be a budget iem! I will say since moving into some >$200 iem's I've found there to be significant sound improvement but once again if what you get sounds good within ones budget why temp ones self

Cheers