Blorton
100+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Jun 25, 2005
- Posts
- 292
- Likes
- 11
Howdy Gang - great site!
(Short version - I'd appreciate pointers towards a bright set of canalphones with musician-class performance.)
By way of introduction, I was born with a significant hearing loss such that I listen to headphones at a volume level typical of a rebellious teenager.
My loss mirrors that of older folks who've been exposed to too much loud noise. The upper frequencies are where the loss is greatest. My audiogram looks like a map for a great ski slope.
Anyways - I wear a pair of expensive, fully digital hearing aids that do well enough for conversational needs, but obviously are horrid at music reproduction. (Every incoming sound is digitally sliced and diced to foreground human voices over all else. In addition to the wild frequency munging, they absolutely play hell with dynamic range.) Since I play trombone in a number of groups, this is a problem. (When I first started playing decades ago, I only wore an aid on one side, so the occlusion and artifacts I'm battling now weren't an issue. And aids back then were "low-tech" analog and had linear gain. ) This is progress?
Anyways - back to the matter at hand...
In addition to using this potential rig for listening to music, I'm also working towards being able to adapt it into a "personal monitor" setup for performing music. (Commercial units are available with two inputs and a mixer in an oversized pager type package and are often used by drummers to listen to a click track as well as the band they are playing with.)
On a lark, I bought a pair of koss plugs and have them running into custom earmolds(really just older ones I had laying around that still fit fine, just are too loose for HA use.). I'm running them off a boosteroo and am liking what I hear. I know they're crappy, but believe me, they are worlds better than what the hearing aids can do. The bass performance of the plugs got much better with the earmolds, but like everyone else, I find their high end response and overall musicality sorely lacking.
Up until now, I've always done my serious listening through mid-fi cans. (AKG-240S and MDR-7506)
I'm tentatively taking the next step by building a cmoy amp, and am shopping for a small stereo mic for the personal monitor side of things, but am undecided on the canalphones. Clearly, I'm a great candidate for the UE10's, but I'm leaning towards the E4(C)'s at this time. Money is not a huge issue, but I need some reassurance that a $1k purchase is the right move before I'd feel comfortable doing that. (I dropped $5k into these aids chasing better musicality and am damn near sick about it.)
I'll probably end up going with an eq at some point, but don't really need one with most signal sources and would prefer not to have one with a portable rig. What would you guys recommend for a bright set of canalphones or IEM's?
I'd appreciate any and all comments or advice,
Dan
(Short version - I'd appreciate pointers towards a bright set of canalphones with musician-class performance.)
By way of introduction, I was born with a significant hearing loss such that I listen to headphones at a volume level typical of a rebellious teenager.
My loss mirrors that of older folks who've been exposed to too much loud noise. The upper frequencies are where the loss is greatest. My audiogram looks like a map for a great ski slope.
Anyways - I wear a pair of expensive, fully digital hearing aids that do well enough for conversational needs, but obviously are horrid at music reproduction. (Every incoming sound is digitally sliced and diced to foreground human voices over all else. In addition to the wild frequency munging, they absolutely play hell with dynamic range.) Since I play trombone in a number of groups, this is a problem. (When I first started playing decades ago, I only wore an aid on one side, so the occlusion and artifacts I'm battling now weren't an issue. And aids back then were "low-tech" analog and had linear gain. ) This is progress?
Anyways - back to the matter at hand...
In addition to using this potential rig for listening to music, I'm also working towards being able to adapt it into a "personal monitor" setup for performing music. (Commercial units are available with two inputs and a mixer in an oversized pager type package and are often used by drummers to listen to a click track as well as the band they are playing with.)
On a lark, I bought a pair of koss plugs and have them running into custom earmolds(really just older ones I had laying around that still fit fine, just are too loose for HA use.). I'm running them off a boosteroo and am liking what I hear. I know they're crappy, but believe me, they are worlds better than what the hearing aids can do. The bass performance of the plugs got much better with the earmolds, but like everyone else, I find their high end response and overall musicality sorely lacking.
Up until now, I've always done my serious listening through mid-fi cans. (AKG-240S and MDR-7506)
I'm tentatively taking the next step by building a cmoy amp, and am shopping for a small stereo mic for the personal monitor side of things, but am undecided on the canalphones. Clearly, I'm a great candidate for the UE10's, but I'm leaning towards the E4(C)'s at this time. Money is not a huge issue, but I need some reassurance that a $1k purchase is the right move before I'd feel comfortable doing that. (I dropped $5k into these aids chasing better musicality and am damn near sick about it.)
I'll probably end up going with an eq at some point, but don't really need one with most signal sources and would prefer not to have one with a portable rig. What would you guys recommend for a bright set of canalphones or IEM's?
I'd appreciate any and all comments or advice,
Dan
