Eddyfcknp
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Has anyone with a SD2 heard the IM02? Looking for a bit of a comparison of the SD2 vs. IM02.
New Custom-to-Universal IEMs: InEar StageDiver 2/3
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FiJAAS
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I have a question. Any users paired the SD-2 with Opppo HA-2?
crlbt
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Hi guys. I have InEar SD-3 at the moment and was wondering if JH Angie will be a noticeable upgrade.
As another option I was thinking of buying silver balanced cable to make it sound less warm (and maybe add a bit of highs) on my AK100II.
Thanks.
As another option I was thinking of buying silver balanced cable to make it sound less warm (and maybe add a bit of highs) on my AK100II.
Thanks.
AstralStorm
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Hello, I've been having fun using these InEar StageDiver 2 for about 2 weeks now with direct comparison against some heavyweighs such as Spiral Ear SE-5 referec, modified Sony MH1C, modified Hifiman RE-400, RE-300, Brainwavz B2 and Philips Fidelio S2. Including against headphones - modded Hifiman HE-500, HE-6 and Paradox Basic.
Finally I've decided to write a microreview. Main comparison is against SE-5 and HE-6, since everything else is left in the dust.
Caveat: SE-5 are equalized. Without it they sound extremely muffled which is apparently how they were tuned. I wouldn't call it a reference tuning.
Mods:
The mods were originally purely aimed at improving comfort - these are pretty ok out of the box, but they put a bit too much strain on 2 points in left ear and another in right.
It consists of applying Comply Ts-400 which fit perfectly and Comply Wraps at critical edges to improve comfort. With these minor additions, they are more comfortable than my already bit aged SE-5 CIEM.
Comfort, isolation, microphonics, build quality:
With silicone tips and default fit, they are very comfortable, only slightly behind the custom SE-5. However longer term usage (talking about 12h of wear) resulted in sore points on earlobe - anti-tragus on both ears and topmost corner of anti-helix in left ear. The latter issue is shared with SE-5. Default fit is already very secure, in fact more than old silicone custom SE-5.
The lower weight probably helps. Unlike SE-5, they do not get sweaty with prolonged use.
The fix for the minor comfort gripes is the use of Comply Ts-400 and applying Comply Wraps at a few critical points.
The in-ears come with very long memory wire cable guides which are actually helpful in fitting as well. However, they can become unwieldy in storage and make insertion a bit trickier due to the size. With silicone tips, isolation is very good, better than quite a few demo CIEMs I've tried and only a few dB worse than the enormous isolation provided by SE-5.
With the Comply tweaks, it is comparable to SE-5, stronger in highs but weaker in bass, more of a muffle than flat attenuation as in SE-5.
Microphonics are very low and straight thump is not bad either, better than in case of SE-5. Cable looks and feels like modern Westone cable with a much more modern Y split than SE-5 (which is a separate story to be told) and a cable cinch made out of a bit of transparent PCV. The one gripe with this exact kind of cable is that the jack itself is either slightly short or slightly thin for some of the sockets - might have rare intermittent contact. This issue is shared with SE-5.
Build quality is excellent. The only unimportant interesting weirdness is the fact that the nozzles and sides of the are rough. very fine pitch 3D printing marks are clearly visible there, betraying the origin of the shells. Body seems more sturdy than an acrylic CIEM and looks like a single piece, likely of ABS plastic as it sounds different than acrylic when struck. (It's probably two-piece, glued together expertly.) Surface feels to the touch exactly like an acrylic shell - likely acrylic lacquer/glue. Cable sockets provide solid removal tension (just short of requiring pliers) and are made out of different, transparent plastic.
Nozzles are equipped with some sort of cerumen protection filter, though with Comply tips contamination should never be an issue.
Oh, and it also comes in a very nice Pelican case and a bunch of wipes for people who actually want to keep their in-ears clean. The only somewhat lackluster part is the selection of tips and lack of replacement filters just in case (available in SD3 or on order) Oh and some people might not like the relatively austere black and smooth piano gloss finish. I guess those people would rather order one of In-Ear's custom IEMs or maybe the quite expensive wooden inlay.
Of course, if you happen to have smaller ears, there's the smaller version available. For my ears, it would fit much worse.
Sound:
Out of the box with silicone tips, the sound is pretty neutral, erring on the brighter metallic side, almost completely due to frequency response than anything related to timbre. Bass is ruler-flat down to 38 Hz, rolling off relatively gently below. The lowest subbass has a hint of armature bass to it.
Soundstaging is excellent with a hint of forwardness, much less intimate than enveloping SE-5 but more versatile. More akin to open area.
Timbre is nearly flawless in this configuration, slightly metallic with bell-like tone not entirely unlike TWFK used in Brainwavz B2, but yet different due to smoothness. I do not recognize the drivers by sound - they might be some new product of Sonion if I were to hazard a guess and these are impossible to take apart. The peak is somewhere close to 6 kHz, but that is very likely to differ based on the listener. Secondary peak is around 12.8kHz, both ~8 dB. These together make for a V-shaped signature, but without the soundstaging tax typical for headphones sharing this kind of sound. The boosted area remains smooth and seems free of resonances other than the highs boost, making it sound very precise and smooth (again very much unlike GR07 or the problem at 8kHz with unmodded Hifiman HE-6). This suggests the resonances are strictly ear canal reflections.
SD-2 get gradually more metallic and brighter with increasing output impedance - best at near zero Ohm. This is quite noticeable even at ~8 Ohm output impedance my phone has. Increasing impedance further causes extra roll-off in addition to further increasing the peaks.
Now, once you replace the silicone tips with Comply foams, everything changes. Especially with the best fitting Ts-400.
The metallic quality of sound is completely gone. Bass timbre becomes better as well, losing the tiny hint of BA bass it had, making it competitive against SE-5 even there. (In fact, it's probably better defined and focused - the silicone CIEM bass definition difference is quite audible in SE-5.)
The feel is of... what do you call it, slight lushness and warmth? Very similar to best dynamic drivers, yet with the speed and precision of balanced armature.
Slightly V-shaped signature is replaced with n-shaped.
Soundstage becomes yet more natural, width is enhanced as is essentially all resolution. It's essentially boundless and unlike SE-5 does not have the feel of a dampened mastering room. Depth rendition in fact surpasses even the capabilities of modded Hifiman HE-6.
Isolation improves and is highly comparable to SE-5, bit lower in bass and bit higher in highs.
Countering the Comply-induced rolloff is trivial with the easiest kind of Butterworth 2nd order highpass with knee at 15kHz (tuned Q 0.775) full 24 dB, one 2nd order low shelf at 36 Hz (Q 0.707) 12 dB. The highs boost is differently set for silicone variant - more like a brickwall. Of course this attempt at countering the brickwall response of the balanced armature only has limited effects.
Even without correction they sound neutral though rolled, kind of similar to unmodified Hifiman RE-600 in this regard, but very different in precision and timbre, much more powerful.
Microdynamics are excellent. SD2 have a high, but existent, limit in macrodynamics - overdrive them (a lot though, I wouldn't recommend anyone to listen at metal concert loudness levels for prolonged time, 100+ dB) and they actually will start sounding slightly compressed in bass. They handle it notably better than Brainwavz B2, but cannot compare in this quality to SE-5 or any of the good dynamic drivers.
Channel balance is perfect with Comply, very good with silicone tips (differences in the position of the audible highs boost due to different tip sizes that had to be used for good fit.
Typical caveat of most BA apply to these - noise pickup from amplifiers and brickwalled highest air. InEar does not lie about 18 kHz upper limit. Only few hundred extra Hz are recoverable.
Sensitivity to noise is slightly better than Brainwavz B2 but nowhere near the insensitiivty of dynamic drivers or SE-5. Lynx Hilo output suddenly appears to contain a hint of noise. FiiO E18 is black. E07 flaws and midrange kind of sound is exposed immediately, these clearly require a better amplifier than that. Leckerton UHA-6s w/ OPA209 shines quite a bit, but it's a bit of a toss up vs E18. Hilo sounds on the whole very slightly better than either, though a just noticeable hint of precision is lost in the very slight noise.
They excel with all genres I've tossed at them and exhibit similar "chameleon" quality to (equalized) SE-5 or HE-6.
Comparison to headphones:
Accuracy is just hint behind modded Hifiman HE-6, mostly due to missing that final bit of air - albeit the extra lushness is more reminiscent of old Audeze LCD-2 I've heard a long time ago rather than sharply delimited hits of bass provided by HE-6. Sort of more cohesive as well. In the Comply configuration, SD2 really hit way beyond their price.
HE-500, even modded and equalized, are clearly left in the dust, as is Paradox.
They are about as brutal as HE-6 in exposing all kinds of mastering flaws and great recordings. In fact maybe a tinge superior due to better soundstage depth rendition.
There's not much more to say.
Final words:
What I find most annoying is that SE-5 Reference were clearly way too expensive or are outdated already. (Yes, they are some years old now.)
No seriously, these are like RE-400 - can fight and win against in-ears at least 4x more expensive if not more. I could easily call the Comply configuration w/ the trivial eq end-game gear.
I do not say this lightly at all - this kind of quality was completely unexpected.
9.3/10 w/o Comply, 9.9 with Comply.
Finally I've decided to write a microreview. Main comparison is against SE-5 and HE-6, since everything else is left in the dust.
Caveat: SE-5 are equalized. Without it they sound extremely muffled which is apparently how they were tuned. I wouldn't call it a reference tuning.
Mods:
The mods were originally purely aimed at improving comfort - these are pretty ok out of the box, but they put a bit too much strain on 2 points in left ear and another in right.
It consists of applying Comply Ts-400 which fit perfectly and Comply Wraps at critical edges to improve comfort. With these minor additions, they are more comfortable than my already bit aged SE-5 CIEM.
Comfort, isolation, microphonics, build quality:
With silicone tips and default fit, they are very comfortable, only slightly behind the custom SE-5. However longer term usage (talking about 12h of wear) resulted in sore points on earlobe - anti-tragus on both ears and topmost corner of anti-helix in left ear. The latter issue is shared with SE-5. Default fit is already very secure, in fact more than old silicone custom SE-5.
The lower weight probably helps. Unlike SE-5, they do not get sweaty with prolonged use.
The fix for the minor comfort gripes is the use of Comply Ts-400 and applying Comply Wraps at a few critical points.
The in-ears come with very long memory wire cable guides which are actually helpful in fitting as well. However, they can become unwieldy in storage and make insertion a bit trickier due to the size. With silicone tips, isolation is very good, better than quite a few demo CIEMs I've tried and only a few dB worse than the enormous isolation provided by SE-5.
With the Comply tweaks, it is comparable to SE-5, stronger in highs but weaker in bass, more of a muffle than flat attenuation as in SE-5.
Microphonics are very low and straight thump is not bad either, better than in case of SE-5. Cable looks and feels like modern Westone cable with a much more modern Y split than SE-5 (which is a separate story to be told) and a cable cinch made out of a bit of transparent PCV. The one gripe with this exact kind of cable is that the jack itself is either slightly short or slightly thin for some of the sockets - might have rare intermittent contact. This issue is shared with SE-5.
Build quality is excellent. The only unimportant interesting weirdness is the fact that the nozzles and sides of the are rough. very fine pitch 3D printing marks are clearly visible there, betraying the origin of the shells. Body seems more sturdy than an acrylic CIEM and looks like a single piece, likely of ABS plastic as it sounds different than acrylic when struck. (It's probably two-piece, glued together expertly.) Surface feels to the touch exactly like an acrylic shell - likely acrylic lacquer/glue. Cable sockets provide solid removal tension (just short of requiring pliers) and are made out of different, transparent plastic.
Nozzles are equipped with some sort of cerumen protection filter, though with Comply tips contamination should never be an issue.
Oh, and it also comes in a very nice Pelican case and a bunch of wipes for people who actually want to keep their in-ears clean. The only somewhat lackluster part is the selection of tips and lack of replacement filters just in case (available in SD3 or on order) Oh and some people might not like the relatively austere black and smooth piano gloss finish. I guess those people would rather order one of In-Ear's custom IEMs or maybe the quite expensive wooden inlay.
Of course, if you happen to have smaller ears, there's the smaller version available. For my ears, it would fit much worse.
Sound:
Out of the box with silicone tips, the sound is pretty neutral, erring on the brighter metallic side, almost completely due to frequency response than anything related to timbre. Bass is ruler-flat down to 38 Hz, rolling off relatively gently below. The lowest subbass has a hint of armature bass to it.
Soundstaging is excellent with a hint of forwardness, much less intimate than enveloping SE-5 but more versatile. More akin to open area.
Timbre is nearly flawless in this configuration, slightly metallic with bell-like tone not entirely unlike TWFK used in Brainwavz B2, but yet different due to smoothness. I do not recognize the drivers by sound - they might be some new product of Sonion if I were to hazard a guess and these are impossible to take apart. The peak is somewhere close to 6 kHz, but that is very likely to differ based on the listener. Secondary peak is around 12.8kHz, both ~8 dB. These together make for a V-shaped signature, but without the soundstaging tax typical for headphones sharing this kind of sound. The boosted area remains smooth and seems free of resonances other than the highs boost, making it sound very precise and smooth (again very much unlike GR07 or the problem at 8kHz with unmodded Hifiman HE-6). This suggests the resonances are strictly ear canal reflections.
SD-2 get gradually more metallic and brighter with increasing output impedance - best at near zero Ohm. This is quite noticeable even at ~8 Ohm output impedance my phone has. Increasing impedance further causes extra roll-off in addition to further increasing the peaks.
Now, once you replace the silicone tips with Comply foams, everything changes. Especially with the best fitting Ts-400.
The metallic quality of sound is completely gone. Bass timbre becomes better as well, losing the tiny hint of BA bass it had, making it competitive against SE-5 even there. (In fact, it's probably better defined and focused - the silicone CIEM bass definition difference is quite audible in SE-5.)
The feel is of... what do you call it, slight lushness and warmth? Very similar to best dynamic drivers, yet with the speed and precision of balanced armature.
Slightly V-shaped signature is replaced with n-shaped.
Soundstage becomes yet more natural, width is enhanced as is essentially all resolution. It's essentially boundless and unlike SE-5 does not have the feel of a dampened mastering room. Depth rendition in fact surpasses even the capabilities of modded Hifiman HE-6.
Isolation improves and is highly comparable to SE-5, bit lower in bass and bit higher in highs.
Countering the Comply-induced rolloff is trivial with the easiest kind of Butterworth 2nd order highpass with knee at 15kHz (tuned Q 0.775) full 24 dB, one 2nd order low shelf at 36 Hz (Q 0.707) 12 dB. The highs boost is differently set for silicone variant - more like a brickwall. Of course this attempt at countering the brickwall response of the balanced armature only has limited effects.
Even without correction they sound neutral though rolled, kind of similar to unmodified Hifiman RE-600 in this regard, but very different in precision and timbre, much more powerful.
Microdynamics are excellent. SD2 have a high, but existent, limit in macrodynamics - overdrive them (a lot though, I wouldn't recommend anyone to listen at metal concert loudness levels for prolonged time, 100+ dB) and they actually will start sounding slightly compressed in bass. They handle it notably better than Brainwavz B2, but cannot compare in this quality to SE-5 or any of the good dynamic drivers.
Channel balance is perfect with Comply, very good with silicone tips (differences in the position of the audible highs boost due to different tip sizes that had to be used for good fit.
Typical caveat of most BA apply to these - noise pickup from amplifiers and brickwalled highest air. InEar does not lie about 18 kHz upper limit. Only few hundred extra Hz are recoverable.
Sensitivity to noise is slightly better than Brainwavz B2 but nowhere near the insensitiivty of dynamic drivers or SE-5. Lynx Hilo output suddenly appears to contain a hint of noise. FiiO E18 is black. E07 flaws and midrange kind of sound is exposed immediately, these clearly require a better amplifier than that. Leckerton UHA-6s w/ OPA209 shines quite a bit, but it's a bit of a toss up vs E18. Hilo sounds on the whole very slightly better than either, though a just noticeable hint of precision is lost in the very slight noise.
They excel with all genres I've tossed at them and exhibit similar "chameleon" quality to (equalized) SE-5 or HE-6.
Comparison to headphones:
Accuracy is just hint behind modded Hifiman HE-6, mostly due to missing that final bit of air - albeit the extra lushness is more reminiscent of old Audeze LCD-2 I've heard a long time ago rather than sharply delimited hits of bass provided by HE-6. Sort of more cohesive as well. In the Comply configuration, SD2 really hit way beyond their price.
HE-500, even modded and equalized, are clearly left in the dust, as is Paradox.
They are about as brutal as HE-6 in exposing all kinds of mastering flaws and great recordings. In fact maybe a tinge superior due to better soundstage depth rendition.
There's not much more to say.
Final words:
What I find most annoying is that SE-5 Reference were clearly way too expensive or are outdated already. (Yes, they are some years old now.)
No seriously, these are like RE-400 - can fight and win against in-ears at least 4x more expensive if not more. I could easily call the Comply configuration w/ the trivial eq end-game gear.
I do not say this lightly at all - this kind of quality was completely unexpected.
9.3/10 w/o Comply, 9.9 with Comply.
gilver
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Can you upload a pic of the comply wraps at critical edges ?
After reading your review, makes me wanna upgrade from my aging ie80 immediately.
After reading your review, makes me wanna upgrade from my aging ie80 immediately.
skalkman
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A Silver cable would probably do you good if you don't want to splash out more on a set of Angies. I'm using my SD-2's with a Forza AudioWorks Hybrid series with my AK100II. With the SD-3's you'd probably want to go full silver and/or get some really wide bore tips.
kokmeng
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Okay. I am gonna share the list of cables recommended by the head-fiers after days of reading. YES! I read thru all 88 pages.
http://www.effectaudio.com/upgrade-cables/iem-upgrade-cable/crystal-iem-upgrade-cable-by-effect-audio.html
http://www.amazon.com/FiiO-RC-WT1-re-cable-Westone-Earphones/dp/B00D6DOYEQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
http://www.jhaudio.com/product/spare-iem-cable
http://www.earplugstore.com/westone-epic-pro-cable1.html
http://headphonelounge.com/silver-iem-cables/
http://www.head-fi.org/products/lear-c2-iem-cable/reviews/9859#comments-title
http://btg-audio.com/webstore.htm#!/Midnight-IEM-Cable/p/11546451/category=2609075
As the result, I bought myself a pair of SD-2S from thomann.de
skalkman
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I would highly recommend Forza AudioWorks's Hybrid aswell. Works really nice with my SD-2's.Okay. I am gonna share the list of cables recommended by the head-fiers after days of reading. YES! I read thru all 88 pages.
http://www.effectaudio.com/upgrade-cables/iem-upgrade-cable/crystal-iem-upgrade-cable-by-effect-audio.html
http://www.amazon.com/FiiO-RC-WT1-re-cable-Westone-Earphones/dp/B00D6DOYEQ/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t
http://www.jhaudio.com/product/spare-iem-cable
http://www.earplugstore.com/westone-epic-pro-cable1.html
http://headphonelounge.com/silver-iem-cables/
http://www.head-fi.org/products/lear-c2-iem-cable/reviews/9859#comments-title
http://btg-audio.com/webstore.htm#!/Midnight-IEM-Cable/p/11546451/category=2609075
As the result, I bought myself a pair of SD-2S from thomann.de
skalkman
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Still use my SD-2's religiously after two years.
kokmeng
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Still use my SD-2's religiously after two years.
What balanced cable you using? Where you got it from? Looks good to me.
skalkman
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What balanced cable you using? Where you got it from? Looks good to me.
That is a Forza AudioWorks Hybrid. Matt can make you some straight connectors if you ask him too, since angled ones can be quite hard to use with the SD-2's.
kokmeng
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skalkman
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kokmeng
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