[Entropic]

OK - I give in... what is 'BA'?

 

[jinp6301]

Uhh, I like the ESW9 much more then the e500.

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Originally Posted by Entropic /img/forum/go_quote.gif OK - I give in... what is 'BA'?

balanced armature - a type of driver

 

[VoLTaG3]

 

[oarnura]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sorry, UE ones were 10s but not the custom ones. Too lazy to look up the proper naming conventions. ANYWAYS, sorry, Head-Fi has a LOT of inaccuracies as a LOT of whats on Head-Fi ARE hype (thus explaining why I have gone through so much equipment in the past few years). As to speakers, I have a set of Klipsch RF-83 (reason why I went for the customs in the first place) and a Klipsch RSW-10d subwoofer.

If your only reference for bass is the RSW-10D your really haven't heard clean, accurate musical bass. I am sorry. While it is a good sub it is not the best at producing great musical bass.

I have no problem believing that the EX700 gives you what the Klipsch sub does. But accurate and musical bass it isn't.

I have Rythmik F12 which is considered to be one of the cleanest and most musical sounding subs in the market.

Quote:

By the way, I've made this analogy in another post in regards to accuracy and musicality: it's like a book, technically it's accurate if you can pronounce each word along with all the hyphens, periods, commas, etc. but reading without emotion and character takes away from the book.

That's a pretty poor analogy.

Quote:

Yes, you are OBVIOUSLY going for what the MAJORITY says on Head-Fi, but you fail to mention that SO MANY people are holding on to Etymotic ER4s claiming that those are great sounding with excellent bass. The ER4s are clynical, yes, very accurate, but FAR from being musical. Congratulations on subscribing to the majority idea on Head-Fi, it's the equivalent of mass market consumerism except for the enthusiast market.

We have already established that your reference for good bass isjust adequate. Get a better sub and see what bass is supposed to sound and feel like.

Sure I should take your opinion, which is contrary to my experience, instead because it is your opinion, right?

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As to your argument using Bose, Bose is garbage. When passages start getting complicated, it can't resolve all the parts of the music. Clear and simple.

That's how most dynamics I have heard sound like. When there is a strong bass line transient response in other frequencies suffer and they can't resolve detail. Very easy to test with a good test disc.


Quote:

Bose is not only colored but it just can NOT handle things that are complicated. Apparently you don't understand this thus think that the only thing wrong with Bose is the coloration.

I understand this, trust me. What I am saying is your opinion is no more relevant or better than a Bose buyer.

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Just from your Bose analogy alone makes me question your thinking. Yes you are entitled to your opinions but apparently your opinions goes as far as a lot of what you read (aka hype) on Head-Fi and not from practice, I'm presuming this since you don't seem to understand the difference of resolution and coloration.

When the vast majority of opinions mirror my own experience I know that a few outliers are to be disregarded. How you figured out my opinions are formed from reading head-fi are a mystery to me? Did you not read the numerous statements where I said "of those that I have heard".

You sound like a typical bose buyer.. "I love my bose I don't care what avsforum's or audioholics hype says".. Yeah that's a good argument...

Let's agree to disagree then. You don't understand the difference that is what I am trying to say.

Musical is pretty silly term to describe colored sound.. that's all I am saying.. It makes it sound positive when it should have a negative connotation.

You can call accuracy, clinical, analytical whatever you want to pretend that accuracy is a negative attribute. All you are doing by that is telling me that you and I will never see eye to eye on what sounds good. I am fine with that.

Oh and I have never heard a Klipsch speaker I liked.....

 

[kobayashi]

Quote:

Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sorry, UE ones were 10s but not the custom ones. Too lazy to look up the proper naming conventions. ANYWAYS, sorry, Head-Fi has a LOT of inaccuracies as a LOT of whats on Head-Fi ARE hype (thus explaining why I have gone through so much equipment in the past few years). As to speakers, I have a set of Klipsch RF-83 (reason why I went for the customs in the first place) and a Klipsch RSW-10d subwoofer. By the way, I've made this analogy in another post in regards to accuracy and musicality: it's like a book, technically it's accurate if you can pronounce each word along with all the hyphens, periods, commas, etc. but reading without emotion and character takes away from the book. Yes, you are OBVIOUSLY going for what the MAJORITY says on Head-Fi, but you fail to mention that SO MANY people are holding on to Etymotic ER4s claiming that those are great sounding with excellent bass. The ER4s are clynical, yes, very accurate, but FAR from being musical. Congratulations on subscribing to the majority idea on Head-Fi, it's the equivalent of mass market consumerism except for the enthusiast market. As to your argument using Bose, Bose is garbage. When passages start getting complicated, it can't resolve all the parts of the music. Clear and simple. Bose is not only colored but it just can NOT handle things that are complicated. Apparently you don't understand this thus think that the only thing wrong with Bose is the coloration. Just from your Bose analogy alone makes me question your thinking. Yes you are entitled to your opinions but apparently your opinions goes as far as a lot of what you read (aka hype) on Head-Fi and not from practice, I'm presuming this since you don't seem to understand the difference of resolution and coloration.

Great post. Good to see someone else on head-fi with intelligence who doesn't buy into troll hype about thier FOTM IEMs.

 

[cn11]

All the armature based earphones I've had (with the exception of the TF10) couldn't come close to replicating the character of bass extension I get with my home system- which consists of Gallo Reference 3.1 (with the additional amp driving the second woofer voice coil), Coda Continuum Unison, and California Audio Lab cd player (definitely not a 'consumer grade' system).

The IE8's are the closest thing I've yet heard to being similar to my home system's extension, speed, and impact. And they don't sound 'one note woolly' to me. Neither does the home setup. I’ve read many times in high-end audiophile magazines and reviews that when you get really accurate, deeply extended bass, an extra level of definition and spatial resolution happens in the rest of the frequencies and soundstage because of that solid foundation presented in the low end.

 

[toughnut]

Beware of flamebait...

 

[dookiex]

Wow, this is turning into a alpha male size comparison kind of discussion Worst of all I fell for it. Oh wells. Anyhoot:

Firstly, oarnura, I have no idea why you keep bringing up speakers and subwoofers. My whole point in my post about authoring music and them auditioning the music through speakers and even car stereos was to point out that music is not authored to sound good on analytical equipment. There's a big difference between monitoring and actually authoring music for home or personal listening. I do my fair bit of audio authoring as well as video editing. There's phones which I use for monitoring but they are just for that, monitoring. I do not use them for music enjoyment (though I do use my Ultrasones for that purpose on occasions, usually I just grab my HD-595s or Grados 125s (yes, another for the list which I forgot after all this "look at all my pretty toys" discussion, a bit silly). What I expect from headphones and earphones is drastically different from what I expect from my speakers and sub. The only similarity I do ask for is that my earphones sound as close to my headphones as possible. In this regard, BAs are sadly lacking and for the longest time because of all the Head-Fi hype and the enthusiast market trend, BAs have been regarded as the best. The reason being there's been very little development with dynamic earphones as manufacturers have not found a need for it. Etymotic came out with theirs and thus everyone started to follow suit. Even Shure came out with consumer lines as well as UE. Now, look at what Shure and UE catered to prior, they catered to professional personal monitors thus they took their existing technologies and adjusted it for enthusiasts. It is in a sense the equivalent of Bose telling people that they have the best sound quality (because their ads say so). UE and Shure both claim that pros use their stuff, it's called marketing. What happens there is that folks who feed into hype, like yourself have shown, thinks to themselves "Well, the artists are using them, they must be great!" Yes, they are great... for MONITORING purposes. They can have extreme clarity but that clarity comes at the expense of musicality. The companies figured out somewhere down the line that they are lacking in musicality so the trend started to go towards multiple BA phones with the idea that they will produce a better and more musical bass response. This comes at the expense of adding a veil which I am suspecting is due to the way they try to dampen the bass response to make the bass sound more musical. Dampening the bass response also bleeds over to the other frequencies thus when you have a warmer sounding BA phone you end up having a somewhat veiled sound. Dynamics on the other hand, when handled properly, doesn't have this issue, it really comes down to how good the actual dynamic driver is.

Long story short, oarnura, you feel that music should sound a certain way because you've brought into the hype that BAs are the best because they provide so much detail. With the release of great enthusiast dynamics such as RE-1s, RE-2s, Yuins, Atrios, EX700s, and now the Sennheiser IE's, you don't see all that many arguments as to which is better, BAs or dynamics because if you've looked through the threads, it's clear that the IEs outperform BAs in their reproduction of bass while being able to match the clarity and resolution of BAs. I like how you're trying to say that I'm buying into Bose style hype because from the way things are at present, I'm one of the ones that listen with my ears instead of regurgitating what I read on Head-Fi. Like I said before, I had this argument before about BAs versus dynamics and some folks were very gun ho that BAs beat out dynamics yet nowadays if you look around Head-Fi, nobody contests that the dynamics may be just as good if not better. It's funny, I'm trusting my ears yet you like to bring up that Head-Fiers are all mostly agreeing with you, hmmmmm, I wonder who's jumped on the Bose-like hype train? Hmmmmmm.

Note (I love these things): Here's the problem with the idea of thinking that analytical sound is the correct sound. Music doesn't consist of just what the mic can pick up during the recording. There's also the fact that you have to take room acoustics into consideration. With the high details of BAs, a lot of people believe that music should be about the details and thus TOTALLY disregarding the fact that warmth is also needed. What do you think the engineers are trying to add back to the recordings when they mix? They are trying to put back what the mics don't record. This creates the music. During the whole crazy BA trend (which has now thankfully died down) folks somehow thought that analytical is the "true" way to listen to their music and things kind of went in the direction of "taking out" what the producers put in. Kind of silly to reverse engineer something like music since it was made a certain way because the creator wanted a certain kind of sound.

 

[MaloS]

"Firstly, oarnura, I have no idea why you keep bringing up speakers and subwoofers. My whole point in my post about authoring music and them auditioning the music through speakers and even car stereos was to point out that music is not authored to sound good on analytical equipment. There's a big difference between monitoring and actually authoring music for home or personal listening."

What kind of music are we talking about? There are plenty of records I heard that sound mediocre on car stereos (really mediocre, unless something is mastered for a cheap audio system, it sounds terrible on one) - but absolutely stellar on planar or BA equipment.

 

[dookiex]

I don't listen to much classical but what I do listen to is rock, jazz, big band jazz, doo-wop (think that's how you spell it), punk, electronica, dub, acid jazz, blues, reggae, and a bit of hip-hop. Come to think of it, most music needs warmth and BAs do not provide warmth without sacrificing clarity and when you have clarity it comes at the price of killing a good bit of the warmth. Never tried planar so I can't make a call on that. My point with the car stereos is that some do test out their mixes in car stereos (obviously not a junk car stereo system) as well as on headphone/earphones and speakers. In other words, they want to get a sense of what the music sounds like on those systems.

I can understand the BA argument if all you listen to is classical and listening in the sense of analyzing not just the music but individual instrument characteristics on a very granular level. I ended up listening to a lot of classical during my college years and the Ety's came in quite useful as I was taking classical music. So in that sense, I can see where BAs may be a bit better but even then, if I was to go back and want to enjoy the music more than analyzing it, I would still go for the good dynamics.

 

[shigzeo]

just for dookiex and ounara, if i remember correctly, the first custom ever was the dynamic from futuresonics. most companies use ba as they can be bought from the same shop and tweaked easily. a dynamic takes longer to get right because not only the driver needs to be personally made, designed and de-faulted, the sound chamber needs to be tweaked to get the best sound from the phone.

of course ba need this too but dynamics benefit more from a properly designed acoustic chamber as they drive much much more air and need a controlled environ. the fact that dynamics move more air makes them more natural while ba may in some cases be more neutral.

but then what system is neutral? not headphones or speakers are usually neutral. as far as i have encountered neutrality in music occurs as infrequently as honesty in politics.

audiophile neither means natural nor neutral: it means love of hi fidelity in music and if we had to pin a person to it: it would be a person who wants the best. of course that best is personal. so while you disagree with each others opinions, you are both correct.

 

[travisg]

I have the lisa 3 with bypassed vcap dock an imod and westone 3 if your 530 and zune sound better than mine i will salt it up and eat every bite of my setup

 

[Spyro]

Man, this thread is way over the top....other than a couple guys I don't see out of control hype on Head-Fi. I see a pretty diverse group of people, preferences in IEM's and preferences in music. They like their stuff...it's a hobby. So we come here and talk about it. It's only natural to gloat about a new toy you spent $400 on and this is the place to do it for portable audio. Others aren't sure what they want or need but they know that the opinions here are more valubale than anywhere else like CNET or Amazon. I find it fun to read hundreds of viewpoints to form a judgement on "the next purchase."

Also keep in mind quality of sound is not only personal preference but relative to what a person has heard previous.

I really like all of my past three IEM purchases (SE530, W3, TF10Pro) but even at this top level I usually find at least one drawback...but it still sounds excellent. But let's keep in mind, it's portable audio and to really consider the level of SQ coming out of any of those IEM's above simply matched with an Ipod is astonishing compared to what we had even 15 years ago.

Having said all that, etiquette is key. To say, I think that.....blah blah blah or I feel that...blah blah blah is fine but to start a thread with a title like this one is asking for an argument. Cheers...

 

[dookiex]

Ha ha. Much better worded than I could have done. Then again, I felt it was a silly argument but had to be vocal about it since that whole comment about accuracy being musicality was quite odd as they are truly not the same. I did not know that Futuresonics made the first customs (lack of following threads I guess ). Thanks shigzeo.

 

[i_don't_know]

Quote:

Originally Posted by oarnura /img/forum/go_quote.gif All headphones are unnatural/unmusical because sounds in nature don't come from tiny point sources on or in your ear. I am going to get the IE7 this week a very highly regarded dynamic IEM. If it blow me away I will write about it. If it has the same flaws I perceive with most dynamics I will write about it too.

For the IE7, don't forget to burn-in for 350+ hours first!

Also, distortion and unnatural sound aren't the same thing. Just thought I'd point that out. I think you know that, though. So I don't understand this. Let's just forget it ever happened.

Basically, dynamics are considered more "musical" because the driver moves more air, thus generating texture and feeling with each sound. This is what I believe is the difference between musical and non-musical. Music is supposed to provoke an emotional response from the listener. "Feeling" the sound (dynamic) creates this phenomenon better than just hearing it for what it is (BA). Musicality has nothing to do with accuracy. To be honest, I prefer a more accurate sound. But if I'm craving a bassier, less accurate presentation for some reason, I'd reach for a pair of dynamic IEMs or headphones simply for that extra musicality that comes with it. I think a bassy BA is actually a little contradicting, to be honest, since something that pumps out serious bass should make you really feel it, and BA drivers excel in speed, detail, and accuracy.


Not arguing with you, just jumping in to over-clarify things. I'm in one of those moods. Frendz?


EDIT: By the way, dynamics can produce a clean, accurate sound. It just takes a ton of burn-in, and you have to keep in mind that BA drivers will always be quicker to some degree.

EDIT 2: Also, VoLTaG3, you're obviously in love with the 530's, so quit while you're ahead. Leave Head-Fi and enjoy life with your Shures.