[vedye]

lol I guess you are right. Apologize

Rephrase:
1. CX300 is so crap and dark and muddy (almost no separation to me) so i think as u can get satisfaction from it, any earphone should be at least not too bad

2. Just my limited experience with UE / Shure and my friend's Um2's they certainly all dont look like "collectable items from the House of Dunhill". Also it's supposed to be actually a very good thing to make IEMs lighter. And the cables are the most convenient i've used, not too thick not too hard and not too soft and very easy to "de-tangling" when ever i want to use them.

 

[ADD]

CX300 is dark and muddy, but it is also emanently listenable over extremely long periods unless one is being critical. In the same way that a bedside radio or TV is easy to listen to over a very long period, so is the CX300. For non-critical background listening the CX300 is actually very good. It's when one tries to think of it as a hi fi or main phone that the problems start.

Contrast this to the IE7 and it sells upon the pretence of being a higher end, true high fidelity product and this tends to raise a certain level of expectation in a consumer that would not necessarily be the case for something cheap.

As for build quality, having owned the UM2 and the Shure SE310 as examples, my view is the build quality of the Westone and Shure are miles ahead of the IE7. The materials appear to be more substantial, appear more rugged and give a feeling of solidity that is completely missing from these IE7 which as I say - appear to be very cheap looking indeed and what I would expect from cheap, complimentary ear buds.

I agree that light materials are a plus for IEMs, however Shure, Klipsch and Westone mange to achieve this without the product looking like it came from a Hong Kong factory circa 1973. It may certainly be rugged in the long run. But it most certainly does not look that way. For $300, I would have expected something that would engender a little pride in ownership, but the IE7 has me wondering where all the money went.

 

[NajoBB]

Thanks for the impressions ADD. Seeing all the opinions of IE8 owners regarding burn in, i hope yours will improve too. I had cx300 long time ago and i honestly, they were the worst earphones i've ever tried regarding SQ, incredibly muddy. But people have different ears so that is to be expected. I say give them a couple of days, and if you don't like them enough after that you could return them and buy something that will suit you better. And about build quality, i had shure e2c and se530, and i wasn't impressed with them as much as i did with my aluminum Denons with tangle free cables that cost 3 times less than top of the line shure. And both shure models had cable crak after a couple of months. Denons are still fine after a year of abuse

 

[AgainstTheGrain]

Meh I'm only concerned about the ie8 not the ie7

 

[ADD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NajoBB /img/forum/go_quote.gif Seeing all the opinions of IE8 owners regarding burn in, i hope yours will improve too. I had cx300 long time ago and i honestly, they were the worst earphones i've ever tried regarding SQ, incredibly muddy. But people have different ears so that is to be expected. I say give them a couple of days, and if you don't like them enough after that you could return them and buy something that will suit you better.

Well I certainly have seen some very radical burn-in changes in my time. the most memorable being the HD555 (went from sounding horrible to sounding OK) and the HD25SP (went from sounding OK to sounding horrible).

So who knows where the burn-in track will lead for the IE7? That said, we really would have to be talking about massive wholesale changes here - like a Corolla turning into a Ferrari. The best way I can describe the IE7 sound is that let's say you feed it an accurate impression of an acoustic instrument timbre. It then low pass filters that input, rolling off from 8 khz onwards, then it says to itself "right, you fed me with a violin". Then it looks up it's synthetic database of sampled violin sounds from a synthesiser circa 1976. And that is what you end up getting! In other words, nothing like the real thing. Just some sort of vague synthetic substitute of what the real thing should sound like. The IE7 view of the acoustic world is certainly a massively distorted one and I honestly cannot ever recall hearing a less accurate transducer in my entire life, wheter that be a headphone or speaker system.

But sadly these things are not returnable here in Australia. You buy them and are stuck with them. And if I sell them I will lose quite a bit of money. They do have redeeming qualities though. The comfort really is something else. I never conceived something could be more comfortable than a CX300, but there you go. Cabling really is excellent. I wish all IEMs were cabled to this degree of care. And finally, I can actually EQ them to approximate the frequency response of my favourite headphone of all - the PXC300. So it does actually make it easier to go from headphone to headphone that way than if I continued to use the CX300 for working and the PXC300 for my main listening.

So I guess I will hope to see improvements over time, but in any case I am going to use them anyway because they are very amenable to EQ, even though it does practically nothing to fix the inherent sonic problems that I described.

 

[shigzeo]

if westone's um2 was considered a good build quality (and it is mostly but the sound tube is incredibly silly as well as the earpiece lead) then the ie7 must be a shame. i was not impressed with the silly connectors on the shure models either but the worst ever is the fragile sa6 from sleek audio

 

[BloodSugar00]

Advancedmp3players.co.uk currently have a number od special offers and discounts going with it being the festive time of year and all that; I am aware of a 20% off all Sennheiser headphones they stock, a 10% of any headphones purchase and then several general discoutnts of an overall 5% off any purchase. Does anymone know if you can use more than one discount code on an order? I've tried to simulate it but can't tell if it's accepting the second code I'm inputting and I don't wana confirm order as I don't wana push the purchase through.

 

[NicktheNorse]

I asked them earlier this year and they said only one discount code at a time.

 

[BloodSugar00]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NicktheNorse /img/forum/go_quote.gif I asked them earlier this year and they said only one discount code at a time.

Thanks for that! It makes sense but when places like Amazon allow more than one code to be inputted it's worth checking out to the frugal shopper

(20% off the IE8's still gets you them for an excellent price but you start to extrapolate and go well maybe if I could get that 10% off aswell...; 170 is still too much for me to be able to assign to a headphone purchase atm!)

 

[jwbrent]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NajoBB /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for the impressions ADD. Seeing all the opinions of IE8 owners regarding burn in, i hope yours will improve too. I had cx300 long time ago and i honestly, they were the worst earphones i've ever tried regarding SQ, incredibly muddy. But people have different ears so that is to be expected. I say give them a couple of days, and if you don't like them enough after that you could return them and buy something that will suit you better. And about build quality, i had shure e2c and se530, and i wasn't impressed with them as much as i did with my aluminum Denons with tangle free cables that cost 3 times less than top of the line shure. And both shure models had cable crak after a couple of months. Denons are still fine after a year of abuse

The Denons are built really well and the cable employed is excellent. They are just a tad too detailed for me, especially at higher volume levels. It looks like we are going down the same path with IE8s. Hopefully, they'll meet our expectations in all areas.

I am spoiled by the build of the Denons; I hope there won't be a huge letdown with the build quality of the IE8s.

 

[NicktheNorse]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BloodSugar00 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Thanks for that! It makes sense but when places like Amazon allow more than one code to be inputted it's worth checking out to the frugal shopper (20% off the IE8's still gets you them for an excellent price but you start to extrapolate and go well maybe if I could get that 10% off aswell...; 170 is still too much for me to be able to assign to a headphone purchase atm!)

I'm still trying to justify spending nearer £300 on the W3s after only a few months with the TF10s!

 

[NajoBB]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jwbrent /img/forum/go_quote.gif The Denons are built really well and the cable employed is excellent. They are just a tad too detailed for me, especially at higher volume levels. It looks like we are going down the same path with IE8s. Hopefully, they'll meet our expectations in all areas. I am spoiled by the build of the Denons; I hope there won't be a huge letdown with the build quality of the IE8s.

I've ordered IE8 searching for a couple of improvements over my beloved C751:

Better soundstage - C751 have good soundstage but it's positioned a little behind your head....can't explain better(not so good with English yet)

Better seal = a little more bass quantity and possibly tightier bass(but even now it's almost perfect for my ears, ridiculously good bass for that price)

More refined sound overall (separation, details...) but as more i mean slightly more. That's all i need.

As i've mentioned before, with shure e2c black tips denons sound almost perfect to my ears as they tune the sound a little: smoother highs with same detail and much better bass. I tried sony's tips but IMO they're almost same as denons (bad).

I hope IE8 will be interesting upgrade at least. Based on reviews so far it seems they'll do a great job, my only fear is for highs....we'll see.

 

[tonyep]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NajoBB /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've ordered IE8 searching for a couple of improvements over my beloved C751: Better soundstage - C751 have good soundstage but it's positioned a little behind your head....can't explain better(not so good with English yet) Better seal = a little more bass quantity and possibly tightier bass(but even now it's almost perfect for my ears, ridiculously good bass for that price) More refined sound overall (separation, details...) but as more i mean slightly more. That's all i need. As i've mentioned before, with shure e2c black tips denons sound almost perfect to my ears as they tune the sound a little: smoother highs with same detail and much better bass. I tried sony's tips but IMO they're almost same as denons (bad). I hope IE8 will be interesting upgrade at least. Based on reviews so far it seems they'll do a great job, my only fear is for highs....we'll see.

The highs is there, not recessed. It just needs quite a long burn in time to settle though.

 

[NajoBB]

I'll burn 'em for two months straight if it's necessary! I can't live without good highs

 

[vedye]

Quote:

Originally Posted by NajoBB /img/forum/go_quote.gif I've ordered IE8 searching for a couple of improvements over my beloved C751: Better soundstage - C751 have good soundstage but it's positioned a little behind your head....can't explain better(not so good with English yet) Better seal = a little more bass quantity and possibly tightier bass(but even now it's almost perfect for my ears, ridiculously good bass for that price) More refined sound overall (separation, details...) but as more i mean slightly more. That's all i need. I hope IE8 will be interesting upgrade at least. Based on reviews so far it seems they'll do a great job, my only fear is for highs....we'll see.

Hi NajoBB, I've been listening to my IE8s for a good few weeks now. I'm a heavy user and I did experienced the big burn-in change after around the first week. Basically after the change it's less darker and the soundstage is more impressive. So to ur concerns,

Soundstage: I think IE8 is good

Seal and Bass: with the Foam tips the Seal is the best and bass is quite a lot. but to me it'll make the sound darker.

Separation & details: Separation is great on my IE8. Now i've noticed a lot small sounds that i didn't notice before coming from different locations/directions in the music. My UE sf5pro is quite clear, but didn't give me this feeling.

Highs: I don't know what DAP you are using, with my sonys the EQ functionality is always very useful. It can tweak my Ex90 to a very bright and strong clear sound with very deep bass. With IE8, i found that the only thing i need to change with EQ is to boost up the highs. So my EQ on sony for IE8 is now (clearbass+1, +0, +0, +0, +1, +2) that +2 is for the highs and it does a superb job! The highs is quite crisp clear and sweet to my ear. I am not sure if the highs are better after the burn-in, but I think i quite like the highs this way so i wont change them back Overall, I don't need to change anything for IE8 on EQ really, any other changes will make the sound less interesting to me.

That is just my personal experience and hope it helps. Maybe it's because i didn't listen to many good phones before, so i'm quite impressed with the soundstage & seperation etc (IE8 is my most expensive one so far. I thought about upgrading to TF10, but didn't coz i wasn't so impressed with the sf5pro). Now it's getting me more curious to the other famous phones....