[csglinux]

I'm trying to find a preset EQ setting for my Equalizer APO using the default DAC. Can anyone point me to the right direction?

If you mean EQ presets with the KSE1500's DAC, here are the full details from the user manual (and a few extra details that should have been in the user manual!):

The volume control on the KSE1500 DAC/amp unit doubles for menu navigation. Double-pressing on the volume button, you get the following set of controls:

Equalizer. This comes with the following predefined settings:
Bypass (flat, or no EQ)
Low boost
Vocal boost
Loudness
De-ess
Below this are 4 user-defined entries. You're able to start creating your own frequency response curves using the parametric EQ either from the flat user-defined entries (1-4), or from any of the existing preset shapes, above. When saving, you'll be prompted to save your EQ curve into one of those 4 user-defined slots. The parametric EQ isn't really explained in the user manual, but it's pretty intuitive. It lets you adjust the frequency response by shape, centre frequency and amplitude. However, I rarely use the EQ these days. I was initially using it to bump up the sub-bass slightly, but I find that with SpinFit tips flat/no-EQ is just about perfect to my ears. In fact, with the SpinFit tips, I find the bass even more prominent than that of my SE846 (to be clear, I now use Brown Knowles dampers in place of the stock filters on my SE846).

Below the EQ is the "Audio" menu, which has two settings:
1) Limiter off/on. There's no explanation at all for this one in the user manual. Basically, in various legacy Shure products, there was always a peak RMS limiter to avoid excessive dB levels at the eardrum that might cause hearing damage. Although the max SPL of the KSE1500 unit (~113 dB) isn’t perhaps as high as with some other headphone/amp combos (a trait of electrostats), Shure decided to keep this limiter feature. I'm not exactly certain at what SPL level the limiter would kick in (I contacted Sean Sullivan at Shure, and he wasn't certain either), but to hear the effect you’d have to be pushing the volume to unsafe levels where the sound might(?) start to distort. At that point, you could opt to use the limiter to basically swap distortion for compression. Neither is a good idea, and if you're willing to spend $3000 on an IEM, you probably shouldn't be risking your hearing by listening at that kind of volume.

2) Input pad: This adjusts the sensitivity of the line-in. You can choose between increments of 0, -10, -20dB. Basically, if you have a high output voltage from your players line-out, you might notice the KSE1500's meters hitting the orange or red. You want to avoid that by reducing either the LO output power, or reducing the sensitivity via the input pad.

The next menu is the Utilities menu, which has the following options:
1) Display: Let's you adjust screen brightness and display timeout.
2) Language
3) Flip screen - so you can use your KSE1500 in Australia
4) Knob direction (do you prefer clockwise or counter clockwise?)
5) Battery info: This tells you the charge %, cycle count and temperature.
6) Factory reset
7) Firmware information
8) Update

The final menu is hardware, which has the following options:
1) Info
2) Disable charging - This is essential if you're driving the KSE1500 from, say a smartphone and you don't want your smartphone to be charging the KSE1500 (and draining its own battery) while playing. (iPhones and iPads don't give you that option, but you could use an Android phone or tablet to simultaneously stream to - and charge - the KSE1500. Most of the time, you'd want to disable charging, even if your player supports it. Note that the KSE1500 reverts automatically to charge mode when shutdown.)

 

[csglinux]

As promised here are my Tests results with the Spinfit CP800.

Well... results are very convincing, I have a cleaner sound than before. Very enjoyable, and good confort for long listening time (but... not very good isolation. I guess you can't have all).

But also I must share another "revelation": I finally followed Jude's advice and set the KSE1500 input to - 10 dB, so that I can now set the A&K SP1000 at full volume (150), changing the volume level only through the KSE1500's knob.

and... I have the strong impression that the sound is really better ! May be it is because the A&K's volume level set at 100% , I have now a "real" line out, bypassing the distorsion of the SP1000's volume level management, or, may be it is... effect placebo

Anyway, I am now very happy with my Spinfit CP800 and also the BRIMAR 16x cable.

I'm a big fan of the CP800 tips too. I'm still saving up for one of those Brimar cables though...

If you haven't already, check out those CP240 tips that @Negyt mentioned (very diligent job, BTW, with all those tips you tested @Negyt !). The CP240 tips aren't as bright-sounding (might be a plus or a minus, depending on your recording and personal preferences), but they're just as comfy and they offer better isolation.

 

[bmichels]

I'm a big fan of the CP800 tips too. I'm still saving up for one of those Brimar cables though...

If you haven't already, check out those CP240 tips that @Negyt mentioned (very diligent job, BTW, with all those tips you tested @Negyt !). The CP240 tips aren't as bright-sounding (might be a plus or a minus, depending on your recording and personal preferences), but they're just as comfy and they offer better isolation.

thanks, I will try the CP240 and also the P-seriescomply's

 

[endressth]

I have never heard them.. And i have no experience with stax . My question : Do you "notice " that you are listening to a different system (electrostatic ) ? If so, what is noticable?

 

[csglinux]

I have never heard them.. And i have no experience with stax . My question : Do you "notice " that you are listening to a different system (electrostatic ) ? If so, what is noticable?

Much more detail. No more graininess like you get from BA drivers. That 8 kHz peak you noticed on the SE846? It's out beyond 10 kHz on my KSE1500

 

[Solarium]

If you mean EQ presets with the KSE1500's DAC, here are the full details from the user manual (and a few extra details that should have been in the user manual!):

The volume control on the KSE1500 DAC/amp unit doubles for menu navigation. Double-pressing on the volume button, you get the following set of controls:

Equalizer. This comes with the following predefined settings:
Bypass (flat, or no EQ)
Low boost
Vocal boost
Loudness
De-ess
Below this are 4 user-defined entries. You're able to start creating your own frequency response curves using the parametric EQ either from the flat user-defined entries (1-4), or from any of the existing preset shapes, above. When saving, you'll be prompted to save your EQ curve into one of those 4 user-defined slots. The parametric EQ isn't really explained in the user manual, but it's pretty intuitive. It lets you adjust the frequency response by shape, centre frequency and amplitude. However, I rarely use the EQ these days. I was initially using it to bump up the sub-bass slightly, but I find that with SpinFit tips flat/no-EQ is just about perfect to my ears. In fact, with the SpinFit tips, I find the bass even more prominent than that of my SE846 (to be clear, I now use Brown Knowles dampers in place of the stock filters on my SE846).

Below the EQ is the "Audio" menu, which has two settings:
1) Limiter off/on. There's no explanation at all for this one in the user manual. Basically, in various legacy Shure products, there was always a peak RMS limiter to avoid excessive dB levels at the eardrum that might cause hearing damage. Although the max SPL of the KSE1500 unit (~113 dB) isn’t perhaps as high as with some other headphone/amp combos (a trait of electrostats), Shure decided to keep this limiter feature. I'm not exactly certain at what SPL level the limiter would kick in (I contacted Sean Sullivan at Shure, and he wasn't certain either), but to hear the effect you’d have to be pushing the volume to unsafe levels where the sound might(?) start to distort. At that point, you could opt to use the limiter to basically swap distortion for compression. Neither is a good idea, and if you're willing to spend $3000 on an IEM, you probably shouldn't be risking your hearing by listening at that kind of volume.

2) Input pad: This adjusts the sensitivity of the line-in. You can choose between increments of 0, -10, -20dB. Basically, if you have a high output voltage from your players line-out, you might notice the KSE1500's meters hitting the orange or red. You want to avoid that by reducing either the LO output power, or reducing the sensitivity via the input pad.

The next menu is the Utilities menu, which has the following options:
1) Display: Let's you adjust screen brightness and display timeout.
2) Language
3) Flip screen - so you can use your KSE1500 in Australia
4) Knob direction (do you prefer clockwise or counter clockwise?)
5) Battery info: This tells you the charge %, cycle count and temperature.
6) Factory reset
7) Firmware information
8) Update

The final menu is hardware, which has the following options:
1) Info
2) Disable charging - This is essential if you're driving the KSE1500 from, say a smartphone and you don't want your smartphone to be charging the KSE1500 (and draining its own battery) while playing. (iPhones and iPads don't give you that option, but you could use an Android phone or tablet to simultaneously stream to - and charge - the KSE1500. Most of the time, you'd want to disable charging, even if your player supports it. Note that the KSE1500 reverts automatically to charge mode when shutdown.)

I don’t plan on using the built in EQ on the unit itself, but I will be using a software on my PC called Equalizer APO. This allows me to adjust more settings. I’m wondering whether if there’s any preset of EQ values people follow here.

 

[csglinux]

I don’t plan on using the built in EQ on the unit itself, but I will be using a software on my PC called Equalizer APO. This allows me to adjust more settings. I’m wondering whether if there’s any preset of EQ values people follow here.

If there are, I wouldn't use them, because other people's ears are unlikely to match yours. Also, changing ear tips can make a huge difference. I don't think there's a good substitute for going through the EQ process yourself. Sorry!

 

[Solarium]

If there are, I wouldn't use them, because other people's ears are unlikely to match yours. Also, changing ear tips can make a huge difference. I don't think there's a good substitute for going through the EQ process yourself. Sorry!

True that... I like using the Mojo better, and I'm trying to recreate that sound signature using the EQ but without any success. The mojo causes random pops even if I use -20db on the amp setting. I was using the default mini-interconnect though, so it may be an issue with that. I just bought a different interconnect cable to test out to see if it's the wire.

 

[Solarium]

I played around with Mojo's settings, and found out that a step or 2 below line-out (both volumes purple) at both volumes blue, with a -10db setting will mostly eliminate the random pops on the KSE. What do most of you using Mojo set the Mojo at? Line out or a personalized volume setting?

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

Can they license the chord dac code on a possible revision? A microSD slot on a KSE 1501 would also not be out of place. And neither would a MUCH BETTER USER INTERFACE, OMG.

My KSE1500 is out for delivery today. So excited!

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

I seem to be having difficulty getting my new unit to charge. It came perhaps 20% or 25% charged. I've kept it plugged in via USB to my iMac, and then to my iPad charging brick, but though charging was emphatically enabled, the battery seemed to stay at the same percentage and then slowly drop. Does battery charging take an extremely long time? Does it require some special Shure charging brick? Is something wrong? I'm getting that weird hissing sound with increasing frequency as the unit is proclaiming its battery is now "low." I have 0 charge cycles so far.

 

[Solarium]

I thought the P-Series were pretty good, but personally I found the Westone foam tips to be even better, with respect to both the sound quality and isolation. So those are my end-game tips. P-Series would probably be my second choice.

I used to use the Shure olives with other IEMs, but with the KSE1500 I didn't find them to be sufficiently isolating. I've tried some of the silicon tips but found that they didn't isolate enough.

Turns out the red ones were smaller than the large P-series comply tips, so I got the orange ones. They definitely offer better sound isolation, and are actually softer at room temperature, I was surprised. They are a bit shorter than the P-series, but with the Mojo I don't think I'll need more dampening of the top frequencies. I like them so far. I'm surprised my ears can fit these largest ones, I think wearing my previous Noble Encore's definitely stretched my ear hole out

I played around more with Mojo's volume settings, to lower the line-out input just enough to eliminate the popping sounds. I didn't want to use the KSE's volume more than 12 at the loudest comfortable setting to drain the battery life or drain the lifespan of the KSE, so I didn't use the -20db setting and instead the -10db, then just lowered the Mojo's volume until the popping goes away. Now that I got rid of most of the popping sound from the Mojo, I absolutely prefer Mojo's DAC massively over the KSE's DAC. The Mojo sounds more full, euphoric, impactful at the bottom end, and more emotional, and the KSE's DAC sound more analytical and flat. I feel there's definitely some play at the EQ settings here on the Mojo and perhaps changes to the transiency of sound, but whatever magic they use sounds great!

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

So turns out I had a bad micro USB cable. Unit is charging very well now that I have a good USB cable. The silicone tips are utterly worthless. The yellow tips are likewise a disgrace. Triple flange muffle the treble and feel like schiit, at least until you cut them off so they don't go so far into one's ear. The foam were good, though my right ear is very delicate, and I find myself needing to soften the "corner" so that it doesn't cut into my ear skin. Still, long term, I will need to figure out a way to get tips that are more comfortable, because this will not work for more than an hour or two. Certainly not for long flights or train rides.

Out of Bimby, the sound is rich, emotive, and tight. The bass has solidity and weight, without booming. I'm very pleased with the purchase. The fact that this sound is this good and this transportable is a revelation to me: K3003i was good, but this is reference on a whole other level.

Any idea why I unexpectedly, every twenty minutes or so, get a super gross 4-5 seconds of distortion that vaguely sounds like a frequency sweep?

 

[JR Draper]

Is that good? really? I was thinking of going for a Focal Utopia + Mojo + Poly. But after reading this I feel like giving the KSE1500 a try. My issue with over-ears is that they always feel heavy and end up giving me headaches. What about soundstage? Does it lose too much in comparison to over-ears?

@Mbarbieri -- Yes, I believe the KSE1500 is THAT GOOD. I'm up to 26 cycles on the battery and it gets better and better. The Chord Mojo + Poly is an unbeatable combination if you use Tidal or Spotify, since you can Bluetooth the audio directly to the Poly. I've never had any issues with connectivity, and the Chord's musicality is pure bliss. Compared to the KSA's built-in DAC, the Chord Mojo + Poly is night/day. I don't think anyone would be disappointed in a KSE1500 + Chord Mojo + Poly combo. It's a very non-fatiguing sound. As @csglinux wrote, the KSE1500 is "notably more transparent and resolving" than the Focal Utopia.

As everyone else has already stated, it's about your own ears and what sounds good to you. For me, the KSE1500 + Chord Mojo + Poly is an end-game setup.

-JR

 

[bosiemoncrieff]

I should do an a/b of Bimby vs internal dac. I want to write a review. Maybe tonight.