I received my SE425s 4 days ago. I fear I'm not very good at writing about sound quality, so others might be able to develop more in that respect. Anyway, here are my impressions after a few days of intensive use.
Before owning those, my favorite IEMs were the Shure E4c. They were also my primary IEMs, despite the cable disintegrating slowly for the past two years. Since I've been using the E4c, I've also owned a pair of q-Jays and a pair of Super.Fi 5 (both lost on plains/trains), but always preferred the Shures.
Enter the SE425s. These headphones are amazingly good, but they can appear terrible to a casual reviewer. The reason for that is that a good seal is much harder to get than with any other IEM I've ever tried (including Shure IEMs). On my E4c, I only use the small olive tips. Same with any Shure SE series phones I had the opportunity of trying. The small olives always gave me the best seal. Before Shure came up with the olives, I used the small grey rubber tips, so you could say I have rather small ear canal.
When I tried the SE425 with the small olives, I heard no base whatsoever. Nothing. Knowing there was an issue with the seal there, I started experimenting with other tips. Medium olives give good results, so it seems I "gained" a size. Weird. My best experience till now is with "customized" triple flanges (scissor cut on both ends to make them into short double flanges). But I'm not entirely happy, because micro-phonics are more of an issue with the double flanges than the olives. Ordered some Comply foam tips to try them up. Will let you know how that turns out. It's the first IEM that causes me so much trouble to find a good seal. Keep that in mind when evaluating them. I guess it has to do with the new enclosing, the nozzle sporting a different angle and being a bit shorter than on my E4c.
With a good seal, SQ is very good. With the right seal, it is phenomenal. Rather flat than fun (which to me is good thing), great tight bass, beautifully detailed mids. They give out much more bass than the E4c, but it's all tight, controlled, definitely less boomy than the q-Jays or Super.Fi 5 I used to own. Honestly, don't know how the SE535s can be worth the extra dough, though I never had a chance to try them yet. To me the SE425 are on par with my memories of the SE530s (that I heard last at least 6 month ago, so take that with a grain of salt). Great IEMs. Love them on jazz, vintage rock, new wave, acoustic guitar, where the trademark Shure mids shine. They might be less suited to electronica and hip hop than "funner" IEMs like Westones or UEs, but I find they're still great "all-rounders". Much better in this respect than my E4c which shine on rock, classical and most jazz, but seem rather limited for more bass heavy genres.
Didn't have a chance to amp them. Most listening was done from my run-of-the-mill sound card and occasionally from my 5 year old iPod video.
Anyone else received those? Do your impressions match mine?
