Non owners are always welcome. Ex-owners though...? I am SO just kidding! Hope you find the ear/headphone of your dreams if you haven't found one already!
The hunt continues, though for now the JVC FX850 and ATH CKR9 tag-team are giving me almost everything I desire from the iem experience.
But there was something else, something off, between me and the 846. I`m a huge Senn fan, and yet I agree completely with the comments made by
Duncan and others regarding the IE800 vs 846 battle: it`s no battle at all. Those were my two supposed end-game IEMS a year ago, and I set up a high-quality (i.e. silent, undisturbed) A-B audiitioning session in a shop here in Tokyo. The 846 was just so obviously in another league, so much better. And the IE800 is pretty damned amazing itself.
So I got the 846. But . . . - I posted this in the CKR9 forum:
I have nothing but good things to say about the 846 sound. If I saw a survey that said the 846 recieved the highest average score for SQ of any IEM on the planet, it wouldn`t surprise me. I actually love them, as a peice of brilliant engineering, as ergonomic, acoustic, aesthetic genius. But when I look back at my 12 months of owning them, and several other HPs, they do not rank as my favorite, or even all that appealing. I simply don`t really like listening to them. My HD800s I cannot live without - I`d go homeless before I sold those. For iems, for whatever purpose - sleeping, working out, commuting, whatever, I nearly always instinctively chose something else. Usually my JVC fxz200, an iem 1/5 the price of the 846. After getting the JVC fx850 a few weeks ago, I knew it was time to sell the SE846. I can`t explain this paradox - I know, I can hear it : the 846 are better sounding. Better detail, astonishingly complex bass, better isolation, etc. But I just don`t like `em.
Actually, that`s not true - I like them, I just don`t like listening to them. Irrational, I know. I`m stil a huge fan of them, which is why I`m still lurking on this thread and haven`t unsubscribed.