Heck yeah it was! I paid for it though... can't wait on slow, free shipping.
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Some initial audio impressions:
- Bass: Probably the best I've heard if you factor in depth, cleanliness (not muddying the rest of the range), and tone of the low notes. Wow. Never heard bass like this from an earphone. It's just so textured and lifelike. Not as ultimately deep as the FX700, Radius DDM, IE8, or Atrio, but not too far off in that aspect. However the EX1K more than makes up for it in the character! You can just 'see' the bass drum's volume, as if you were there in concert with a front row seat and you can actually notice the drum skin jumping with each strike.
- Mids: They're placed just right. You feel a bit closer to the vocalist than with the SM3. But not overly so. Also, to this point, I haven't detected any spoken 'Sssssss' sibilance so far. There's such a nice tone to voices, and you really get a sense of a bass, tenor, soprano, or whatever is the person's natural vocal style is.
- Treble: Incredibly detailed. It must be more resolved and layered than even the FX700, going by my memory of them. They actually make my SM3s seem just a tad smeared and blurry sounding. I never thought a dynamic driver IEM would do that. I have noted a little harshness here and there though. Seems I can sense that mid-treble spike seen in the frequency graph.
So, I really dig their sound at this point. I hope burn in brings a bit of taming to the edginess in treble. I don't think they have as much bite as the FX700 though. And certainly nowhere near the likes of the FX500 or W3 (both of those from memory). Now if I could just get those darn ear loops to stay put better! Then they'd be close to ideal..
Edit- Man do they get along well with the Arrow 3G.