[chinesekiwi]

Initial impressions (straight out of the box, no burn-in):

Why do I need to read a manual to use these?
Wouldn't it just be easier to label them with 'L' for left and 'R' for right like every other manufacturer does?

What the PL-30 offer to the table is an adjustable Y-cord. What I mean by this is that you can separate the two cords together and separate them to the point in which they feel comfortable. This has it's pros and cons: Pro being that you can separate them to where you desire as sometimes in other models, the Y-cord can be too long. The big negative however is that it's not stated in the manual anywhere and if one was to wear these from default, it would be extremely uncomfortable and in fact, I wouldn't even be sure that they'll fit.
Also one might easily break the cable if one was to separeate these in an improper fashion.
The PL-30's come with a built in shirt clip which is good.

That said, the package is rather good accessories wise, with some white bi-flange tips, a bunch of spare single-flange universal tips, some larger single-flange tips and even a pair of cone-shaped tips.
These also come with a good sized case to store your PL-30's in and even something to wrap them around with.
However as with my RE2 case, I did notice a strong chemical smell. The chemical smell however is not apparent on the actual PL-30's which is good.

That said though, what you want are sonic impressions:

Oh sorry, sonic sound impressions:

What I used was a Cowon D2:

Songs were:

Pendulum - Hold Your Colour (my bass test song)
Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here

Both in Vorbis -q8 ripped from FLAC.

I have only tested these on the default 'Clear Bass' setting and with the default single-flange black tips.

1) These are VERY easy to drive. I had to turn the volume down because slightly shocked at how loud it was at first. This counts as both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing being of course that your turn your volume down increasing battery life. The bad thing however is that with them is you get a noticeable hiss when it's silent.

2) What actually impressed me the most about these wasn't the bass at all (will write about the bass next), it was actually the instrument separation.
The instrument separation on these PL-30's are very good considering they are $20. The instruments are clearly defined.

3) The 'clear bass' bass, as marketed as Soundmagic, is just that. The bass is clear and defined much like the midrange is. However the bass is rather slow and not very deep. The bass impact on these are average.

4) What makes the PL-30 fall over is that it does not do complex passages well. It gets quite muddy in complex passages.

These are my impressions so far.

Are they worth more than $20? Yes.
Are they a giant killer? No.

I'll burn them in a bit and see what happens to the sound.

 

[ExtendeD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gradesm /img/forum/go_quote.gif My tracking states it was sent out on the 21st and it's already in Singapore awaiting to be mailed to me.

Yeah, mine were also shipped out on the 21st as well. I hope mine get here soon too! Best of luck to you and everyone else who is waiting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chinesekiwi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Initial impressions (straight out of the box, no burn-in): Why do I need to read a manual to use these? Wouldn't it just be easier to label them with 'L' for left and 'R' for right like every other manufacturer does? What the PL-30 offer to the table is an adjustable Y-cord. What I mean by this is that you can separate the two cords together and separate them to the point in which they feel comfortable. This has it's pros and cons: Pro being that the where you desire as sometimes in other models, the Y-cord can be too long. The big negative however is that it's not stated in the manual anywhere and if one was to wear these from default, it would be extremely uncomfortable and in fact, I wouldn't even be sure that they'll fit. Also one might easily break the cable if one was to separeate these in an improper fashion. The PL-30's come with a built in shirt clip which is good. That said, the package is rather good accessories wise, with some white bi-flange tips, a bunch of spare single-flange universal tips, some larger single-flange tips and even a pair of cone-shaped tips. These also come with a good sized case to store your PL-30's in and even something to wrap them around with. However as with my RE2 case, I did notice a strong chemical smell. The chemical smell however is not apparent on the actual PL-30's which is good. That said though, what you want are sonic impressions: Oh sorry, sonic sound impressions: What I used was a Cowon D2: Songs were: Pendulum - Hold Your Colour (my bass test song) Porcupine Tree - Arriving Somewhere But Not Here Both in Vorbis -q8 ripped from FLAC. I have only tested these on the default 'Clear Bass' setting and with the default single-flange black tips. 1) These are VERY easy to drive. I had to turn the volume down because slightly shocked at how loud it was at first. This counts as both a good thing and a bad thing. Good thing being of course that your turn your volume down increasing battery life. The bad thing however is that with them is you get a noticeable hiss when it's silent. 2) What actually impressed me the most about these wasn't the bass at all (will write about the bass next), it was actually the instrument separation. The instrument separation on these PL-30's are very good considering they are $20. The instruments are clearly defined. 3) The bass, well as marketed as Soundmagic, the 'clear bass' setting is just that. The bass is clear and defined much like the midrange is. However the bass is rather slow and not very deep. The bass impact on these are average. 4) What makes the PL-30 fall over is that it does not do complex passages well. It gets quite muddy in complex passages. These are my impressions so far. Are they worth more than $20? Yes. Are they a giant killer? No. I'll burn them in a bit and see what happens to the sound.

Wow, thanks for the write-up, you got it up really quickly. Congrats on receiving your phones, and I look forward to your full, in-depth review along with comparisons to other phones.

Thanks again.

 

[Suicidal Fishee]

Okay review time. I ordered my set maybe 2 weeks ago and they just came today. I live in Australia for reference. Now, disclaimer, I probably go against the majority of this site because A) I believe burn-in makes **** all difference B) My ears are more than likely screwed from repeated loud concerts and listening to music in the car or with headphones at what is louder than safe and C) I don't think iPods are all that bad for sound quality.

I currently own (in similar price range) KSC 75s, MDR EX-71s and Sennheiser HD201s. I know what I like and that's all this review is, my opinion and nothing else. I tested these with some soft rock songs, metal, DnB, trance, and others. I tried my best to put these through their paces. All songs were listened to on an iPod Classic with MP3s encoded with lame at -v0. As a matter of fact I'm still listening while I'm typing this review and ignoring their faults I'm liking them the more I listen to them.

Okay first of all, packaging and such seemed rather nice. For 30 bucks you get a snazzy little box, case and a manual that isn't very engrish at all! Bonus points already. The headphones themselves seem cheaply made with dodgy plastic, again thirty bucks, who cares, the cord feels similar to that of the MDR EX71s and will probably break and fray the exact same way they did eventually. The shirt clip is a nice touch. The Clear/Deep Bass settings knob was stuck on mine and they kinda had to be popped up and turned a few times before they loosened up and could actually be turned without long nails and or a set of pliers.

My first impression upon listening to these was "haha funny joke guys" because they sounded like crap. They didn't provide a good seal or hardly any isolation at all and it seemed like everyone on here reccomending these was playing an elaborate joke on my behalf. "Hah I'll show you" says I as I went through the whole box playing with all the tips trying to get something that would give a halfway decent seal and just couldn't get anything good going, all the rubber based tips fit exactly the same and isolate exactly the same (which is not very well at all especially compared to E2s and the like) and the foam tips just seem to make the bass overpowering and mudtacular. Eventually I found a set that fit alright and I jammed them deep into my ear and they actually stayed, thanks to a healthy lump of ear wax helping hold them there as I discovered after I took them out. Ew. I started the song playing again and listened for a while.

Now looking at the acoustics of them, much like chinesekiwi said above me, the instrument seperation and vocal seperation is quite good, until you get more than one instrument and vocals together. That's when it all starts going bad. Once things get complicated everything just mushes together and the highs start to get too harsh and distort slightly and the bass either just "woomfs" over everything or seems to disappear entirely from the mix. I found this most apparent with metal especially, once you get blast beats, shredding and some heavy vocal sections going on it just sounds plain terrible. No worse than cheap earbuds though. The simpler the music the better these headphones sound, soft rock and music with not alot going on sounds great. With electronic music it seems to take a bit more before it gets too overwhelming and things start going south. DnB was either a hit or a miss and trance and electro and the sorts worked alot better but was still susceptible to the "blergh" factor in some sections. Highs are adequate, nothing amazing, they distort really badly in complicated sections and with harsh vocals and cymbals especially. Also they can be outright harsh at times, don't listen to something like Justice with these loud unless you like your ears bleeding. During simple parts though the highs shine, this also makes them stick out more, your decision wether this is good or bad. I didn't mind it too much and it suits female vocals nicely. Mids are okay but can be a bit lifeless and hollow sounding sometimes, guitars cut through the mix alright but there's a lack of punch until it gets down to towards the mid bass frequencies which is where these headphones do their best work.

I'm a bit of a bass nut so lets talk about that now. Now like I said before, when listening to metal, especially in complicated sections with alot of double kick drumming going on, the bass seems to disappear entirely from the mix. The mid-bass is there, and it sounds great, but the lower bass frequencies, especially sub bass, are non existant. The headphones don't try and reproduce them. This both a good and a bad thing, good because it doesn't make the headphones "bottom out" and distort on the lower end but bad because unfortunately it makes things like double bass drumming just sound like repeated clicking and some bass heavy dance tracks seem soulless and empty. The bass down low, before the frequency cutoff, is just too... erm, slow? It gets a bit muddy as well, but as the bass frequencies get higher up it becomes much clearer, nicer and a bit punchier. This is why I said before DnB was a bit of a hit or miss. Due to DnB having a lot of bass all over the place, especially sub bass, these headphones either hit the right notes in some sections or flat out don't. On the other hand genres lighter on the lower end of the frequency spectrum like trance works really, really well. I also found that bassy male vocalists like Frank Zappa and Leonard Cohen work quite well with these and it's quite a pleasing nice warm tone.

Compared to my KSC 75s, these are okay, maybe better for comfort (personal preference) but in every other way they lose out. MDR EX 71s? Yeah, I'm going to say these about on par. Musical seperation was better on the Sony's but these are more comfortable due to sitting in your actual canal. They also have clearer bass, but that's not saying much.

However compared to entry level canalphones say like the Shure E2s, these are nothing, the E2s win in every single way. What could've been an amazing canalphone and actually up there with the good brands is severly hindered by it's inability to do anything but die in the ass when the music gets busy. I do have to concede though, these heaphones are great. For the price. You'd be hard pressed to find anything better for 30 dollars

And that's about where the comparisons have to end. Anything above 80 AUD (and I'm being generous extending the margin that high) these can't compare to really. These are far from better than any high end canalphone and I think anyone who says otherwise has worse problems with their ears than I do

 

[nsx_23]

Awesome, another aussie head-fier. Where in oz are you?

 

[nc8000]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nc8000 /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ordered 2 for my sons so >$20 but did not get tracking number despite the confirmation saying I would

Send them a message and got a reply with a tracking number that seems to be correct, they just hadn't put it in the shipping notification but that is not really surprising as the shipping noticification was send 17th october but according to postal tracking they weren't actually shipped until 21st october as others have also posted. Tracking shows that they have arrived at my local postoffice today but as that is saturday they will not get delivered until monday.

EDIT: They did actually deliver today and I did a quick test before passing them on to the sons comparing them to the CX300 one of them is using now. The CX300 seems to have more slam to the bass, the PL30 seems to do about everything else a bit better. Compared to my HF2 however they completely die but then I never expected anything else. My son who then tried them imidiately said that they are better than the CX300 (which cost $80 retail in Denmark) so for $20 shipped this seems to be a very good deal and won't matter much if they loose them or break them. I might actually order some more sets just for when that happens.

 

[20LEGEND]

These earphones are being compared to such a wide class of IEMs; from CX300s to E2Cs. Guess they fit in somewhere in between. Can't wait to get mine!

 

[Stikk]

Hey so I just looked on Focalprice and they're selling other SoundMagic earphones now.. Including these. Someone get in and grab a bargain, they're $9.77 and their cable is an astounding 9999.9% copper wire!

Seriously, read the description..

 

[20LEGEND]

Are those worth getting? I have about $11 lying in my paypal account, which I doubt I'll use anywhere.

 

[LTUCCI1924]

I just oprdered a pair. I would like to hear what super bass sounds like. LOL

 

[ExtendeD]

Quote:

Originally Posted by LTUCCI1924 /img/forum/go_quote.gif I just oprdered a pair. I would like to hear what super bass sounds like. LOL

Haha, cool. I'm looking forward to a review along with comparisons to the PL-30. Which model did you get? They have a bunch of different models, all within $1 of each other. Anyways, good luck, hope it ships faster than the PL-30.

 

[LTUCCI1924]

I ordered the super bass iem. I will see how they sound on my TV movies thru my stereo receiver amp. I think they will ship and I will get them in 15 days. dont forget the PL-30 were out of stock. I dont think these will sound as good as my Pl-30 but I am hopeing they sound better than my koss75

 

[ExtendeD]

Ah, it looks like that model is the PL-11. It'd be great if you could test it with your FiiO. Do you plan on getting the e5? If I pick up another pair in addition to my PL-30, it'd likely be for my portable set up. And yeah, I'm sure that yours will ship on time. But if this is a good phone, it may end up out of stock like the other one.

Anyways, best of luck with the shipping, and I hope they turn out to sound good. If nothing else, the price isn't hard on the wallet.

 

[LTUCCI1924]

Yeh I am looking forward to the E-5. The E-5 is about the size of the I-pod shuffle. The E-3 is just to bulkey for my use but I do use it at home.
Oh these are 12 ohm. LOL

 

[LTUCCI1924]

Well I stoped useing my PL-30 and am useing my JVC FX66. I just seem to like the bass and high end better. Also better comfort.

 

[i_don't_know]

Suicidal Fishee's post made me a bit skeptical. Are these going to be better, on par with, or worse than 11mm Skullcandy FMJ's? This would be when listening to a lot of rock, some of it being distorted and busy like Dinosaur Jr.