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you are spot on.without anyone jumping at me,this thread and the previous locked one are hyped.very few rational opinions were written and as James-444 said,we should read between the lines and read the more unbiased opinions.
sm3 reminds me of ck10 and um3x thread. those two particular threads were pure fanboyism and unfortunatly because of this,ck10 and um3x owners didnt want to write or admit their faults and in the end i and i am sure others payed the expensive price.
so i want to thank music,James,DFKT,shigzeo,soozieq,cn11.......and others for writing an honest "rattional impressions".i am not thanking them because they wrote anything negative about the sm3,but because they took the time to write valid impressions and comparisons.
i hope this is not the case with the lcd2 thread because if it is,i will hunt you down if all your comments were just fanboyism(which i doubt,maybe a bit over-enthusiasm)
Deja vu, this site is.
There will always (almost always at least) be people that like something, and others that don't. If it weren't for the EM3 Pro, I would be listening to the SM3. I have the same opinion of them that I did from the start, which does not necessarily agree with other names mentioned above. Whatever they say does not influence or change what I am hearing! From my reading when I was keeping up with this thread (well, the previous one) was James heard the SM3 completely differently than I do.
Bottom line is everyone's ears are different and especially everyone's
perceptions are different! Some people focus on the good, some people focus on the bad, some people are between. Combine that with people hearing the same IEM differently because of physiology, tips, music, source, mood, experience, preference, expectations, etc. the more people that hear something, the more chance there will be people that don't care for it.
Here is an example of how people hear things differently: crossfeed never works for me and I hear minimal differences at best while others claim they hear significant improvement. And I have listened to old Beatles music trying to hear the crossfeed effects.
Fanboysim: Who can name one expensive IEM that does not have some fanboyism (unless it is universally disliked)? I did like the CK10 at the time for what it brought to the table vs. what I had heard at the time, and still to this day it would be very listenable for me. I didn't care for the UM3X, but I can respect it's virtues and that some other people hear it differently than I. My thoughts on the TF10 are that it stinks and is not top-tier, but it is still on the top-tier chart because of the difference of opinion. Speaking of hype...how many people are so very interested in the x-Jay because it has 4 BA drivers? Will that make it far superior?
People need to set their expectations realistically for themselves, not based on what others say. LCD-2, SM3, whatever, is it a sound signature you know you will like (the experienced people should know their preferences) and do you have the gear to drive it. Speaking of the LCD-2, someone said it sounded flat, but they were using their iPod to drive it! OK, what expectations did that person have? $1K headphones with a $200 player?
Back to the SM3, I still think the SM3 is tops for me as far as universals I have heard (which now include the DBA-02). I did switch from using the custom sleeves to using the sensorcom tips again as I think the sound is closer to the EM3 Pro across the midrange and treble.
