Right, here's the score with me and the SM3:
I decided to sell mine for a number of reasons.
Firstly, I felt they were too delicate at the price to allow me to properly relax and enjoy my music when out and about. Approx a month after I got them, one of the nozzles snapped off from the housing and I had to send it back to Handheld Audio, who then sent it to Earsonics, who repaired it and returned it directly to me. Turnaround time about 10 days or so, so nothing major, but it did put a worry in my mind that I would have to be extra careful with them. And given that I'm left-handed, blonde and prone to smashing everything that comes within a 12 mile blast radius of my clumsy mitts, that meant I started to actually resent the SM3s for being so plasticky and fragile looking. And that apprehension meant I wasn't properly able to chill out and just whack the things in my pocket, my bag, my ears, like I wanted to and get on with the business of loving the noise coming out my J3.
Secondly, that bloody J3 had so many options for sound tweaking, I was forever messing around with that EQ fruit machine trying to hit the jackpot with the SM3s and as a consequence I was losing sight of the wood for the trees. My mind started tying itself in knots. Now, that obviously raises the question of whether that indicates the SM3s are flawed or not. On reflection, I don't think thats the case - its more a comment about the Cowon's wide range of EQ possibilities than anything. The reason I say this is that just before I sold them, I finally settled on a very small upper mids and treble boost as the best of all worlds. Every other frequency band flat, all other mad scientist levers set to off. That leads me to believe the technical signature of the SM3 is in no way flawed significantly, just that clarity-wise it can be nudged a little by upping those higher registers. Big deal. That might be a problem of course if you are lumbered with a crApple device, given their shitetastic eq settings, but hey, you're an idiot for having one and don't deserve to be happy ever.
That last sentence is a joke.
Thirdly, I walk a lot and am getting older and spreading wider with each minute that passes and therefore have to walk a lot more just to stand still. That means I need an iem that stays put in my ears and is comfortable and which I can just fire and forget, plug'n'play, insert and ignore. The SM3s - even with the Sensorcom tips - fitted me snugly but still felt too awkward for me to truly let me relax and get on with the business of putting one foot in front of the other (if you knew me, you'd know how herculean a task that is). They can't really be worn down without the tips wriggling in the ear canal, and over the ear is annoying for me when I have to stop in shops or speak to people, what with having to be so careful and babying them. As all of my previous iems I'd enjoyed had been designed to be inserted and used cable down, I guess ultimately I'm just a worn down kind of guy. Insert your own joke here.
Fourthly, a number of reviews and threads started popping up recently about the Ety ER4s, the MC3s, HF5s etc, and I began to think back to the ER4Ps I used to own, and how much I liked them at the time and whether they would sound the same to me now I was further down the head-fi road and had a new pmp (having cut that crApple umbilical cord earlier in the year). That monkey on my back started itching and howling, slowly but surely, and I knew I had to deal with it.
So deal with it I did; I sold my SM3s to Mark for a bargain price, bought the HF5s and pocketed some healthy change. Seemed like a win-win situation, especially given the extra clarity the HF5s offer over the SM3s (not that there is anything at all unclear about the latter, but I guess my own 'personal preference' is for clarity of sound above all else), not to mention the increased comfort, isolation and build quality for a quarter of the price of the Earsonics. I'm in no way saying - please don't misinterpret me here - that the SM3s are flawed. I don't design or build iems, or run a company doing those two things, so I have no way of knowing what's possible given Earsonic's resources and for what cost. Etymotic have been going for longer and have a different modus operandi, clearly. Of course, given a blank sheet of paper, I'd say in a perfect world I'd like a pair of iems that had the build and clarity of the HF5 and the three dimensionality of the SM3s. And cost twenty pence. But hey, I'd also like to be invisible and have x-ray vision. Some things are achievable and others you have to compromise on. For me, the HF5s represent that ideal compromise. For others, the SM3s come closest to their day dreams. You can't write formulas or measure these things with any degree of intelligence whatsoever, despite what you might think. Throw a human into the mix and you get such a weird cake it makes a nonsense of any recipe.
Now, here's the sting in the tail: when Mark got the SM3s from me, he pm'd me to say there was something wrong with the left earpiece, that the balance was off, in favour of the right channel. So he sent them back to me, I sent them to Handheld Audio, they sent them to Franck, he repaired and sent them back to me. Or did he? (cue the suspenseful music). When I sent the newly received pair back to Mark, guess what? Yep, same comment - something was wrong with balance. Could it be his ears, or was Franck pulling a fast one? Guess we'll find out - Mark's returning them to me this week and has decided they're not for him so once more I will be the owner of a pair of SM3s. Maybe they're fine and Mark's just wired strangely, maybe they're not and I'll have to send them back for the third time.
Watch this space. And continue scratching your backside while doing goldfish impressions with your mouth.
Quote:
You two have now convinced me to also cast my vote for Bennyboy71, a born-again-Headfier, a man who finally saw the light (surely heard good sound?) at the end of the tunnel (surely end of the nozzle?), got rid of his £300 SM3s and got the £72 Etymotic HF5.
Yes, Bennyboy71 hears his HF5s as stellar, and clearly better than the SM3s! -- How very silly of me to think all along that precisely ericp10 & cn11 would vote and campaign for music_4321. Now I understand why they didn't.
