Impressions of the JVC FXC51 before turning them on:
The packaging is decent, it looks nice, comes with two extra tips (S and L, M is already on the IEM's) and there a 1 year warranty card (USA only).
The mailman was really rough on my package, he shoved it in my mailbox, and it took me 10 minutes to get it out, but the JVC package was still in perfect mint condition, thanks to amazon's 'bubble-wrap' packaging (actually it's a kind of giant bubble wrap, like giant air pockets, seems to work well).
The cable is nice and smooth and a good length, it reminds me of the CK10 cable, except just a tiny bit thinner, and there are some microphonics in the Y section.
The included medium sized tips look thick and supple, the fit I achieved is instantly fairly deep, snug and tight, again reminding me of the CK10... however considering the tight fit I can still hear my surroundings very well... such as my typing on the keyboard, it's very clear... I'm guessing this is because they're vented, and thus the low isolation is a trade-off there.
Well, I just listened to the RE272's on the T51, time to turn these on and see if Katun and James are crazy or not.
If you haven't followed the story thus far, Katun thinks these have better bass than the Ultrasone PRO 900, better tonality than Sony Z1000, and better highs than something I can't recall right now.
JamesMcProgger told me on msn he thinks they are equal to the TF10's apart from soundspace.
My immediate first impression is...
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...is they sound cloudy.
There's a thick fog from the mids to the lower highs or something, and then they open up again somewhere in the mid highs and have a decent open sky extension, but the fog gets in the way.
The "SHH" sounds are a little bit emphasized, but not sibilant or harsh, just SHRHRHSHSHshshshshHRHShShsh all the time...
The bass is pretty impactful, it's nowhere near the qualtiy of EX600 or EX700 bass, it's a bit uncontrolled and a tiny bit muddy, but it's pretty good, it reminds me of Koss PortaPro bass, very similiar.
The overall presentation is very colourful, this is not a boring IEM and not a reference IEM at all.
There's no hyper-clarity or hyper-realism that I was hoping for, they don't have any of that, but they are very impressive so far (after 2 songs lol) in their own right...
It's not fair to compare these to the RE0 and RE272, because they're tailored for different types of sound, and the RE272 wins easily, but I can see the FXC51's having a certain charm and I wouldn't be disappointed in them for up to $100.
The soundstage is wider than expected, and the imaging is better than expected, wider than RE0, but for some reason the bass is very narrow which may give the impression of a narrow soundstage, since the bass is always in a very close proximity, but the imaging of the mids and highs is far beyond a $24 IEM level.
I'm not a bass lover and want to Eq it down a bit straight away, and I just came from listening to the RE272's prior to these (which have much higher quality bass, except in much lighter impact) however a bass lover might love these =p when I very briefly listened to the ATH-CKS70 or CKS90 can't remember which one I thought the bass was muddy, well these have that same kind of muddy... keep in mind I think the PortaPro's are muddy too.
Listening to a few bassy tracks now, I'd still recommend the a-Jays Three to a basslover, but they cost a little bit more and have less clarity than these. :/
Background information and detail is very high.
Note thickness is high.
'Wetness' is pretty good, not dry sounding at all.
Vocals are okay, reasonable.
The muddy and overshadowing bass becomes quickly tiring, but after Eq'ing it down a few notches they sound nicer.
They seem to respond pretty well to Eq and I'd call these a $75 IEM ballpark figure, as long as you don't care about balance these seem much better than the RE0 and PL50, after eq'ing down 60Hz A LOT, eq'ing down 300Hz, upping 1kHz, upping 300khz, upping 6kHz... then they have a fairly close resemblance to the characteristics of ER-4 and RE272, however they can't compete at all with the RE252, EX600 and UE700.
