PMV PP
My initial impression was pretty lukewarm yesterday as I was coming from the Bravado MKII with a clean U shape sound signature.
Today, I started listening to the PMV PP with a fresh set of ears to gauge how it fares against the competition by playing classical and jazz music from the high resolution sound source.
tl;dr: The overall sound is on the warm side and fairly smooth. Bass is strong and punchy, albeit lacking some control. Low-end extension is surprisingly good for a sub $200 earphone. Treble extension could be better and the midrange is obscured slightly by the bass and a bit of muddiness.
At first glance, I hear the warm, dark and dense sound, in another words it sounds bit cloudy and veiled. PMV PP is supposedly using 2 microns film like the iSine series, but man this driver feels ever sluggish. Due to this transient behavior, it's neither the most transparent nor the open sounding IEM, but yeah I can say tonality wise, it is passable for a planar driver as the iSine 10, 20 and even the i4 all needed a heavy DSP to fix their wonky tonalities.
There is no complaint on the low frequency side. In fact, in the acoustic music, the bass drums and other instruments on the bass side reproduce the atmosphere of the bass richly with good impact and extension. However bass timbre is a bit on a warm and fuzzy side and it smears into the lower midrange.
Mids as a whole exhibits not a bad tonal balance, except for few quirks: the PMV PP has some of the most plasticky midrange timbre I’ve ever heard and the bizarre muffling and distant presentation completely guts resolution as well as all around technical ability.
It gets even worse as we move up to the upper midrange and treble region as they are notably uneven, and lacks treble energy and sparkle to offset the overall darkness.
Compared to the
NF Audio NM2+:
The strengths of the NM2+ are clarity and bass control. On both counts it is ahead of the PMV PP, which is tuned for a warmer and more bass-heavy sound. The NM2+ is more balanced on the whole, largely thanks to its tighter, less emphasized low end and more pronounced ear gains. The NM2+'s sound is thinner overall, and the brighter treble is more prone to harshness and sibilance than that of the PMV PP's, but this brighter (vs dark and warm) signature works better with my music library. Timbre, dynamics and imaging are all noticeably better on the NM2+ as well.
