Redcarmoose
Headphoneus Supremus
Right, I totally agree with first impressions. But you have to understand I get these boxes in the mail and I have to photograph an unboxing. With the Stellaris, they had put the cable and ear-tips away in-a-box which seemed like something fragile to open. So I naturally went for my cable of choice, the 4.4mm OCC Hansound, so as to not disturb the packaging. Remember too, the Sony 1Z is dark DAP due to bass but also has an accented treble. I did all my impressions this way. When I started to read the differences in opinion, I quickly gave a listen after the unboxing with the included cable.unfortunately not.. my impressions are based on trying one briefly on an audio meet, so i didn't try switching cables/tips at all. i forgot if any of my friends did experimented using other cables with it, but i certainly didn't.
though to be honest that's how i usually choose to buy earphones/audio gears in general.. if it doesn't impress me in the first minute, i don't think it's for me.
If something impresses me, i would listen to it longer and think:
-well, this is nice, but do i need this?
-do i have something similar in function already in my collection?
-is this better and can this replace it?
if the answer is yes to all of it, then i would buy it.
from what i had heard, even if using different cables, it would not change the tuning significantly enough for me to even like it.
on a note, there were 7 of us (me and my friends) who tried the Stellaris (and also some other IEMs, headphones, amps, etc that everyone brought to the meet) and all 7 of us came to the same/similar conclusion on how it sounds... aaand, my friend who owns it put it on sale the next day
also a side note, all of us are impressed (with varying degree, of course) with the Hook X, S12, CRA/CRA+, Salnotes Zero, EDAs, and AS16 Pro
I stopped wanting to buy new earphones for some time now after my last purchase (i think that was a year or so ago), but i like these enough that i bought the EDAs and CRA, just to play around with them some more.
the P1 max, i didn't like it as much as the S12/Hook X, but i can see that beneath that relaxed presentation, it still shows similar potential in technicalities as the other planar, though not as showy like the others. I would not buy it, but i would still recommend it to others
So that's how I came up with this cable theory.
But I'm with you totally......as this hobby is just about subjective as anything. Also age and hearing loss is a huge thing, as an IEM can (if tuned right) replace that loss of high tone, where it would be too much for youngsters.
Cheers!
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