DynamicEars
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2019
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The ear-gain region is an interesting beast. To my ears, 2kHz has the effect of sharpening the "edge" sound, whilst 3kHz "focuses" the midrange sound, especially vocals, and brings it toward your face.
Just enough 3kHz => kind-of-shallow stage, but wide and "open" / "transparent"
Too high 3kHz => in-your-face, shallow stage
Too low 3kHz => narrow but uncannily deep stage (a.k.a., FiiO FA7s, at least to my ears)
Moondrop Blessing 3 and the Simgot EW100P both have Harman-like 3kHz. Both have shallow but very wide and open soundstage.
I've just realised today whilst listening to the SA6II: the illusion of soundstage "depth" is a by-product of recessed midrange. At all time, the SA6II, U12T, and similar U-shaped IEMs, have bass as the foreground, midrange further away, and treble air at the furthest back around around the headstage. Both U12T and SA6II also take advantage of pulling the 3kHz down to "diffuse" the center image a little bit, further improving the illusion of depth.
Meanwhile, Moondrop Blessing 3 and Simgot EW100P place everything on the same plane. So, if the ultimate goal of tuning is "balance between frequencies", then I guess they have achieved it with VSDF and Harman IE target.
A small "hypothesis test": Using EQ to bump the 150Hz and 50Hz and drop 3kHz, the illusion of depth and layering immediately returns to Blessing 3 and EW100P. The separation between layers, however, still depends on that "mythical" technical performance of the driver configurations. EW100P is simply no match against the B3 and SA6II (as it should be).
If you ever wonder what's the fuss about with those $$$$$$ DAP, you can have a look at my review of P6 Pro ($3899). I approached the borrowed unit with the expectation of snake oil, and left the review thinking about saving up to buy one for myself.
Here are some tricks about sources that I learned when trying to get P6 Pro sound without paying $4000:
Cheapest way to get the sound close to P6 Pro is Apple dongle + Topping G5 (or NX7). I'll explore some even cheaper battery amps in the future and see what works.
- It's not about "scaling up". It's more about smaller dongles not being able to drive IEMs to their full capability. And no, I don't think it is about max power output.
- The sense of "dynamic" and "snappiness" of note attacks depends a great deal on your amplifier. Apple dongle sounds way crisper and more dynamic when supported by my Topping G5.
- The DAC has impact in terms of fine-tuning the sound. For example, keeping G5 as the amp, I can hear noticeable change in the forwardness of the soundstage when swapping between different dongles and DAPs acting as the DAC.
- Most of the time, gain is just loudness, not driving power (meaning those "scaling" thing I mentioned does not exist when changing gain). However, some sources change the way the amp works when changing gain, thus might change the driving power. Therefore, you should try high-gain once to see if the driving power of your amp actually changes. For example, Shanling M6 Ultra sounds way more dynamic and crisp at high-gain, but low and mid-gain sounds the same.
Couldn't agree more. I was skeptic to get Fiio M17 at first. I just want to buy the new Sony ZX707 at first, then was thinking how if stretch up budget to get WM1Am2 instead to pair with my Z1R but in the end, the M17 (more expensive than WM1Am2) have more technicalities and snappier transient attack and that dynamic while have "body" on every single transient attack although the more colored WM1Am2 also sounded very great. Was torn between two but I got the M17 with great price so I went with M17.
This "dynamic" and "snappiness" that @o0genesis0o said, is spectacular on high end DAP, that i never heard before. Maybe combination of great DAC and together with flagship amplifier as a package made this effect. I thought M11 plus or similarly mid high DAP is just enough for me, but once I get the M17, there is no way going back.
the dynamic, refinement, those transient attack that go fast with body weight, just like quality jab. Since I am a bass quality lover, i like the very tight mid bass presentation but have weighty sub bass on below.
Having flagship DAP has changed my perception from "Good sound = 70% transducers + 20% source + 5% eartips + 5% cable" to "Good sound = 50% transducers + 40% source + 5% eartips + 5% cable"
my midfi IEMs sounded better, and some have marginal improvement, especially those with planars, ESTs, piezos.
This is isn't an advertisement nor review unit. Bought with my own money and I don't have any connection with Fiio btw, just happen that I have lot of their sources, they make great DAPs but their IEMs aren't great to be honest.