Damn, I wrote most of a lengthy review of the fx101 phones and somehow deleted it all. I really don't feel like doing it again so here is a coles notes version:
Very good sounding at the price, I'm not kidding these could easily go for a higher price based on the sound alone. The build quality of the phones themselves seems solid enough, the cabling is very thin and cheap looking especially at the plug and where the cable goes inside the housing on the phones, but the big upside is that there is very little microphonics on these so I'm not complaining. Aesthetically speaking they look like budget phones targeted at teens/preteens but the sonic capabilities of these are something else.
The phones come with 3 sizes of tips which should really do for most people, I ended up sticking my smallest tips from the old nuforce ne700x when experimenting but the stock tips worked right for me as well. Comfort is 10x better on these for my ears than the nuforces, for people with small ear canals like me these JVC are very nice, ne700x would hurt within an hour of listening while the fx101 are comfortable for hours. Isolation is also very good on these, quite a bit better than the ne700x but the nuforces were never said to isolate very well even with a tight seal, no such problem with the fx101 if you need isolation.
Soundwise thumbs up from me, there is great clarity and detail in almost all frequency ranges, the fx101 is much more efficient than my now dead nuforces, I'd say the nuforces needed at least 30% more juice to reach the same sound pressure level as the fx101.. the slight downside of this sensitivity is that when no music is playing but the player is turned on there is a very faint hiss that can be heard, this is on a cowoni9 with an amp powerfull enough to drive Ultrasone HFI780 quite decently so with other players the hiss may be inaudible. To me not a big deal, I don't listen to absolute silence on my player so..
The sound signature is a fun V shape as expected, though to me the first half of the V (the lower end) is much more pronounced. Right out of the box I found the bass as a whole to be overbearing, nice and meaty sounding but a bit overdone and somewhat wrong to my ears because it would hide detail in the lower bass range and bleed into the mids a bit, it just sounded a tad boomy.. playing with the EQ I found that dropping a narrow band at 135Hz by 2db changed the phone from a good budget bass phone to something wonderfull. In fact after playing with the EQ for hours I'm not touching the other ranges at all anymore, I may find a more optimal setting for the bass yet but that 2db drop at 135Hz has taken a lot of the boomyness out and brought out the detail in the mid and lower bass area, it's smoothed the lower end out nicely in comparison to what it was. I'm sure I'm not perfectly flat on the bass response but it is much much better and the detail is that approaching what I had with the ne700x now, and it's still quite fun. Extension is good as well, songs recorded and mastered with a wide dynamic range really show presence in the sub bass, especially after adjusting the upper bass down a bit.
The mids and highs are just about right to me on the fx101, taking down the upper bass has also helped the mids out a bit which were not too bad to begin with.. again I won't claim a perfect balance but I've not needed to touch any of the other frequencies, there's lots of detail and clarity across the ranges.
To conclude, these are an awesome deal at $30, if you're buying them for under $20 in the states it's a steal because the sound is comparable to higher class phones. The higher end IEMs may or may not offer you more than this budget phone but if the difference is 5% or 10% in quality I'm not sure another $100,$200,$300 is worth it to me, that is up to you to decide. Only complaint I have is the bass tuning on these phones out of the box, I prefer fixing mids and upper ranges with the EQ as I find it much easier but I think I found something quite nice in the end, I think the bass is now more enjoyable than the nuforce ne700x which was fantastic in it's own right.
Cheers Dsnuts, I like my FX101s.. wish we had US pricing up here cause then I'd be all over the fx40 as well.
