[Rockwell75]

The free one she got from her Samsung smartphone.

That reminds me of that time Paul McCartney was asked what his favorite sound system that he'd ever heard was and his says "whatever is playing at the moment". It really is all about the music

 

[Deezel177]

That reminds me of that time Paul McCartney was asked what his favorite sound system that he'd ever heard was and his says "whatever is playing at the moment". It really is all about the music

Oh, for sure. Like I said on a thread some time ago, IEMs are almost-always the fifth or sixth item on a musician's priority list. It's always the instrument and everything they need to play it first. Some drummers even put their thrones over their in-ears. Dave Weckl, to this day, is a Shure SE215 user, and Matt Garstka has gone on record to say that he prefers simple earmuffs over his JH Roxanne CIEMs. It goes to show how different pros and audiophiles can be, and it proves (to me, at least) that a lot of the "musician-grade" or "pro-grade" terminology in marketing is (and always has been) little more than fluff, honestly.

 

[blotmouse]

It goes to show how different pros and audiophiles can be, and it proves (to me, at least) that a lot of the "musician-grade" or "pro-grade" terminology in marketing is (and always has been) little more than fluff, honestly.

Totally.
Mostly fluff, and some musicians need to re-arrange their gear to account for the signature thing they signed on to promote, that they never actually used until they started promoting it.

In my experience musicians don't care unless the technology gets in the way of their performance. And some are like baseball players, highly superstitious, and keep using the same stuff that has always performed for them. If they change out anything, they change their personal signature and their relationship to the creative process.

I know for a fact that in a few hired gun situations I was in, if I had showed up without my signature instruments and gear, I would have been fired. I had so many Radio Shack rig "fixes" at the time. Garbage cable to box that you need to tilt on its side to turn on properly, etc. Don't forget to tap on the power tube... check.

I was there because of the limitations and sound of the gear I chose to perform through. Usually someone will hear your performance and want "That sound", not that upgraded sound you messed with to get better "pro" quality.

Now how we experience the musicians art after the fact, that's the story we are writing here....

In my experience, in the studio, no one ever used IEM's. It was full sized 100% of the time. Maybe that's changed recently though?
There is something to being "locked in" with those full sized muffs. It's probably Pavlovian, but it just feels like you're ready for the go button.
I looked at musicians that used IEM's on stage as cheaters. "What, you can't sing in key without a personal monitor?" Novice, lol. Can we get a real pro in here?

I can totally see drummers being cool with IEM's though. So many takes have been ruined by headsets falling off during a massive tom explosion or something similar, lmao.
And the sweat, smh.

Anyway... happy Saturday folks!!

 

[ranfan]

I thought that 'reference' means something which you can refer to. And so preferably something which sounds closest to how the recording was recorded, sans boost nor attenuation in any part. Which is kinda like the definition for ruler flat 'neutral'. But then again even a flat frequency responding monitor is still subject to coloration, and something that is uncolored to me doesn't really exist or else we'd create a paradox (i.e. silence). Something as close to being uncolored is as good as we can get, and if possible for the most occasion as well as @Deezel177 mentioned. It's useful to have a standard as a way to help measure things, but one's standard may vary from another. So really the term 'reference' is open to interpretation in my opinion. Not set and chiselled: more appropriating something like a benchmark

And 'balanced' to me is something like an all-rounder. It approximates towards neutral, but can be slightly north or south from it in some parts. To me a balanced sound could have some coloration and is tonally inaccurate to a degree. As long as the deviation doesn't tilt the sound to becoming overly warm or boosted bright leaving the opposite corresponding parts sounding deficient/lacking. In other words causing the sound to become unbalanced or heavy on one side

 

[Deezel177]

I thought that 'reference' means something which you can refer to. And so preferably something which sounds closest to how the recording was recorded, sans boost nor attenuation in any part. Which is kinda like the definition for ruler flat 'neutral'. But then again even a flat frequency responding monitor is still subject to coloration, and something that is uncolored to me doesn't really exist or else we'd create a paradox (i.e. silence). Something as close to being uncolored is as good as we can get, and if possible for the most occasion as well as @Deezel177 mentioned. It's useful to have a standard as a way to help measure things, but one's standard may vary from another. So really the term 'reference' is open to interpretation in my opinion. Not set and chiselled: more appropriating something like a benchmark

And 'balanced' to me is something like an all-rounder. It approximates towards neutral, but can be slightly north or south from it in some parts. To me a balanced sound could have some coloration and is tonally inaccurate to a degree. As long as the deviation doesn't tilt the sound to becoming overly warm or boosted bright leaving the opposite corresponding parts sounding deficient/lacking. In other words causing the sound to become unbalanced or heavy on one side

Ditto.

 

[Rockwell75]

To me, those three terms mean similar things, but with varying degrees of specificity. Balanced to me means generally even or safe; no cardinal sins, no funny business. It's the most malleable of the three, because - and this is why I personally don't believe in a specific "target" curve to define balance or accuracy - you can actually push or dip frequencies quite a bit before they become unbalanced. As Jude said on his IE900 review, balanced (and he even extends it to reference) represents a host of curves, rather than a rigid, target one.

This is a very helpful clarification. The mathematician in me wants to say family of curves

Now, reference gets a lot more specific. I think a lot of you know by now my personal definition of reference. A reference IEM should not add any colour to the track, so the changes between one track to another can be as transparent (or obvious) as possible. If I play 10 different tracks and I hear the same lift in the bass, or brassy-ness to the vocals, or glare in the treble, etc., then that IEM isn't a reference IEM. And, for an IEM to be reference, all of its parts have to be neutral, which, to me, has the same meaning as reference, but applied to the individual parts of an in-ear, i.e. its lows, mids, highs, imaging, dynamics, etc. A monitor with a neutral low-end has a bass that complies with the tracks its playing, but if the mids and highs aren't similarly neutral, then it isn't a reference IEM.

This is actually exactly how I understand the term and how I classify something like the u12t (again, minus the bass boost). The VX is another one that gets brought up but on the whole it had too much vibrance in the upper mids to qualify here.

In reality, I don't believe there's a fully-reference IEM out there right now, especially once you consider personal biases as well. One of my references, for example, is 64 Audio's A18s, which has a slight softness to its treble and a slightly elevated mid-bass. I don't mind the former, and I actually need the latter when I'm getting fatigued and I need the pump the volume a bit higher. So, there are an infinite amount of scenarios that an IEM has to fulfil to be considered fully-reference, thus the idea is to just find one as close to it as possible for the most amount of time. At least, that's the conclusion I came to a while ago.

Again, very interesting. Do you think a fully universal across the board reference IEM is strictly possible? Or is it one of those Heisenberg situations where the more you're reference in one category the less you'll inevitably be in another so you'll ultimately need some combination of different monitors to provide full spectrum reference?

I think, regardless of what IEM you play your music through, pitch nowadays is extremely muddy waters anyway. I don't know whether or not you've seen a lot of the videos about it online, but 99% of the music we listen to these days is technically off-pitch. Most music use a system called equal temperament, which splits the octave (from C1 to C2, for example) into a set of notes with equal intervals. This is the principle by which pianos are tuned, and how pianos in music production software is tuned as well. The issue is, notes don't naturally have equal intervals. So, if you take, say, the A major triad (A, C, E) and the D major triad (D, F#, A), the A note in both chords should have different frequencies. Here's a compilation of Jacob Collier explaining it online:

Excellent I'll look into this more when i've got time.

He, in particular, is someone who takes advantage of this to create lots of microtonal contrasts in his music. I believe his track, Hideaway, starts and ends with two different versions of the A chord. He starts in the "less accurate" equal temperament to create a feeling of something familiar, but slightly off, then ends it with a harmonically-correct version to create a sensation of safety and homecoming. He does this in his stunning, stunning arrangement of Moon River as well, where he goes up and down by intervals that are less than a semitone. So, rather than going from G to G#, he goes from G, to G half-#, then to G#. Again, it's stunning stuff.

It's also why, if you look at the basses of Henrik Linder from Dirty Loops, you'll see lots of squiggly lines on his fretboard, rather than straight, equally-divided ones:



Funnily enough, this goes back to what I said about a balanced tuning. It's not just our in-ears that can be pushed a couple dB's here or a couple dB's there and still sound correct; music itself can be pushed cents here-and-there without anyone batting an eye! So, yeah, if you wanna get really in-depth and mull over these sorts of things, there's a literal sea out there left to explore.

Thanks again man this was a very helpful post and will be added to my thread index.

 

[Scubadevils]

Great to read these last few posts, I'm still very much learning the 'language' and I love to understand what it means in the context of what I'm hearing. My job involves a lot of piecing together components to achieve an outcome, or indeed working back from the outcome to build the components - I'm super keen to better understand when reading reviews and equally when I write my own, which I'm looking forward to. It's fantastic when the penny drops and I can link a term previously unknown to me in the context of music, I love that 'ahhh' moment!

With that in mind, two that spring to mind for clarification -

Resolving: is it correct to say this relates to the presentation of detail, like in a higher resolution TV? If so, MEST MKII for me is highly resolving but lacks coherency - which feels like the glue that bonds technicalities and musicality, resulting in an emotive connection to the music. Eg - if not coherent, our brains need to consider the various inputs, potentially distracting from the full picture.

Dynamics - from Google, I'm reading this as being the variation in loudness between notes. To what extent does an earphone determine this outcome vs the mastering of the recording? Is there a 'sh!t in, sh!t out' that is somewhat mitigated by highly dynamic earphones?!

Thats all for now, expect more questions if it's OK!

 

[drftr]

I may have missed it, but doesn't the Isabellae exist any longer? They're not featured at the Oriolus web page (anymore?).

drftr

 

[Rockwell75]

I may have missed it, but doesn't the Isabellae exist any longer? They're not featured at the Oriolus web page (anymore?).

drftr

I don’t know what’s up with Oriolus’ website but I’m not sure Isa has ever been listed there. If you’re in North America and want one Musicteck is the way to go.

 

[drftr]

I don’t know what’s up with Oriolus’ website but I’m not sure Isa has ever been listed there. If you’re in North America and want one Musicteck is the way to go.

I'm in Mexico currently but will take a look - tnx...

Thought it might be discontinued.

drftr

 

[Rockwell75]

I'm in Mexico

The struggle is real brother. I’m in Canada and it’s similarly hard to get ahold of good gear to demo here.

Thought it might be discontinued.

It’s quite new and very popular I’d be quite surprised if it was discontinued.

 

[Deezel177]

Great to read these last few posts, I'm still very much learning the 'language' and I love to understand what it means in the context of what I'm hearing. My job involves a lot of piecing together components to achieve an outcome, or indeed working back from the outcome to build the components - I'm super keen to better understand when reading reviews and equally when I write my own, which I'm looking forward to. It's fantastic when the penny drops and I can link a term previously unknown to me in the context of music, I love that 'ahhh' moment!

With that in mind, two that spring to mind for clarification -

Resolving: is it correct to say this relates to the presentation of detail, like in a higher resolution TV? If so, MEST MKII for me is highly resolving but lacks coherency - which feels like the glue that bonds technicalities and musicality, resulting in an emotive connection to the music. Eg - if not coherent, our brains need to consider the various inputs, potentially distracting from the full picture.

Dynamics - from Google, I'm reading this as being the variation in loudness between notes. To what extent does an earphone determine this outcome vs the mastering of the recording? Is there a 'sh!t in, sh!t out' that is somewhat mitigated by highly dynamic earphones?!

Thats all for now, expect more questions if it's OK!

Resolution can certainly be equated to detail, but I personally prefer the word information. The word detail implies that surface-level clarity that simply comes from clean-cut notes and a well-separated (or tidily-laid) stage. Whereas, I personally think resolution should also encapsulate "subtler" details; those deeper textures that turn a note from just clear to fully three-dimensional. You can get detail by, again, simply boosting the treble and articulating everything strongly. But, often times, there's nothing behind that detail; no tactility, no weight, no texture, etc. Rather than just being the sheer amount of "detail", I believe resolution should also include the qualities that make those details convincing. So, if we're using the TV as an analogy, you'd also include aspects like backlight bleed, which affect the blacks of the image and how vividly colours are allowed to pop. This is also what I'm referring to when I mention a black/stable background in my reviews.

Dynamics, in practical terms, refer to the ebb and flow of the music; whether or not you can hear it breathe across passages; whether or not, when a track crescendoes, you can actually tell how much the track has "risen", etc. To properly judge dynamics, it's best to use a track that builds from start to finish. One of my references there is Snarky Puppy's Go. It's a track that starts with a bass guitar and ends with a full ensemble. On a dynamically-capable IEM - an IEM with great dynamic range - at the very start of the track, you'll be able to tell that it isn't fully utilising the IEM's headroom yet. There's a certain emptiness or bareness to the soundscape. Then, as the track builds, you'll be able to feel that headroom get more and more filled in until the climax, where it's just hitting you at full force. You can really feel the drama and the journey there. On the other hand, an IEM with poor dynamic range won't be capable of rising with the track. Or, worse yet, it'll sound stuffed at the beginning and get increasingly claustrophobic.

Now, when you play an inherently compressed track through a dynamically-capable IEM, the effect you'll get is the one I described for the start of Go. The track is all there, but - unless you pump the volume fairly high - it'll come off a bit empty and/or bare; not vivid or breathing. I mentioned Jacob Collier's ridiculously-genius arrangement of Moon River on my previous long-form post. It's a track that - almost like Go on an overdose of steroids - starts with whispers of vocals, which eventually build to hundreds and hundreds of tracks' worth of them. The only issue with it, though, and it's something that's frustrated me to no end, is that the mixing and mastering almost totally kills that journey for me. It was processed with such compression, especially in the lows, that it can't fully open up and climax when you think it should. It comes off a tad held back in vividness right at the end, which, especially with high-end IEMs, is so heartbreaking for how good of an arrangement it is.

'Still an absolutely stunning, Grammy-Award-winning track, though. I implore you all check it out:



In my opinion, though, apart from outliers like the ODIN, which make compressed tracks simply sound tiny, there are very few IEMs out there that outright kill the enjoyment of a track simply because it was mixed and mastered with lots of compression. A dynamically-capable IEM won't make compressed tracks sound worse; they'll just make dynamic tracks sound a lot better, if you get what I mean. Like, in the case of Moon River, it doesn't sound bad at all. It just doesn't sound as open and moving as it possibly could've, especially given the arrangement. Still, I'd honestly much rather have that than an IEM that bottlenecks the dynamic tracks to sound the same as the compressed ones.

 

[jwilliamhurst]

Resolution can certainly be equated to detail, but I personally prefer the word information. The word detail implies that surface-level clarity that simply comes from clean-cut notes and a well-separated (or tidily-laid) stage. Whereas, I personally think resolution should also encapsulate "subtler" details; those deeper textures that turn a note from just clear to fully three-dimensional. You can get detail by, again, simply boosting the treble and articulating everything strongly. But, often times, there's nothing behind that detail; no tactility, no weight, no texture, etc. Rather than just being the sheer amount of "detail", I believe resolution should also include the qualities that make those details convincing. So, if we're using the TV as an analogy, you'd also include aspects like backlight bleed, which affect the blacks of the image and how vividly colours are allowed to pop. This is also what I'm referring to when I mention a black/stable background in my reviews.

Dynamics, in practical terms, refer to the ebb and flow of the music; whether or not you can hear it breathe across passages; whether or not, when a track crescendoes, you can actually tell how much the track has "risen", etc. To properly judge dynamics, it's best to use a track that builds from start to finish. One of my references there is Snarky Puppy's Go. It's a track that starts with a bass guitar and ends with a full ensemble. On a dynamically-capable IEM - an IEM with great dynamic range - at the very start of the track, you'll be able to tell that it isn't fully utilising the IEM's headroom yet. There's a certain emptiness or bareness to the soundscape. Then, as the track builds, you'll be able to feel that headroom get more and more filled in until the climax, where it's just hitting you at full force. You can really feel the drama and the journey there. On the other hand, an IEM with poor dynamic range won't be capable of rising with the track. Or, worse yet, it'll sound stuffed at the beginning and get increasingly claustrophobic.

Now, when you play an inherently compressed track through a dynamically-capable IEM, the effect you'll get is the one I described for the start of Go. The track is all there, but - unless you pump the volume fairly high - it'll come off a bit empty and/or bare; not vivid or breathing. I mentioned Jacob Collier's ridiculously-genius arrangement of Moon River on my previous long-form post. It's a track that - almost like Go on an overdose of steroids - starts with whispers of vocals, which eventually build to hundreds and hundreds of tracks' worth of them. The only issue with it, though, and it's something that's frustrated me to no end, is that the mixing and mastering almost totally kills that journey for me. It was processed with such compression, especially in the lows, that it can't fully open up and climax when you think it should. It comes off a tad held back in vividness right at the end, which, especially with high-end IEMs, is so heartbreaking for how good of an arrangement it is.

'Still an absolutely stunning, Grammy-Award-winning track, though. I implore you all check it out:



In my opinion, though, apart from outliers like the ODIN, which make compressed tracks simply sound tiny, there are very few IEMs out there that outright kill the enjoyment of a track simply because it was mixed and mastered with lots of compression. A dynamically-capable IEM won't make compressed tracks sound worse; they'll just make dynamic tracks sound a lot better, if you get what I mean. Like, in the case of Moon River, it doesn't sound bad at all. It just doesn't sound as open and moving as it possibly could've, especially given the arrangement. Still, I'd honestly much rather have that than an IEM that bottlenecks the dynamic tracks to sound the same as the compressed ones.

Yes!!! To all of this!! Great explanation.

 

[Wildcatsare1]

Great to read these last few posts, I'm still very much learning the 'language' and I love to understand what it means in the context of what I'm hearing. My job involves a lot of piecing together components to achieve an outcome, or indeed working back from the outcome to build the components - I'm super keen to better understand when reading reviews and equally when I write my own, which I'm looking forward to. It's fantastic when the penny drops and I can link a term previously unknown to me in the context of music, I love that 'ahhh' moment!

With that in mind, two that spring to mind for clarification -

Resolving: is it correct to say this relates to the presentation of detail, like in a higher resolution TV? If so, MEST MKII for me is highly resolving but lacks coherency - which feels like the glue that bonds technicalitiesa and musicality, resulting in an emotive connection to the music. Eg - if not coherent, our brains need to consider the various inputs, potentially distracting from the full picture.

Dynamics - from Google, I'm reading this as being the variation in loudness between notes. To what extent does an earphone determine this outcome vs the mastering of the recording? Is there a 'sh!t in, sh!t out' that is somewhat mitigated by highly dynamic earphones?!

Thats all for now, expect more questions if it's OK!

For dynamics go to well recorded acoustic music, with full symphony you have everything from ppp to fff, with little or no compression. Physics actually works in IEM’s favor, tiny drivers, but tiny space to “excite.” Then an acoustic guitars are great for shading, speed, and microdynamics.

 

[Scubadevils]

Resolution can certainly be equated to detail, but I personally prefer the word information. The word detail implies that surface-level clarity that simply comes from clean-cut notes and a well-separated (or tidily-laid) stage. Whereas, I personally think resolution should also encapsulate "subtler" details; those deeper textures that turn a note from just clear to fully three-dimensional. You can get detail by, again, simply boosting the treble and articulating everything strongly. But, often times, there's nothing behind that detail; no tactility, no weight, no texture, etc. Rather than just being the sheer amount of "detail", I believe resolution should also include the qualities that make those details convincing. So, if we're using the TV as an analogy, you'd also include aspects like backlight bleed, which affect the blacks of the image and how vividly colours are allowed to pop. This is also what I'm referring to when I mention a black/stable background in my reviews.

Dynamics, in practical terms, refer to the ebb and flow of the music; whether or not you can hear it breathe across passages; whether or not, when a track crescendoes, you can actually tell how much the track has "risen", etc. To properly judge dynamics, it's best to use a track that builds from start to finish. One of my references there is Snarky Puppy's Go. It's a track that starts with a bass guitar and ends with a full ensemble. On a dynamically-capable IEM - an IEM with great dynamic range - at the very start of the track, you'll be able to tell that it isn't fully utilising the IEM's headroom yet. There's a certain emptiness or bareness to the soundscape. Then, as the track builds, you'll be able to feel that headroom get more and more filled in until the climax, where it's just hitting you at full force. You can really feel the drama and the journey there. On the other hand, an IEM with poor dynamic range won't be capable of rising with the track. Or, worse yet, it'll sound stuffed at the beginning and get increasingly claustrophobic.

Now, when you play an inherently compressed track through a dynamically-capable IEM, the effect you'll get is the one I described for the start of Go. The track is all there, but - unless you pump the volume fairly high - it'll come off a bit empty and/or bare; not vivid or breathing. I mentioned Jacob Collier's ridiculously-genius arrangement of Moon River on my previous long-form post. It's a track that - almost like Go on an overdose of steroids - starts with whispers of vocals, which eventually build to hundreds and hundreds of tracks' worth of them. The only issue with it, though, and it's something that's frustrated me to no end, is that the mixing and mastering almost totally kills that journey for me. It was processed with such compression, especially in the lows, that it can't fully open up and climax when you think it should. It comes off a tad held back in vividness right at the end, which, especially with high-end IEMs, is so heartbreaking for how good of an arrangement it is.

'Still an absolutely stunning, Grammy-Award-winning track, though. I implore you all check it out:



In my opinion, though, apart from outliers like the ODIN, which make compressed tracks simply sound tiny, there are very few IEMs out there that outright kill the enjoyment of a track simply because it was mixed and mastered with lots of compression. A dynamically-capable IEM won't make compressed tracks sound worse; they'll just make dynamic tracks sound a lot better, if you get what I mean. Like, in the case of Moon River, it doesn't sound bad at all. It just doesn't sound as open and moving as it possibly could've, especially given the arrangement. Still, I'd honestly much rather have that than an IEM that bottlenecks the dynamic tracks to sound the same as the compressed ones.

Excellent, thank you very much for the detailed explanation, much appreciated.