jwilliamhurst
Headphoneus Supremus
Looking forward to your impressionsGreat way to start the weekend: Hiby RS8 has arrived
OHH I like this. + Bass Heft, +euphonic vocals and immersive staging.
Ordered the Dignis RS8 case in black.
The Watercooler -- Impressions, philosophical discussion and general banter. Index on first page. All welcome.
- Thread starter Rockwell75
- Start date
Oh nice!
I just ordered one at the store earlier today (they ran out of stock already so must wait), and now finished watching the review video. Thanks for the shareI very much agree with the staff impressions. Vocals on these are excellent, raw yet pristine. On top of that, far-reaching low-to-top end high resolution and unique planar fast lively sound that are also supplemented by sufficient thickness in the lows making it sound honey-sweet. It's even more impressive that they developed this 'Ortho' planar driver from scratch, it's very well-tuned in my opinion, head & shoulders above its previous two models or other planar IEMs out there for that matter. The coherency of a single driver is also hard to beat
The design also looks unique and cool, utilises sapphire glasses usually used in luxury watches. The body/shell made with titanium as its housing material, light & durable. In addition the shape was also made based on many samples of ear impressions, which resulted in a nice flush fit, or at least in my case. It also uses Pentaconn ears connectors, interchangeable with Elysian monitors' stock cables
(Aside, I also bought XM5 which also have nice vocals. The DD in these new Sony TWS are a step-up from their previous model. Noise cancelling was also remarkable, very effective at silencing out surrounding sounds. Microphone excels at detecting user's voice and can filter out intruding outside sound. These are going to be very useful at noisy office/cafe environment during online meetings, on top of listening to music of course
It's like having earplugs capable of playing sound. XM5 was released yesterday in Japan, and they're handing out free goodies for every purchase. I got a tumbler for mine yay)
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No kidding!
They look like they were really inspired by the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (not a photo of my watch)
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kevin638880
500+ Head-Fier
Let's hope the inside is not as fragile as those RO calibres....
Edit: wow, it looks identical to an RO/a Gerald Genta design.
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Once you pay for service you make sure you don’t break them again
kevin638880
500+ Head-Fier
My friend's ROs usually break down on their ownOnce you pay for service you make sure you don’t break them again
Admittedly it is usually their chronograph and perpetual movements that are easier to malfunction, but breaking down twice within 6 months is not really a good sign.I'd bet my money on VC Overseas if I want a sports watch. I also like VC's finishing more out of the big 3. Nothing beats a German movement (i.e. ALS/Moritz Grossmann/L&H) in terms of finishing tho, of course
Speaking of which, it is rather fortunate that IEMs are fairly robust and rarely malfunction on their own, largely speaking. I'd hate to send an IEM back to a manufacturer and wait for months with nothing to listen to.
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Homrsimson
500+ Head-Fier
Does anyone know if the multiverse mentor has venting like the jewel?
Wanna hear this. Big fan of the Madoo Typ 512.Oh nice!
I very much agree with the staff impressions. Vocals on these are excellent, raw yet pristine. On top of that, far-reaching low-to-top end high resolution and unique planar fast lively sound that are also supplemented by sufficient thickness in the lows making it sound honey-sweet. It's even more impressive that they developed this 'Ortho' planar driver from scratch, it's very well-tuned in my opinion, head & shoulders above its previous two models or other planar IEMs out there for that matter. The coherency of a single driver is also hard to beat
The design also looks unique and cool, utilises sapphire glasses usually used in luxury watches. The body/shell made with titanium as its housing material, light & durable. In addition the shape was also made based on many samples of ear impressions, which resulted in a nice flush fit, or at least in my case. It also uses Pentaconn ears connectors, interchangeable with Elysian monitors' stock cables
(Aside, I also bought XM5 which also have nice vocals. The DD in these new Sony TWS are a step-up from their previous model. Noise cancelling was also remarkable, very effective at silencing out surrounding sounds. Microphone excels at detecting user's voice and can filter out intruding outside sound. These are going to be very useful at noisy office/cafe environment during online meetings, on top of listening to music of course
Typ 821, by all accounts, may turn out to be a price-bracket-defining set of monitors.
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I’ve sent the demo back, so I’m expecting my own unit next week at some point. I’ve been sharing stuff on the N30 thread but I’ll summarize here. This was the regular version of the DAP, not the Amber Pearl which I had on pre order. I absolutely love it, it’s pretty much exactly what I wanted the N8ii to be (after I got fed up of the slightly brighter tonality). It has a warmer, analogue, and fuller tonality with excellent technicals. It’s dynamic and punchy, incredibly spacious staging on all 3 axis with wonderful textured bass, an emotive/wetter mid range, and smooth but well extended treble. It would be a good complement to 320Max Ti for a more musical source. It’ll never be a reference or bright tonality no matter what power or timbre mode you choose, so I’d keep that in mind. But it’s a tweakable sound giving you the choice to make it warmer, fuller, and softer with classical tubes or slightly more crunchy and revealing with modern and solid state timbres. It drove Grand Maestro just fine.
It really surpassed my very high expectations, whether it’s my own bias towards the sound and presentation or it’s just “that good” I will never know. It really left a tremendous impression on me and I cannot wait to get it back. I’m trying not to hype it just because it’s a new toy, I had reservations which is why I requested to demo even with a pre order already in place. If it didn’t meet my own expectations at that crazy price there was just no way I was going to stick with it. At the end of the day just like with any piece of gear, it won’t be for everyone. It’s got a coloration to it that I can imagine some people won’t like or won’t enjoy the synergy with their gear.
So between the two chonkers I’d categorize like this:
Neutral/transparent/dynamic: 320Max Ti
warmer/fuller/musical/analogue/adjustable: N30 LE (regular)
Just to clarify it’s not like the Max lacks musicality or the N30 lacks transparency/dynamics, because that’s not the case, but those would be the words I would use to describe both overall.
I'm responding to this here because it is after all at least partly a "philosophical discussion" thread, and I also don't want to clog up the EE thread.
At the outset I want to say that I feel this topic is very vast & multi layered-- I'm going to do my best to present some of my thoughts as best I can...a lot of "thinking out loud" will follow...I find this topic very fascinating to ponder.
I would agree that it is perhaps poorly defined but IMHO there is very much a distinction to be drawn somewhere between two distinct, shall we say, ideologies, approaches, temperaments, or underlying philosophical persuasions in this hobby that have to this point been been (perhaps poorly) conceived as the "objective/subjective" distinction. Not only that but I would go further and argue that there is at play here a fundamental ideological/temperamental divide that is rooted in the bedrock of human nature.
The best characterization I've heard so far of what might be described as the "fundamental battleground of human intellectual discourse" was given by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the following quote (which I'm pretty sure that I shared some time ago in the Objective/Subjective discussion thread over at the Headphones.com forum):
"As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture."
In this hobby I think this distinction translates to a more analytical/intellectual approach (objectivist/materialist) on the one side, to a more emotive/heart-centred approach (subjectivist/idealist) on the other. It is no coincidence that another word for "subjectivist" in Holt's glossary is "mystic".
This was an interesting statement to unpack.
Fundamentally, what people consciously "believe" is of very little relevance here I think. It's not a question of what any of us believe-- what we should we should be concerned with is what is true. (In this sense I am very much an "objectivist".) Furthermore very few people have a well defined consciously formulated worldview. That is to say, most people have not sat down and taken stock of their beliefs and tried to assemble them into a well-defined or coherent structure. I would agree that most people, if pressed, would not deny that "their experience is caused by something external to them"-- but it's just as true that the vast majority of people would say this without really putting much thought into what "experience caused by something external to them" really means or implies. For example, I will admit that it certainly appears as though there is a world external to me that is impressing itself on my mind (the materialist perspective) however after only a little reflection it becomes apparent to me that the only thing I have ever had direct experience of is my own subjective consciousness (the idealist perspective)-- everything I have ever experienced has come to me through the medium of this subjective consciousness. It's not even remotely clear to me at this point what "external to me" exactly means. At root, the purely subjective element of my experience appears to me to be at least as fundamental as that which is external to me (whatever that means).
All of this has, I think, profound implications in audio where the level of perception involved (in describing things like soundstage, timbre, the changes in sound brought about by a cable swap) are often incredibly subtle. It's not altogether clear to me that people's mental attitudes or expectations can't influence the listening experience in a non-trivial way. For example, someone who is pre-disposed to find differences in sound when changing cables, due to their inherent mental bias...may exagerrate in their minds the differences they do hear. On the other hand it's just as true that someone who, say, based on measurements was convinced what there was no sonic difference between two cables, due to their inherent mental bias may not hear subtle differences that are in fact there.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't-- I don't think this is the relevant point. What is relevant is where someone's inherent bias is, which is largely informed by their temperament. Speaking for myself, I'm not altogether opposed to the idea that every aspect of my experience is measureable somehow-- but my subjectivist bias leads me to trust my ears and experience first, and measurements second. In the ultimate sense this "objective/subjective" distinction is as much about differences in inherent temperament than it is about differences in belief structures around metaphysical reality. Beyond that, it's not clear to me that even if it were true that there is some "measureable property" responsible for all of my experience, that one will be able to actually discern the specifics from reading the measurements. A classic example of this would be with our thoughts-- I might grant that one could hook up enough wires and apparatus to my brain that they could detect some measureable corollary to my entire thought processes...but I would still maintain that the actual content of my thoughts and the sum total of my experience is fundamentally asymmetrically accessible. Detecting the existence of thoughts is not the same as reading the specific content of said thoughts.
In a similar way I often think of looking at an FR curve as akin to looking at a reflection of a building on the ground-- you can discern the dimensions of the building but not its substance.
I don't think anyone is making this claim-- but I do think there is a line somwhere between objective reality and one's subjective experience...and where this line resides is not altogether clear at this point.
Fair enough. However regardless of what is said of this topic generally, one of the most common "disputes" I see is between those who, for example, believe that all aspects of sound can be discerned in the FR, and those who maintain that the FR is just one piece of a multi-faceted puzzle. Perhaps crudely, it does seem to me that the line dividing these two camps is in many ways consistent with the objectivist/subjectivist temperaments I've thus far been trying to describe.
At the outset I want to say that I feel this topic is very vast & multi layered-- I'm going to do my best to present some of my thoughts as best I can...a lot of "thinking out loud" will follow...I find this topic very fascinating to ponder.
I would agree that it is perhaps poorly defined but IMHO there is very much a distinction to be drawn somewhere between two distinct, shall we say, ideologies, approaches, temperaments, or underlying philosophical persuasions in this hobby that have to this point been been (perhaps poorly) conceived as the "objective/subjective" distinction. Not only that but I would go further and argue that there is at play here a fundamental ideological/temperamental divide that is rooted in the bedrock of human nature.
The best characterization I've heard so far of what might be described as the "fundamental battleground of human intellectual discourse" was given by Ralph Waldo Emerson in the following quote (which I'm pretty sure that I shared some time ago in the Objective/Subjective discussion thread over at the Headphones.com forum):
"As thinkers, mankind have ever divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first class founding on experience, the second on consciousness; the first class beginning to think from the data of the senses, the second class perceive that the senses are not final, and say, the senses give us representations of things, but what are the things themselves, they cannot tell. The materialist insists on facts, on history, on the force of circumstances, and the animal wants of man; the idealist on the power of Thought and of Will, on inspiration, on miracle, on individual culture."
In this hobby I think this distinction translates to a more analytical/intellectual approach (objectivist/materialist) on the one side, to a more emotive/heart-centred approach (subjectivist/idealist) on the other. It is no coincidence that another word for "subjectivist" in Holt's glossary is "mystic".
This was an interesting statement to unpack.
Fundamentally, what people consciously "believe" is of very little relevance here I think. It's not a question of what any of us believe-- what we should we should be concerned with is what is true. (In this sense I am very much an "objectivist".) Furthermore very few people have a well defined consciously formulated worldview. That is to say, most people have not sat down and taken stock of their beliefs and tried to assemble them into a well-defined or coherent structure. I would agree that most people, if pressed, would not deny that "their experience is caused by something external to them"-- but it's just as true that the vast majority of people would say this without really putting much thought into what "experience caused by something external to them" really means or implies. For example, I will admit that it certainly appears as though there is a world external to me that is impressing itself on my mind (the materialist perspective) however after only a little reflection it becomes apparent to me that the only thing I have ever had direct experience of is my own subjective consciousness (the idealist perspective)-- everything I have ever experienced has come to me through the medium of this subjective consciousness. It's not even remotely clear to me at this point what "external to me" exactly means. At root, the purely subjective element of my experience appears to me to be at least as fundamental as that which is external to me (whatever that means).
All of this has, I think, profound implications in audio where the level of perception involved (in describing things like soundstage, timbre, the changes in sound brought about by a cable swap) are often incredibly subtle. It's not altogether clear to me that people's mental attitudes or expectations can't influence the listening experience in a non-trivial way. For example, someone who is pre-disposed to find differences in sound when changing cables, due to their inherent mental bias...may exagerrate in their minds the differences they do hear. On the other hand it's just as true that someone who, say, based on measurements was convinced what there was no sonic difference between two cables, due to their inherent mental bias may not hear subtle differences that are in fact there.
Maybe they are, maybe they aren't-- I don't think this is the relevant point. What is relevant is where someone's inherent bias is, which is largely informed by their temperament. Speaking for myself, I'm not altogether opposed to the idea that every aspect of my experience is measureable somehow-- but my subjectivist bias leads me to trust my ears and experience first, and measurements second. In the ultimate sense this "objective/subjective" distinction is as much about differences in inherent temperament than it is about differences in belief structures around metaphysical reality. Beyond that, it's not clear to me that even if it were true that there is some "measureable property" responsible for all of my experience, that one will be able to actually discern the specifics from reading the measurements. A classic example of this would be with our thoughts-- I might grant that one could hook up enough wires and apparatus to my brain that they could detect some measureable corollary to my entire thought processes...but I would still maintain that the actual content of my thoughts and the sum total of my experience is fundamentally asymmetrically accessible. Detecting the existence of thoughts is not the same as reading the specific content of said thoughts.
In a similar way I often think of looking at an FR curve as akin to looking at a reflection of a building on the ground-- you can discern the dimensions of the building but not its substance.
I don't think anyone is making this claim-- but I do think there is a line somwhere between objective reality and one's subjective experience...and where this line resides is not altogether clear at this point.
Fair enough. However regardless of what is said of this topic generally, one of the most common "disputes" I see is between those who, for example, believe that all aspects of sound can be discerned in the FR, and those who maintain that the FR is just one piece of a multi-faceted puzzle. Perhaps crudely, it does seem to me that the line dividing these two camps is in many ways consistent with the objectivist/subjectivist temperaments I've thus far been trying to describe.
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Resolve
Sponsor: Headphones.com
I actually don't think anyone who has thoroughly studied the scientific side of things would believe that FR is all there is when it comes to sound quality. There may be those who do think this - but I'd suggest those people do a bit more research on the subject. It has been demonstrated that FR is far and away the most important factor, but it is not the only factor. Even Dr. Olive himself mentioned this in a recent interview. I think perhaps the darker characterization of this isn't so much that FR is all there is but rather... target adherence is all there is, which is a straightforward misunderstanding of the science. But yes, I do see this from time to time as well.
They look uncannily similar! Nice looking watch thereNo kidding!
They look like they were really inspired by the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak (not a photo of my watch)
It's not going to be as warm or dark as 512, 821 is more resolving has sharper imaging and a wider reach. Def worth a try
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