I love the L3's for a great deal of music, and prefer them, without question, to the V3s of the same brand. The dynamic bass really does make a difference in the overall balance of the frequency range, though I am using the same 1 down 2 up DIP switch configuration for both. Others have made fine comparisons between these two sets, however, so I want to make the less obvious comparison between the L3 and the Shuoer EJ07 (both ranked "S" by BGGAR). My comparison involves three wildly different tracks, played through TIDAL streaming, so I hope you'll follow along... (Note, Sedna Earfit (Large) used for all listening).
Jackie McLean – “Melody for Melonae”
Opening track on prime 60s Blue Note LP, Let Freedom Ring. First minute, Walter Davis Jr. comes in martially for a piano phrase that sounds like it could have erupted from Shostakovich Piano Concerto No. 2, with Herbie Lewis keeping a lazier but earthy pace just beneath. Then McLean blows a much more sinuous riff, more mischievous than military, on sax, with Davis Jr. and Lewis falling in line, and tight cymbal hits from Billy Higgins. At thirty-five seconds, McLean explodes in a sumptuous melody, with the other instruments providing a scaffolding that cascades as much as it trusses up that energy.
Both the EJ07 and L3 do fine work here. The L3s perhaps pull Higgins’ cymbal-work out with a bit more sparkle, though both sound tight and accurate. The opening balance between piano and bowed bass strings is definitely better with the EJ07. With the L3, the bass slightly overpowers the piano, or anyway the balance between them is off, so that the more staccato notes from the piano feel harshened somehow, as if blurted out from the veil of the bass. All in all, their “mesh” is not as natural-sounding to me as with the EJ07. The main sax melody at 35 seconds is properly beautiful and bellowing in both, with the EJ07 carrying every part of the quartet together the best, and with the L3 giving more oomph to the saxophone and cymbals over piano and bass. Different flavors, though if I could only have one, the EJ07 feels the most generous with all pieces.
Heather Duby – “Judith”
Opening track off Duby’s 1999 LP, Post to Wire, this under-heard gem engages with trip-hop, ethereal but bodily seductive female vocals, and especially a dynamic electronic arrangement provided by Steve Fisk that constantly subverts the various markers of genre and era.
Skin-tight drum hits and cymbal taps keep pace aside punctuating bass string plucks, which seem to blossom (electronically?) with intensified terminal vibrations. Duby’s voice wavers and enunciates with crystalline coyness, a little menacing, while piano lines waver and reverberate in the left channel, taken over by fuller chimes (vibraphonish keyboard?). Then, at 35 seconds, the electronics explode in a deep, rumbling counterpoint, while echoes of Duby’s own voice shimmer in the background of her confident main melody in an erotic, but also wrathfully accusatory march.
Again, both pairs shine overall. I think the L3s give slightly more sunlight to Duby’s vocals, but the bass blossoms after the plucked lines throughout the first thirty seconds feel less controlled than with the EJ07. Duby’s vocals, pretty and highlighted as they are with the L3, do also tend to diminish the effect of the electronics’ ominous, rumbling counterpoint in the chorus, robbing the passage of some of its ambiguous eroticism (the ratio of raw power to that pumped-up prettiness). The main trip-hop rhythm is just as crisp and driving with the L3s as with the EJ07, however, and neither disappoints.
Seam – “Rafael”
Yet another album opener, this one off Seam’s 1993 master-alchemy of post-hardcore and sad folk-rock, The Problem With Me. Dynamics are as crucial to this sound as with Slint, or again, as with the later, less incisive “post-rock” from Godspeed! or Explosions in the Sky, though compressed here into proper volcanic songs, rather than their stretched, languishing litanies.
Left channel guitar is picked in a riff like a rosary, with a twang that could be country if it were not so damned sad. Or perhaps it is as sad as some country, only here the lonely walk it takes is in beat-up Chuck Taylor’s instead of in cowboy boots. The bass trudges shadowing behind it, before the drums kick and stutter with articulate energy, and the right channel guitar, distorted to cold hellfire, snarls out as if summoned by the drum kicks. A steadier beat brings in the unaffected, nearly banal male vocals, which are nevertheless disarming, with a kind of candid powerlessness swarmed round by that distorted guitar and the now effusive, waterfalling bass-line. It is a melancholic chaos, frigid and enveloping, but like gushing magma, too.
The L3 is capable here in a way that contrasts with the ThieAudio V3s, which felt too thin and shrill for this "scene". The L3 is, instead, eminently listenable, and lets you into what I have called the swarm of distorted guitar, lustrous/lustreless male vocals, and heartbreaking bass plummets. However, the twang of the left channel guitar, especially in the opening moments when it is alone, are clearly preferable to me in the EJ07, sounding fuller and...uh... “twangier,” which is also to say, more bodied in their sodden prayerfulness. Finally, although the drum sounds snappier and more upfront with the L3, the balance of the swarm-effect is thrown off just a tad, so that the drum and the bass outweigh the guitars, both distorted and twanging. Because the vocals depend so much on the absolute balance of everything else, they feel a smidge whinier to me with the L3 than with the EJ07. What's more, the EJ07 DOES NOT LOSE control of this gorgeous mess up to any volume you can physically withstand, whereas the L3's grip on the sound collage begins exponentially worsening past a certain level, strident rather than engulfing.
For this genre, as with Unwound, or Fugazi, or Codeine, or Bitch Magnet et al., the EJ07 clearly is my weapon of choice.
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I have much more side-by-side listening ahead of me, but although I can say the L3 does not reach as high as my (still clear favorite) EJ07, it is by far a better option for me to take on the go, out where the elements are too dangerous for the investment the EJ07 represents, than the V3.
On a technical note, I'll say the L3 is also easier to drive than the EJ07. I used the Dragonfly Cobalt for all comparison tracks, but the L3 sounds great coming straight out of my iPhone SE. The EJ07 needs more power, pure and simple. But it can TAKE that power in a way that the L3 cannot always handle (see final notes on the Seam track above).
To the point: I recommend either set. Push come to shove, I prefer the EJ07, which still seems unbeatable to me for all types of music, but the L3 shines unique spotlights on parts of many tracks, and holds its own in other ways, too, at one-eighth the cost. The L3 is also by no means a lesser "version" of the EJ07, and their tunings are appreciably different, catering to different tastes. The L3 scratches my relatively small itch for what other IEM'ers call "OCD detail," with a better balancing of the mids than the V3, though not at the godly level of perfect balance I feel the EJ07 has, where nothing is lost. Diffuse-field and divine.
