[toaster]

the "t" and "sh" sound is sibilance.

the sensaphonics, to the best of my knowledge, differ from the ue's by having less sibilance. even the people that love the ue's, will usually agree they are "sharper" than the sensaphonics. to some people this doesn't matter, to others it's actually a good thing.

if the sibilance bothers you that much, the sensaphonics could be a better choice for you.

 

[seankonnery]

Happy Birthday, Josh!

I just hope I like the UE with my portable set-up because that's what it's for anyway.

 

[Born2bwire]

Quote:

Originally Posted by raisin Because they don't make the drivers- those are produced with the hearing aid industry in mind, not high fidelity.

That was my understanding as well. It would be very interesting if they were able to fabricate their own drivers.

 

[seankonnery]

Could it be my CD's aren't good enough (all copies in wav file) and the UE are showing all the defects in the recordings?

 

[toaster]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seankonnery Could it be my CD's aren't good enough (all copies in wav file) and the UE are showing all the defects in the recordings?

thanks for the birthday wishes.

21.

that's another thing...these custom iems are very detailed, in that they reveal the quality of recordings like i've never heard. you can really tell what cd's were recorded well and which ones weren't. also, if you're using low bitrate or lowquality recordings, they'll really sound bad.

 

[seankonnery]

A new discovery! If I listen on a lower volume (around 8:00 on the sr-71) the distortion of the cymbals is almst completely gone and I hear much more detail. It sounds excellent.

 

[random person]

How loud is 8 on the sr-71? Is it a 1-10 scale, or is the scale wider than that -- in other words, what percentage is it? I'm asking because I NEVER listen to my UE5c about the halfway mark on the Ipod volume meter and I'm trying to understand how that compares with your listening habits.

Did you call UE yet or are you giving your head some time to adjust to the UE10Pro before you call them?

Hope it al works out for the best!

 

[seankonnery]

Picture the face of a clock. I listen to my senn 650 at 11-12:00. I thought the UE would be good at 9:00, but they sound less distorted at 8:00.

I am doing both. Listening more to get used to them AND calling UE to ask questions. I spoke to Doug over there and he said to try a couple more listening sessions and then send it back for a look at possible repair.

 

[omendelovitz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by toaster22 if you want an OPEN SOUND, CANALPHONES, even the best, are simply NOT FOR YOU.

Ok then, I have a quick question. The best headphones that I have been able to acquire to date are the Grado SR-125 IMO(open headphones) and the Koss Portapros (hardly worth mentioning, but good background info). I have recently realized that my Grado's don't do mobile and am looking for a suitable canal-phone replacements. The thing I love the most about my Grado's is their soundstage... It's like experiencing 3-D, except in my ears! I definitely agree with the 'centre stage' label placed on these cans, and this is what I am looking for from a pair of canalphones. If I understand what you're saying correctly, I won't find this 3-D-esqe sound performance in canal-phones. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, which canal-phones would you reccomend to match my grados the best? correction - best match my Grado's, but a little more bass would be nice...

Thanks in advance.

Oriel

 

[seankonnery]

UE 10 Pro has certainly more soundstage than the Ety's, but not as much as the Senn 650.

 

[Jmmmmm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by omendelovitz Ok then, I have a quick question. The best headphones that I have been able to acquire to date are the Grado SR-125 IMO(open headphones) and the Koss Portapros (hardly worth mentioning, but good background info). I have recently realized that my Grado's don't do mobile and am looking for a suitable canal-phone replacements. The thing I love the most about my Grado's is their soundstage... It's like experiencing 3-D, except in my ears! I definitely agree with the 'centre stage' label placed on these cans, and this is what I am looking for from a pair of canalphones. If I understand what you're saying correctly, I won't find this 3-D-esqe sound performance in canal-phones. Am I understanding you correctly? If so, which canal-phones would you reccomend to match my grados the best? correction - best match my Grado's, but a little more bass would be nice...

This might be a little off-topic for this thread, but..
Do you need isolation, or do you just need portability? If you just need portability, then definitely just get a pair of koss ksc35's or ksc75's. They have a grado-ish sound, and are a steal at ~$20. Any decent headphone will have better soundstage than most canalphones.
If you need isolation, I'd say ones you could look into are the er4's or er6i's (depending on price range), or the e4c's(<--my recommendation). I don't think any of them have a grado sound, really, but they are the closest you can get that I can think of. That is, unless you are able to spend $600-$1000 on custom's like seankonnery here. Then you are out of my jurisdiction. If you have any more questions, search around and perhaps start a new thread.

 

[toaster]

here's the deal...

the way our ears perceive sound (in a nutshell) is:

1) Sounds enter our ears and bounces around the pinna. The pinna is the concave outer part of our ear, before the ear canal. The pinna is responsible for creating nearly ALL acoustical cues. A study was done, where clay was inserted into the pinna, essentially "flattening out" the surface of the ear. All that was left was a hole where the ear canal formed. The rest of the pinna was filled with clay. The subjects who's ears were filled with clay had nearly an impossible time detecting the source of sounds presented around them.

2) The ear canal picks up sounds once they have been ricocheted around the pinna, and then ricochets them some more. Finally you hear the sound.

Wow, that's an abbreviated description.

Here's the point: Headphones, because they sit around your ears, still allow the pinna to pick up acoustical cues. This adds depth, and creates what we perceive as soundstage. Now, with canalphones the pinna is not active in the listening experience.

Here's where it gets interesting though...the good people over at sensaphonics, ultimate ears and likely all other high-end custom iem companies, work hard to recreate the effects of what it sounds like when your pinna plays an active role in hearing music. They do this by modifying the sound output of the canalphones, to artificially create these little reverberations and modifications in sound. In some respects, sensaphonics has succeeded at doing this. (I only mention sensaphonics, cause it's all i personally have heard) The results are actually quite startling at times, because it really does sound like sounds are distant and you can sense the acoustics of the room they were recorded in.

It should be noted that each iem company has their own way of recreating these pinna effects. Michael santucci himself actually posted about it back in a thread i started a whiles back. kinda interesting if you can dig it up.

anyway, what i will say is that the ability of canalphones to recreate this "open-sound" was certainly not that striking until the sensaphonics. The etys are able to create some sort of space, but it always seemed flat in terms of truly being able to sense room acoustics. The e5's produce deep bass which is visceral and creates an "openness" in its own right. The sensaphonics on the other hand, simply are "wide-open" in comparison. They are fantastic.

But, in the end, while headphones will always allow for the pinna part of our hearing to be truly active, canalphones will always offer a somewhat artificial, if any, recreation of these pinna effects.

hope that makes some sense.

 

[Jasper994]

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikongod can you hear sounds above 16k hz?

Yup, I sure can... I'm really not sure what the deal is with canal phones when it comes to this 16khz cutoff but it seems that they all do this.

 

[gorman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by seankonnery Could it be my CD's aren't good enough (all copies in wav file) and the UE are showing all the defects in the recordings?

Yes, it could be. This is what happened to me with Jeff Buckley's Grace. At the time of my review I indicated some sibilance, only to discover at a later date that the remastered Legacy edition had a less pronounced sibilance "problem".

The thing is, I don't believe it's a problem. It's just the way music is recorded. Sometimes when I speak I hear myself spitting out Ssss too...

 

[omendelovitz]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jmmmmm This might be a little off-topic for this thread, but.. Do you need isolation, or do you just need portability? If you just need portability, then definitely just get a pair of koss ksc35's or ksc75's. They have a grado-ish sound, and are a steal at ~$20. Any decent headphone will have better soundstage than most canalphones.

Jmmmm - you're right about the new thread, but I will leave my reply in this thread b/c in the end, it rolls back around to the UE's (just not the custom ones). Anyway....

I don't necessarily need the isolation, and owning isolation type phones (mdr-ex 70) and regular headphones (koss portapros -supposedly koss' best outputs yet), what I have found is that I like the sound in both; however, it seems that the sonys completely skip over many song details - I have heard entire instruments taken out of a song by these earphones.

The Koss' reproduce most if not all the inherent frequencies in the music, however 'flatten' them out IMO so that the music is all there, but sounds cluttered. That's mainly why I bought the Grados. - I will post a new thread to talk about the koss headphones elsewhere.

Having spoken with mike diaz @ UE, he claims that if I like the Grado sound, then the super.fi pros will "blow me away". This is partly why I was pestering you, honeybee and donaldkelley about your impressions of the earphones in their respective threads.