Hey all,
Unfortunately I did not have a positive experience from lendmeurears. I live in Sydney, Australia and earlier this year my GR07 mk1's went dead but it was still under the warranty. Lendmeurears offered a replacement, so I mailed it to Singapore.. 3 weeks later I receive a used product; it had dead skin/earwax in the canal if you looked closely. I was assuming it was a returned GR07 from another customer. I asked for a new one and lendmeurears agreed but again I needed to wait 3 weeks for it to arrive so it was a total of 6 weeks turnaround. The communication was slow as well, 3-4 day response from emails and the need to send emails twice to ensure communication was okay. I'm not sure how many people on head-fi.org have needed to return anything faulty to lendmeurears but my experience wasn't pleasant.
Anyway, I decided buy a GR07 BE from an Australian seller this time
http://headphones.com.au/ . Markus from headphonic answered all my questions on the phone and was very familiar with in ear canalphones. Basically when I asked for something similar/better than the GR07 mk1 he went straight to the BE. Also he said a similar product from other brands were double the cost and definitely recommended I give these a shot if I was on a budget. There was a $50(AUD) saving between lendmeurears and headphonic but headphonic were much better in their service and knowledge; so for people in Australia buy from headphonic; they definitely spend time to explain the products to you.
My Review of the GR07 BE:
The GR07 BE is a step up from the GR07, there's that extra bass but the clarity is maintained. On my ipod fifth generation, I only had the stock earphones to compare. The stock earphones have a punchier bass line but the clarity is so much better in the GR07 BE.
On my computer running Essence STX>MediaMonkey>FLAC, I could crank it right up without distortion.
I managed to burn them in for at least 250 hours playing music from classical, rock and house genres on shuffle at 75% volume until the battery on the ipod died. To be honest, I did not notice any major difference (althought some of you may disagree)
I made sure I listened to these 3 tracks on the ipod (all FLAC>WAV converted via Switch)
Zedd - Clarity
- House music is great for this canalphone especially if it has vocals. Unfortunately it was mastered and produced digitally so no matter what headphone I listen to it through.. theres a limit to how 'good' it will sound.
[Noriko Ogawa, Bergen Philharmonic] Grieg - Piano Concerto in A minor op16 Allegro molto moderato
- This piano concerto is brought to life. The soundstage can be sort of visualised with the piano on the front right and the orchestra behind.
- In comparision to the GR07 mk1 the BE bring out the subtle components of the bass clef of this piece. I'll probably listen to a bit of Mozart and chamber music in the future to test whether it was the BE or just this particular recording.
[Itzhak Perlman; Israel Philharmonic Orchestra] Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, Op. 8-2, RV 315, Summer - 1. Allegro non molto
- In general, EVERYBODY should listen to this track or use it as a testing track.
- The violin 'sings' in ways I can't explain.. The GR07 BE does an excellent job of maintaining the clarity of the violin. Then the bass is slightly exaggerated (compared to my old GR07 mk1) for a classical piece but it's not a problem as my ears don't mind it.
Overall, this headphone does not disapoint and it's a great addition to the V-sonic line; expeciallly those looking for a clear and accurate canalphone with slightly extra bass. I have since stopped using my GR07 mk1 as I've just gotten used to the BE.
marth
