First, a thank you and a damn you to decay. I was perfectly happy with my IE8 until tonight. Now I will be looking like I have Frankenstein bolts sticking out of my ears.
OK, so just got back from vacation, 8 hours on the road (with 2 young kids and a good amount of crying themselves to sleep, yea), so I was a little too tired to try the mod last night. I did mess around a little and put them on my Philips SHE9500 which have the worst headstage of my IEMs and I did hear an improvement. Problem is I wasn't able to get a seal without holding them in my ears.
So tonight, I try a bunch of my tips, pretty much all of them that I think will work. Here are some of the different ones I tried working with.
I tried to put 2 tips inside the flanges, but could not fit them since I don't have the Sony. With just the flange and silicon, I couldn't get a seal. So I tried the bi-flange I have. Still no seal. Then I tried the ADDIEM tips over various combination of tips and yet still, no seal. Mind you, it did sound pretty good when I pushed them in to get a seal, but let them go and the seal was gone.
So, tstarn06, that very generous guy (no joke), sent me these large bi-flanges he got so I could try them with my IE8 months ago, but my foam under single flange sounded better to me. So, my last attempt was using the rather large bi-flange in the Senn flange, and wow. So I switch back to my old tips and I am wondering where the soundstage went. It was like going from my IE8 to my SHE9500 before this tip mod, a huge difference.
So, I am tired and haven't spent all that much time comparing, and am using different tips than decay (and possibly any other as I think the tips I have are rare). The stage is much wider without a doubt. Some of my test tracks include Hotel California (live), various Armin van Buuren, Grandmaster Flash - The Message to name a few, and wow. I was going to write more, but wow. It seems like there is much better separation and I can hear everything in it's place much better, it seems to bring the details out. Every song sounds wider and more spacious, just better to my ears. And it does sound a lot more transparent.
Just a note on Hotel CA...with my old tips it sounded great, but honestly not like the concert it is. This is one song I thought the W3 sounded better, more like I was sitting front row at a performance in a small room. Well, with the new tip configuration I get the same feeling, actually like I am front row in a bigger room, maybe a medium sized hall vs. a small coffee shop. Wow. And all my other genres sound better also!
I think these tips increase the detail which makes the IE8 less forgiving.
OK, the big negative for these tips (the ones I have, not decay's mod) is they keep separating so the large bi-flange is stuck in my ear when I remove the IE8. Luckily the tips are so large I can easily just pull them out. And the problem is the core doesn't extend very far out, so not much I can do. I did try with the Senn half bi-flange inserted the right way and still the same issue.
Why oh why did you have to go this far decay? I was perfectly happy before and now I have to look like a freak while wearing my IE8 out of my ears. Maybe I just have to forget this whole thing happened, not listen for a few days and go back to my old tips. Probably ain't going to happen!
I will be getting Sony tips later this week, so I will see how those sound with decay's specifications!
EDIT: A few things I forgot: I tried the large flanges again without the Senn half bi-flange to make sure it wasn't just those and they don't sound as good as my foam under silicon.
And how about "bolts" for the name of the tips. Or maybe "decay bolts" in honor of the creator.
Also, I did manage to get the tips to stick much better with the Senn half bi-flange on the right way and a spacer so the tips don't go on all the way which pushes the large bi-flange tip out.
And finally, when I was comparing the IE8 with the W3 I did think the W3 sounded better with some pop/rock/acoustic songs. While this mod does improve the presentation for electronic, I think it makes a much bigger improvement for pop/rock/acoustic, giving a similar transparent, realistic presentation, yet much wider in soundstage.
