[koruki]

Dare I ask how does the fake ones sound? haha

 

[Azathoth]

It was mentioned in the original post:

"And of course the sound. The bass was muffled, over-pronounced. No soundstage whatever. Horrible treble. They were not genuine Sennheisers."

 

[ddkyd]

Wow, that is one good fake one. Certain things could have changed in their production line from first batch of IE8s... but the sound quality is where you can tell the diff i suppose.

 

[Dj TechnoWinstrol]

What about the serial numbers? Theres any way to determine if they are original or fake using the Serial numbers? Maybe sending it to senhheiser or trying to register the product on the web page, the registration format asks for it. Did you tried that?

 

[SolidVictory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by koruki /img/forum/go_quote.gif Dare I ask how does the fake ones sound? haha

They sounded terrible, like I mentioned in my post. The treble and midrange balance was completely off, and everything was extremely harsh. The bass was bloated, muffled, and uncontrolled. It was worse than most earphones that you can get for $15-$20.

An even bigger giveaway was that the left driver had significantly lower volume than the right one, and sometimes did not work at all. It's very easy to tell when you have the fakes in your ears that they are not real Sennheisers.

 

[Dj TechnoWinstrol]

Quote:

Originally Posted by SolidVictory /img/forum/go_quote.gif They sounded terrible, like I mentioned in my post. The treble and midrange balance was completely off, and everything was extremely harsh. The bass was bloated, muffled, and uncontrolled. It was worse than most earphones that you can get for $15-$20. An even bigger giveaway was that the left driver had significantly lower volume than the right one, and sometimes did not work at all. It's very easy to tell when you have the fakes in your ears that they are not real Sennheisers.

What about the serial numbers? Theres any way to determine if they are original or fake using the Serial numbers? Maybe sending it to senhheiser or trying to register the product on the web page, the registration format asks for it. Did you tried that?

 

[SolidVictory]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dj TechnoWinstrol /img/forum/go_quote.gif What about the serial numbers? Theres any way to determine if they are original or fake using the Serial numbers? Maybe sending it to senhheiser or trying to register the product on the web page, the registration format asks for it. Did you tried that?

I'm not too sure about serial numbers. Since I've never had to send my IE8s or other IEMs for serial confirmation, I don't think they are really used to determine authenticity. Because when you think about it, a box can be genuine, but the IEMs can be fake inside of the box.

I did not try to confirm anything with serial numbers with the fake IE8s, since I pretty much knew they were fake after the extensive comparison. I would say to lean more on an authorized dealer + sound of the IEM instead of serial numbers.

 

[thechungster]

They're damn good fakes O_O Thanks for the pictures, it helps a lot

 

[obentou]

Wow, this is definitely news... the fake looks so real, it's amazing what they can do these days...

Great work here, this definitely should be a sticky

 

[david1978jp]

Do you get your money back?
The real IE 8 needs such long burn in time, so does fake one? maybe??

 

[borako]

Nice work. I was waiting for something like this, but nobody so far was able to present such information.

 

[TedGamble]

Does the fake box have a hologram on the back?

 

[rds]

If these are indeed fake this is very bad news for Sennheiser. It being virtually impossible to tell a real IE8 form a fake really does a lot of damage to the brand (especially if they sound like crap).

The people who built these fake ones would have a put a lot of time and money into r&d as well as production setup and they are certainly looking to make a profit. In this case buying from an authorized dealer is not enough for me. After all it's safe to assume there are corrupt authorized dealers out there.

Sennheiser better quickly think of a way for customers to be sure that their ie8 is the real thing without having to do a side by side comparison looking for micro details.

 

[CountChoculaBot]

Is there a holo sticker on the back of the box of the fake? If not, then peeps should probably start using that as the indicator. Otherwise, people are going to go crazy trying to compare the differences.

 

[midnightwalker]

Lucky that mine is genuine

)