[Spad]

Quote:

Originally Posted by jinx20001 /img/forum/go_quote.gif not exactly no, but you must agree that being a proud new owner of the most hyped set of earphones in years sways your decision a little

Well, it wouldn't sway mine. But I feel very certain we're from entirely different backgrounds. I come from a world where we do not ". . . lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." Some here, depending on their own history, may know exactly what I mean.

 

[jinx20001]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spad /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, it wouldn't sway mine. But I feel very certain we're from entirely different backgrounds. I come from a world where we do not ". . . lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do." Some here, depending on their own history, may know exactly what I mean.

well thats your opinion, you dont know me, how i do things, how i get things and when i get things, i wasnt asking if it would sway your decision, i was saying that theres a higher chance that because of this it may sway decisions.

 

[vedye]

Zipppppppp.

ah, actually i'm very looking forward to W3, i'll get a pair as soon as i can (after the TF10 which interested me even more based on the things i read.

 

[spleisher]

Been a bit since I've posted. Sorry for being the OP and then going silent. Had to make the commute home from work.

At this point, the thread has dissolved a bit to a more general discussion of whether or not the Westone 3's are worth a darn.

Honestly, that was not really my intention. I was really just trying to point out that IF there is a common issue with the sound signature of an IEM (especially a TOP OF THE LINE, $400 IEM) requiring heavy tinkering with tips to render the IEM comfortable to use, sound-wise, that's a problem.

I'm not a Westone 3 hater or anything. I couldn't care less. For all I care, you can remove "Westone 3" and insert the make/model of your choice. I'm just saying that IF I had bought them and needed to monkey with tips to resolve "issues", I would not be a happy consumer.

That's not the point of tips, at least to me.

 

[Geise]

I think as audiophiles we tend to forget that a lot of the tinkering we do to get better sound is just that, tinkering. It goes beyond what should be expected of the consumer. Saying "Hey, these iems don't sound sibilant with this particular tip" is like saying, "this car doesn't handle like crap...with this particular set of tires" (at least to me). Now unlike cars, our choices are much more limited here and we have to make lots of compromises. I think it just doesn't seem like a compromise to many of us because we're so used to it in this hobby

 

[spleisher]

Geise, I have to admit, that was a very good point.

YOu do have to consider that the folks who are on this forum discussing these thingsat such a level of detail are looking at all of this from a totally different perspective than the average bear.

 

[palalopy]

Longtime lurker, first time posting, since this is an issue that is of concern to me. Just wanted to share some of my own thoughts/testing with solving this issue, and hope some people could give the same.

I have owned the W3s since mid December, and I too have had issues with sibilance. I had owned and been using the UM1s, and had spent extensive time with UM2s and loved the 'westone sound', so for me at least it wasn't simply not being used to the signature of westone drivers.

I have tried all the various tips, and while the long complys and triflanges did seem to slightly lessen the sibliance, (and shure black foams enhance it), I have fairly short ear canals, so wearing the longer tips for more than 30 minutes just isn't bearable. I continue to use short foam tips, since I get the best seal/comfort with them.

I don't know if anyone else has experimented with this, but from my testing, the sibilance was much harsher with lower quality (128-160kbps mp3s) songs than on higher quality (256-320kbps). I never tested different bitrates for the same song however, so this is nothing definate by any means.

In addition, I switched between a few sources (Nokia N81, laptop, Sony mp3player), and I did notice a slight difference (N81 more sibliance than either of the other two). I suppose it could just be that the sound drivers for my N81 are more sensitive than the other two, but I consider myself to have a pretty good ear, and other than the sibilance I did not notice any other changes in the quality of the music.

Obviously, different people have different ears, and clearly some of us are more sensitive in higher registers, and something with how the W3s reproduce sound doesn't work optimally for our ears.

In the end, I just resorted to tweaking the EQ slightly so that the highs and sibilance aren't as loud. In my opinion, the Westone cables and monitors are by far the most comfortable out there, and all other aspects of the W3s sound is amazing, so I can bear having to work around the sibilance.

 

[raelamb]

Ok I'm sure I'm gonna get yelled at again but here goes. Why would you spend all this money on earphones and gear and then encode your music in low bit rates? The most important part of the sonic experience is the source. It is against my religion to listen to any files encoded in less than lossless! The W3's are tremendous ear phones. I have not listened to my RS-1's or my ESW9's since I received them. I use the thin complys and the comfort and sound are spectacular. Of course you're going to hear "sibilance" on crappy compressed files. If you insist on truncating your bits you are better off with the Shure 530's which I owned for over a year that are NOT as good as the W3's and are far more forgiving of low rez files. Remember, dreck begets dreck

 

[palalopy]

@ raelamb

While I admit I am not the most high end audiophile, I don't really know what the point of your post was. Obviously, there is a significant difference in general sound quality from a lossless track to a 128kbps track, but it is not always possible to start from a lossless file.

I was speaking only regarding sibilance (and yes, I understand what sibilance is), and the 's' seemed to be more piercing on the lower quality files I had in my library. Perhaps I am wrong, but I wanted to put that out there incase this was of any help to others with similar problems, or someone else had tested this and could give a more definative answer.

Another thing I forgot to mention is that I seemed to notice the sibilance on vocals, but not on the few orchestral tracks I had, (ie from Diana Krall, sibilance, from violins on the Shindler's List theme, none). I apologize if sibilance is normally just a vocals issue and I was not aware of it.

 

[pdupiano]

Quote:

Originally Posted by spleisher /img/forum/go_quote.gif Been a bit since I've posted. Sorry for being the OP and then going silent. Had to make the commute home from work. At this point, the thread has dissolved a bit to a more general discussion of whether or not the Westone 3's are worth a darn. Honestly, that was not really my intention. I was really just trying to point out that IF there is a common issue with the sound signature of an IEM (especially a TOP OF THE LINE, $400 IEM) requiring heavy tinkering with tips to render the IEM comfortable to use, sound-wise, that's a problem. I'm not a Westone 3 hater or anything. I couldn't care less. For all I care, you can remove "Westone 3" and insert the make/model of your choice. I'm just saying that IF I had bought them and needed to monkey with tips to resolve "issues", I would not be a happy consumer. That's not the point of tips, at least to me.

====
Then get customs, if you really dont wish to mess with tips. Freq's are at the sub $400 price range.

At this point I really just don't understand what you mean then and trust me I'm trying to think of the possible angles that you're getting at.

But if you really mean your last statement as:
"If I pay $400 bucks/300 w/e, for the Se530/W3/TftPro(w/e) then why does it all come down to the tips"

IF that is in fact your point, then all I can really say is its because of the the design of IEM's in general.The fact that you do need to create a good seal to obtain the music signature that the IEM's are designed for. IF you believe that this makes IEM's pointless/worthless, Head-Direct has some of the best non-IEM headphones with high quality, so you can go down that route. Tips are an integral part of the design of an IEM because of the seal issue. unfortunately, you make huge compromises when you decide to make universal versus custom IEMS. And as I stated originally, this is something that companies take into account (at least responsible companies who want to make money). At the end of the day an IEM sort of has the following in its manual:

"The sound signature that reviewers and test subjects acquired through the use of our product was achieved through obtaining a particular seal that they were able to replicate by using tips that best suited the shape of their ears. We have done our best to include an all inclusive set of interchangeable tips to accommodate for a wide range of users. If you are unsatisfied with these for fitting issues, please look into our custom models."

 

[moseboy]

There is officially a Westone 3 Custom, called the ES3X:

ES3X Musicians' Monitors :: Westone


Go nuts

 

[spleisher]

pdupiano, I don't know how I could be more clear about what I am saying, but I will try one more time.

I am not saying: "If I pay $400 bucks/300 w/e, for the Se530/W3/TftPro(w/e) then why does it all come down to the tips"

I never said "Why does it all come down to the tips?"

What I said was that tips should be for the purpose of achieving a comfortable fit, and for achieving the required seal for an IEM to function as they are designed to function. I am quite aware that having a seal or not is a REALLY BIG DEAL. An IEM user needs to do nothing more than break their seal by pulling their IEM slightly away from their ear, thereby watching all their bass impact magically disappear to figure that out.

What I am saying is that IF users have to experiment heavily with tips (triple flange vs. bi-flange, longer or shorter, foam or silicon, WHATEVER) to resolve ISSUES with the sound such as sibilance, there might be an actual problem, or tendency toward a problem, with the IEM.

And yeah, price matters a bit too. A $50 product having personality quirks that you have to creatively work around is one thing, a $400 one is another.

 

[spleisher]

Quote:

Originally Posted by raelamb /img/forum/go_quote.gif Ok I'm sure I'm gonna get yelled at again but here goes. Why would you spend all this money on earphones and gear and then encode your music in low bit rates? The most important part of the sonic experience is the source. It is against my religion to listen to any files encoded in less than lossless! The W3's are tremendous ear phones. I have not listened to my RS-1's or my ESW9's since I received them. I use the thin complys and the comfort and sound are spectacular. Of course you're going to hear "sibilance" on crappy compressed files. If you insist on truncating your bits you are better off with the Shure 530's which I owned for over a year that are NOT as good as the W3's and are far more forgiving of low rez files. Remember, dreck begets dreck

Raelamb, you were making a good point about file quality and the impact it has on the sound of an IEM (albeit a point that is PRETTY LOOSELY tied to the point of this thread, if it's tied to it at all) until you whipped out this comment:

"...you are better off with the Shure 530's which I owned for over a year that are NOT as good as the W3's ..."

Don't you think that whether the SE530's are "as good" as the W3's is a matter of opinion, mostly.

I mean, in all seriousness, we're talking about two comparably priced products here. We're also talking about products that are heavily influenced by people's taste, especially when you enter into the mix the discerning palate of enthusiasts on a forum like this.

And please, please, please, do not respond to this post with an attempt to PROVE that the Westone 3 is better than the Shure SE530. As it is mostly a matter of opinion, there is no way to convince everyone of either side. And, even if there were, that's not the point of this thread.

 

[forsberg]

Geez. Seriously. EVERY Westone thread I read I see jinx typing his typical garbage. It's getting old buddy.

You might have broken the head-fi record for giving the most repetitive input for something you do not even own.

Why do other people's opinions bother you so much? It's just head-fi. If it angers you so much, do yourself (and all of us) a favor - don't read Westone threads.

 

[jc9394]

Personally I think sibilance is in the recording, not with the IEM. Westone 3 probably have more sibilance due to not as forgiving as SE530.

As for the bitrate, I tried same song with 128k, 256k, 320k, and lossless. Sibilance is harsher on the lower bit rate than 320k and lossless. Between 320k and lossless, I heard no different on sibilance as all.