Head-Fi...ers? First post here, and I need some help so that I can actually spend time doing something else today. To make things clear, I've spent a solid 5 hours at this point trying to make up my mind here, and I'm one of those people that will take a week to make such a decision on "just headphones" if left to my own devices for too long.
Anywho, I'm looking for a pair of IEMs to pair primarily with my phone. However, I'll also be using them with my bedside cd-player/stereo occasionally (which has no EQ control). With that said, I care a whole lot more about how it sounds out of my phone, which effectively doubles as my MP3/FLAC/OGG player on-the-go. Also, I'll have EQ controls there (at least 5-band, but potentially more depending on what software I decide to use) to correct any small issues with sound.
My problem with finding headphones that I like has always been my wide array of music tastes. I listen to alternative (pretty much all branches of it), classical, and jazz about just as often as I listen to hip-hop, pop, rap, and R&B. With that said, I also listen to rock, electronica, symphony, and house music. It would be easiest to say, everything that's not country music, opera, or dubstep I listen to. Even then... I don't mind a little dubstep in some songs.
From what I can tell with all of the reading I've done, in the price range I'm looking at (~$50), it seems like the XE200Pro or TD4 are the ones to look at. Presently, even after reading Joker's review of them, I can't really quite grasp where their strengths/weaknesses moreso lie. So hopefully, someone else can help me out here. Without being too specific:
- I enjoy a deep, wide soundstage.
- When music is intended to exhibit ambiance, I enjoy that "lost in a jungle of sound" feeling one gets from a device having good timbre.
- I like a nice, low bass with enough boom to get the point across and then some but I want it to have character when it does and not be just a muddy "boom."
- ...With that said, I don't want all the sparkle taken out of my highs as a result of too much low-end grunt. I can, even now, hear a few kHz above "normal," so if something is supposed to be heard in the higher ranges, I want to distinctly hear it.
- If I had to have a preference, a little bleed-through of bass into the mids would be preferred to a sharp cut-off between lows and highs. Though from what I can tell, neither of the two I mentioned have such a problem to begin with.
- To somewhat summarize all those points... when a sound is intended to blend a bit, I want it to do just that. At the same time, when the sounds are supposed to be distinct and separated, I want my IEMs to be up to the challenge
The TL;DR version would be, between the XE200Pro and TD4, which would you choose and why? If you've tried both, a comparative analysis of both would be greatly appreciated, as I suspect they're probably somewhat close.
From what I've read, the discontinued XR120Pro II was probably the closest thing to what I'm looking for (seems to have offered my preferred balance of "airy" vs. "intimate" and being able to swing between "types" of bass) , but there doesn't seem to be any information at all regarding the XR120Pro III, so I'm not sure whether or not to bother with that one or not =/
) in fact there's no bleed in the mids so there's no rumble instead it is very accurate making everything intimate, but yeah the vocals could sound muffled and dark at times but my ears learned to "interpret" that as "rich and full" vocals rather than dark, which I had the displeasure to hear from other earphones.
