IvanV
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Nov 15, 2015
- Posts
- 14
- Likes
- 10
My Pistons 3 from GearBest arrived today. I've seen the pictures before, but the packaging still made an impression. The case, the plastic/rubber/foam inside that the buds are sunk into that feels kind of velvety to touch, the design and finish of it all... It's a completely peripheral matter, but it's still really pleasing to see that they put such effort into it.
I hooked the 'phones to my Lumia 640 and put them in my ears. The tips felt weird, more like teflon than rubber, but they stayed in and provided more isolation than I expected.
I started off with some Rammstein and I really liked the bass: "round", "warm", punchy when it needs to be and just a little bit more present than what I'm used to. I switched to a bit of Kraftwerk, which also sounded really well, with great soundstage that was especially noticeable when an instrument was moving from one channel to the other and I really felt like it went from one point in space to another.
Then I played Tristania - Angina. It's a metal track with piano and lead female vocal playing significant roles (also, some violins and, at one point, tubular bells). It sounded kind of off from the get go, but not by much and then, when the piano was first supposed to appear, a bit before the half minute mark, a shock, the piano almost wasn't there.
The female vocal was also anaemic. It seemed that they were simply eclipsed by over-accented lows and highs. I listened to a few more tracks which left very much the same impression and then I reached for the equalizer. I had to make a bit of a hill in the middle (with the peak of around 5-6dB at the 1300Hz mark) to drag the vocals and piano back where I wanted them, but the overall sound still wasn't quite there. Finally, I clipped the highs just a little bit and it really seemed to "open" the entire sound.
At that point I was no longer 100% sure if I was correcting or "remastering" the sound to make it more after my own liking. Still, I do think that these phones over-accent lows and highs (and I think that the highs actually bother me more than the lows), with the mids ending up badly obscured. Perhaps they'll burn in after a bit of time, although the only phones that I ever noticed changed the way they sounded were Koss Sparkplug, which, after I'd had them for quite a bit of time, got impractically bassy.
BTW, I tried hooking the Pistons to my stereo and I was surprised how neutral they sounded. It's weird, but neither highs nor lows seemed as pronounced (which was both good and bad, the excess treble was gone, but the bass became kind of unimpressive) and that made the mids much easier to hear.
EDIT: Just to add that the remote works with Windows Phone 8.1.
I hooked the 'phones to my Lumia 640 and put them in my ears. The tips felt weird, more like teflon than rubber, but they stayed in and provided more isolation than I expected.
I started off with some Rammstein and I really liked the bass: "round", "warm", punchy when it needs to be and just a little bit more present than what I'm used to. I switched to a bit of Kraftwerk, which also sounded really well, with great soundstage that was especially noticeable when an instrument was moving from one channel to the other and I really felt like it went from one point in space to another.
Then I played Tristania - Angina. It's a metal track with piano and lead female vocal playing significant roles (also, some violins and, at one point, tubular bells). It sounded kind of off from the get go, but not by much and then, when the piano was first supposed to appear, a bit before the half minute mark, a shock, the piano almost wasn't there.
At that point I was no longer 100% sure if I was correcting or "remastering" the sound to make it more after my own liking. Still, I do think that these phones over-accent lows and highs (and I think that the highs actually bother me more than the lows), with the mids ending up badly obscured. Perhaps they'll burn in after a bit of time, although the only phones that I ever noticed changed the way they sounded were Koss Sparkplug, which, after I'd had them for quite a bit of time, got impractically bassy.
BTW, I tried hooking the Pistons to my stereo and I was surprised how neutral they sounded. It's weird, but neither highs nor lows seemed as pronounced (which was both good and bad, the excess treble was gone, but the bass became kind of unimpressive) and that made the mids much easier to hear.
EDIT: Just to add that the remote works with Windows Phone 8.1.