[caracara08]

@Airlight, great impressions.  Thank you.

 

[nehcrow]

Tenores with Jays small-ish wide-bore tips. Certain tips will make the lowest bass slightly too powerful for my taste, the Jays tips though seem to relax the bass volume-wise and provides the most open, natural mid and treble to my ears so far.


Wow, these are terrific. Extremely clear, flat and smooth detail devoid of any problem areas, and using wide-bore tips the entire spectrum feels very open and natural.
They can have a very wonderful sense of presence in the treble region, making things like scratching fabric and similar textures feel really open, airy,  "windy" and natural. That same feel to the sound you'd get if you ran your fingers slowly over styrofoam, that whispy, breezy quality.

Micro-Transients are overall very good, I wasn't expecting that level from such a small driver. Clicks, clanks and such are very well-defined.

Macro-dynamics is the main area where I feel something like the much larger-driver Vsonic GR07 achieve a more dynamic sound, i.e dynamic areas of the sound can rise higher over the more non-dynamic portions of the sound. So the Tenores will not give the drums as loud/raised dynamic levels over the electric guitars, for example. This means that the GR07 will have a more air depth to their levels, while the Tenores present a slightly more concentrated feel (to put it another way, placing the snap of a snaredrum at the same perceived volume level, the Tenores will have a more in-your-face body to the sound, while the GR07 is more separated into the snap and the rest of the sound being a step away from you).
The advantage of this is that everything is presented in a very well-contained package for you to pick apart, if they had bigger "movement" to the dynamics of the music, they would not be as analytical, and it would be more of a chore to keep track of the "surface" of the audio if things dynamically stood out more.

Overall spectral balance really is suberb. I think it's safe to say these do everything my Etymotic HF5s do, and more. The HF5s have a more rolled-off highest end and are slightly boosted in the lower treble compared to the Tenore, which really just effortlessly flows into the hypersonics. The Tenores seem to have a very mild lack of focus around 4-6KHz, making them ever so slightly less present-feeling and slightly emphasising the upper treble, but other than that they absolutely shine for presenting every aspect of the spectrum in a very balanced, accessible way, all the way up to the highest treble. They are extremely airy and open-sounding thanks to this, anything containing lots of intricate treble details like crashing glass or glass shards trampled on the floor, glassy or metallic sounds in general, are very convincing and defined. If you imagine the sound a car engine makes as it cools down, that metallic ticking of engine parts contracting as they cool and creating very sharp, metallic textures, that quality is all in these headphones.

Mids are really gorgeous, very full, yet seemingly devoid of any bothersome resonant qualities. They remain silky smooth and nothing wants to create weird warbling or "wah"-y tonalities.

Sine sweeps reveal almost no dips or peaks at all as it moves towards 20K. Really, really impressive. 

Listening to movie dialogue will quickly reveal things like subtle upper treble noise during spoken portions which goes away as the sound mixer muted that dialogue track, really revealing the slightest nuances of the material.

Orchestral music is extremely well-presented, the mild dynamics keep the room sound and the instruments very cohesive with each other, while the excellent reach in the treble gives you every nuance of the reflections of the room and air, and the prickly nature of the transient response make plucked instruments perfectly audible, yet not overly obvious or standing out unnaturally.


Overall these really seem to really content well with less dynamic, more prickly micro-textured micro-transient headphones like the Etymotic HF5 (they do feel very Etymotic BA-like to my ears, with a fuller bass). They cannot pack the same snappy, quick punch over the register when called for like the GR07s, but remain very well-detailed, delivering a well-defined layer of transient response over the main body of the sound, that give your ears a good sense of dynamic transparency even in thick congested parts.

These really don't do anything wrong. As a complement for a GR07 for example they are great, the GR07s extremely lively, responsive dynamics can often sound a bit inappropriate for orchestral music, as the music gets an exaggerated sense of foreground and background, with clicks and cracks and snaps often being very up-front when you want to feel like you are listening more to a somewhat distant room of instruments without anything coming through too aggressively.

Finally somebody who thinka GR07 can keep up with the newer breed of awesome IEMs
Great impressions

 

[waynes world]

 
Who else saw this coming? 

 
LOL.

 

[mochill]

Wayne DO IT

 

[Airlight]

Finally somebody who thinka GR07 can keep up with the newer breed of awesome IEMs
Great impressions

 
To be honest, switched from the Tenore to the GR07 after about an hour with the Tenore, and I could feel my brain just contently saying "...ahhhhh". I have an inordinate fondness for my GR07s though, still never really heard anything quite like them, they sound like a normal dynamic driver which has has 3 extra layers of lively, steel-wooly, hard-to-describe textures added to it on top. I love them to death currently.
 
The Tenore reminds me a bit of the Soundmagic PL50 BA-driver model, very smooth sound from both, but the Tenore do everything better pretty much. Much flatter response where the PL50 has way too much mid-focus for me, I don't like it when I raise the volume and all I get is that 1KHz area pressing against my ears, I need more definition, which the Tenores and their treble extension really provide, while still being very relaxed and non-dramatic.
 
And for certain material the Tenores kick the GR07s ass in terms of realism. Listening to a very challenging orchestral track, "Neodämmerung" from the 3rd Matrix film (which is mixed fairly muffled for an orchestral track so most headphones will render unnaturally strong mid-frequencies for the choral parts of it, the GR07 is a bit too good at separating the track, and the choir feels stretched and slightly disintegrated. The Tenores handles this track like a champion in keeping it airy, quite safely avoiding the overly middy emphasis the track is prone to, and presenting in the proper "proportion" depth-wise.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WeQGBAMJ94&fmt=18
 

 

[luisdent]

Interesting arlight, I found the dynamic variations better than most in the way you described it.  hmmmm

 

[mochill]

The tenores are dynamic drivers...and I'm I love

 

[luisdent]

If anyone is interested, I store my zero's in an altoids tin like all my other iems, but I actually use the included pouch to keep them from moving around. It works extremely well. Just lay the pouch open in the tin, place the wrapped earphones inside and fold the other half of the pouch over, close the tin. Nice safe storage that fits in your pocket. $2-3 for a tin ain't bad either. And for the first few days you can have your tenores smelling minty fresh too.
 

 

 
 

 

[Airlight]

  Interesting arlight, I found the dynamic variations better than most in the way you described it.  hmmmm

 
To be honest I'm mainly comparing to the GR07. The Quadbeats also I think has better overall dynamics, but the Tenores are no slouch. Still, I think the Tenores like the BA driver of my HF5 are very good at rendering very fast, sharp, solid clicks in the treble, but as you get down into the midrange and lower mids, they lose energy and urgency quickly. This makes them to me seem quite smooth and even there, with good separation of various elements frequency-wise aswell.
 
Also certain tracks that some headphones can render very dynamically and very aggresively, the Tenores insist on rendering quite politely, slightly avoiding the fast initial attack for the lower half of the spectrum and being more even there, and instead giving a smooth yet detailed upper half.

 

[luisdent]

 

  Interesting arlight, I found the dynamic variations better than most in the way you described it.  hmmmm

 
To be honest I'm mainly comparing to the GR07. The Quadbeats also I think has better overall dynamics, but the Tenores are no slouch. Still, I think the Tenores like the BA driver of my HF5 are very good at rendering very fast, sharp, solid clicks in the treble, but as you get down into the midrange and lower mids, they lose energy and urgency quickly. This makes them to me seem quite smooth and even there, with good separation of various elements frequency-wise aswell.
 
Also certain tracks that some headphones can render very dynamically and very aggresively, the Tenores insist on rendering quite politely, slightly avoiding the fast initial attack for the lower half of the spectrum and being more even there, and instead giving a smooth yet detailed upper half.

 
Ah, well from what i remember, the gr07 had good dynamics. I don't have one on hand to directly compare, but the gr07 had a bit of peak in the treble, and that could equate to a bit of dynamic energy in some music that has stuff in that region. But otherwise, compared to most iems the tenores do superbly well. The gr07 is no slouch either though. I think some people will find the flatter overall response as boring if they're not used to that sort of very neutral response. But given the time to become familiar with a neutral response makes it really hard to listen to anything else. haha. i'm spoiled on the spectrum!!!

 

[Airlight]

   
Ah, well from what i remember, the gr07 had good dynamics. I don't have one on hand to directly compare, but the gr07 had a bit of peak in the treble, and that could equate to a bit of dynamic energy in some music that has stuff in that region. But otherwise, compared to most iems the tenores do superbly well. The gr07 is no slouch either though. I think some people will find the flatter overall response as boring if they're not used to that sort of very neutral response. But given the time to become familiar with a neutral response makes it really hard to listen to anything else. haha. i'm spoiled on the spectrum!!!

 
Yeah, I have such difficulty describing the sound of the Vsonics. Rather than "peaky" I'd almost describe them as if someone took your average accurate dynamic driver, ran them through an aggressive tube amp to generate some additional harmonics to fatten the treble up, yet somehow keeping the sound free of distortion (I've seen testers mention the GR07 have extremely low distortion overall). 
 
I gotta say I wouldn't have any problems selling my PL50 on the spot. And the Tenore are much more natural in their frequency response than the HF5. Plus like you say the Tenores comparatively do put less focus on generally more dynamic areas of the spectrum from the GR07 and HF5.
 
Voices on the Tenores are at times unreal in how realistic they can get, and acoustic sounds of any kind are simply superb.

 

[Inks]

Tenores are a notch above the GR07s IMO. Vent modded I like the bass of the Vsonics a bit more but the mids highs and treble are way better than the GR07 which is less detailed and more peaky

 

[luisdent]

Tenores are a notch above the GR07s IMO. Vent modded I like the bass of the Vsonics a bit more but the mids highs and treble are way better than the GR07 which is less detailed and more peaky

 
That's how I hear it as well:
 
http://rinchoi.blogspot.com/2012/10/vsonic-gr07-mkii.html
 
The 6khz peak is what bothered me. Or rather, the impression of a peak from the fact that the areas around it were scooped out a bit. It made certain things seem sibilant. Overall, it didn't sound bad, but the tenore has a very smooth flat treble the is more revealing.
 
On another note, what do people recommend to make the right earpiece discernible in the dark. Really, would you dab superglue on the housing? I taped a piece of notecard wrapped around the cord on my er4s, but these are smaller wires and i don't think that would work as well.

 

[SilverEars]

Canceled my order, it takes too long for the cheap price of $46. Where can I get it shipped quicker?

 

[waynes world]

Canceled my order, it takes too long for the cheap price of $46. Where can I get it shipped quicker?

 
I'm patient (sometimes!). Where were they $46?