Panasonic IEM after EQ

[Kevbaz]

Today I received a set of Panasonic RP-HJE120 from Amazon. Out of the box they sounded a bit naff to be honest.

After I applied PEQ using my RME DAC from Amir's review of these, wow, what a change. They now sound actually really very good.

Given these cost just £10 delivered from Amazon in the UK, have good measurements for distortion and Group delay, accept EQ really well, if I was to spend well over £1000 on IEMs can I really expect better sound from a new set of IEM's outside of maybe not needing to apply EQ to fix them

I get paying more for headphones maybe gets you better build, industrial design, better QC etc. But is there really any reason to spend big bucks on IEM's

Cant wait to see more IEMs review by Amir.



Cheers
Kev

 

[Jim Shaw]

I get paying more for headphones maybe gets you better build, industrial design, better QC etc. But is there really any reason to spend big bucks on IEM's


Cheers
Kev

Silk purse/sow's ear. EQ works best when used to make something good better. Not trying to make something not good acceptable.
Cheap is not necessarily bad, but usually, it is.

 

[JeffS7444]

I get paying more for headphones maybe gets you better build, industrial design, better QC etc. But is there really any reason to spend big bucks on IEM's

Not everything can be corrected in that manner: Distortion, poor fit, phase cancellation in multi-driver designs, etc. But when it works, eq can be magical.

 

[digitalfrost]

I bought in short succession:

- Moondrop Chu
- Moondrop Aria
- Mangird Tea 2

I have also EQed quite a lot of headphones. You cannot EQ everything. Especially with IEMs, the highend end ones usually have multiple drivers which are their own characteristics. With headphones you have open/half-open/closed ones and that also changes things.

You can take measurements all taken by the same guy with the same devices, EQ all of them to the same target curve and still it will sound different.

 

[Jimbob54]

If you now have a pair that is comfortable and sounds as you like after eq, you aren't going to get much more from a "better" iem.

But in my experience with quite a few, and as others have said, even after eq, no two pairs offers quite the same experience. Whether that difference is worth $00s is entirely subjective.