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Started my IEM journey

FlorenAnderson said:
Started my IEM journey from scratch. I think my next pair of earphones will be the CCA CXS.
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I too am considering getting some IEMs. MY KEF M100 earbuds sounded fantastic and lasted me for several years amazingly... and they increased in price from $69 to ~$170 and I'm not spending $170 plus taxes on ear buds unless i hear them first... so I'm thinking of IEMs but I'm concerned they might interfere with the comfort of my prescription frames and lenses... the wire behind the ear might be a problem? :D
 
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I've gotten into them too. The Truthear crinacle zero is a must have. The 7hz Timeless came in today and it's really good, but not as musical as the Harman tuned Zero. Final VR3000 is excellent for gaming, and not bad for music with eq.
 
Doodski said:
I too am considering getting some IEMs. MY KEF M100 earbuds sounded fantastic and lasted me for several years amazingly... and they increased in price from $69 to ~$170 and I'm not spending $170 plus taxes on ear buds unless i hear them first... so I'm thinking of IEMs but I'm concerned they might interfere with the comfort of my prescription frames and lenses... the wire behind the ear might be a problem? :D$69 to ~$170 The price is too expensive for me, I think some bullet IEMs can help you solve these problems very well. They look light and comfortable and don't interfere with anything at all, I have noticed the KZ linglong and Tachjim Zero, and everyone seems to be willing to give them good reviews. You can watch out for more reviews
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$69 to ~$170 The price is too expensive for me, I think some bullet IEMs can help you solve these problems very well. They look light and comfortable and don't interfere with anything at all, I have noticed the KZ linglong and Tachjim Zero, and everyone seems to be willing to give them good reviews. You can watch out for more reviews.
 
Dunring said:
I've gotten into them too. The Truthear crinacle zero is a must have. The 7hz Timeless came in today and it's really good, but not as musical as the Harman tuned Zero. Final VR3000 is excellent for gaming, and not bad for music with eq.
Click to expand...
How comfortable is the Truthear crinacle zero? I think wearing experience is equally important.
 
FlorenAnderson said:
How comfortable is the Truthear crinacle zero? I think wearing experience is equally important.
Click to expand...
They're the most comfortable IEMs I've had out of a dozen. The shape is smooth with no pointy edges. The stock tips are pretty soft, but foam ones are good too, just personal fit really. Now I check photos carefully to check for points or edges. These you could wear all day.
 
IMO everyone should start with the 20 usd benchmark called 7Hz Salnotes Zero and move their way up.
 
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FlorenAnderson said:
How comfortable is the Truthear crinacle zero? I think wearing experience is equally important.
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I love my TxCZs, but they are rather bulky and have large diameter nozzles. The large nozzles can make it difficult to find replacement tips, which can have a big impact on comfort and frequency response. Also, the tips tend to be quite fragile due to the large bore and resultant thinness of the foam. However, the TxCZs are still a massive bargain for £50.

You can see a picture of my ever increasing mountain of tips here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../tips-and-cables-for-iems.43077/#post-1541106

And welcome to ASR! :)
 
Berwhale said:
You can see a picture of my ever increasing mountain of tips here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../tips-and-cables-for-iems.43077/#post-1541106
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I had to chuckle because your mountain of tips is starting to resemble mine. I can't find anything that keeps my IEM in my left ear. Silicone tips definitely don't work. Foam see the best so far but I am on a quest to find a tall tip that will fit into a long ear canal. A lot of times I think I'm ordering a different product from AMZN and it turns out to be something I already have, $20 later.
 
FlorenAnderson said:
How comfortable is the Truthear crinacle zero? I think wearing experience is equally important.
Click to expand...

There is as much point asking someone else if that IEM is comfortable as recommending your Size 8 shoes because they fit you perfectly. The only way for you to find out is to try them on.
 
Something oddly similar about these two posts
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Berwhale said:
I love my TxCZs, but they are rather bulky and have large diameter nozzles. The large nozzles can make it difficult to find replacement tips, which can have a big impact on comfort and frequency response. Also, the tips tend to be quite fragile due to the large bore and resultant thinness of the foam. However, the TxCZs are still a massive bargain for £50.

You can see a picture of my ever increasing mountain of tips here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/.../tips-and-cables-for-iems.43077/#post-1541106

And welcome to ASR! :)
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Looks like this hobby is expensive. lol
 
If you need foam tips I just got the Sonicfoam 20 pack on Amazon. They have different nozzle and tip sizes as well. The neat thing is a business card arrived in the box. If you take a picture of them installed and email it with some feedback to their email on it, they'll send you a free box via the Amazon shipping. My second box just arrived today, they asked if I wanted the same model and size or a different one.
We both use IEMs with the same size so we're stocked with foam tips for a while for $14.
 
I have a problem with IEMs. I don't know what it is. I never enjoy them for a long period of time. They all sound somehow wrong, and over a period of time, tiring to me. Tried different IEMs (got 15 or so by now) different EQ profiles, original tips, spinfits, moondrop tips, foams etc. Some worked better than others but nothing with which I am fully comfortable. There is always something that is fatiguing on the high end, something that is wrong tonality wise that I can not put my finger on. No issues at all with headphones, just IEMS. Any ideas or suggestions?
 
IAtaman said:
I have a problem with IEMs. I don't know what it is. I never enjoy them for a long period of time. They all sound somehow wrong, and over a period of time, tiring to me. Tried different IEMs (got 15 or so by now) different EQ profiles, original tips, spinfits, moondrop tips, foams etc. Some worked better than others but nothing with which I am fully comfortable. There is always something that is fatiguing on the high end, something that is wrong tonality wise that I can not put my finger on. No issues at all with headphones, just IEMS. Any ideas or suggestions?
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I think it's reasonable to expect an enjoyable experience. To be honest the amount of IEMs I can enjoy for hours are definitely a small minority among the sets I've owned. This has made me more skeptical than before about product recommendations, especially for anything new and hyped. I also see a quite a lot of implied disappointment on IEM oriented Discords. For instance people looking for solutions to salvage a undesirable stock response, often flagship models! Or, people getting overly excited about new product releases despite owning large collection of presumably well-regarded IEMs.

My suggestions is cherish the ones you like. Headphones have a lushness and texture that IEMs can't come close to IMO. IEMs are damn convenient though.
 
I don't think my problem with IEMs is with product specific, that's why I was mentioning that I have tried so many of them with some many different configurations. I really dont't know why but my suspicion is it is tuning related. I tried to experiement with EQ a bit with no success.
 
IAtaman said:
I have a problem with IEMs. I don't know what it is. I never enjoy them for a long period of time. They all sound somehow wrong, and over a period of time, tiring to me. Tried different IEMs (got 15 or so by now) different EQ profiles, original tips, spinfits, moondrop tips, foams etc. Some worked better than others but nothing with which I am fully comfortable. There is always something that is fatiguing on the high end, something that is wrong tonality wise that I can not put my finger on. No issues at all with headphones, just IEMS. Any ideas or suggestions?
Click to expand...
Human left and right ears can exhibit different levels of gain between them. Their response to treble is not equal.

The dynamic is complicated because, at say, frequency of 6kHz the gain is relatively uniform in the front-back as well as the up-down planes, sort of evenly occurring across the ear's diameter . As frequency rises, to say, 9kHz the gain at the ear generally speaking bi-furcates being more constant and covering more in the up-down plane than the front-back plane; but then too there is more surface with gain at the upper sector than there is down at the same ear's sector.

As frequency rises, to say, 12 kHz the gain in the ear becomes significantly irregular; almost like there's a splatter of unequal sectional gain response in both the up-down and front-back planes with further irregularities in the gain response coverage between up and down surface areas themselves, and in addition likewise gain irregularities between front and back surface areas themselves. [Front to back is used to mean ventral to dorsal, while up to down is meant to mean cephalic to caudal.]

These peculiarities are apparently part of our sound localization. With IEM usage we do not receive influence from our ear pinna, which our brains co-evolved with in developing sound directivity. In other words, the brain has an innate template for placement which the IEM's sound doesn't completely match up with 100% due to the way patterns of frequency gain are not uniform and then too we are missing the pinna modality.

With IEM's we are seemingly prone to localize higher frequency sound more at the inside of the top of our head (brain neocortex); as per the above basic pattern for 12kHz. This localization involves brain connectivity to the cortex, which I presume means signaling involving the inner brain (brain thalamus). Prolonged IEM treble listening sustains a brain reaction that, in effect, keeps demanding the thalamus perform. I surmise this in time becomes burdensome (neuro-chemically) for the thalamus to sustain and connectivity through to the neocortex gets interrupted.

Since electroencephalograph studies show that fatigue in the brain is coincident with loss of brain cortex connectivity with the inner brain I see this as one explanation of how prolonged IEM treble can bother some. It's a combination of perturbed localization and how we are prone to irritability when fatigued.

[Note: I imagine a person's ear canal difference between left and right may also have some functional influence on the peculiarities of gain at the ear drum described in general terms above. And then too possibly depth of IEM insertion, such that "etymotic" IEM deep ear canal insertion may (?) tend to be less treble fatiguing in context of prolonged listening time. ]
 
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