Audio Random IEM / Headphone Rants

esanthosh said:
That would achieve the opposite. Getting customs would be like supplying drug to someone who wants to get a rehab! :p

Guess I should elaborate a bit. A hobby is something you should enjoy thinking about (and doing). It should relax you. It's a mistress to your wife of work. I think I am losing that enjoyment with IEMs.

This hobby is about two parts - music and gear. It is all about being interested in exploring both parts, getting to know newer things, evaluating them and being ready to move on to the next step if you get bored. With HT too, it's about these two parts - Movies and gear. But there, it helps that I am an average consumer and not a videophile with certain expectations. Last year, post my revamp of the setup, all irritants and shortcomings were ironed out. From thereon, it was all about content. I don't have anything to complain other than not having enough time to watch everything I want to.

While I do not expect to achieve that state of satisfaction with audio gear, I should at least NOT hate to take them out. I took a break last year too, but I had not stopped exploring gear or music. I was just happy listening to EX-1000/FX700 and others with QA350/iPod 5.5G + UHA-6S/2SD and not having to write about them. If anything, I was tired of filling out review templates and decided that RE-272 will be my last ever review on head-fi. This year, not only am I disinterested in writing about them, I am disinterested in even using them. What I am not sure about is if this will be just a phase that will go away with time. It would still help to have one foot out the door, I think!
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I kind of know how you feel. I'm not as big an enthusiast as you are (just have a PL50, RE262, XBA-03) but I recently realized I'm spending far more time reading about IEMs and drawing up to-buy lists than actually putting them to good use. I've resolved to stop checking out new reviews for a while and just focus on using the 3 that I've got as much as possible. But I might end up getting a ATH-M50 (and possibly a HifiMan HE400 to try out the planar sound) to start and close out my headphone collection :)
p.s. - having something like CanJam India's might help reduce the retail therapy for a lot of people if there was one venue to try and checkout many products - what do you think?
 
But, there's a pattern to those 'reviews'. One negative review is usually followed by a few positive 5-star reviews most often on the same date.

Rs. 500 by cash with ID Proof? Why would anybody need an ID proof for RMA?

I've had a nasty encounter with them much early. But, not sure if it still makes for an interesting story after several months have passed by ;)
 
@esanthosh

while you are on a break from trying out iem's and writing reviews, let some nasty encounters keep this thread going

go ahead and share it. i am sure it would be an interesting read :bleh:
 
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Tekfusion TwinWoofers build quality is not that good. I have received a pair with exposed copper wire at the Y split joint. I've contacted Flipkart, they said I did the damage to the IEM so they will not replace it. So I contacted Tekfusion and they asked me to send the damaged pair to their Bangalore address. After two days the sent me a new pair. In replacement part Flipkart doesn't perform except in shipment delivery time. Prices are also high on Flipkart. In fact I wrote a review about the TW and the incident happened to me, they have removed it :( saying it should be strictly about the product.

I didn't liked the SQ also, So I gifted it to a friend. So I suggest to stay away from TW. In 1200 INR one can get Soundmagic ES18 or PL21 which are good IMHO.

BTW @esanthosh I started liking the FXT90 ;) Till now it lacks points in sound stage department.
 
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The Tekfusion Saga

Alright! A handful here (and few close ones on head-fi) already know this. If anybody wants the full transcript, I'm happy to attach it as a PDF. Though one has to read from bottom up (as I was lazy to print each mail in order), it conveys much more than I can cram in here. If you have the lazy time, I'd suggest that you waste time on the PDF than my short summary ;)

Download Full Transcript of Mails (Leaves out only Payment details and my address)
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The short of it...

When I wanted to buy TW, it was OOS at Flipkart. So, I asked the company directly. I mentioned that since it was the first Indian IEM company that I've heard about, I may do a review. They offered a secret price of ₹1100, but in return, they wanted a "good review" that can be featured on their web site. Further, they wanted me to send the review for approval before posting. I refused stating that I have not done such a thing with any of my reviews. They then vaguely threatened that anyone presenting 'misleading information' about the company and the blog / site publishing will face legal action 'with criminal penalty'.

At this point, I was in two minds. On one hand, I did not want to deal with or review a product from such a company. On the other, I did not want to back down from a fight between my freedom of expression and a threat. I finally decided that it would be better if I review than otherwise. After letting my boiling blood cool for a few days, I shot a long reply. He got all too polite at this point. I paid, they shipped.

After this it was mostly a mundane conversation....

After a few days, I got a mail from them asking about how I like the IEM. I said I had not formed an opinion yet. But, I mentioned briefly about how I heard the FR. I was told that the entire current batch was sounding different from the earlier batch and they are 'looking into the problem'. They asked me to refrain from posting a review until they sorted it out. I was offered either a 300 hour burned in IEM from the earlier batch for the review or the option of waiting for the next batch. I thought I'd wait, but it felt like a disservice to TE if I did not at least post my initial impressions, especially considering the hype train it was at that time. It feels a wee bit odd that some new member here (whose 80% of posts were singing hymns about TW) would counter me about the impressions in a series of questions and disappear soon after that. I've not heard from Tekfusion for the last four months and may never since the company may have vanished.


Highlights for those who are short on time

Also note that for reviewers, we must approve your full review, before you publish it, because recently we had a small misunderstanding with a blogger who wrote that the Twinwoofers resembled beats studio.
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Thank you again for contacting us. We'll give you a discount at Rs.1100, although you have to promise us that you won't tell this to anyone, as we don't sell to consumers directly at this price point. The only reason we are giving you this discount price is because we want you to give us a good review, that we can feature on our website. We are presently collecting reviews, and want to put a page on our website, specifically with reviews for visitors. If your review meets our expectations, we'll definitely feature it.
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We hope you understood. Reviews are good to write, although if they have misleading information, then we hold the right to file a crime penalty against the individual who publishes such misleading information, and we also hold the right to sue any blogger or the press who writes or publishes false information about our product, in such instances. All reviewers are therefore advised to take our approval prior to publish, to avoid any such problems later on. We simply do not tell any reviewer to change his or her personal opinion on our product.
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Our best advice is that we send you one from our old batch, you decide for yourself. Build quality is decent but not excellent because it was our very first batch. This second batch was not large in volume, because we are still checking if the changes in our winding machines affected the sonic signature. We felt that the mids and highs feel over stressing the spectrum slightly more than before, although we can't tell 100% right now because we're still doing a frequency analysis. We may stop our production until we finalize our analysis.
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We advice not to do a review until we give you a confirmation on our results. Thereafter, if we receive any complaint regarding sound, we definitely give replacements for all our customers having the current batch. Thereafter, you may write up a review, so that everyone gets actual information. What are your ideas? Can you wait for a month?
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Reading back...

  • Seeing how the first few mails went, it is possible that they bullied a few positive reviews out of others.
  • No other company promoted burn-in as part of the cure for signature flaws as TW did. It is likely people are under placebo when writing those positive reviews (Don't trust me? See this video. Placebo is a real phenomenon :p)
  • It has been a full four months since they were supposed to investigate and fix the problem. It has not happened. Looks more like a cop out on their part.
  • They've gone from replacing the 'erroneous' batch free of cost to demanding ₹500 cash for replacement. Wonder what happened to the HDFC account I transferred money to.
 
esanthosh said:
  • No other company promoted burn-in as part of the cure for signature flaws as TW did. It is likely people are under placebo when writing those positive reviews (Don't trust me? See this video. Placebo is a real phenomenon :p)
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  • I never got into the habit of burning in, the only IEM that really benefited from this exercise in my opinion were the PL-30's I had long ago (that too only the subdued bass got a little more volume OR I might have switched the bass nob for all I know).

    I always have maintained the burn in period just attunes our hearing sensibilities to the IEM's strong point without making a lot of change (sound-signature wise) to the IEM itself.

    Apple products (and subsequent upgrades) are perfect examples for the placebo effect. The video is a perfect example, Sire.

    On a completely unrelated note --
    (Do not forget the subtitle captions)

    P.S. -- Glad you spilled the beans. =]
 
Never seen such company who is asking a positive review from the reviewer, if reviewer won't come out with positive review for their product so they will take legal action against them - This is what they meant by saying misleading information.
esanthosh

Are they asking you the money for the review sample also?

It is really very bad that company is asking INR500 for the RMA(sending back the IEM to the customer) and INR500 for sending the IEM back to the customer after RMA. Which courier company charge INR500 for such a small item?
 
esanthosh said:
The best word for me to describe TW is "bright". It's not a budget bass-head IEM like PL11, not balanced like E30 or somewhat tonally balanced like ES18, just "bright". When it comes to clarity, there is always a natural clarity and then, there's artificial / manufactured / enhanced clarity. TW from what I hear belongs to the latter category than the former. Any IEM with a treble tilt would in general appear more clearer.


The vocals take a slight step back in the presentation. The 3-6Khz region is bumped, 8Khz has a spike, there's also a bump post 10Khz - at least to my ears. These bumps enhance the perception of clarity, but also splash some of the information in your face. Certainly, going from TW to any other IEM would make the other IEM "less clear" and "not as apparent" with respect to details.


In all, my impression is that TW is a differently tuned IEM, one that stands different from the crop of usually bass heavy ones in this price range. The end is commendable, I only have issues with certain aspects of the means to get there.

tongu23e.gif
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esanthosh said:
  • It has been a full four months since they were supposed to investigate and fix the problem. It has not happened. Looks more like a cop out on their part.
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It is pretty evident, that it was a deliberate attempt on the company's part. The bright sound sig that TW has , is exactly what they had in mind right from the start. it wasn't any batch issues or anything. spikes in various regions giving a perception of calrity

But i guess they under estimated the kind of audiophiles we have in india. "The means to get there" is indeed pathetic
 
Yes! I did pay for the IEM. It was selling at ₹1200 at Flipkart at that time and the company sold me at ₹1100. But I did not consider it as a 'review sample' - more like a discounted buy directly from the company with review being my own discretion.

I guess they are asking ₹500 for an "upgraded" pair, not for shipping. But, if it is still within warranty period, they should be upgrading it free of cost. If they actually had an upgrade called TWII which was sold at a higher cost, it would have at least made some sense.
 
psygeist said:
^^Where is your SM3 ? What other earphones you have now ?
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SM3 is probably with my brother in law(it broke and went for rma long back)
IE8 is somewhere in the study table's drawer.
At present using the good old IE7(just love it!) and the hd25.Will pass on the M50 to a friend soon(failed to understand the hype around it)
 
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