Audio Which IEM should I get sub-8k?

Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

Excellent impressions. You are right about vocals. They lack life, especially notable when coming from IEMs like RE-262. But for bass, especially on the impact part, try a different tip / source.
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Thanks mate, BTW I'll be going to Amarbir's store tomorrow to try out RE262

As for changing cables, at least Twilight cable feels better. You won't last long with the stock cables anyways
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Yeah for the feel and sturdiness, twilight seems to be a necessity but at around $40, one can get M1!

BF1983 said:
[quote name='esanthosh']

As for changing cables, at least Twilight cable feels better. You won't last long with the stock cables anyways ;). My theory is that the signals travel much faster through the braided cables (two way lane) than the memory prone (road with too many bends) stock cable :p
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Err this is not the Mumbai Coimbatore highway ! Its a 1 - 2 foot wire where signals travel close to the speed of light !!!! :p[/QUOTE]

Exactly!
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

BF1983 said:
Err this is not the Mumbai Coimbatore highway ! Its a 1 - 2 foot wire where signals travel close to the speed of light !!!! :p
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A cable is to signal as highway is to humans. You should think in terms of those tiny electrons struggling to take the bumpy stock cable like we struggle with potholed roads. To each size, it's own highway :p
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

So I suppose it would be best to use a 19 gauge stranded wire. Just think a 19 lane highway for all those electrons on their Ferraris !!!! :eek:hyeah.
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

So you have no problems with the Fit , great!

what else you could have asked for ?, now all you have to do is buy another IEM like 262, to be kept along with TF10 so that you have a Mid centric IEM also.

else you can buy something like FX700,SM3, W3(4?) which has it all.

congrats on your purchase ! i hope you keep it for a long long time ! :)
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

Woaah....who ever says cable doesn't make a difference has definately not tried enough cables.
I have tried most of the UE cables, stock cable, the ES2 and the twilight cable with two sets of TF10's at jaben(A/B'ing) and cables do make a difference. Some have a huge difference, some don't.

Try the TF10's with a UE Rainbow cable and you will not believe its a TF10. The Stock cable & the ES2 cable sound similar, the es2 being slight more boomy, in other words, the bass extends deeper/lower. :p
The twilight cable improves very slightly, but just about enough over the stock TF10 cable to make them my favourite VFM cables.
The UE green cable makes them sound a lot like the Um3x. But for much lesser on the wallet ;)
I haven't tried the Enyo/Lune but from what i've heard from people the Lune is much faster and has a better treble than the enyo.

Of course you will notice these subtle difference if your source file is >128kbps to say the least.

Play a bad source file and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a TF10 and a JVC Marshmellow is what I say. ;)
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

I asked UM to make my miracle with UE cable jack so that i could try different cables, so i want to believe that cables do make a difference.

lets see,

I will be getting either a Null audio Lune or the UE rainbow cable.

Benny, how was the rainbow cable, in terms of manageability and thickness, was it like the the westone cables ( 3-4 wires twisted) or like TF10 (3 -4 wires sleeved to make a wire. )
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

strategy said:
So you have no problems with the Fit , great!

what else you could have asked for ?, now all you have to do is buy another IEM like 262, to be kept along with TF10 so that you have a Mid centric IEM also.

else you can buy something like FX700,SM3, W3(4?) which has it all.

congrats on your purchase ! i hope you keep it for a long long time ! :)
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I've my eyes on FX700/W3, maybe somewhere in June I might get one of the two or something better that might be available at a similar price. (Or maybe a Full-sized headphone now)

BTW I have issues with how TF10 fits, its isn't very comfortable.
bennysachdev said:
Woaah....who ever says cable doesn't make a difference has definately not tried enough cables.

I have tried most of the UE cables, stock cable, the ES2 and the twilight cable with two sets of TF10's at jaben(A/B'ing) and cables do make a difference. Some have a huge difference, some don't.

Try the TF10's with a UE Rainbow cable and you will not believe its a TF10. The Stock cable & the ES2 cable sound similar, the es2 being slight more boomy, in other words, the bass extends deeper/lower. :p

The twilight cable improves very slightly, but just about enough over the stock TF10 cable to make them my favourite VFM cables.

The UE green cable makes them sound a lot like the Um3x. But for much lesser on the wallet ;)

I haven't tried the Enyo/Lune but from what i've heard from people the Lune is much faster and has a better treble than the enyo.

Of course you will notice these subtle difference if your source file is >128kbps to say the least.

Play a bad source file and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between a TF10 and a JVC Marshmellow is what I say. ;)
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Maybe cable does have an effect on SQ, but the question here is how?

BTW how much effect does the twilight cable have on SQ of TF10?
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

^^ I am not sure how much difference there is but my impressions of the twilight cabled TF10 is practically the same as your impressions. :p
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

All UE cables are twisted(like the Westone cable). The build quality and comfort is way better than the Stock cable.

The twilight cable improves on every part of the spectrum but very slightly. I couldn't tell the difference between the two when I drove it straight out of my desktop with an onboard soundcard or my HTC Hero cellphone. But when I got my Sflo2 and recompared them, there was a slight improvement. The sound just opens up!!!

I haven't tried the null audio cables. Probably this coming weekend if i get the time, i'll visit Null Audio's place here in Singapore and post my impressions.

The stock cables are very fragile. Mine broke in 2months. Good thing i had a spare ;)
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

contact him an then go to his place , i doubt he has a cable for demo ! ( he replied to my message saying there will be a week time before the order gets processed )

Great that we'll be having first hand, impressions on the null audio cables ! :D ( aand , when are you coming back to india again ? :p )
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

I never implied that I wanted to audition a cable for TF10 from anyone, Im just inquiring whether or not the twilight cable is worth it.
 
Re: Can someone lend me their RE-ZERO

Benny said he might be going , so i am keen to hear his impressions on the Null audio cable.

cause he is the only one on TE who has tried various cables for TF10, passionately !

kudos to benny ! :D

and oh BTW i received my TF10 today , the newer stock cable is quite different from the earlier stock one. for starter , the memory cable near the housing is better, not as horrible as before.
 
Since Mep has gone from ZERO to TEN to 2000 / 5000, someone mathematically weak had to check out the ZERO. So, I took one for the team.

I already like the RE-ZERO. Did a very limited comparison with RE0. Since I don't know if I'll be writing an 'impression', thought I'll post a rough one here:

RE-ZERO is very efficient and good for low volume listening as indicated by it's impedance. But, at much lower volumes (-30 on RB-ed Clip+), some of the dynamics gets lost. So, max I could go down was -30. For e-Q5, I could tune down 5dB more (I think). When compared to RE0, the new RE-ZERO with TRS plug is much better built. I wonder how my RE0 has last this long when I compare them side by side.

The first impression was :S, :(. Where did the rich timbre, texture, great imaging and presentation go... that is until I fooled my brain by making it think that RE-ZERO sounds better over the ear than straight down :p. After some more minutes of brain burn-in and re-adjustment to the 'pale' sounding RE-ZERO (compared to 262, e-Q5, FX700, SM3 I am coming from now), I started liking it for what it is.

Coming to sound (RE-ZERO via Clip+ vs RE0 via Clip+ -> T3), bass is not an improvement on quantity, but a bit of a re-adjustment. RE0 has a mid-bass hump, but RE-ZERO fills it out a bit more without hump/bump. It's not near 262 levels, but just about decent. It loses a bit of the impact compared to RE0.

Mids are slim, but not as anorexic as RE0. Vocals are a bit more forward than the RE0, which makes it much better in my book. In terms of tone, RE-ZERO sounds a bit more neutral compared to RE0.

Treble on RE0 still rules, but RE-ZERO with it's controlled presentation does not feel like lagging behind too much.

I've always felt RE0 to be a bit weird with imaging sometimes, but RE-ZERO has much better imaging, though it has a similar sound stage size.

RE-ZERO is no 252 or 262. But, it is a step ahead of RE0 for me, especially the low impedance part. That's it for now :)
 
the thread starter has a budget of 18K now ! :rofl:

i hope he gets LCD2 :) ( suites his requirements )

nice impressions there. ( did you buy them :mad:. you should have bought the CK10 not re-zero!! )
 
^ I did buy them from head-fi for about $90 landed.

Since I had already burnt my hands with Arrow and another package from head-fi missing, I was cautious and not so hopeful. But, they turned out fine. Hope my luck continues, I've a few more things on the way :p (though nothing big :ashamed:)

@strategy,

CK10 is still on my radar. But, I've to ask around a few of my trusted 'advisers' on head-fi if it's as good a side-grade as RE-ZERO is to RE0. Besides, the damn thing costs $270 - 285. So thinking twice before buying them. Need to sell one of DBA-02 or CK10 after that!
 
Just got them today, struck a deal with a guy from jaben forum for BNIB TF10 in exchange for his 2 month old CK10 + $80SGD. So cost of CK10 was Rs 2000/- only. Lol.
These are basically going to be my sleeping iems cause they're super small and comfy. The sound is nothing short of Amazing.

To begin with, I've been using my TF10's quite religiously since 6-7 months now. So putting these on, the first thing i noticed was the supah ultra huge soundstage, the lack of bass, the speed of the bass, the increased treble sparkle, a more accurate imaging and presentation, little more forwardness in the mids.

The lack of bass makes them unbearable for EDM(there goes 70% of my playlist ;) )

But put on a rock, reggae, pop, live, acoustic, hindi song, you get what i'm saying, anything which doesn't really have a lotta bass, and these are outta the world. Outta the head if you must. They don't give me an isolation as good as i get from the TF10 (maybe I should try the biflanges from headdirect with these) but they are as good as a Re0 with respect to isolation. As per what I remember from the Re0 I had tried, they are pretty similar, just better in certain aspects.

I really liked the Re0 but I could never really put my money down for them cause I find them too dry and cold. The Ck10 is a tad better than the Re0 in that aspect, very very slightly warmer. If the Re0 is as cold as sleeping butt naked in Alaska, the Ck10's are a linen bedsheet, slightly warmer :p . The imaging of the Re0 was also a bit off. I always felt that, even though no one else thinks so. These have a better imaging than the Re0 and the soundstaging is sooo MASSIVE!! The treble can be a bit shrill in some tracks though.

Make the mids a little more forward on these and I would say these are the IEM version of the Grado RS1 cans.

Thats all for first impressions. Lemme know if you guys wanna know anything more.
 
WTF ! :O

How much ? " wont spend more " my a$$ (EDIT: sorry for the harsh words , it seems you got one heck of a deal, i wish it was me ! :p )

Congrats !:D
 
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