Hello, I just joined, primarily for the audiophile products. Looking at purchasing the NHT C3 speakers for our new living room. Space is about 15 feet wide by 33 long and they will fire long ways. Space is just for general listening, music room with all equipment is downstairs, so hoping they will fill it with sound nicely. Cheers.
Mar 18, 2024
There are a few community-favorite, great-sounding IEMs out there for under $100. The problem has been that if the cable breaks on your $40 "giant-killer" and you need to buy a new one...now it's an $80 IEM with the same risks. But, changing an existing favorite to have removable cables takes: new tooling/molds, reliable connectors, and can also change the sound (many IEMs have small housings and need to be made larger to accept removable connectors). After trying to improve some of the favorite low-cost IEMs, we opened up the search for a partner who understood what we were trying to do and could create a new product for us from the ground up.
There are a couple more requirements the community gave us for this project from all of your requests and feedback online: -A lot of people like the option of a microphone cable, but some audiophiles swear the electronic circuit in the cable changes the sound. Needs to have a microphone cable AND a braided cable. -Even some community-favorite, low priced IEMs can vary a lot between units. If you have to buy more than one unit to get the sound you want, the price increases. So the units have to be consistent to provide value. A requirement for the NuForce EDC is to be within +/-2 dB of left/right channel matching and from the frequency response target. This is being carefully worked on to scale with production.
NuForce is already known for having very comfortable IEMs. We were really happy that they were willing to work with Massdrop and the audiophile community to provide the above and tune an all-around fun, musical sound signature with clarity and bass that works for travel, gym, or quiet listening environments.
Just for fun. My first portable rig amp back in 2010 was...a NuForce!
I'll have to try tomorrow with the microphone cable, I'll let you know!
1. Whilst these have a detachable cable it uses an uncommon connector, the same connector that was used by Trinity Audio before they switched to having cables detach at the y-split. I have a strong dislike of the connector these use. I would have far preferred MMCX or standard 2-pin. The connector used on this is a mistake. How big of a negative this is depends on how frequently you bust cables. I've never had a cable break, other folks I know seem to break a cable every month. You won't just be able to go get an aftermarket cable to replace your broken cables with this. You'll be locked into NuForce.
2. The cable is not braided. It is a double twist, which is different than braiding.
3. The headphones use the less common thin Shure nozzle, which means that aftermarket tips are more scarce.
I was sent a pre-production copy of these to evaluate. Next time I'd advise sending it earlier, as the connector issue could have been resolved before launch.
This is made worse by you guys not being upfront about what connector you're using, making customers think they'll be able to find replacement cables easily, when that's hardly the case. I'm out.
What does this mean? It means that you can use the EDC with more aftermarket 2-pin cables. You don't have to have the proprietary NuForce cable with the shroud and after you use a 0.77mm 2-pin cable you can still use the EDC cables. You just might not get a good connection if you use other stock NuForce HEM cables as they are 0.75mm pins and you may stretch out the sockets.
This tradeoff is important to our community and NuForce has agreed to help us with this change for mass production. Early testing showed that the EDC could accept a range of 2-pin cables but with varying tolerances, it makes the most sense to go for flexibility with aftermarket cables.