Which headphones of Drop's currently available?
I have some rewards points to burn but there's no obviously good options on Drop right now for headphones Contenders Ultrasone - maybe? I don't own any Ultrasones, so curious. Looks like garbage travel headphone which could be useful also. Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. - Maybe? I have the DT 880 Good price point, really uncomfortable headphones but could be interesting to try the upgraded version. E-MU - strong contender but $400 is a bad price point for what it is. Which of the above would you choose and why? Nothing else on Drop is relevant to my interests, because Already own 6xx 820 800 s Ether cx Garbage / Consumer grade Meze 99 - garbage bass canons, hard pass No gaming headphones obviously Sennheiser wireless - no to wireless/bluetooth Hifiman - I have 2 of drop hifimans and they make really bad cheap shit on Drop, hard pass on HE-R7DX Aeon - I own the closed, Drop refuses to address #padgate so no reason to buy open Beyerdynamic 177x - wireless, nope Too similar 8x / 560s...
Mar 28, 2024
- The nozzles turned out to be maybe even 1mm larger than Westone and Shure nozzles, which is too bad. - They sound muddier than the Westone 4R using the included Comply tips. - They sound and seal better with tri-flange tips, but they don't ship with them. - The microphone is positioned poorly, it falls somewhere in the middle of my belly. It should really be positioned where it is with iPhone headphone cables, on the right headphone's cable. - EQ adding another 20db to the 10khz-20khz range significantly reduces the muddiness of the sound. This is consistent with their frequency response (https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/NuForcePrimo8.pdf) and compared to the Westone 4R (https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/Westone4R.pdf). With respect to my personal preferences, my hearing is pretty consistently good and I'm a classically trained musician. - You get less telephoning with braided cables than the one it ships with.
With EQ, they sound as good as the 4-armature Westones. That's a big achievement! I got my W4 used for $180 in 2013, so this is a pretty great deal in that respect.
To put something more concrete to a description of the detail: - EQ greatly improves the rendering of noisey/glitchy music and church & chamber reverb. It's super clear. - For noisey artists like Sleigh Bells, Anamanaguchi and Marnie Stern, all the harmonic interference and heterodyne comes in great. - Contraltos and mezzo-sopranos don't sound as good as they do on the Westones. This would be the vast majority of the female voices in Indie music I listen to. It's just a little clipped and muddy. - Baritones in the contemporary music sound a little muddy too. - High voices come through less muddily generally. - EQ improves the quality of voices overall.
This is consistent with the Westone 4, but exceeds the $100 Shure E3C lineage of IEMs.
The detachable cable will be handy and I'm glad this uses the contemporary MCMX standard.
The copy on Amazon indicates these are Knowles drivers (i.e. use the Knowles patents). I wonder who manufactures these.
- Jyri/NuForce
Kinda Crazy how everyone hears things Completely different from each other!
Overall they're really good sounding IEM's IMO, and if I didn't need my car worked on ASAP, I'd definitely be keeping them!
But for now my Westone UM Pro 30's and Nuforce EDC IEM's will do me just fine and I'm content with the both of those for right now!😎👍🎧
Can you confirm that Jyri?
So they might be a little bit tight fit at first, but like I said, my Comply tips fit the both of them great IMO!
It sounds better with EQ that boosts the treble, which looks like https://www.dropbox.com/s/rg8kbckm5pre9kf/Screenshot%202018-03-30%2018.43.24.png?dl=0 . High notes on the GDA strings come out better, like I hear the timbre better. The reverb sounds better, and that does a lot for how these recordings are done (on stages, not anechoic chambers). Otherwise I wouldn't say it's that much of a difference.
I'm pretty sure classical recordings are already mixed to help high strings a bit better, so it's really tough to say without listening to a ton of recordings. Older recordings (I'm thinking Heifetz) sound like old recordings.
If I pump the volume up to 50% of the MacBook's output (a reported "-12 db"), which is quite loud on these headphones, the difference between treble-boosted and flat is less noticeable. When it's very loud, it's all a little tough to listen to, so it's hard to say.
This is straight out of the MacBook Pro 2016's audio output, I don't use a headphone amp or anything like that.
On this machine I don't have any FLAC audio to test. I'll try it later.
Regarding comparisons to other headphones I’m most familiar with the Westone 4 and it’s a little less flat sounding. It also costs a lot more. A $30 pair of Sony amplified headphones sound better than both. It’s not a really fair comparison, if you want to use over ear headphones they will almost all sound better than the Primo8 or indeed any IEM.