1 Nightwish - Music.flac

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1. Phantasm (phnt@fluffytail.org)'s status on Saturday, 27-Jul-2024 05:30:36 JST Phantasm

   in reply to
   @dushman @kaia Decided to give them a try and bought them and my first impressions are kinda mixed after a day of usage. First the good things.
   
   They sound pretty good for the price and are balanced with some bass and treble added which is nice considering that their main usage is probably commuting to work in a loud bus, train,... where a lot of bass will be drowned out by the environment. The top end where cymbals and hi-hats live may be a little too high, but that's just my preference and it's not distorted and butchered. It's done in a tasteful way. The included eartips are comfortable and are a good fit for me, but the iems themself are a little to big and hit some parts of my outer ear which gets uncomfortable after an hour or two.
   
   Now the bad parts. The DAC isn't great and will change output levels if there's almost no sound data quickly which is really bad in some of my songs that have a more quiet intro with a lot of volume changes (included below - 1,2). Another issue might be a DSP or a DAC+DSP issue. I noticed that there's a noticeable high frequency hiss when some frequencies in the higher vocal range are present (1), ignoring the noisy amplifier that always adds hiss that is noticeable in low volume parts of a song (comparable to cheaper bluetooth headphones). No, it's not a digital/analog input as the iems can do both. I've sent it both analog and digital audio and it will do it on both even though it shouldn't go through an amplifier when it receives analog input. Granted my laptop sound card also hates them and also produces some hiss that is changing depending on the frequency, but it is much less noticeable and usually only noticeable when I'm looking for it. The volume was at ~40%. I'm also very sensitive to high frequencies so that my be a part of it. It also might be a QC issue. Who knows, but I'm pretty sure the changing output levels are intentional.
   
   1:
   20 seconds into intro the output levels start changing independently in the left and right channel. The hiss can also be heard at this point (most prominent around 1 minute into the song). The changing levels can be heard again at ~2:05. 2:28-3:05 the weird frequency shifting hiss can be heard.
   
   2:
   Mostly here to again show the output level changing in the heart beat intro and the hearable hiss at around 3:40 in the vocals part. The original song noise and the amplifier noise can also be clearly distinguished here in the intro.
   
   Am I being a little harsh and nitpicky? Yes. In reality you almost can't notice the hiss in public transport with more "normal" songs. I can't notice the hiss in the rest of the song that aren't marked in any way. And the changing levels can be an edge case depending on the music.
   Was throwing symphonic metal songs with a very wide dynamic range considerate? No. It's probably the worst I can throw at them and likely not the target genre for these.
   1 Nightwish - Music.flac
   2 Nightwish - How's the Heart.flac