I got these yesterday. Good IEM, but not best of 2024 IMO. Sennheiser really ruined people’s perception of treble when people ignore these 10k dips that really veil everything. This does not have good treble. Good mid-range. good bass. Treble is very mid. The Meteor is substantially better with it’s treble tuning. I’d also take something like the Performer 5+2 over these, personally, unless you really just want something mid-focused.
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Making judgments like that when treble is so variant between individuals seems imprudent.
The treble works very well for me, almost certainly because my HRTF has a dip in a similar region to where the Volume S (and many other IEMs) dips. Yours may not, which is why you find it veiled.
Doesn’t mean the IEM is bad, and doesn’t mean other IEMs with more treble in this band are better. Just means it’s not the right fit for you.
Also, not sure how Sennheiesr ties into this at all.
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You’re right 100%. It is going to be subjective per person based on HRTF, I agree. My main point with senn is the sound of the HD 6xx (600, 650) etc got so aligned with what “good treble” should sound like, that people seem to ignore the 10k dips (Or maybe just some mid/upper treble dips in general) in those headphones, which Volume S have as well. Filling that in with EQ just outright fixes it, IMO. Especially for things like female vocals.
I 100% agree with you on the treble, but the Meteor, which what I mentioned, doesn’t have any of those upper treble peaks from what I’ve seen. It’s very clean and I just think it’s just outright better than these for that characteristic regardless of hrtf (Maybe that is just me). It also does not have the overbearing subbass, which I 100% agree with in the review is a bit too much on the Mega5EST, etc. Like these are good, do not get me wrong (Never said this or that are “bad”), I just don’t see them being a “2024 best” IMO. I think many people would like other options. Might just be me, though.
Edit: I just checked and notice you have not measured the Meteor. For the record, the Meteor were the IEMs I tried JUST before receiving the Volume S (received both the same week), so the comparisons were fresh in my mind (They just sound substantially cleaner in practice and a bit more natural, IMO). But it is even less peaky than the volume S. Though I know some people with hearing loss like a 15k peak.
Here are Crinns measurements on them.
Anyway, thanks for your review, still appreciate it.
Interesting. Since when have people said the HD 6 series is a model of “good treble?” The 6 series is praised for its reference mids, not treble.
Just ignore the HD6X0 reference please. I don’t feel like getting into it. My main point overall is specifically that I think the Volume S is similar to the HD6X0 in it’s treble performance. That is it. Maybe it was a bad comparison, off the cuff. People do not generally respond to me in these forums. I just came in to share my ‘take’. That’s it. You do not have to agree with me. They are fine IEMs.
I bought these and pre-ordered based on the hype back in early feb like a lot of others. I just came in to give an honest opinion. Maybe set people up with a more proper expectation other than “2024 IEM of the year!” “SO amazing!” “OMG!” “The new ‘META’ Standard!”. And I am not even saying this review does that (others do), but this is the review that convinced me to buy them. So, I am simply sharing my experience and opinion for others so they can have the proper expectation. I doubt my words will sway people much anyhow. Especially when the reviewer/mod with the large platform decides to just say my comment is being “imprudent” lmao.
9000hz +5db 2.5q
Recommend to anyone to try this filter. It is a small lift in the 9k region. Based on Listener’s measurements to push it to match the JM DF. Of Couse mileage may vary based on unit variation, but improves the ‘veil’ significantly, just based on my testing right now.
When headphones IEMs have this dip, I do not consider them to have “good” treble. This is the type of ‘dip’ I am referring to when I mention Sennheiser.
I don’t think it’s being imprudent to point this out at all.
The problem I have with the argument involving HRTF is that not even one of the examples showing averages of population HRTFs in this Understanding the Headphones.com IEM Measurements article show any kind of dip (or would it be rise?) at 9-10k. And once you start playing with filling in that section with EQ, I think you will quickly realize just how important it actually is for perceived clarity, regardless of overall wide-band balance between bass, mids, treble. I also think, likely, regardless of HRTF.
Also maybe a side question… but do we actually know how strongly actual HRTF affects perceived expectation of sound with IEMs? From how it’s told, it seems mostly theoretical, but likely. BUT we do not know how strong the influence is or how much ‘leeway’ there is in perceived response vs actual, correct?
Apologizes all around, but I just wanted to make this final point. This will be my last post on it, unless someone wants to discuss it in good faith further, I won’t belabor my point any further.
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Seems reasonable, both in terms of it being an issue for you, as well as other people not having the same issue and 6 series treble generally being agreed to be good.
I get a pretty gnarly 7 kHz dip on the Sennheisers that has a similar effect in isolation, but I also get a huge 10-11 kHz peak on my head that means I don’t really hear the 6 series to be quite as “veiled” as some others do, even if I still get a big dip elsewhere as said.
The 10 kHz rise (relative to Harman, think its actually adherent to JM-1 here) is actually the reason I didn’t try to review Meteor. IEMs that don’t have a dip in the same region VolS does tend to sound really glarey and sibilant for me, and I feel like that + the extremely thin midrange meant I wasn’t optimistic about my take on it.
Even so, its totally possible your hearing curve is just closer to the average represented by JM-1/ISO 11904-1 and so the Meteor works better for you in the treble. Makes sense to me.
I tried this, and its definitely not a good fit for me. I understand how based on your complaints why it works for you, though.
The examples in that paper are only showing the ranges of one standard deviation. I can’t share it right now but if one looks at the totality of the blocked canal DF HRTFs in the literature, you often see a reduction starting around 10 kHz relative to what we see in the ISO HRTFs.
Not really, to my knowledge. I’m not aware of any studies on how measured response correlated to perceived response.
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Interesting points, thank you! Have always appreciated the work you guys do!
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Hi! You write in the review that the black stock tips do “round” the treble a bit more than the Sotfears UC ones, but what’s curious is that it seems like it works exactly the other way around for 5128, if measurements from your EQ tool are anything to go by. It looks like there’s less 4-7 kHz and ~15 kHz energy with UC tips vs black tips on the graphs.
Could it be that the graph descriptions are mixed up, by any chance?
There’s a VERY similar difference between two Volume S samples on Crinacle’s squig as well… Could it be that one was measured with the black tips and the other with UC tips? I know there’s no way for you to know that, but I’d be happy to hear your guess on the matter as there’s no getting the answer from Crinacle himself.
I actually think it has to do with the UC tips being more compliant and thus being able to achieve a deeper max insert compared to the black tips.
I know this is a mess, but if you look around 6.5 kHz you’ll see the UC tips have two whole seatings that get deeper than any of the black tip seatings could, so the length mode being around 6 kHz gets de-emphasized in the overall average, as does as the upper treble peak which gets reduced with hyper-deep insert with the UC tips.
Re: Crin, I know he doesn’t actually do a lot of the measurements—he has employees for that!—but when we talked at CanJam NYC he seemed to prioritize seating the IEM as deeply as possible, which may be responsible for a similar difference in his measurements.
Hope that helps!
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Thank you very much for your swift reply!
That pretty much was my guess. And with this in mind you find the black tips to “round” the treble, not UC tips? That’s what is really interesting to me (perhaps due to the lack of understanding of the degree of significance individual anatomy may have in this).
That’s a great bit of info regarding Crin’s modus operandi. It might help me a lot trying to make sense of the measures, thank you!
I remember reading on his site (where he gives explanations for his graph database, including general methodology descriptions) that all IEMs are measured with wide bore tips, unless stated otherwise (I’m not aware of any single case of that, except for the recent Mega5EST measurements done on 5128). That part was written a long time ago and can’t help but wonder whether it still holds true or anything has changed in his approach.
By the way, I just remembered something and it feels a bit wild to me. About a year ago I came up with a compensation target for B&K 5128. I just dug it up, checked it and turns out that it’s actually very similar to the one you now have on your GitHub measurement database/EQ tool (“WIP DF HRTF”), especially it’s slightly older version (with less smoothened treble features and different tilt + filter configuration for bass and treble).
It was based on some bits of relevant info I was able to scrape up here and there, including pieces featured in Sean Olive’s 2024 CanJam presentation, but with tge level of my “expertise” in mind… It’s basically a result of a lucky (un)educated guesswork and some experimentation. DF HRTF with a -1 dB/per octave tilt was used as a base, with a transform based on the delta b/w 5128 measurements and mean avg of human in-ear measurements applied, iirc.
But (or maybe exactly because of that) it’s amazing to me how closely it aligns with (although preliminary and incomplete) results of the work done by highly knowledge and competent people like yourself and your associates.
The ~10 kHz dip is a deliberate feature (reading you talk about your treble perception idiosyncrasies in IEMs and HPs yet again is actually what reminded me of this little project of mine). I don’t quite remember about the 8 kHz feature, but I think it should be deliberate as well.
Hey guys, I’m still waiting for my set to arrive. I hope there are no QC problems.
I saw the Meta video and how the mid-range of that is comparably better. So, is it a good idea to EQ the mid-range of Volume S. Also did anyone EQ these? I would love EQ profiles for Volume S…
First time posting. Thanks already…
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EQ-ing the midrange of Volume S to something like that of Meta’s may as well have a worse result, as it’s all about tonal balance. Chances are you’d have to adjust bass and treble to match that midrange profile better.
I would be very interested to see a @Listener devised EQ profile for Volume S as well someday.
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That’s what I was thinking, the meta’s mid-range tuning comes with not-so-good bass and treble. Still, I don’t want to be too keen on other IEMs for quite a while. I believe I’ll enjoy Volume S. I have been using Hexa for more than a year and I hope it’s a upgrade I’ll relish.
I mainly listen to classical. I know it has a Classical (High) Impedance which is generally not recommended but I’d love a EQ that’s done especially for classical music in mind on the recommended (Low) tuning. [Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart…the usual lot…till Mahler]
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