Last Week's Most Interesting

One week after CES and I thought we will be quiet for a while - wrong! This week Westone officially announced the latest addition (and best yet) to their custom IEM offering with the new ES3X. For a company that took almost two years to finalize their top universal IEM (Westone 3 that is), Westone certainly surprised people with this custom IEM as it only takes them a few short months from pre-production to final production. No doubt that they have included the knowledge and experience they learned from developing Westone 3 into the new custom.

Westone ES3X, the best Westone custom IEM to date. It has three transducers on each side splitting in three ways. Save up some money before you even look into the detail of it cause the one thing we can be certain is, it won't be cheap.

• Driver unit: Three balanced armature drivers with a passive three-way crossover
• Frequency Response: 20Hz~18 kHz
• Impedance: 56 ohm
• Sensitivity: 124dB / 1 mW
• Plug: 3.5mm
• Cable length: ~50 inches.
  

S1 Audio's BUDBUD, one really weird earbud concept that I missed last week during CES. In short, it is two earbuds built into one cable with selectable switch to activate one or both sets (for sharing, as told). Why do any one want to design such an earbud? I guess the answer is, becasue we can. No price yet.

• Driver unit: 13mm
• Frequency Response: 20Hz~20 kHz
• Impedance: 24 ohm
• Plug: 3.5mm ( 3-pole)
• '1 to 2' user switch, dual volume controls
  

Last Week's Most Interesting [CES edition]

Like predicted, many earphone makers are holding back their product launch for this year Consumer Electronic Show. Since most of them are just being showed off by the manufacturers instead of a real product release, I think I'll skip the actual spec for now and do a more in-depth report once they are ready for the actual market. Here is a bird eyes' view of all the interesting earphone news I found over the Internet:

Griffin Technology is known for their iPod accessories. Here is their latest offer and an upgrade to their old earbuds series, the TuneBuds Fit.

Acoustibuds is an adapter that change your open style earbud into a semi-open design. It probably will block out some noise but don't expect a lot. Generally speaking, this type of adapter usually do more harm than good, I am not sure how well this one will actually do.

UE is luanching two new IEM for their Metro.fi series, the 170 and the 220. Strange enough that I can't find any of the Metro.fi series on their website any more. Seems like the new owner is changing things a bit. Oh well, Metro.fi is the low end of UE line-up, so don't expect too much.

Shure is also launch its own low-end IEM model, the SE115. It is said to be an upgrade of its current low-end SE110. Instead of the balanced armature transducer used in SE110, Shure decided to give the new IEM a dynamic transducer for better bass kick - I won't blame them since many of their low-end model buyers are probably not looking for accuracy but rather more 'fun' sound and head banging action.

Altec lansing is launching a whole new series debuted the BackBeat, including the one in the picture called 906, a bluetooth IEM that can be used with either bluetooth enable devices or with the bluetooth adapter. The new series looks pretty good, hopefully they'll sound just as good.

Koss has a new IEM to show us, the CC-01. The most interesting bit about this IEM is the adjustable eartips. By turning the metal knob on the back of the earpiece, the eartips will change its size accountingly and you'll get a 'custom' fit with just one set of eartips.

There are still two more headphones I like to tell you about: Maximo iM590 and Koss KDE/250. I didn't find good pictures on both on the Internet but I did find a thread you can read about them (over here). I had have an opportunity to demo the iM590 sample few months back and I can tell you that it is an very good sounding IEM of its class, so those of you who are looking for an entry class IEM should at least take a look of it once it launches. The other Koss offering, the KDE/250 is a dual drives clip-on - Yes, you are reading it right, it is a two-ways clip-on, with one 20mm transducer for the bass and one 13mm transducer for the mid and treble. The expected MSRP isn't cheap (US$250), but I think Koss might have something real special this time. Fingers crossed.

CES is really fun, isn't it? :D

[UPDATE] Here is a good picture of Maximo iM-590. This will be one IEM worth looking into for Q1, 2009.

Last Week's Most Interesting

Well, I want to point out the DigiFi Opera S1 isn't really a 'new' news. It has been around the U.S. market for 2 months now but little attention was paid to it. However, a recent post on Engadget suddenly stir up quite an interest on this wireless IEM and before you know it, it is out of stock EVERYWHERE! There are actually two versions of the Opera wireless IEM, the S1 and S1+. S1+ is said to have a better SQ than S1, but there isn't much to go on as it is (DigiFi is an Korean company, and unfortunately its site seems outdated and worst of all, not in English). Opera S1 / S1+ utilize Kleer wireless technology for transmission. Music is transmitted in uncompressed format so no sound deterioration occurs during the process. The technology seems promising but so far it is slow to pick up by the industry - and some of the few who did pick it up offer it at such a high price, most consumer would probably just settle for lesser technology like bluetooth. This most likely explains why Opera S1/S1+ sold out that fast - because DigiFi priced them just right. MSRP US$110 (S1) / US$130 (S1+).

• Driver unit: 13.5mm dynamic transducer
  
• Frequency Response: 20Hz~20 kHz
• Impedance: 32 ohm
• Sensitivity: 98dB / 1 mW
• Plug: 3.5mm
• Cable length: Wireless
• Range: 25m (indoor)
• Operation time: 9~10hours (recharged in 2~3hours)
• One transmitter can pair up to four receivers (earpieces) at the same time.
  

The List

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See The List as an independent page, click this [LINK]

This list is based upon the reviewer's personal assessment and opinion, and may change or update without any notice. Given the list hasn't been updated for awhile as well as the rapid change of IEM market, do note that you might not want to pay too much attention to the actual rating number but more to the relative position of each IEM in the list. 
 
Bewared, simple numeric ranking is fundamentally flawed as all detail are ignored. As the reader you must understand that sound signature is as important as the sound quality. You will be better off with an IEM of lesser sound quality but fits your taste than an IEM of higher quality but you don't enjoy. Remember, music is for enjoyment and headphone is no more than a instrument to fulfill that goal. An cheap instrument that does what you ask worth a lot more than an expensive instrument that sits on the shelf.  Never takes this ranking as it is, there are reasons why these IEM are ranked in such order and you might not agree with those reasoning. So please do your own research as well as read into my past reviews to determine which IEM suits you best. There is no guarantee that my opinion is more reliable than your own.

* Value ranking of 4.85 and over is designated the Sonic Diamond Award™ for outstanding price / performance ratio after considering all aspects of the IEM, including SQ, design, fit, customer service, availability, etc.

Last Update: Feb. 25th, 2015.