Sony MDR-EX1000 Impressions

Discussion in 'IEMs and Portable Gear' started by takato14, Jul 14, 2016.

  1. james444

    james444 Mad IEM modding wizard level 99

    Pyrate Flathead IEMW
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    Thought I'd share this here, since quite a few others seem to be in a similar dilemma as myself when it comes to the EX1000. On the one hand, these offer some of the best qualities I've ever heard in dynamic driver based IEMs, particularly in the lower half of the frequency range. On the other hand, they have obvious weaknesses, like a somewhat uneven high range, tricky ergonomics, wind noise and subpar isolation, which ultimately make me use them less often than I'd want to.

    So, if you'd ask me how I'd imagine my ideal DD-based IEMs, I'd reply without hesitation, they ought to be just like the EX1000 in bass and lower mids, however with slightly smoother and more restrained upper mids and treble. And while I'm at it making wishes, I'd love for them to fit more comfortably and stay in place, as well as offer a little more isolation.

    Enter the Fostex TE-02n, an amazing pair of budget IEMs even in stock form, with better ergonomics and isolation than the Sonys. As a pastime, I've been trying to mod these over the last couple of months, in order to squeeze the subjectively best sound quality out of them (and gather a little more experience on how DD IEMs work in the process). This yielded many hours of tinkering fun, interesting discussions with friends and several mod versions with different signatures. However, none of them left me completely satisfied.

    So, at some point, I just grabbed my EX1000 for a lengthy A/B session and simply tried to get the Fostex' bass and low-mids timbre as close as possible. With that achieved, I tried to dampen their upper-mids and treble to fall somewhere in between the EX1000 and MDR7550... and that was about it.

    Now for the first time, I felt entirely happy about the result, so I decided to call this mod "final". Soon afterwards, I handed both my Sonys and the Fostex to a good friend, and yesterday found this feedback in my inbox:

    "Listening notes... I have to say, the Fostex is a stunner, really smooth and at the same time detailed. It's definitely a tad smoother and more detailed than the Sonys (N.B. EX1000 and MDR7550). The slight sharpness in vocals I heard with the older mod is completely gone. However, tips are also important, and fit with the older mod wasn't perfect. Now I realize how good the bass really is.

    Still, for soundstage and bass I'd give a slight nod to the Sonys, it's just their effortlessness and timbre in bass that I haven't heard in any other IEM. The Sonys are also more dynamic and sound "bigger", that's surely because of their 16mm drivers. Moreover, the Fostex needs a lot more juice, so it doesn't sound best from a smartphone... but from my Mojo, it's a stunner. Vocals are by all means better than on the Sonys, no treble harshness whatsoever, yet still very detailed. I actually prefer the Fostex over the Sonys from my Mojo, whereas I prefer the Sonys from my smartphone.

    Anyway, you nailed the Sony sound signature pretty well, in fact I'd say it's a bit closer to the 7550 than the EX1000, the latter being less neutral than the other two."


    With that said, please regard this post as some kind of interest check. If there's enough demand, I can write a step-by-step tutorial on how to perform that mod. And since it's a bit complex and requires good eyesight and nerves, I could also offer to send out a few modded units to genuinely interested parties. For clarification, the Fostex with their much smaller 9mm drivers are not claimed to and cannot be a carbon copy of the EX1000. But I think they're close enough in signature and sound quality to be potentially interesting for those who love the Sonys and have been on a similar quest regarding their ideal DD-based IEMs.

    Feel free to let me know your thoughts... :)
     
  2. deafdoorknob

    deafdoorknob Almost "Made"

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    further tip rolling notes ... mainly for comfort but also to slightly attenuate the spike ...

    1) decored shure olives - just a tad too loose for the nozzle, poor seal...

    2) shure orange foamies, least comfortable amongst the foamies but most sonically transparent imho.

    3) double flange silicone (taken from my fitears) not bad, the length and seal is the best of the lot for me, sound appears to be a little bassier and it accentuates the honkiness by a little, but not unacceptably so.
     
  3. WNovizar

    WNovizar Facebook Friend

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  4. Grahad

    Grahad Guest

    If you have used Comply's, peel off any remaining foam that hasn't disintegrated, and just shove the stem up the decored Olives. Works well enough.
     

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