Custom 3's verses I-buds

[Coytee]

I'm new to the Ipod world. Bought it yesterday & put some stuff on it last night. Listened to it today while waiting on something.

Might be important to note, I ripped in WAV format, converted to Itunes loseless & error corrected so I think/hope I've the the highest quality sound I can muster on the unit.

Enter my question: I was listening to David Gilmour's DVD that I ripped. I was listening to Echos. The song sounded good but when they started to get into jam mode (as in creshendo), the sound in the ear buds started to distinctly distort.

I had the volume on the Ipod at what I think was 3/4 but I'm not sure (during the low volume parts). As the volume of the song increased, I actually went into my volume control and turned it down two different times, ending up at about 50% volume (only a guess for conversation sake)

What I'm wondering about is the distortion on the Ipod buds. I guess I won't know until I actually try the Custom 3's (in shipping now), but will they do the same thing the Ibuds did or was this distortion electronic?

Seeing as no one probably knows the answer, I'll report back when I find out.

By the way... has anyone seen the killer file job Amy has done on her fingernails? [*-)]

[:|]

[kaiser SET say]

Richard, the Custom 1's will walk all over i-Buds period. The Custom 3's will be like going from a pair of those out of the back of the van speakers to your Jubs[] LOL

I have been bitten by the portable bug for the last year and now have a pleathora of DAPs, LOD's, Amps, IEM's and phones[:$] Here is a shot of my current portable rig which until I get a pair of Custom 3's I'm driving UE .5 EB's[]

[Professor Thump]

How do you like your Tomahawk amp?

I will also be interested in your opinion of the Custom 3's when you get a set.

[Jay481985]

the ipod buds distort very easily.

[skonopa]

What I'm wondering about is the distortion on the Ipod buds. I guess I won't know until I actually try the Custom 3's (in shipping now), but will they do the same thing the Ibuds did or was this distortion electronic?

Seeing as no one probably knows the answer, I'll report back when I find out.

If you are comparing the stock ear-buds that comes with an iPod to a pair of the Klipsch Custom 3's, you might as well be comparing a Chevette to a Corvette!

Like the Chevette, the so called "iBuds" will get the job done and get you were you need to be, but don't expect anything really exciting. Now, the Custom 3's are a whole 'nother level, like the Corvette! Since it sounds like you are using a high-quality rip of your music, my gut feeling is that you will not experience any of that kind of distortion in the Custom 3s. At any and all listening levels that I've tried my Custom 3s on, they sounded awesome. However, you may discover some unwanted thinks within your recordings that you may just not have noticed before, due to clarity and the "intimacy" that a good pair of IEM will provide.

[customsteve01]

Richard,

There is no campairing the two. I read the tread titke and went WHAT???

Waiit till you get the 3's and you will understand.

Maybe I will start a thread "Jub's verses Bose Wave......"

Now do you understand.....

Steve

[customsteve01]

Kaiser,

I don't think richard will mide a little high-jack of this thread.

Can you tell me more about your little pocket amp.

Steve

[kaiser SET say]

Sure Steve and I think the Professor asked me last week and I'm just now cruising back by here[:$]

I love this amp, if I could give you one word about the Tomahawk is it gives BODY to music on all my iPods. I have spent some jack now but there is no comparing an iPod/iBuds out of the box with minimum 128KB rips to an iPod with a LOD (Line Out Dock) cable into an external amp, a lossless CODEC and a pair of Custom 1's even. (for those with a discerning ear the difference will be night & day)!

All of Ray Samuels amps, headphone amps and portable amps are first rate and on par with the top names out there as far as I'm concerned. See Link:

http://www.raysamuelsaudio.com/

Ray now has 4 portable amps with the full dual mono SR-71, The Hornet, The Tomahawk and the new Predator which has built in DAC so that you can use it with your PC/Laptop. I chose the Tomahawk because Ray designed it specifically for the IEM's phones although it has hi and low gain and drives my Grado SR-60's to very enjoyable levels but it truly excels with IEM's as it was intended. I can't wait to get a pair of Custom 3's so I can write them up here[Y]

I have gotten a little carried away with portable audio (who would have ever thought[]) and now I have put together 3 seperate portable systems so that I would have tons of options because even portable systems have synergy and and sound signatures. I picked up a Corda Headsix portable amp along with a MiniBoxE+ amp also. I have a selection of LOD's and IEM's already and have just been waiting on the 3's to come out[H]

I really like carrying my Senn PX-110's around with me on the go because people will ask me how does the amp thingy sound and when I hand it over to them with a pair of external cans they always and I'm not exaggerating here say "Holy Bat Quano"! Of course I then tell them that they are holding a thousand dollar rig and they become the 99.9% of people who are not audiophiles and go $1000.00 totally forgetting what they just heard[:|]

Then we will have the amp vs. size of a portable rig convo and say for the sound quality I get I don't mind having this digital camera case over my shoulder, don't even know it's there most of the time. While on this subject I will tell you a Tomahawk with the 2nd gen iPod Nano is light and small enough to drop in your front shirt pocket and size to sound ratio will just blow you away.

The Tomahawk is a solid piece of gear and not to be confused with a toy, of course at $309.00 shipped to the door that is not a toy price. You can get into some decent external pod amps for as little as $109.00 but like home gear better quality demands more $$$. Outside the build quality on the Tomahawk I think the # 1 selling factor for the Toma is the battery life. It will drive a pair of SR-60's for 400+ hours on two triple "A" batteries[li]

[customsteve01]

Kaiser,

Onemore question. where do you get the cable to go between the Ipod and the amp. Yours looks different than the ones on Rays site but he has no info in the web site about it.

Steve

[kaiser SET say]

The least expensive LOD I've seen is here under cables:

http://www.head-direct.com/product_detail.php?p=15# The little MiniBoxE+ is a nice amp

Or this site is most popular with portable enthusiast (mine is the Bling Bling Silver cable in photo's):

http://www.aloaudio.com/ He is proud of his cables but with that said he builds a good product.

Here are some other nice portable amps/manufacturers:

http://www.meier-audio.homepage.t-online.de/

http://www.ibasso.com/ShowNews.aspx?ID=60

http://www.headb.com/box_plus/index.html

http://www.rockhopperaudio.com/

http://www.practicaldevices.com/purchase.htm

Let me know what you decide on and if you get one Steve. As you can see prices vary, you can get the iBasso T-2 and the C&C Box+ for $109.00. The Tomahawk is 3 times as much but once again you get a much nicer unit if you want to go the distance[]

Now if you really want to protect you iPod investment chech these out. I love them, have one on my U2Pod, 2nd Gen Nano and a new one on the way for my new Nano[] It's a disease I tellya[:'(]

http://www.yotank.com/itankvideo.html

[BLSamuel]

If you are comparing the stock ear-buds that comes with an iPod to a pair of the Klipsch Custom 3's, you might as well be comparing a Chevette to a Corvette!

And the el-cheapo ear-buds that come with the really cheap mp3 players would be like a Yugo?

Kind of work for awhile, but make the Chevette look pretty good by comparison?

Even my 13 year old says most of her friends / classmates mp3 players sound terrible, and I think that was before I got my Custom 2 which she uses on long road trips.

She does have a 40 GB Creative Labs Zen Xtra which is not as cool as an iPod but was a lot less expensive at the time and can hold a lot of songs and sounds a lot better than the cheap mp3 players.

The Zen Xtra is something of a dinosaur by today's standard, almost as big as the smallets cassette players of a few years back[]. I know, you're thinking, what was Dad thinking? Dad was thinking - capacity baby, carry your entire music collection wherever you go, forgetting that teenage and pre-teen girls don't have even 1,000 songs in their collections. Probably not even combined, maybe not even now a few years later. Girls are thinking small cute fashion accessory. Even then they were pretty happy. An iPod would've made them ecstatic but around $100 more a pop at the time, for a lot less capacity. Maybe could've had a low capacity for about the same or less but don't recall - a couple of years before the Nano. Our oldest daughter has a 4GB iPod Nano and uses that all the time now. Hers is used for tunes in our bedroom when we tire of the radio.

I don't think either of my girls hardly ever used the ear-buds that came with the Zens. We had a set of Sennheisers which got destroyed, some Grado SR40s that got destroyed (both may be repairable), some cheap Sony next to the ear and some Koss Porta Pro 2 the latter 2 still functional. (And I let them use my Custom 2? - but they ALWAYS put in the case and return to safe keeping when not in use - I guess they respect quality or the I brought you into this world look... And thankfully they've not (yet) started fighting over them, arguing a bit, but no tugging so far.... I never evem stuck the tortorous looking Zen ear-buds in my ears.

I'd been using my Grado SR60s for several years before the Zen Xtra arrived, a few years before the Custom 2 arrived. The plug on the SR60s got destroyed during a road trip quite a few years ago (they were very young then - what was I thinking) but I called Grado for technical assistance after I had hacked off the molded plug to replace it to find which wire was which and spoke to John Grado who told me what I needed to know but to send them in. Arrived back within a week as good as new, no charge. Good thing too, the rather beefy cable wouldn't fit into the mini headphone plug I found at the local Rat Shack. They're due for repair again that I think could be fixed with a dab of plastic epoxy or just a small part but email tech support recommends to send them in so off they'll go when I get a chance. I suspect they'd like to see just how they failed - a small crack in the plastic from years of use, misuse, and abuse though the girls have been very careful with the SR60s once they were allowed to use them again. They're even more careful with the Custom 2.

[skonopa]

She does have a 40 GB Creative Labs Zen Xtra which is not as cool as an iPod but was a lot less expensive at the time and can hold a lot of songs and sounds a lot better than the cheap mp3 players.

The Zen Xtra is something of a dinosaur by today's standard, almost as big as the smallets cassette players of a few years back. I know, you're thinking, what was Dad thinking? Dad was thinking - capacity baby, carry your entire music collection wherever you go, forgetting that teenage and pre-teen girls don't have even 1,000 songs in their collections. Probably not even combined, maybe not even now a few years later. Girls are thinking small cute fashion accessory. Even then they were pretty happy. An iPod would've made them ecstatic but around $100 more a pop at the time, for a lot less capacity. Maybe could've had a low capacity for about the same or less but don't recall - a couple of years before the Nano. Our oldest daughter has a 4GB iPod Nano and uses that all the time now. Hers is used for tunes in our bedroom when we tire of the radio.

Oh hell, I still use my trusty ol' Creative MuVo Slim for working out at the gym, as well as listening to at the pool. The thing is friggan ancient by todays standards - all of 512 megs of capacity. But at the time I bought it, that was the shizznet when it came to small rugged solid-state MP3 players. At the time, I could not justify the cost of an iPod, which were just coming out at the time. I figured 512 megs would be plenty. Also, the thing is built like a tank. It has been camping, at the pool, at the gym, on numerous flights, etc and it still keeps on ticking. Not only that, but it really does sound very good (assuming using a good pair of earbuds, such as the Klipsch Custom-3s). If the thing eventually dies, I don't know what I would want to replace it with. Yes, I could punt and just go with an iPod Nano, but I've seen a lot of really nice small-sized solid-state players out there. Of course, now-a-days, for those times when I really do want to carry nearly my entire music library with me, I also have a 160 gig iPod, with over 7,200 songs on the thing, with still nearly 90 gigs free! And the sad thing is that is only part of my collection. I still have a number of CD's that I've never even gotten around to ripping into my iPod. My eMusic account also assures a steady supply of new music as well. The iPod comes in handy as I have an in-car iPod hookup through my Alpine deck - that thing is awesome, especially for long roadtrips (like last summer when I drove out to Wisconsin then Indianapolis, and back - gotta love my trusty ol' TomTom GPS nav as well!).

I don't think either of my girls hardly ever used the ear-buds that came with the Zens. We had a set of Sennheisers which got destroyed, some Grado SR40s that got destroyed (both may be repairable), some cheap Sony next to the ear and some Koss Porta Pro 2 the latter 2 still functional. (And I let them use my Custom 2? - but they ALWAYS put in the case and return to safe keeping when not in use - I guess they respect quality or the I brought you into this world look... And thankfully they've not (yet) started fighting over them, arguing a bit, but no tugging so far.... I never evem stuck the tortorous looking Zen ear-buds in my ears.

I don't have any kids myself, so never had the problem with getting earphones destroyed. However, I did give my old 30-gig iPod to my oldest nephew for Christmas just this past year. From what I've been told by my brother, he STILL listens to that thing constantly! Glad that he is putting it to use. I would not be surprised if my other nephew (his brother) uses it as well, and I am willing to bet a few fights over has broken out as well. As for the stock headphones, I'll have to admit that the stock earbuds that came with my Creative MuVo Slim actually sound pretty good as far as stock earbuds go. I thought they sounded much better than those crappy things that come with the iPods (although I've never listened to the new "redisgned" ones that come with the current models of iPods. The ones that came with my 160 gig iPod are still in the plastic sleeve they came in. Between the Shure E3C's and my new Klipsch Custom-3s, I"ve never had any reason, nor desire to bother with those things.

I'd been using my Grado SR60s for several years before the Zen Xtra arrived, a few years before the Custom 2 arrived. The plug on the SR60s got destroyed during a road trip quite a few years ago (they were very young then - what was I thinking) but I called Grado for technical assistance after I had hacked off the molded plug to replace it to find which wire was which and spoke to John Grado who told me what I needed to know but to send them in. Arrived back within a week as good as new, no charge. Good thing too, the rather beefy cable wouldn't fit into the mini headphone plug I found at the local Rat Shack. They're due for repair again that I think could be fixed with a dab of plastic epoxy or just a small part but email tech support recommends to send them in so off they'll go when I get a chance. I suspect they'd like to see just how they failed - a small crack in the plastic from years of use, misuse, and abuse though the girls have been very careful with the SR60s once they were allowed to use them again. They're even more careful with the Custom 2.

That is cool that Grado is willing to do that - send them in and get them fixed - no questions asked. Pretty neat that you got to talk to John Grado himself and having him tell you it would be better to just send them in and let them fix'em. I've had a friend and co-worker ask me about getting good earbuds as he wants to get an iPod or similiar MP3 player. I've suggested him to look into the Klipsch (of course) as well as the Grado and Sennheisers, as well as the Etymotic ones (which I hear also are very nice, although I've never listen to any of their product myself). Anyway, do love my Custom-3s - the things are friggan sweet!

[BLSamuel]

Dang Steve,

My Custom 2 are pretty sweet.

Custom 3 are considered a lot better.

I still don't ever get the kind of seal I should or can't keep it. I may need extra large ear gels. It also doesn't help that my right ear mostly has been itching and well it itches it gets some anti itch cream or scratched - probably won't go away until I get enough will power to quit scratching.

The Image prototypes I tried at the Pilgrimage were so easy to use and I had to turn the volume down way low and still had trouble hearing the conversations in the room - either that or CP1 and others were all whispering to see my reaction but I doubt they all would've worked that sort of trick out that quick. Instant seal with the Image. I'm intrigued by the new Image X-5 but the original X-10 still have better bass.... I think I'd go for the better bass over better treble (that's insanely good to begin with). I think Prof Thump said the X-10 has the bass closer to the Custom 3 while the X-5 has treble closer to the Custom 3. The X-5 is also supposed to be more forward sounding than both the Image X-10 and Custom 3. I'm hoping we can compare them all in a couple of weeks.

Never thought I'd buy any headphones other than better Grados and had been thinking for quite some time that it was time to upgrade from the SR60s. I probably will buy a Grado phono cartride when my Shure v15 type 5mr (something like that) wears out or needs a new stylus. And of course if I ever have way too much money to spend I'd want some of the retro cool looking wood bodied Grado cans. Quite unusual to talk to the head guy. I suspect Grado employees, including John, have the kind of passion about their work as do the Klipsch people.

I do hear lots of things with the Custom 2 that I don't with the Grados but to be fair $200 in ear monitors to $70 open aird cans. It'd be nice to be able to compare sometime with a comparably priced Grado. The Custom 2 are more comfortable. Even though after several months of daily use I still don't forget that there's something in my ears. Never could tolerate any ear-buds I tried.

edit: probably use my Zen Xtra until it quits. The headphone jack is getting kind of flaky so I probably should see about fixing that before it gets any worse. A little too busy and stressed out lately to open up smallish electronics..... the springy part seems to have lost some of it's spring. Hopefully just a little soft but something's probably cracked a bit or maybe the solder on one side has cracked.

[videoCWK]

For the record, iPod earbuds seem to distort at any volume. I own a pair as well, they came with my iPod, and at a comfortable volume level (a little more than halfway) they distort, especially in bassy songs. Sony makes pairs of headphones priced at $15 that I guarantee you will distort much less. Apple earbuds are some of the worst headphones I've ever used (aside from a frail pair of green brandless earbuds I was given on an airplane to listen to radio with), and I'm shocked by just how many people use them and by how many good reviews they've gotten on the Apple site.