custom 3..first impressions..disappointed

[dheerpat]

hi all ..just recd myearphones an hourback..after spending an hour fiddling with gels and equlisers on mi touch...i am sorely disappointed with the sound qulaity,,,i bought these for 12500 bucks(in indian rupees) and expected to be far better than my creative ep 630(excellent bass) and senheisser cx 350..unfortunately i am finiding all of them at par..i mean where are the dual drivers performing...i had very high expections from such pricey earphones...but sadly i seem to have bought duds...ny one can guide whts cud be wrong as sound quality is not better than those mentioned which are one tenth priced..

[Enrique Troncoso]

Hi dheerpat,

I have a pair of Custom-3 headphones and they sound great to me. I don't know about your ear anatomy but once you have a good seal (which is also required with other headphones) you will hear the richness of sound and bass.

Have you checked the quality of your songs.. If they are less than 200 bps then these headphones will not make any difference. Having said that, you can always return them since you have 30 days to do that.

just my two cents!

[dheerpat]

hi enrique...will the quality of songs make differece i have mp3's which are encoded in 128 kbps ..shud i convert them-if yes how---to higher bitrates? secondly i am using largest gels ...feel like not getting enough seal...which i used to get with other two brands..i treid their seals on custom 3 but could not as they dont fit there,,

[dgoreck]

I would be atleast at 192kbps, if not higher.

I don't have the Custom 3's, but I'm sure my Images work similair. When I have my Images in, I can barely hear a person trying to have a normal conversation with me with no music playing. With this, I know I have a fairly good seal. Did you try the double tips? They seems to work better for me.

[BuyOtherSoundEquipment]

As with any new audio equipment, it may take you ears some time to really adjust to what you are hearing. With other (cheaper) headphones, they produce exaggerated bass, which to some people sounds impressive. The Custom-3s balance out the entire range and can therefore seem "thin" in the bass compared to other 'phones. I encourage you to take some time and really listen to some recordings with which you are familiar. Also, I would set the EQ on your player to flat. Most people have it set to either a "rock" setting or a bass enhanced setting, both of which can sound good but I feel are artificial in the improvements that they make.

As the others mentioned, quality of the file is extremely important as well. For instance, I am currently listening to "Over the Hills and Far Away" by Led Zeppelin on my Custom-3s, which was ripped from the new Mothership album as an Apple Lossless file. That means the bitrate is somewhere in the neighboorhood of 950kbps. Compared to the copy I have from their "Houses of the Holy" album, which is at 128kbps, you can hear the distinct difference in quality. The improvements of a higher bitrate are excellent when used with earphones that are able to portray the differences.

[dheerpat]

ok will try ...should i conver my present mp3 collection which is in 128 kbps to 192 0r higher..will it make any diff or i will have to rip from original cd's only to mentioned bit rates

[dgoreck]

Re-rip from the CD. Up-converting is not like TV in terms of audio...it is an ins't, seperate topic. You already lost the data, so just re-rip. I forget the codec I use, but I rip into 192-320kbps VBR. I also create FLAC files, which are lossless.

Do you have a dececnt CD player home stereo. Try using the headphones on that, and see if you notice a difference. Don't just limit yourself to your portable player, ipod or not.