Zephyron

Update on ATH-CK32 mod. I took out the paper and ripped some cottom out of a cotton swab/earcleaning stick, and rolled it into a small, low density cottom ball and stuffed in into the ATH-CK32's funnel. All it all, its not bad. The bass rolloff is now not all that severe, should be acceptable to a certain standard, and bass extension rolloff seems to take place somewhere earlier in the sound spectrum graph, which is a good thing, although it still can be felt and is audible. The harsh mids have supposedly been buffered by the cotton swabs and are not as bad as they were before. The highs seem largely unaffected, the rolloff is still there, starting from about 12kHz or so from what I observed in Foobar2k's spectrum analyzer and Audacity's tone generator.

Finally can be considered a minor upgrade in terms of sound over stock buds (compared to my iAudio U3 stock buds and my almost 2 year old Creative MuVo TX FM stock buds that is), and the isolation is pretty good.

Depends much on his tastes actually. I'm thinking that he likes rock because of the Grados.

Hmm, why not try letting him use the KSC75? With sponge modded with a 20 cent hole in the centre.

Partially reviving the ATH-CK32 - It now has bass recovery:

Well, my itchy fingers made me do something to the ATH-CK32 in hopes to make it worthwhile.

I took off its paper filter and wanted to place in some sort of 'buffer' in order to buffer the sound produced from its drivers, but I ran out of cotton, so I decided to use paper instead.

Bass did come out, but it still kind of lacks extension. The treble suffered a little bit more though, and feels muddier (though not as muddy as my EX71, suprisingly) but I attribute that to the 'funneling' of the paper, and I believe either cotton or sponge should have done better. The extreme high still rollsoff to my ears. On my Creative MuVo TXFM, to balance out the sound, I turned up the leftmost EQ band (62Hz) up one notch and the 16kHz band up 3 notches.

Do note that the pics below are the bad examples, I removed the badly folded paper from this one and placed in a more rounded out version later on.

PS: Sorry for the poor quality pictures, I only had my handphone camera available then.

Step 1: Take out that filter (It wasn't simply paper apparently. Its some sort of meshed texture speical paper thing)

Step 2: Get the paper ready

Step 3: Roll em up (into a tube/funnel) and fire in the hole!

Step 4: Place that filter meshy thingy back on

Nope, unfortunately. Before any firmware update, its recommended that users backup their music player's file contents... Unless you're talking about the iAudio theme song and the videos, they're available somewhere for download from Cowon's site.

From head-fi reports, it seems that the UE xXx is gonna cost between US$350-400.

Would you guys be waiting for that?

But DIY should be cheaper to get from overseas isn't it?

If I move on to an iPod, I'd wanna get one as well

Wah, that lineout is chio. Might be perfect for an iPod 5G Black version

^

Aron, you opened up a CX300 to try?

Convenient or otherwise?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=11...644&q=ipod+flea

^

Fully burnt in the CX300 yet?

Hmm, would that mean that the cable that comes with PA2V2 is high in impedance as well, or is it just simply a bad cable?

I never tried, so can't be too sure.

Only ones I tried amping before are the CK7 and UM2 through CMOY2 and PINT, not much improvement on CK7, no improvement whatsoever on UM2.

If very very high impedance however, I dunno what to really say, since the only high impedance phone I ever spent time with is the DT880. Listening through it with CMOY2 and PINT, I think I like the PINT better. Sit down there at Squalle's home and then listening to my classical tracks with PINT + DT880 = bliss...... Ahhhhhhh *eargasm*

Also, I think that high impedance phones usually cannot be run through a portable. A home source (dedicated amp) would be good.

It would also depend on the earphone/headphone you're using.

Different headphones respond differently to amplification. Earphones too low in impedance and high in sensitivity in general do not benefit much from amplification.

^

According to people who've owned them both, I think you might be better off with Creative's EP630 instead. Digdub also said that we would be paying for the Sennheiser brand name as opposed to the difference the sound quality the earphones make.

Burnt in more than 24 hours already, the more recent graph I tried to draw apparently still stands more accurately that the first.

Now can confirm that the ATH-CK32 is a canalphone that rolls off in bass and highs and only mainly has mids. A good scenario of 'you get what you pay for', its not a good earphone in my books. The best way to describe the ATH-CK32 is that it sounds rather nasal. Its clarity however, still beats the MDR-EX51 I currently have.

Below it a final comparison graph of how I think it sounds (1+ hour usage or so) after comparing it with the ATH-CK7 (a days usage) and SportaPro (graph not included):

I take back what I commented in my 2nd impression with regard to its treble sparkle, the CK7 completely blows it away in that department.

The CK7 gave me a more accurate feel of how the ATH-CK32 sounded like after A-B-ing the tracks I'm familiar to, ranging from Jazz, Alternative Rock, Classical and Video Game OSTs. Somehow, after using the CK32 for an hour and then switching back to the CK7 makes the CK7 actually sound warm and whole.

This should be my final impression for the CK32, I don't think there'll be anymore change in terms of sound, especially when I've seen burning it in utilizing lineout load at slightly higher than listening volume to kind of accelerate the burn in process, and then use the ATH-CK7, then switch to the ATH-CK32 for about 1 hour and then write this out.

Overall summary: Avoid the CK32, fork-out the extra cash for either the Cresyn LMX-E630 or the Creative EP630, they do your wallet better justice.

^

Agreed with what Digdub said with regards to the bass extension, its definitely not there, and highs are rolled off.

However, I don't really feel that its too congested however, might be fit issues.

Also agree that money would be better spent on the Cresyn LMX-E630 and Creative EP630.

^

Don't consider that its good too soon yet. Honestly, I'm not very impressed as of yet, even given its cheap price point. Hmm, can let you audition first before you decide to get.

What AT can are you using now?

Listened to the CK32 more carefully for a 2nd time this morning (yesterday was a brief impression before letting them burn in), the burn-in time has passed an estimated rough of about 10 hours or so.

Burnt in using white noise and sine wave sweep at 440Hz.

Had to take back some things I said yesterday. it'd seem that the bass of the CK32 seems much softer this time round, much so that I believe that there's a slight bowl scooped from the depths of the low to mid-bass region. It does recover when it reaches the high bass region though. The bass was much more tamed than I remember, or maybe I got the wrong impressions right from the start. Through EQ from the laptop (Foobar 2K), the main frequencies I have to push up were from the 55Hz to 311Hz region from a descending order of +6dB peak at 77Hz, and lowered at it sides in order.

Further bass tests in audacity (using the tone generator), the CK32 completely fails to reproduce anything below 22Hz, and the bass seems to start to rolloff at around 50Hz or so.

Still, the bass reproduction is much better than that of the ATH-CK5 still.

The mids seem to have more body this time round, female vocals (Utada Hikaru, Christina Aguilera and some others were used for test), don't feel as distant as I remembered yesterday, improvement was quite big.

The highs don't seem to have changed much, but there's a slight sparkle which I never thought was there. Sibilance seem to have also been tamed, tested to some tracks which have strong S sounds to test.

Must get to school now, I'll do some more further listening at the 20th hour I guess

EDIT: ADD

Digdub: They do carry microphonics, but its nowhere as bad as the CK5 IMO, not so bad this time round. Can also wear CK7 style

Zen Vision:M is 25mW/ch @ 16Ohm impedance if I remember right, and I don't know about the 5G iPod, but if its the same as the other HDD iPods go, it should be 55mW/ch @ 16Ohm impedance and 30mW/ch @ 32Ohm impedance.

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That graph's just my what my ears tell me. To others, it maybe different

THESE THINGS ARE LOUD!!! XP

First impressions, not yet burned in:

-These things are very low-mid-end bass quantisized, but the bass doesn't extend very deep. Its sensitivity maybe lower than that of the CK7, but it seems louder to me because of the low-mid bass and low-mids quantity. The volume levels were tested whilst walking around Causeway Point. The bass definitely does not drown out as easily as the CK7.

-There's a huge dip in the mid-mids to high mids region and supposedly quite a bit of concentration of low to low-mid highs, it can be a teeny bit sibilant at the start (they remind me a bit of the UM2 in this department). It feels somewhat hollow to me, the mid-mids to high-mids region feel very unresolving. Male vocals seem closer to me but female vocals seem somewhat distant. Overall, the mids feel as if they lack body.

-Surprisingly, its quite detailed, and can handle complex heavy rock passages better than my EX71, CK5 and LMX-E630 did.

-Its highs feel a liiiiiiiitttle bit rolled off.

-Soundstaging feels similar to the slightly larger than the EX71 and CK5, akin to LMX-E630's level but comes nowhere close to CK7.

-Very comfortable to wear, attentuates outside noise better than the EX71, CK5, LMX-E630 and CK7 to my ears. The ear sleeves used are similar to that of the CK5 and CK7, but seems somewhat thicker to me.

-Overall 1st impression isn't very good, but will burn-in for a few stages and then test the results after that using the CK7 as a benchmark for placebo hearing. I still prefer the sound from the LMX-E630 over the CK32 as of now.

Somehow, the CK32 strikes me as a phone that was deisgned for use in extremely noisy environments, where its pre-burned in graph should handle things more effectively.

EDIT: Pic add

ATH-CK32

Close-up shot

ATH-CK lineup

Just got it, testing right now.

Wow, congrats!

Considering the CK31/32?

Honestly, with the 3 of them at hand (HJE70, CK7 and CX300), I think you can do a review

Wa, Digdub, you very power leh.

Why buy so many? Plagued by the curiosity?