In-ear planar magnetic open back earphones for monitoring on the go?

Configure and optimize you computer for Audio.
Post Reply New Topic
RELATED
PRODUCTS

Post

I recently started to use planar magnetic back headphones for monitoring (I am using the Hifiman HE400i). They are great and have a big impact on the quality of my mixes. Problem is they are extremely bulky and simply not made for monitoring on the go. They have to stay in the studio.

Since I travel a lot I started to look into open back IEMs with planar magnetic drivers. It appears that there are currently two manufacturers that dominate the market. In one hand there is Audeze who essentially invented that segment with their iSine LX/10/20 series. On the other hand there is Monoprice with their Monolith M300 IEMs.

I could not find a lot of discussion in terms of their use in music production. Only a lot of audiophiles who pretty much all claim to be blown away by the quality of any of these. Are there any people here who such IEMs for music production? If so, what is your experience with using open back planar magnetic IEMs in a mobile studio setup?
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.

Post

Still pretty new, so I'm not sure how much feedback you'll get tbh. I've heard of fairly established artists taking them on the road to get writing and editing sessions when otherwise it would be downtime, so certainly some people out there getting some use out of them.

The iSines are pretty great inears in general, at least came across that way when I've had a loan of a pair previously to try out. Transient response and definition are possibly untouched by the vast majority of in ears, although the shape of the ear canal can be a little bit of a barrier for getting the sort of flat response you'd expect from larger models in the range. I've heard them with the Reveal applications running a 50/50 blend of clean and processed signal, which compensates a bit for the ear issue and levels it all out nicely so I guess it's viable to quite some degree.

Other than that, whilst I've used them in general and they seemed great, but I've not done a proper comparison shoot off. Personally, I'm running Lcd2's and not working outside of the studio these days, so I've not really had much of a need to spend a whole lot of time with more portable solutions, which does kind of limit my ability to give you much more feedback in that regard.

Post

Hey, thanks for the thoughts. That is indeed helpful. Which ones did you try? LX, 10 or 20?
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.

Post

You might try posting this thread in the
Hardware (Instruments and Effects)
forum here. You can't tell from the name but that's where the big headphone discussions happen. Good luck.

Post

Just to wrap things up in case somebody finds this thread searching for answers. I ended up getting the Audeze iSine LX, mainly because of the Reveal plugin which is specifically targeted at music production. As pointed out by Kaine, the iSine are really good out of the box but I also found that using them with the Reveal plugin at 50/50 gives the best results. Without the plugin they have a bit of a spike around 1kHz. I have used a lot of in-ears in the past and these are by far the best yet. It really is a different level of audio quality. I assuming that if you go for one of the higher end iSine models (they have a high end model for $2.5k now), the audio quality will even be better.

Having said that, they also suffer from familiar IEM shortcomings. The bass is definitely there but it is not as pronounced as one would like. If you want to optimize the low end in a track, these are probably not the best monitors to use. And they are semi-open, so the people around you will hear it if you play the same 8 bar loop for hours on end. But for $199, they are an absolutely outstanding value. They will not completely replace my Sennheiser HD25 because when on travel I sometimes need the privacy of closed headphones, but I am expecting that they will be a very useful addition. They definitely sound much clearer than the HD25s.
Follow me on Youtube for videos on spatial and immersive audio production.

Post

It's the 10's and 20's I've used and whilst i've not had a demo on the LX as yet, I wasn't expecting much of a sound profile change from the 10's from the feedback I've had, at least if your running Reveal.

However, one of the my colleagues has used the LX and they fed back similar comments about the aggressive 1k being tamed with Reveal and once that's done everything above the bottom end fits nicely into place, so it sounds like his experiences largely match your own in this instance. Agreed with the sub end through, although I guess it's pretty hard to get accuracy for the bottom end on any pair of in-ears.

Post Reply

Return to “Computer Setup and System Configuration”