New Performer 8 owner here. 4.4 mm balanced cable. They landed today.
Firstly, these are the first pair of iem’s that I have ever owned or used. On opening the box, my first impression was how small the ear pieces looked. However, they look like sparkling jewels. I have to say that they are absolutely beautiful in my opinion and the workmanship is first class.
They already have a pair of blue/red tips fitted (not sure what size these are) and there are additional blue/red tips in a small plastic bag enclosed together with the standard tips in the box.
On inserting them into my ears, they fit okay as far as I’m aware. I would say I have small/medium sized ears and the face plates are almost flush with my outer ears. I’m not sure how much I’m supposed to push them in but I’m winging it here a little.
I’m driving them with a Shanling M6 Ultra (approx 30 hours playing on the DAP so far)
Have been listening now for approximately 2 hours straight out of the box.
Volume around 16-22 so far on Low gain setting. Sounds loud enough, I obviously don’t want to damage my ears.
First sound impressions on a few albums and tracks I know well:
Led Zeppelin II 96kHz 24Bit - Vocals are great, very accurate imo. Drums are mostly okay, guitars are fantastic. Sometimes a passage can sound congested but it could be the mastering/recording. However on some tracks the drums and hi hats sound excellent, stereo image is great. Cymbals really good. I’m enjoying the album as a whole. Nice tone/timbre to the drum skins too. (Hope my expressions are correct here)
Chet Baker Quartet, No Problem 44.1 kHz 16Bit - wonderful sound to all instruments and very accurate sounding imo. Great tone to the instruments. Chet really sounding great here. I can hear straight away the P8 will excel with Jazz.
Richard Tunnicliffe, Bach Cello Suites 192 kHz 24Bit - Stunning straight out of the gate! The bow moving across the strings is wonderful. Real bass in the cello and excellent reverb coming across. Very accurate cello imo. Can’t wait to listen to the whole album now.
Diana Krall, Turn Up The Quiet 44.1 kHz 16Bit - vocals immediately good as are all the instruments been played. Excellent double bass, guitar and piano. I’d say good weight to the notes here. Her delicacy in the vocal here is really impressive. Note decay also great imo.
So to sum up, my ears don’t hurt yet and the music sounds good so far. So maybe I have them inserted correctly. Looking forward to many hours/days listening to this rig and listening to the genres/artists I like. Mostly Classical, Acoustic, Rock, Jazz and Pop.
I assume the Performer 8 needs many hours of burn in so I’m not experiencing how it will eventually sound yet. However, I already don’t want to stop listening.
I’ll report back in a week or so to see if I made the right decision with my first IEM.