[bigbeans]

 

[Evshrug]

Frontpage worthy! Nice write up G!

It is, but they may wait for the inevitable full review. But even so… this was a joy to read!

 

[Chris Kaoss]

Sennheiser IE900 First Impressions

​

This is not going to be a full review, but rather my first take on the IE900, having spent most of the last week getting to know them.

Full disclosure: Sennheiser loaned me the IE900 in exchange for my honest review, without fear or favour, or any expectations from me (other than I have it wrapped up within a month). I am required to return them to Sennheiser once I’ve written my full review, but fully intend to purchase them as my new reference high-end IEM for serious listening. That’s probably a bit of a spoiler for what’s to follow…

Package, presentation and accessories. I’ll cover the whole unboxing experience in my full review, but it’s fair to say the IE900 is very well packaged, beautifully presented and generously accessorised for a premium IEM. It’s not quite hitting the levels I’ve seen with some other, admittedly more niche flagships from the likes of Empire Ears, Sony, and some of the better-known boutique Asian brands, but it’s not spartan or lacking in any way either.

Everything you need comes in the box, including six pairs of custom tuned tips (more on this later), three separate cables terminated for 3.5mm single-ended, 2.5mm balanced and 4.4mm balanced respectively, and a cleaning tool for removing the earwax you’re bound to get all over the mesh grilles in the tips. Aside from this you get a certificate of authenticity (important for when the fakes start flooding the market), and a well-made carry case to hold the IEMs, tips and a spare cable.

​

Build quality, design and comfort. I’ll keep this short – the IE900 is probably the best made, most comfortable IEM I’ve used to date. It’s fold-over design is ridiculously small and compact, and you have to wonder how they got everything they needed to fit into the small, precision-machined aluminum shells. Sadly, none of the included silicone tips suit my ears (and other than Dekoni Bulletz I generally dislike foam tips), but with a box full of third-party options, finding tips to match was fairly straightforward.

Apparently the Sennheiser tips have a groove that slots into the lip on the IEM nozzles to allow for two insertion depths, but this obviously doesn’t work with regular tips. No stress though, between Acoustune 07 (my go-to tips), JVC Spiral Dot, AZLA Sedna Short and Final E-type tips, you’re not going to be short of options that fit well and sound great.

I’ve also read reports that the mesh grille in Sennheiser’s tips is there for a reason (to regulate the treble), but even if that’s true the effect would be subtle, and based on what I’m hearing with Acoustune tips, you don’t need any filtering to make these sound good (in fact, I much prefer the sound of the 07 tips to stock). As I always advise anyone trying out a new IEM for the first time, spend some time with different tips and hear for yourself what this does to the sound.

But I digress. Before we get to the all-important sound impressions, just one more thing: I actually like the stock cable. I don’t always say that, and in fact on both my super high-end IEMs (64 Audio Fourte and Empire Ears Legend X) I didn’t like the stock cable at all. While slightly microphonic, the IE900 cable is covered in a smooth plastic finish that makes it tangle free and very soft to the touch, with slightly thicker earhooks that easily shape to your ears and hold the featherlight earpieces in place. If you’re someone that struggles with memory wire guides like I sometimes do, rest assured this is a very good implementation, and just a little squeeze on the cable as it rounds the top of your ears is enough to get me a good fit every time.

​

Sound impressions. I’m not someone that needs to spend weeks and weeks listening to an IEM to ‘get it’. I pretty much ‘got’ the IE900 after listening for about ten minutes. After that, the character of the sound slowly revealed itself like layers, song after song, genre after genre.

Unlike many flagship IEMs (especially the mutli-driver behemoths that have become the norm), the IE900 doesn’t have an obvious ‘wow factor’ on first listen. That’s a good thing, and you’ll see why shortly. Instead, the first thought that came to mind as I plugged the 4.4mm jack into my HiBy R8 DAP was that it ‘sounds so right’.

Katie Pruitt, one of the outstanding singer-songwriters of the past year (and now one of my all-time favourite artists) has a singing (and recording) style on her debut album Expectations that can sometimes – sometimes – expose a metallic grain in the trailing edge of her hauntingly beautiful voice. This is particularly apparent in IEMs that don’t shy away from treble, or that push the upper midrange too much (both of which seem to be a trend right now). But as soon as the piano keys that introduce the album’s last track, ‘It’s Always Been You’, started playing, I almost chuckled at the irony in that title.

As Katie started singing, I braced myself for the inevitable high-pitched grate that follows her otherwise sugar sweet notes and…it wasn’t there. I mean, I could hear the coarseness, but it wasn’t metallic, nor did it grate. It was just, real. In the 20 seconds it took for her to finish the first verse with the words ‘Everything was a dark shade of grey’, I had already heard what I needed to hear, and it wasn’t dark or grey.

There’s a part where Katie belts out a note (2:55 if you want the timestamp) that often poses a problem for some IEMs (and most headphones) I’ve heard it with: resonance. The notes (and pitch) are so intense that they bounce around and reflect inside the IEM or headphone cavity, which can be fatiguing and usually has me reaching for the volume wheel, but not here. I actually skipped back and played it again, this time louder, not quite believing I heard it right the first time, and again, no resonance, no ‘shout’, just the passion without any pain.

​

I cycled through a few other tracks that I use to test my preferred genre (female singer-songwriter, in case you haven’t guessed), and with each one I sank further back in the sofa, letting the music wash over me like a gentle breeze. Beyries’ ‘Alone’, Jillette Johnson’s ‘Bunny’, Brandi Carlile’s ‘The Story’, one after the other I was struggling to pick out the usual ‘flaws’ or quirks that so many IEMs present, especially on first listen. But instead of flaws I found myself forgetting about the gear and falling headlong into the music itself.

Everything I was hearing speaks to the fundamental tonality of the IE900, which I can only describe as laid-back, balanced and natural, but this short description alone doesn’t do it justice. To my ears, it’s laid-back because it’s not aggressive, not in-your-face. It’s balanced for the same reason, because it doesn’t draw attention to any particular frequency, and yet is able to highlight certain frequencies if the music calls for it to do so. And it’s natural because, for want of a better description, it makes me believe I’m listening to the singer, not a recording of the singer.

I can count on one hand the number of IEMs and headphones that I’ve heard that have all three of these traits, and all of them not only cost an order of magnitude more than the IE900, but also make use of multiple drivers to do so.

As I started switching up genres, I kept wondering how exactly these tiny IEMs, with their tiny 7mm dynamic drivers, were creating the huge sound I was hearing. Reference tracks like the Eagles’ ‘Hotel California’, presented live on the K2 HD edition of Hell Freezes Over, sound so lifelike, it’s as if I’m stood in the inner circle of the performance, the crowd around and behind me, the distinctive shakers perfectly rendered first to my right, then to my left, and the guitars – each with their own character – adding to the layers of sound. The drums, when they hit, hit deep. I could almost feel them in my chest, a great indicator of a top-shelf bass response, and one of the first things I check for with any IEM.

Finally, the vocals, rich and earthy, with nothing between me and the microphone. When Don Henly trails off the famous line (timestamp 4:35-4:40) ‘What a nice surprise, bring your alibiiiiiis’ (my emphasis), the texture, tone and warble in his voice are so distinct, he may as well be in the room with me. Again, the IE900 was doing all this without calling attention to itself. It was effortless, as if that’s just how the song was recorded and that’s how it’s meant to be heard. I wasn’t being force-fed the details with tuning tricks, but since I was already invested in the music, the detail was just there to pick out as and when I want it.

​

I’m going to spend more time in the main review breaking down and examining specifics, like bass/midrange/treble quality, quantity and emphasis, but I just want to make mention of one thing that’s impressed me time again since the first session: the bass on the IE900 is probably the most deep hitting, articulate and emotive I’ve heard from any single dynamic driver IEM.

In my opinion, the IE900’s bass is bested only by one other IEM (which I happen to own): the Legend X. For the record, the Legend X is a 7-driver hybrid IEM with dual 9mm dynamic driver ‘subwoofers’ in each earpiece tuned specifically for bass.

While I made a point of kicking off these impressions with the vocal quality of the IE900, which to me is among the best, if not the best I’ve heard from any IEM based on my preference for warmer, wetter, more organic vocals that neither compromise or force perceived detail, my make-or-break as far as sound quality is concerned is the bass. It’s the foundation for everything else that follows. I can have the sweetest, most uplifting vocals painting rainbows on my soul, if the drums hit and I can’t feel them in my chest (or in the case of IEMs, my cheeks), the illusion collapses and takes me right out of the music.

I’m not sure what voodoo magic Jermo Koehnke, Sennheiser product manager and lead engineer on the IE900 team, used to tune and shape the bass response on these IEMs (and I’ll examine the technology behind it in more detail in the full review), but – and I’m repeating myself here – it sounds so right. Kick drums kick with that combination of deep hardness and gorgeous decay, guitar strums reverberate and echo with palpable texture, and piano strikes have just the right amount of dense thud and growl that will make you believe the piano is right beside you.

And not for a millisecond is the bass too full, boomy, bloated or muddy. These are words reserved for lesser IEMs, even when they cost multiples more than the IE900. It’s also not limp or drab, the words I use to describe bass that’s supposedly tuned ‘just to fill in and support the midrange’ (like most BA bass or overdamped dynamic drivers). To which I say, why even bother?

​

Rounding off my sound impressions, a word on technicalities. While I’ve spent most (ok, all) of my time describing the tonality of the IE900, it’s not because I’m avoiding talking about its technicalities. These are the so-called intangible, unmeasurable qualities like soundstage, instrument separation, imaging, clarity, resolution, dynamics and timbre. You’ll be glad to know…the IE900 has them all!

Jokes aside, this speaks more to the effect the IE900 is having on me. I’ve spent many years ‘climbing the ladder’, so to speak, learning, listening to and choosing IEMs as I discovered more about what I like (and don’t like) about each one with the music I listen to, to the point where it almost became an obsession to find the very best of the very best. To me that used to mean the best technicalities – that list of factors I mentioned above – because that’s what most people to use to compare like-for-like in the audio gear world.

The reason I’m telling you all this here, without going into specifics, is because the IE900 is changing all that. I sensed that, contrary to what I normally do when starting to asses an IEM, I wasn’t analysing the sound as much as I was enjoying the music. Now that I’m focused on putting thoughts to paper and actually listening for technical acuity, the IE900 is not only excelling at those I find important – like stage size – but isn’t lacking in any of the others either. And by not lacking I mean it’s playing on the same field as IEMs I consider to be exceedingly technical. But it’s doing it with a sense of musicality that many of those analytical IEMs lack, and in doing so, its technical ability becomes less important.

Rest assured I will go into specifics in the full review, so if you’re curious whether or not the IE900 is wider, or more resolving, or less dynamic than your favourites, I’ll cover it all. But I think I’ll stop here before these first impressions become more of a ramble than they already are. I’m sure you get the idea – and if you don’t, watch this space, because my full review is being written as you read this, and you won’t want to miss it!

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Closing thoughts. The IE900 caught me by surprise. I believed it was coming my way, but I wasn’t sure if Sennheiser had actually sent it, such was the clamour from the buying public following its equally surprising announcement and fast tracked release.

So, when it arrived in a nondescript box last week, the IE900 was last thing on my mind. Thankfully I had time on my hands, and that same evening I sat down for my first listen. I haven’t stopped listening. Since then it’s been a chaotic, unstructured, on-a-whim affair so far. Call it a honeymoon if you will, but I’m enjoying it so much I’ve hardly put another IEM in my ears for a week.

It’s time to get back to Earth, have a cold shower, and relook at the IE900 using a more critical lens. I’m not sure how that will change our relationship – I mean, can you go back to being just friends after being passionate lovers? I promise to do my very best to describe Sennheiser’s Magnum Opus as objectively as possible in this utterly subjective hobby, especially with the future of the company’s consumer division seemingly up in the air.

Until then, I hope I’ve managed to give you the essence of what I believe to be a very special IEM indeed.

Nice write up.
Aaaaand . . . .



now, i hate you!

 

[musicday]

Good first time impressions.

 

[feverfive]

Took delivery of my set about 45 minutes ago, so figured I'd provide initial thoughts after such a lengthy audition period, hahahahahaha.

Seriously, I have had quite a bit of gear run through my hands since coming back to the hobby a little over a year ago. Before exiting the hobby 5+ years prior, I had transitioned entirely to portable/transportable, and also dove into hybrids (as a lover of DD bass but also desiring the detail retrieval capabilities of BA at the time). I accepted the coherence issues and moved on with life.

It'll take a bit of time (<--relevant term here, right?) to get used to these single DD sets again. Because it's the timing...the coherence, that I missed and need to get used to again. Early returns are promising, because I tend to like/dislike immediately, and rarely change my mind in a drastic way when it comes to audio gear. And I like these immediately.

 

[feverfive]

Hmmm, aren't the ear pieces supposed to be stamped with the SN? The plate on the back of the case displays SN, but see attached pic...the left ear piece is marked with model number, but no SN, and right ear piece has no markings at all. Maybe I'm misremembering?

 

[xenithon]

Hmmm, aren't the ear pieces supposed to be stamped with the SN? The plate on the back of the case displays SN, but see attached pic...the left ear piece is marked with model number, but no SN, and right ear piece has no markings at all. Maybe I'm misremembering?

Looking at the photos in @gLer ’s first impressions it looks right - just IE 900 on one ear piece and the other with no markings.

 

[Scubadevils]

Hmmm, aren't the ear pieces supposed to be stamped with the SN? The plate on the back of the case displays SN, but see attached pic...the left ear piece is marked with model number, but no SN, and right ear piece has no markings at all. Maybe I'm misremembering?

Serial number is only on the case and model on one earpiece.

 

[gLer]

Hmmm, aren't the ear pieces supposed to be stamped with the SN? The plate on the back of the case displays SN, but see attached pic...the left ear piece is marked with model number, but no SN, and right ear piece has no markings at all. Maybe I'm misremembering?

No, that's correct. No SN on the earpieces, only on the case. Those faceplates are too small for when the sales figures hit seven digits

I want to add a note about the bass. The ie900 excels and goes unbested in synth bass. But when it comes to acoustic instruments like drums it does not excel. As you said it is unaggressive and it will be noticed. Here it is bested by the Dunu Luna in these aspects (with the compromise that Dunu Luna does not excel in synth bass). Dunu Luna gives a stronger excursion impact that the ie900 lacks for things. And will give a much better snap to drums. And Luna will give the benchmark decay for drum sounds.

Interesting. I've heard many good things about Luna, but bass excursion wasn't one of them.

Out of curiosity, which tips are you using? I found the bass with the stock tips a bit soft (likely I wasn't getting a good seal), and indeed the IE900 seems to be very tip sensitive.

I've tried it with about 6 or 7 tips of varying hardness (I don't like foam at all, softens the bass too much). Finally settled on Acoustune 07 tips, mainly because the bass kick, punch and rumble was more visceral than any of the others. In fact the bass response bested the Fourte in terms of punch and slam. This is not a slow bass - though likely not as fast as Luna's beryllium DD bass - though I often find beryllium bass too fast in decay and therefore not completely natural.

Anyway, just wanted to make the point that tips will change the sound of these IEMs, and your favourites will depend what you're prioritising in the sound.

 

[feverfive]

I had the Luna for only a couple weeks lat last Fall, and yeah FWIW, OP's description of the bass wasn't my experience either, but I won't debate the point as I feel I also didn't have an extended time with them and a paucity of source+eartip swapping at the time. As someone who appreciates DUNU, I was actually a bit disappointed, but it was actually the upper mid/lower treble that I couldn't quite "get."

 

[soundblast75]

The bass on Legend X was quite uncontrolled and ultimately bloated, ie900s bass is precise and sweet, leagues ahead imo

 

[gLer]

The bass on Legend X was quite uncontrolled and ultimately bloated, ie900s bass is precise and sweet, leagues ahead imo

As much as I love the IE900's bass, can't quite agree there. Legend X is still the king of bass in the IEM world. It needs a long burn-in/play-in time for those subs to settle, and also ALOT if power and control from a good (neutral) source. Then and only then will you hear what they're capable of. No question IE900 bass is TOTL however.

 

[Scubadevils]

My tip experiments continue, CP100+ arrived today and they are very good.

 

[feverfive]

My tip experiments continue, CP100+ arrived today and they are very good.

Huh, I have some of those too. Will give them a try. So far, about 3 hours in...dang, didn't realize I've had these in my ears for so long....and really liking my ol' workhorse, AZLA SednaEarfit (regular light).

EDIT: actually, just the CP100, not the + version

 

[Scubadevils]

Huh, I have some of those too. Will give them a try. So far, about 3 hours in...dang, didn't realize I've had these in my ears for so long....and really liking my ol' workhorse, AZLA SednaEarfit (regular light).

EDIT: actually, just the CP100, not the + version

Are you happy with them so far?!

In terms of tips, I've found quite a few now that are very comfortable and sound great. Probably still lean towards either the Comply foam or Symbio foam.