Tag Archives: Shure

Shure SRH1840 Initial Impressions

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Impres­sions so far:

After about 25 hours of burn in period — Com­pared to Sennheiser HD800, they’re not as dynamic sound­ing or as detailed and slightly less bass, but we’re talk­ing about half the price of an HD800 here.  Com­pared to AKG Q701s, the SRH 1840 has a more pro­nounced bass.

Very com­fort­able and feels light on your head (267g w/out cables).  Due to its size (smaller than HD800 or AKG Q701) and light weight, the SRH1840 doesn’t feel over­whelm­ing when worn.

more to fol­low soon…

Shure SRH1840
Shure SRH1840

Orotofon e-Q5 Review

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Ortofon e-Q5 and box
Orto­fon e-Q5 and box

Ini­tial Impres­sions:
The Orto­fon e-Q5 is a bright, accu­rate sound­ing IEM.  Slightly heav­ier as a result of it’s solid alu­minum acoustic cham­ber.  With a fit that isn’t the most secure, when com­pared to Shure or West­one IEMs.

The Sound: 9 / 10
I have been lis­ten­ing to the e-Q5 for the last 3 weeks and I have to hon­estly say that I’ve grown to love them.  At first I thought they were lack­ing in bass, but as I lis­tened to them for a longer dura­tion, I didn’t miss the bass much and really appre­ci­ated how detailed and crys­tal clear the highs sounded.  The upper mids were clean and airy.  Which leads me to the sound stage of e-Q5.  So far the e-Q5 has pro­vided one of the best sound stage I’ve heard on any IEMs.   Even though the ear tips were plugged straight into my ears, the sound encom­passed my ears like I was wear­ing head­phones.   As men­tioned above, bass isn’t e-Q5’s strong point, but when lis­ten­ing to music with lots of bass, the e-Q5 pre­sented a tight although slightly thin response.  The use of West­one E6 head­phone amp made the e-Q5 extremely plea­sur­able to lis­ten to as the amp pro­vided enough bass for music to sound fun (noted in West­one AMP’d review).

Ortofon e-Q5 and nano
Orto­fon e-Q5 and nano

The Looks: 9 / 10
The Orto­fon e-Q5 comes in red, black, and sil­ver.  The red anodized alu­minum I reviewed was the first thing I noticed about these IEMs.  The red chrome alu­minum and it’s cylin­dri­cal shape makes the e-Q5 look very mod­ern and chic.  WIth sil­ver accent on the bot­tom, these IEMs look like state of the art elec­tron­ics pieces.  When you wear them, they stick out like Com­bos crackers.

Function: 8 / 10
I tested the e-Q5s in var­i­ous envi­ron­ments and activ­i­ties and here are the results: pro­vides great sound iso­la­tion for com­mut­ing and lis­ten­ing to music at home in peace.  For light car­dio the e-Q5s stay in your ears firm enough.  How­ever, for inten­sive work­out I found myself read­just­ing the IEMs for a firmer fit. The Com­ply foam tips (included with sil­i­con tips) pro­vided a securer fit for my ears. The trick to achiev­ing a securer fit is to put the wire over your ears. This helps to sup­port the weight and the IEMs don’t droop down.
Dis­tin­guish­ing between right (red) and left (black) was very easy as the e-Q5 comes colour coded (bot­tom of the cham­ber).  The bot­tom part of the cable is flex­i­ble, soft, and thick pro­vid­ing tan­gle free usage.  The upper left and right part of the cable which con­nect to the alu­minum cham­bers is thin­ner and as a result prone to micro­phon­ics.  If you loop the cable around your ears then you have bet­ter pro­tec­tion against micro­phon­ics as  the Y part of the cable becomes shorter and less prone to come in con­tact with your clothes. Loop­ing the cable around your ears seem a bit awk­ward as the IEMs are not designed to be worn this way, but a) pro­vided a securer fit, b) pro­tects against microphonics.

Ortofon e-Q5 closeup
Orto­fon e-Q5 closeup

Boom for your Buck Rat­ing: 9 / 10
Priced at $300 CAD, these IEMs sit between Shure SE 425 and SE 535 in sound and price per­for­mance.  Cheaper than Klip­sch X10i by $50 dol­lars, the X10i pro­vides bet­ter bass and comes with a remote con­trol, while the e-Q5 has bet­ter highs and sound stage.

Total: 35 / 40
If you like pre­cise, real­is­tic music then e-Q5’s sound sig­na­ture is the per­fect solu­tion for you.

Pros: crys­tal clear highs, good sound stage, looks great
Cons: slightly heavy as a result the fit isn’t as secure as some IEMs

Note: Orto­fon is a Dan­ish com­pany famous for mak­ing great phono car­tridges.  And Oro­ton Japan pro­duces the e-Q5 IEMs.  The e-Q7, it’s older sib­ling, has been discontinued.

Shure SE315 Review

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Shure SE 315 and box

Shure SE 315 with box

Ini­tial Impres­sions:
Shure SE 315 is like a mid­dle child, a solid per­former in every aspect (bass, mids, and tre­ble), but doesn’t gain the atten­tion that SE 215 or SE 425/535 receives.

The Looks: 8/10
The Shure SE 315 is slightly big­ger than the SE 215 with more rounded edges. For some­one with smaller ears, the SE 315 looks a bit over­sized.  The black model is painted in lac­quer black and the SE 315 model num­ber and Shure name is embossed in sil­ver.  This makes for a very clean mod­ern look­ing IEM.  The looks won’t wow any­one, but they’re aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing set of IEMs.  As with the rest of Shure SE line, the SE 315 has mem­ory wires around the ear so that you can loop them around your ears and the nice thick cables are detach­able and Kevlar rein­forced for dura­bil­ity.  As a result you have a cable that’s very sturdy and doesn’t tan­gle up easily.

The Sound: 8/10
As I men­tioned above, the SE 315 is solid in low/mids/highs.  Com­pared to the SE 215 it has cleaner more detailed mids and highs.  I think the SE 315 per­forms very well with the mids but the highs are a bit flat.  Lis­ten­ing to jazz/classical or music with many nat­ural instru­ments and vocals in the higher fre­quency brings out it’s lim­i­ta­tion.  But I wouldn’t say it’s a big weak­ness.  Just com­par­a­tively speak­ing to it’s older broth­ers (SE 425/535), the highs are a bit lack­ing in detail and crisp­ness. As for the bass, it’s a bit recessed and more on the neu­tral side so if you’re a bass head, you might not be impressed.  I like bass myself, but I didn’t find the bass to be weak or defi­cient.  The lows are not as tight as SE425s, but with SE425s you’re going up a level with 2 micro dri­vers vs. 1 micro dri­ver for SE 315s.  I’ll get back to updat­ing the sound qual­ity of these IEMs after 100 — 200 hours of burn in period.

Shure SE 315 closeup

Shure SE 315 closeup

Func­tion: 8/10
As with all of the SE line, the SE 315 has great noise iso­la­tion and they stay on your ears.  So they’re great for jog­ging, work­ing out, or com­mut­ing.  Also, if you live in a noisy house­hold they’re great for block­ing out the stres­sors of scream­ing chil­dren (blocks out around 30 dB).  For home enter­tain­ment  like watch­ing movies or lis­ten­ing to your CD/FLAC/Lossless music, I would invest in head­phones which pro­vide bet­ter sound stage.

Boom for the Buck Rat­ing: 8/10
The ques­tion is for twice the price of an SE 215, how do they com­pare? I would pay the extra dough for clearer more defined mids and highs. But thats just me. For IEMs hov­er­ing around upper $100 to lower $200 (CAD) range, it’s tough to find bet­ter IEMs.

Shure SE315 3.5mm jack

Shure SE 315 3.5mm jack with round end

Total: 32/40
Noth­ing too spec­tac­u­lar or infe­rior to out­line.
Pros: great all around in sound qual­ity, noise iso­la­tion, sturdy cable,
Cons: as with all the SE line, if you use mp3 players/phones with a case that has small open­ing and the jack socket is recessed  then the 3.5mm plug won’t fit

 

Shure SE215 Review

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Shure SE 215 and box

Shure SE 215 and box

Ini­tial Impres­sions:
Wow, Shure SE215 actu­ally sounds good.   To con­tex­tu­al­ize, Shure SE210 was my first foray into IEMs around 4 years ago when I was work­ing in Korea.   Then I grew out of them as I moved to Klip­sch Image X5.  As there was a notice­able dif­fer­ence between the two, I stopped using the SE210.  Fast for­ward to the present. The SE215 is a dif­fer­ent IEM than the SE210 in appear­ance and sound.

The Sound: 8.5 / 10
I was sur­prised by it’s sound qual­ity.  The bass really rocks and the mids and highs sound clean and not over­whelmed by the bass.  I tested them out on dif­fer­ent gen­res like rock, elec­tronic, R&B, Jazz, and Clas­sic.   And they all sounded very good to my untrained ears.  It was great to lis­ten to 50 Cent’s “In da Club” again with these IEMs.

Shure SE215 hanging

Shure SE215 hanging

The Looks: 8.5 / 10
As I men­tioned before SE215 is dif­fer­ent than the SE210.   Most notably, it has detach­able cables.  So If you dam­age the cable, although thick and sturdy (usu­ally the around the ears or the jack area), you can replaced it your­self.  I think the entire Shure SE line looks very mod­ern and sleek as it fits snug­gly in your ears.   The SE215 is the small­est in the fam­ily as it only has a sin­gle “micro­driver”.   The SE215 also comes in black or translu­cent.  The translu­cent mod­els look like a shrimp in some ways.

Shure SE215 and SE210

Shure SE215 (bot­tom) and SE210 (top)

Func­tion: 8/10

The SE215s are great for every­day use like com­mut­ing, at home, or for work­ing out.  As the SE215 is a noise iso­lat­ing IEM, you get peace from the outer world (you can even hear your­self breath).  They’re like wear­ing earplugs as you have to fit the foams in your ears. As a result, the IEMs are tricky to wear because you have to squeeze the foams and twist them in your ears to form a per­fect seal.  Once that’s accom­plished you have very fit IEMs that stay entrenched in your ears.  The over the ears and foam design is a boon and a bane.  For exam­ple, if you’re a jog­ger they’re per­fect (as often than not sweat com­bined with run­ning equals nor­mal ear­buds slip­ping off), but if you’re in an envi­ron­ment where you have to take them off fre­quently, then it becomes a has­sle.  On a side note, I wore them a lot in the gym and some­times the cable got caught as I was doing some bicep curls and they popped right off my ears.   This can be a bit of a shock as they fit tight around your ears.  So be care­ful. You don’t want to break your IEMs due to the cables stretch­ing. And one more thing, if you’re using an mp3 player or a phone with a case doesn’t have a recess for the jack area (e.g. my iPhone 4 case), the 3.5mm jack can’t be plugged in.

Shure SE215 and nano

Shure SE215 and nano

Boom for the Buck Rat­ing: 8.5 / 10
Can’t say enough about the qual­ity of sound for the price.

Total: 33.5 / 10
Pros: looks good, detach­able cables, they stay on your ears, per­for­mance to price ratio.
Cons: learn­ing curve for putting them on, the process of wear­ing them is not as con­ve­nient (for some peo­ple), some mp3/phone cases are not com­pat­i­ble with the jack

Shure CBL-M+-K / CBL-M-K Review (Sept 26th/11):
Review by: Andrew Sit

After lis­ten­ing to the SE215 almost daily for 2/3 months straight, I can con­firm that the cable does pro­vide a sub­tle increase in sound qual­ity. I notice slightly deeper bass and clearer mids.  With these things (esp. cable upgrades) it is so slight, I hon­estly believe if you were to lis­ten to the cables back to back it would be indeed hard to tell.  But, I do con­firm that there is indeed an improvement!…
Also depend­ing on pref­er­ence, the lack of mem­ory wire, and the fact that the cable con­necter is at an angle.  I find the upgrade cable MANY times more com­fort­able to wear than the stock cable.
I always thought the orig­i­nal cable was good, finally Shure has used softer cables that pro­duce less rub­bing dis­tur­bance (micro phon­ics ).  But the upgrade cable is even more flex­i­ble and more comfortable.