esanthosh
Skilled
Disclaimers
Let's begin with what this is NOT.
Background:
I ordered a headphone from Jaben and was surprised to find an additional IEM in the package. It's the new entry level IEM from Jaben called Hippo Epic-Sparkle. I think these are el cheapo cousins of Hippo Boom.
While this may be a Chinese New year gift, I find that Jaben does this regularly to surprise it's customers. May I add, a good marketing ploy as well - gives something to talk about in forums
There are only a few reviews so far - one from Indonesian Forum here
dfkt of abi has got it too. But do not expect his review until a few weeks later.
Build Quality:
I guess this would be priced much lower. So, it's not fair to expect great quality and HES does not disappoint on that front.
The cable does not provide any comfort whatsoever. The cable has plenty of memory as you can figure out from the photos. Within the first three minutes I tried it, pulling Clip+ out of my shirt pocket totally blanked the right ear. Some pats, adjustments and lot of four letter words later, it got fixed. I figured that the connector was the issue.
I hate to admit it, but I did not figure out that Right and Left were wrongly marked until I was nearly half an hour into my listening and started A/B-ing with other Headphones and IEMs :ashamed:
Other features:
Accessories: Two more tips and a pouch.
Isolation: Do not bother. There's none. I could stop music and strike a normal conversation. It's the most open IEM I had. I thought I had a loose seal and pushed it in. Apart from that little ear ache, there was no improvement. May be I should try different tips.
Microphonics: There's plenty of Microphonics (when cable touches your body while walking). When worn over the ear, it reduced.
Sound Quality:
They were easily driven by Clip+ even at 50% volume (For comparison, RE0 needs cranking up to 90%)
When compared against EP-630, it's got a better sound stage. But it's not wide. I could not perceive depth of the sound stage though.
But, you should pray that there are no "sh..." in the song. For instance, this is what I heard in "Points of Authority":
Well! this sibilance has been a problem with almost all their IEMs. So that was expected
I thought they were not that bad in the slow songs. I was trying Opeth's "Harvest" (4th Track of "Blackwater Park" album) and it did ok. But when the next track "The Drapery falls" went past it's melodic opening, I wish I could close my ears - there was an overwhelming amount of harshness.
For sometime, I thought it was doing something different from all other IEMs as I noticed some good effects (like the background vocals or the cymbals) like never before. Well! they were attributable to the Left-Right confusion mentioned above.
But where it fails is when it had to handle the effect of a vocal or a riff traveling from left to right. With RE0, I could "feel" it was traveling, with sparkle, it was in left ear and quickly disappeared into the right.
At first I feared that bass will drown out everything. It was thankfully not the case. Mids were good enough.
Well! that's only one hour with Left and Right inter-changed for half of that period. Let's see how it does with 100 hours burn-in.
Packing - Front
Packing - Back - The Specifications
IEM:
Let's begin with what this is NOT.
- I am not an audiophile, just someone who likes music. And this is not a review, just impressions.
- Generally, my attention span is a few minutes, so do not expect a critical and perfectly analytical review.
- And I am in Play school as far as lingo goes. So wherever I cannot find a term, I'll explain in layman terms. If I am wrong in my usage of terms anywhere, please feel free to correct me. After all, everybody should start learning somewhere.
- I got bold enough to write this impression because If you cannot join them (in terms of good ears and knowledge), Beat them (by writing on something they won't get their hands on for sometime)
Background:
I ordered a headphone from Jaben and was surprised to find an additional IEM in the package. It's the new entry level IEM from Jaben called Hippo Epic-Sparkle. I think these are el cheapo cousins of Hippo Boom.
While this may be a Chinese New year gift, I find that Jaben does this regularly to surprise it's customers. May I add, a good marketing ploy as well - gives something to talk about in forums
There are only a few reviews so far - one from Indonesian Forum here
dfkt of abi has got it too. But do not expect his review until a few weeks later.
Build Quality:
I guess this would be priced much lower. So, it's not fair to expect great quality and HES does not disappoint on that front.
The cable does not provide any comfort whatsoever. The cable has plenty of memory as you can figure out from the photos. Within the first three minutes I tried it, pulling Clip+ out of my shirt pocket totally blanked the right ear. Some pats, adjustments and lot of four letter words later, it got fixed. I figured that the connector was the issue.
I hate to admit it, but I did not figure out that Right and Left were wrongly marked until I was nearly half an hour into my listening and started A/B-ing with other Headphones and IEMs :ashamed:
Other features:
Accessories: Two more tips and a pouch.
Isolation: Do not bother. There's none. I could stop music and strike a normal conversation. It's the most open IEM I had. I thought I had a loose seal and pushed it in. Apart from that little ear ache, there was no improvement. May be I should try different tips.
Microphonics: There's plenty of Microphonics (when cable touches your body while walking). When worn over the ear, it reduced.
Sound Quality:
They were easily driven by Clip+ even at 50% volume (For comparison, RE0 needs cranking up to 90%)
When compared against EP-630, it's got a better sound stage. But it's not wide. I could not perceive depth of the sound stage though.
But, you should pray that there are no "sh..." in the song. For instance, this is what I heard in "Points of Authority":
Well! this sibilance has been a problem with almost all their IEMs. So that was expected
I thought they were not that bad in the slow songs. I was trying Opeth's "Harvest" (4th Track of "Blackwater Park" album) and it did ok. But when the next track "The Drapery falls" went past it's melodic opening, I wish I could close my ears - there was an overwhelming amount of harshness.
For sometime, I thought it was doing something different from all other IEMs as I noticed some good effects (like the background vocals or the cymbals) like never before. Well! they were attributable to the Left-Right confusion mentioned above.
But where it fails is when it had to handle the effect of a vocal or a riff traveling from left to right. With RE0, I could "feel" it was traveling, with sparkle, it was in left ear and quickly disappeared into the right.
At first I feared that bass will drown out everything. It was thankfully not the case. Mids were good enough.
Well! that's only one hour with Left and Right inter-changed for half of that period. Let's see how it does with 100 hours burn-in.
Packing - Front
Packing - Back - The Specifications
IEM:
