Just like Alice I disappeared down a rabbithole a few years back.
But the world I entered was one that belongs to the audiophile (where they speak a completely different language to the rest of us mere mortals).
Now, don’t get me wrong; I’ve had a wonderful experience despite the title of this post – which may give you the wrong impression.
This is a VERY expensive but rewarding habbit; although I do question the value proposition of (but am intrigued by) the Oriolus Traillii, for example, which has received very good reviews in https://www.head-fi.org/.
This post relates to problems I have had with my last three sets of IEM’s (in ear monitors) and how these issues were resolved; in other words it’s a customer service review.
I accept that shit happens and that I have been particularly unlucky; but despite the inconvenience of a repair, if the company selling the product treat you right then everyone should be happy.
The first set of what I thought were very expensive iem’s (how wrong was I!?) were a pair of custom emotions made in England by https://www.acscustom.com. I still have these and they are awesome.
But they developed a fault with the 5 pin cable connector used at the time; I sent these back and acscustom remade them for me with a 2 pin connector and they have worked flawlessly ever since.
Next up were a pair of 64audio Nios which developed a rattle; these went all the way back to Vancouver, USA and came back to me after a month, rattle free…. Lovely.
In December 2020 I bought a brand new pair of Sony’s ier-z1r and yesterday after closer inspection of the left connection – which was detaching from the iem rather too easily I thought – I discovered that the tiny copper sleeve which should have been on the terminus of the cable connector pin was actually in the female receptacle of the body of the iem.
Now, I had noticed this before, but assumed that the left and right pins of the connectors were different diameters by clever design – to prevent the user connecting the left side to the right iem and vice versa.
It was only because I bought some MMCX to 2Pin adapters (which didn’t fit the left side), on the recommendation of a fellow head-fier, in order to use my 2 pin cables with the ier-z1r that the penny finally dropped.
Final confirmation was this; the Sonys come with not one but two sets of cables and the second pair wouldn’t fit on one side either.
So, back to Sony they go!
I’ll let you know how I get on!
