MEElectronics M9 Review
Intro
Last week I made a bit of an impulse buy. I was not really in the market for new in hear earbuds/monitors but I bought some. Previously I had been using the older of my 2 pair of Sennheiser CX300s. I have had these for probably 4-5 years and really liked them. Recently I thought one ear as not outputting as much sound as the others and they had become more muddy in tone. I have been listening to a lot of podcasts and audiobooks recently so it was still ok. Well I was browsing around on Slickdeals and saw a thread all about new in ear monitors in this under $30 price range. Recently it seems that there are a lot of new upstart companies that are making fantastic sounding products for fractions of the price.
Build Quality
The build quality of the M9s are quite good. The heads are a hard metal shell and the metal looks to be anodized. I ended up with the silver buds because they were a little cheaper than black. The cord seems pretty sturdy. It is kind of slick feeling so hopefully this helps avoid knots. The cord is in a Y configuration. This is a personal preference but I much prefer the J cord style of the CX300’s. This will take a little getting use to. The plug end is bent at a 45 degree angle and I think this will work well for people who wrap the phones around a device or put the device in a pocket while using it. For my devices its a nice tight fit that really clicks in. The one area I can ding build quality is the speaker grill area. On my CX300’s its made of a wire mesh, on the M9 it looks to be a cardboard cover. I am a little concerned with how this will hold up over time, especially with sweat. I like to wear my IEM while biking.
Sound Quality
I would categorize myself somewhere between enthusiast and audiophile. I don’t have the budget to spend thousands on speakers and headphones every year but do enjoy quality. I would say I favor bass but like crisp clear full range either. Muddy strong bass for me is a pass. I tested with a variety of music. I am recently into electronic,dubstep, house stuff, but balanced this with Tech N9ne new album “All 6’s & 7’s” because of the hard hitting base but sharp clear fast lyrics. I also used Silversun Pickups, Incubus, and John Mayer. The later because this is an excellently mastered album with fine detail in the guitars.
The M9’s are advertised as for bass heads and I would not argue with that. The bass is strong but not overpowering for my taste. The bass improved as the headphones burned in (See below) the bass becamse more accurate and cleaner. The mids and highs are very crisp, with the highs maybe being too crisp and strong for my liking. This can be improved with EQ but isnt a huge thing. I think I will get use to it the more I listen. I prefer the crispness to the not as crisp mids and highs of my CX300s.
The soundstage is pretty good for in ear ear buds. Its no where nearly as large as my Sennheiser 595 cans but there is several factors of price difference too. The soundstage is large and improvement over the cx300’s.
These headphones do need a burn in period in my opinion. I was not impressed with them on first listen but I played music through them over night for 2 nights and the phones improved quite a bit. Tones mellowed out and some of the harshness of the mids and highs wore off. I would think the more I use them the more this will improve.
Fit/Noise Reducing ability
Many people do not like in ear headphones because of the fit. They say they the sound quality is poor. This is 100% down to fit. Companies need to really stress this in instructions. Without the proper fit all in ear earbuds will sound terrible. The proper fit transforms them. This said I am still experimenting with the fit of my M9’s. I really want the double flanged versions to work for me but I don't think it will for me because they are a bit large. I do wish they had a couple of sizes of the double flanged versions but for the money your still getting a great value.
These are a ported design. The port is directly opposite of the speaker driver. It is a small hole in the metal housing. My CX300s were sealed and this worked great for noisy things and riding my bike into the wind. The ported design of the M9 still seemed to work pretty well when mowing but I did have some trouble when riding my bike. The wind noise was more noticeable than I expected. I may stick with my second pair of CX300s when riding at windy times.
Other
The amount of extras these come with is impressive for the price. The case is nice, I don't see using it much as its not big enough to put a phone or ipod touch into, but you could fit a shuffle easily into it. The airplane adapter is super nice. I have always wanted one of these but don't travel enough to buy one. Looking forward to trying it out. They came with 3 sizes of one flange ear tips in the bass boost (black) silicone, 1 size of double tip bass boos material. Also 1 pair of double flange tips in a balanced silicone (gray). I found the little covers a little hard to fit on but they all seem to stay.
Comparison to the CX300’s
My CX300’s have been my old reliable workhorse. I do everything in them without worry. I accepted their falts of having some muddy sound (Part of this was due the excessive wear I think I might have on my original pair). I must say that the new M9’s are better just about everywhere and I wont hesitate recommending these to anyone in the market for in ear buds for $20.
Conclusion
I bought my M9’s at Amazon for $16.99 and for the money I would say these are a fantastic value. These are so much better than any of the included headphones that come with any music player it really should be an automatic upgrade for anyone. While I have not experienced the really high end in earbuds and IEM’s I can say that the M9’s as a whole are the best I have heard. They are not without falts but I think I will get use to some of these. Time will tell how much I end up using them in the next few months. For less than $20 its very hard to go wrong.
Will update with a photo tonight.
StrawberryJam, DJClay & SFS at The Bourbon in Lincoln NE Photos
Thursday February 25, 2010 some friends had asked me to come take some photos of them playing at The Bourbon Theater in Lincoln. Since I just got my new Canon 7D I went and tried out the camera. Wow am I impressed. The ability to shoot at high ISO is amazing when coming from the 20D. The auto focus is good but I need to learn abit more about it before I have it down perfect. I am really impressed with the video ability of the camera and the audio recording properties were pretty good as well.
StrawberryJam
Make sure to watch the video in 720P!
DJClay
http://www.myspace.com/djclaymusic
SFS
http://www.myspace.com/sfslincoln
Make sure to watch the video in 720P!
To view all of these photos and more in high resolution follow this link to the big gallery http://liquidretro.net/photo/gallery3/TheBourbon/
Mini3 Headphone Amp Build
This past week I built an AMB labs Mini3 headphone amplifier for my Sennheiser HD595 headphones. The amp is still burning in but so far I am very impressed. It really helps when playing audio through my computer and especially through my iPod. The build was very fun. I soldered my first surface mount components. I also built it first time around correctly with no problems. The case is also great. So far I am very impressed. Here are some pictures of the finished project.
MuxTape, Personal Mix Tapes!
I ran across a cool website the other day. www.muxtape.com It allows you to upload 12 of your own MP3 files of songs you like and put them in any order you choose. You end up creating your own mix tape but in a digital sense. Its has RSS built in so once you find some one you like watch their feed to see what new music they add. The site is a great way to share music with your friends and online communities. Check out the site and upload your own songs to create your own MuxTape.
Get 5 Free Songs From iTunes (FACEBOOK REQ) + Update
I found this tonight on DIGG (http://digg.com/apple/5_Free_iTunes_songs_For_Facebook_Users) and thought it was worth a repost. You get 5 free songs in iTunes with it. I tried it and it works great. Enjoy 
Directions:
-Log in to Facebook
-Search for "ticketmaster live"
-Join the group
-After joining at the top of the page will be a code for 5 free songs.
-Copy the code
-Go to iTunes Music Store and click redeem on the right side of the page
-Enter the code and you have free songs.
-Leave the group if you want
You get 5 songs priced from $.99 - $1.29
Update on the blog and whats going on with me. I have been very busy at at school and I have not had much time to post on the blog or take pictures. I have some pictures of the A8L and a short modeling type shoot that I did that need posting. Hopefully I can get that done soon.
July is Concert Month (Concert Summary)
This month I have had the chance to attend two great concerts near my home. First on July 1 at Westfair Amphitheater in Council Bluffs, IA. I saw 311, Matisyahu, and Swizzle Tree. I went with a carload of friends and it really made for a great time. Swizzle Tree was the first band and they really had a hard time getting the crowd going. It was hot and the crowd was not feeling the band. Matisyahu was the next band. I had heard they were good from friends who had seen him previously and they were right. Matisyahu was out to really have a good time. He was climbing and jumping on top of tall speakers and dancing all around. He also ran into the crowd and climbed a large observation tower about 50 ft in the air. Matisyahu sounded good and true to his albums. His clothing was somewhat interesting. He had suit jacket that soon came off and he had a t-shirt type shirt on underneath. He also had khaki colored baggy dress slacks and white tennis shoes. Overall, the best song he sang was his beat boxing. Matisyahu really got the crowd going and I think just about everyone liked him. I got a good picture of Matisyahu with my camera on my Razr cell phone.
On to 311, the main event for the show. I have been to two previous 311 shows and they have all been good. They are best when the band is not promoting a new album that has just come out. Fortunately, this was not the case this time. The band played a wide variety of songs, which was great old and new. The bad thing was the sound quality. It seemed to me that the balance between the instruments and vocals was not right. The vocals were not clear for some of the louder stuff. It was almost as if they turned the volume up to 11 and things were distorted. The other disappointment of the show was the last encore song. The concert’s theme was Red White and Boom and it was put on by 89.7 the River. The last few songs fireworks were lit off. The fireworks were decent, not the best I had seen but it was definitely professional level fireworks. The problem was that all of the fireworks went off almost at all the same time. The last song was Omaha Style, which usually is one of the beginning songs. The usual last song is F**k the Bull Shit that is just a classic and is great live. It is a shame they did not play it this time but I guess there is always next time. Overall it was a good show by 311. No pictures of 311 worth posting they did not come out sorry.
On Saturday July 21 at Westfair again I went to the annual River Riot show put on by The River radio station. There were quite a few bands such as Fuel, Buck Cherry, Papa Roach, Hinder, and Incubus at the show but I really only wanted to see Incubus. Evidently a lot of people also had the same idea just to go see Incubus because it took 1 hour to get parked. We first waited on the interstate and then along the highway to find a spot. We ended up having to park facing the wrong direction on a road behind the concert. This made getting out tricky but we managed.
Being a sold out show the amount of people was kind of unreal. People were every place but we found a place to squeeze in. As we walked in the door Papa Roach was just finishing and Hinder was getting set up. Papa Roach sounded ok from a distance. Hinder is not a band I like so I really did not pay much attention to them. They were good at stalling for Incubus and Hinder even played a cover of Born to Be Wild. The original is far better.
Incubus took a while to set up but they did come out on time. Everyone in the crowd was stoked and very excited for them. The beginning of incubus show was very full of energy and was some of their more high energy songs such as “Wish you were hereâ€Â, “Anna Mollyâ€Â. As the concert progressed, the show became more mellower and calmer. The opener was “Quicksand†from the Light Grenades album. A surprise of the evening was the song “Driveâ€Â. I was surprised how soon they played this song. I was expecting it to be one of the last songs because Incubus is very well known for it. However it was played with in the first 5 songs. Incubus played for about 1.5 hours and it was a very good set. It included a nice mix of new songs and older songs. Some cool things that they did was during If I remember right the song was “The Warmth†Brandon Boyd the lead singer had two flood lights and he did some artistic movements of them and then he went and pointed out each member of the band who had a solo jam session. It really was well done and a cool simple visual. Another neat thing was how the band went off stage. The last song of the encore was “Aqueous Transmissionâ€Â. It is an interesting song because of the use of an instrument called the “Pipa†(Read more at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqueous_Transmission) The band played the song and then went off one by one with the remaining members still playing. It really was a neat way to end the song and concert.
Overall the concert was great and one of the best I have been to. Incubus sounded very good and very much like they do on their albums. I had a good time in the pit and it was just a great show because Incubus was there. It did take an hour and 20 minutes to get out and on the interstate again but that is all part of the fun of it.
Media from the concert. These are all from my Razr phone.
