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[Andrew Payne]

I don’t think anyone can answer as it really depends on what you are looking for so IEM’s versus over ear headphones and the sound you are after is such a personal thing. Happy to give a recent experience though. I have used good over the ear headphones (Sennheiser HD650) and these sound awesome (if open back design doesn’t interfere with other people – as you get external sound from them). My only issue is that when playing for a few hours they can get a bit uncomfortable/heavy so I looked at IEM’s.

I started with Shure SE425 as they came well recommended on a number of (drum) websites. These were crap for me. Very comfortable and great mids but treble was very harsh and bass response was AWFUL for drums. This was after fixing the ear sealing with eartips that suited me so the lack of bass was not due to poor fit. I was so disappointed that I contacted local Shure agent (in Australia) and sent them back to be checked. They came back as working perfectly and after a number of phone discussions with the agent and the retailer that I purchased them from, the conclusion was that they were working as expected but in the words of the Shure agent the SE425’s have “a response below 200Hz that is not great”. I was so disappointed, and I have no recourse so stuck with a useless (to me) pair of Shure SE425 IEM’s. Please DO NOT buy Shure SE425’s for IEM’s for drumming as the bass response is terrible.

I learnt my lesson from this and so my research began. I ended up finding a MUCH better (and cheaper) pair of IEM’s that actually sound very close to my HD650 headphones. They are actually awesome and I am so happy with these. They are 7Hz Timeless IEM’s from Linsoul. If you look them up they get some fantastic reviews and very reasonable price. I haven’t had them for long so can’t comment on how they will perform longer term but so far they are awesome and appear to be very sturdy. Bass response in particular is exactly what I was after. They sound fantastic when playing my e-kit triggering Superior Drummer 3.

Good luck with your searching.

Dell Precision 7730, i7 6 Core 2.6 GHz, 128GB RAM, 1TB SSD and 3 x 2TB SSD, Cubase Pro 13, SD3 plus a variety of SDX's and EZX's, Orchestral Percussion, EZBASS, RME BabyFace Pro FS and KRK V4 monitors. Modified Yamaha DTX900 triggering SD3.

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