Mike,
We think the pro application is right down our alley. With my 8 years of experience at Electro Voice and 12 years of live sound, I would hope I have a pretty good understanding of what most musicians need for IEM applications. Pro stuff is cool because there are no compromises. That’s what I enjoy, pure performance. Whether it be the exceptional performance of a musician or the accurate playback of that music, it is all good.
We have been doing a lot of custom shells for people in the company. This are two reasons why we are interested in this. One…it allows us to accurately measure their ear canal geometry of many people. This was very important for the development work I needed to generate the ear tip patent application. Two…we have the opportunity to do many unique IEM designs easily in the ear shells. Since there is a lot more room in the ear shells than a generic chassis it is easy load up a lot of drivers into that design. The more drivers the better for headroom and as you may know, Klipsch is all about headroom. Not that we want to be deaf, but because we dislike phase and amplitude distortion. You don’t have to play it loud all the time to appreciate the fidelity of great headroom and superior attack. Since we are attenuating the noisy environment in a headphone by isolation you don’t have to play it very loud at all to hear new things in recordings that you have never heard before. If I could get a loud speaker to have the bass extension of these designs….WOW that would be impressive, and quite large. Now all we need is a perfect HRTF algorithm to make the imaging sound like a perfect room.
So I thought there would never be a more comfortable design than an ear impression for a “Custom” IEM. I was wrong… the “Custom Series” of products that we are launching are more comfortable! I was surprised. It may take 5 minutes to get that custom fit, but once you understand the angle that you need from the wire mold, every time you put it back in your ear you get that same “Custom” fit. No unnecessary force vectors in the ear canal equals no pain. Simple Right?
Bob Gassel put it best today when I was talking with him on the phone. He had heard that the new headphones we had developed were more comfortable than the current designs, but he said he wasn’t prepared for the level of difference in comfort. Instead of a factor of 0.5 improvement it is more like a factor of 5 times improvement in comfort! But don’t believe me…Get your fit kits from Klipsch in the mail and see for yourselves.
So why don’t you just go and stick it in your ear?
This is…