Moderately priced birthday gift

@craighmcgill this is an excellent suggestions. It will make your Vox sounds so awesome. Let me know your budget I’ll help you pick one out.

It depends on how much time you have. I bought a few sets on aliexpress for $5 and they sound amazing. I have a couple of $700 sets and it sounds pretty awesome too. Which one do you want to take red pills or blue pills, :joy:

Do a search on aliexpress for the pick-3, Ones to look for are the
D-fi $4.99
EDX pro $2.99
ZSN pro $6.99
KZ ZVX $4.99
7hz Zero $9.99

You’d probably want to get some ear tips and better cables, Both are not so much for better “sound” but it makes life easier, iems are such pain when you have to deal with tangling cables and uncomfortable eartips. So in general add $20-30 to your iem purchase and it would be ok.

They are amazing but and that’s a big but, you have to enjoy having your ear thoroughly violated because the ear bud has to be inserted pretty deep into your ears. :joy:

I’m a big fan of Fiio, sadly they don’t get good treatment from the YouTube wannabes but the products are great and the unboxing experience is excellent and in general they punch above the PricePoint. IEMs are all sounds decent but not the same and why would you want them to. I have not all, but almost every line of Fiio iems and the FT3 headphones as well as the desktop amp and the player. If you have specific questions let me know.

Hey @craighmcgill here’s my oft repeated but IMHO correct thoughts on the next thing inexpensive thing to buy.

A Zoom B1 Four multi effects unit.

It includes:

  1. Tuner (this pedal alone can cost more than $100)
  2. Numerous in built effect for you to have fun playing with all at really good sound quality (better than that VOX thing IMHO)
  3. Most importantly an in built drum machine with different drum patterns and adjustable tempo. You NEED to work on your timing (trust me we all need to work on our timing) and this little thing is perfect for doing it.

Retails at around $100

Here’s a quick guide I wrote for it.

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Thanks @fennario
IEMs are different breed of audio interaction altogether, once you put them on you are pretty much blocked from everything else, that’s why it’s a great choice for musicians. Of course, leave it to the audiophiles to E’ffs things up with their nose in the air and anemic listening profile that no one can listen to for more than an hour without getting ear fatigues.

I have a big issue with KZ the company because they committed fraud a few years back, they made a few collaborations iems with YouTubers and instead of having all kinds of drivers working together they just put them all in but only connect one main dynamic driver and tune them to the “celebrity’s” sounds choice. it’s sold like hotcakes but it’s just a fake.

That said, we can all benefit from this mishaps because many of those great sounding iems are now so cheap, and fake electronics or not they still sounds great.

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That would be me! :slight_smile:

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Absolutely agree, I hate the sound. The Vox was also my first “amp”. The spark go is much better with headphones or at low volume.

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So, question to @Al1885: if the Vox sound is already terrible, is an IEM really the first thing @craighmcgill should get? He will only hear how terrible it is!

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I used the vox with kz zsn earphones, doesn’t made the experience better :sweat_smile:. There are some other in earphones more expensive on Ali, are they better? @Al1885 …and if so, do you have a concrete one in mind? Thanks for your advice :v:

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The kz are very good in combination with my Walkman and the spark

I really love both my HBB collabs iems.
Both sounds like snappy iems with very tight highly defined mid bass which is really perfect for us bazzo.

A rare find is the Fiio FD11 is super cool. I get it here for $22 and it sounds just amazing.
Another Fiio favorite is the FH3. For $60 that’s a steal.

If you want the audiophile experience just get the cra it’s 90% there. Bright articulate and subtle control bass. And it’s $12-15 or less. Moondrop Chu is about as good with better bass but still very neutral.

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Well that could be a valid point. I have a Vox amplug but haven’t connected the headphone on it for a long time. If that’s the case either get a new katana go or spark mini or go. The headphone amp chip inside is pretty awesome and capable. I plugged in my HD 6XX and it’s not half bad.

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Here’s Scarlette 2i2 for half price from the factory store

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Sorted. 80ohm plug showed up today and it sounds great with the wireless now. Filters out that high frequency noise.

I don’t know what it is but I want it! What is it?

Described here better than I could:

All credit to @groaner for the idea. I bought the exact one there and it’s great.

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Ah, cool! I have no hiss on any device. No need to spend money then…

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I picked up a pair of these Shure IEM and they are great, but still need the filter

Shure SE215 Special Edition PRO… Amazon.ca

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Be careful with the smallest size. I put them on my earbuds I use for jogging and they felt like they kept falling out so I kept pushing them back in. After my run I realized that they had come off the earbuds and I had shoved them all the way into my ear canal. Luckily I was able to get them out with a pair of tweezers, but still, scared me.

I use the medium size on my IEM’s though😄 I found that I prefer memory foam tips for running.

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As far as a gift goes. I’d get a few sets of strings, maybe a string winder.

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What about a talkingbass course for after b2b? Or a book, like ari capps? Amazon.com: Ariane Cap: books, biography, latest update

Also, i agree with the zoom b1four suggestion. Or what about a clip on tuner like the tc unitune? https://www.sweetwater.com/c938--Guitar_Tuners?highlight=UniTuneClipN&mrkgadid=&mrkgcl=28&mrkgen=gpla&mrkgbflag=1&mrkgcat=drums&percussion&acctid=21700000001645388&dskeywordid=&lid=58700008501175174&dsproductgroupid=&product_id=UniTuneClipN&prodctry=US&prodlang=en&channel=online&storeid=&device=c&network=x&matchtype=&adpos=largenumber&locationid=9007347&creative=&targetid=&campaignid=20426646913&awsearchcpc=&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwzZmwBhD8ARIsAH4v1gUWYWw3WHWbCfQuTEugIiDShyURIphQuWAvcr6GUW1eKx_Hk9aqoBkaAhGNEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Is it worth upgrading my behringer uphoria with this? Or no real difference?

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