Soundmagic PL50 IEM

[Lauen]

So I recently got some new IEM's, as I was getting tired of my JBL J33's, and I wanted to try out some Balanced Armature IEM's, and especially ones that go around your ear. In case you don't know, that means the cable goes around your ear. If you wanna know more about how a Balanced Armature driver, check the video Linus did on them and other types of drivers.

 

On to what music I listen to. The music I listen to is like 96% of the time Metal, varying from Heavy Metal by the likes of Judas Priest, Manowar, Grave Digger, Mystic Prophecy, to heavier stuff, like Lamb of God, to power and progressive metal, like Sonata Arctica, Pagan's Mind, Symphony X, Alestorm, Gloryhammer, more recently Persefone, Ghost (aka Ghost B.C), and some Thrash Metal, Megadeth (though newer stuff is more heavy metal), Annihilator, Evile, Anthrax, F.K.Ü., and on to a little bit of Extreme Metal like Xerath, Keep of Kalessin, and the occasional video on YouTube, George Kollias drumming and Alex Rüdinger drumming to some songs, and some drumming educational videos from Mike Johnston. I might, very rarely, listen to a tiny bit of dubstep / brostep. but that's very rarely. Pictures are taken with my phone, Nokia Lumia 925, and then just uploaded what needed to be seen to imgur.

 

Packaging is fairly straight-forward, thin cardboard, with the IEM's in a sort of hard foam. The cable goes from the IEM's, into a small cardboard box below the foam for the IEM's. There's lots of marketing stuff on the box, won't go into detail about that but I'll leave you with some pictures.

 

Big pics though lol, didn't realize.

 

 

 

 

Not including the picture of the back because that was just the marketing in different languages.

 

Build Quality and first feel when you get them out of the packaging: These are extremely light and small. They feel pretty decent, they don't feel as solid as my J33's, but I'm okay with it. They also have a pretty short nozzle, so their insertion isn't pretty deep, but for me it worked very nicely with the small foam tips included. When I pulled them out of the foam, one of the stock foam tips came off, and it broke LOL. The plastic inner thing came loose, so the foam on it's own came loose, but not the plastic thing. so I had to peel that one off of the nozzle. Have a pic of the right earpiece!

 

 

So next to my hand (not that big) they look TINY, which they actually are. have a pic of the outside of them.

 

 

Color coded for left and right, very nice, but you can't actually insert these the wrong way around, at least I can't, so you sort of know which is which pretty easily. It came with a very nice amount of accesories, as I will show you right here:

 

 

 

Forgot a pic of the cable and connector!

 

 

At the time of taking these pictures I was wearing the PL50's, so I was using the small foam tips they came with. As you can see, there were 4 different sizes of single flange tips, three different foam tips, two cable guides, and a hard carrying case. As you can see, I only have one medium sized foam tip, as I threw away the broken one, but kept the plastic thing just to show you it.

 

On to sound! It's a very balanced sound, but a little mid-centric, which I like. Bass is light, accurate and very clear, mids are clear, they stand a little out, but it makes for a very good experience in metal, and voices sound amazing. Highs are clear, have a very natural volume and sound in general, no harshness, all good here. Imaging / Separation is excellent, you can pick out instruments / certain sounds to focus on them, makes music with orchestra's sound very life-like. Soundstage is suprisingly good, better than my Shure SRH440's, but not as good as my Pioneer SE-A1000's or Sennheiser PC360's, but those are open over ear headphones, so you'd expect them to be better anyway. I did play some CS:GO with them.

 

Comfort: These are very light, very small, and are just in general extremely comfortable. Insertion is a bit shallow, so you might not get the best isolation, but that's up to what tips you use, I find the small foam tips to work wonderfully, but they're a little low quality, so I'll be getting some Comply foam tips whenever I can.

 

Value: MSRP according to Soundmagic is $55 USD, and I paid $58 + $14 shipping, so a total of $72 USD, I think it's a REALLY good value. They can be had for $42 on Amazon right now.

 

Overall, I recommend them if you're after this kind of sound, but keep in mind the shallow insertion. I heard Rock-it R20 was a good pair too, which inserted deeper, but they weren't available in Norway at all.

 

Just ask if you wanna know anything else about them! I probably forgot some things I thought of before I wrote this, but whatever

 

EDIT: Added pic of the cable. it's a pretty nice cable overall, a little stiff right now though but I'm sure it will straighten out eventually. Sorry for the awful white balance in some of the pictures!

 

EDIT #2: I also forgot to mention that after I bought my pair, the store listed them as discontinued. Doesn't look like they're discontinued on Soundmagic's site though.

Edited October 31, 2014 by Lauen