esanthosh
Well-Known Member
I only have Hippo VB. So, do not really know a lot about S4.
They both are sibilant. Both are said to be good in bass. There are some guys in TE who have bought S4 for around 3400 in Mumbai and are extremely satisfied.
Hippo VB has a wide sound stage, has plenty of "clean" bass and I like the signature very much. By "clean" bass, I mean - it's not muddy as in Creative EP-630, not like boom, boom speakers. It's very clean, lot in quantity, but not over-powering by any means. I am not actually a bass head and have never liked boomy speakers or EP-630 very much. But somehow I like VB. May be because VB brings out extra details in the bass side of things. Like when I listen to "Wings of Marie" (Tool, 10,000 days), it's good to listen with VB, which brings out all those thunders and 'effects' alive compared to my bass light, still great RE0.
They have variable bass plates, which are wrongly marked. Bass plate with one dot has the MOST bass, with 3 dots is much lesser. But, I have only used the one with 2 dots, which sort of strikes the balance. You can search head-fi (or Brendon's review on TE) to figure out how to tame the sibilance. They are slightly bigger and for my ear (in which most IEMs with medium size tips fit easily), it sometimes produces an irritation after couple of hours of use with the stock medium tip. With Sony hybrids, that problem reduced a bit.
You can "mod" Hippo VB by spending $12 more and getting Sony Hybrids from 1to3Shop on eBay. Sony Hybrids do not fit the VB. It took me something like half an hour (and I am clumsy with my hands, YMMV
) to stretch and fit them on VB without tearing them. The hybrids are too costly compared to other after-market replacement tips as it is essentially one pack with various sizes of tips. So, if your size is medium and it goes kaput, you essentially pay 500+ to get ONE pair of usable tips again. Then why buy them? With Sony hybrids, the singer's vocals go from Row 1 to something like Row 4 (for my fit and seal), which takes away whatever treble harshness it might have and somewhat reduce sibilance. But forget about them being not sibilant. If you have a recording where the singer stresses "s", it would still come as "ssss". But the impact is much reduced when it is with Hybrids.But for buying Sony Hybrids, that guy accepts only PayPal as he does not ship to India via eBay listing. He is one of the official sellers (even on Amazon), so he could be trusted. At least I got mine in 15 days
Even without the Sony Hybrids, VBs are really good. I am a little "adventurous" (because my head explodes when I do not know what the guys are talking about in head-fi or abi when it comes to matters of SQ
) when I have a few hundred bucks more in my account, you need not be. So, please do read those 100 pages on Klipsch S4 and 100 more pages on Hippo VB in Head-fi and come to a conclusion .After all that blah! blah!, IMHO, you cannot go wrong with either of them. S4 in fact could be much more comfortable if you get a fit. But then, I can only comment based on what I have actually tried and tested. Always remember one thing - in audio, everything is subjective. Who knows? If you buy Hippo VB, you might call them trash
