Thankfully size does not equal comfort (childish giggle) in all situations and the SS01-B, though looking a little offbeat in terms of design does actually sit comfortably in your ear. It is fairly lightweight and comprises of a side by side configuration of micro dynamic drivers with carbon diaphragms in two dual tubes giving that sawed-off shotgun effect with the tip in the middle of the two barrels. The L and R though are barely visible on the roof of the driver shell even in daylight so my tip is mark one of the cables to know which is which because in poor daylight you are not going to be able to distinguish the tiny raised letters on each ear piece.
The flat cable is thankfully a straight through flat cable free of fiddly ‘ithingy’ remotes and mics and next to zero memory retention and terminated with a 3.5mm gold plated jack. I would have like to have seen some strain relief protection since the cable seems to just go right into each ear piece with none in sight. Sadly the SS01-B does not come with any but the cable does look pretty durable I just don’t know how its terminated inside the shell to give it a 100% thumbs up without that strain relief at the earpieces though there is one at the jack end.
Actually my biggest problem was the fit. I couldn’t decide if the SS01-B was an over the ear design or a downwards cable design. The home page seems to suggest a downwards fit on the SS01-B but I actually found some better seals on over the ear. The tips that come with the SS01-B are fairly generic rubber tips but I got a feeling a double flange might have suited better as the medium tip, the one that fitted me best, felt too shallow in either over or straight down positions. It took me quite a while to get the sweet spot before deciding to swap them for some Sony hybrids of my own to get a better seal. The seal is everything on these dual driver SS01-B’s. Of course this could be just my luck and the whole design of the SS01-B and the tips that came with it could be just a bad fit for my ear and everyone else gets a much better fit and seal. Still the hybrids worked just fine and I ended up doing the listening both over the ear and straight down. Either seemed fine to me.
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