CCA CA16 Review (1) – Land Of Confusion

BEGINNINGS

This was my first CCA endeavor although I have plenty of experience with the sister company KZ. Other CA models such as the CCA CA10 have gotten plenty of praise, so the CCA CA16 intrigued me given the new midrange balanced armature drivers, and I was particularly drawn to the layout of a 7mm dynamic driver surrounded by the BA drivers. I was hoping this would lead to a nice cohesive hybrid concept. Unfortunately for me this mystery all ended once they arrived.

GOOD TRAITS

• Interesting driver layout
• Isolation
• Smaller diameter nozzle for smaller ear canals

NEEDS IMPROVEMENT

• Eartips, uncommon shape that affects the entire frequency range. All silicone tips make these completely un-listenable.
• Cable tangles easily – typical budget removable cable these days
• Limp fuzzy bass
• Compressed/non-cohesive midrange

SOUND

Isolation on the CCA CA16 is good since they fill my ear well, but I still find them uncomfortable after some time. Usually most sets fit me well. Smaller ears will most likely find them uncomfortable. This is where part of the confusion comes in, it sports a small diameter nozzle (smaller than Final E series) which none of my usual eartips fit, but has a larger shell. Unfortunately the foam tips that came included as a free gift from the seller are the wrong diameter so you have to push them down onto the larger part of the nozzle by the shell. Normally I do not mess around with trying to find the right tips unless there needs to be some tweaking to correct some deficiency. Optimistically I assume the manufacturer will include something somewhat usable. This set however requires better tips and I don’t think anything I have in the silicone family works with these at all. If I graded them primarily with the silicone tips they would end up in the drawer of forgotten mistakes.

With silicone tips of any nature, the bass is tubby and not particularly defined – bland sounding and lots of drawn out hum in the sub bass. The bass driver tends to get it’s signature from harmonics of a driver being pushed too much.  Bass bleeds into the midrange with included tips. The gifted foam tips from the seller help, but they do not help too much with bass definition, still just harmonic fuzzy bass. This was most likely a design compromise to orient the BA drivers around the dynamic driver. Something larger probably would have made the shell too big. I have some other micro driver earphones like the KZ HDS3 and the Final E500 which do a better job with bass articulation.

Mids are recessed even though the bass and treble are not overly boosted, and strangely sound like they are struggling all the time especially given there are 4 BA drivers. It is quite annoying and tip rolling does not fix this area. Perhaps a result of too many drivers.

Treble is sharp with silicone eartips – foam eartips can alleviate this, however other undesirable traits remain. Quite often the lower highs sound as if they are run through a cheese grater…similar to listening to a garbled cassette tape or 128kbs or less mp3’s.. The treble is probably my least objectionable part of the the CCA CA16, but there is a weird valley that creates some of these oddities.

TECHNICALITIES

Congestion despite driver count, the bass doesn’t seem to be able to deliver the notes in a strong manner, and the midrange drivers hit a wall, everything in the midrange sounds compressed even though it is recessed. Timbre takes a hit  because of the treble cheese grater syndrome. Vocals sit behind the mix to create illusion of depth, instrument spacing is good, width is average.

ENDING REMARKS

In general the CCA CA16 give me the sensation of having hung out at the local nightclub too long and everything heard is a blurry mess even though it is trying to masquerade as a balanced/neutral tuned earphone. Unless you want to play around with foam eartips to extract better qualities, I would not recommend since the bad outweighs the good. I cannot help but wonder what a larger nozzle might do, or perhaps reduce the driver count. I would still recommend a TRN V90 or Blon BL-03 over this attempt.

GRAPHS

• Left vs Right
• Foam eartips vs Silicone (there may have been a sealing issue with the silicone tips.)
• Impedance Plot
• 30Hz square wave
• 300Hz square wave

SPECIFICATIONS

MY VERDICT

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DISCLAIMER

I received these unsolicited from the Aliexpress store Wooeasy which can be purchased from them here. Tested at: $59.

Get the CCA CA16 at Wooeasy Earphones Store.

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About my measurements.

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