Asim owns the site https://www.headphonesradar.com

Disclaimer by the editor: CLEAN AT YOUR OWN RISK! audioreviews.org takes no responsibility for your actions based on the suggestions below. Please note that Asim is not a native English speaker who does not live in an English speaking country. The language used is very charming. Please be forgiving, you cunning linguists of this world.

Many of us are in constant search of simple DIY’s to maintain life and usefulness of our day-to-day necessities like headphones. But it requires an active mind to explore the cleaning ideas right from our house, kitchen for sure. Apparently, I did this job on your part too and here I am with great items you can find at home to free the headset from all the muck you have been hating.

3 Homemade Tips How To New-Clean Your Headphones

If you want to fit yourself best in the criteria of a tech expert, not much, at least a simple cleaning of your most-used device can be a good kick-start.

Before you head over to any of the out-of-the-scratch formulas mentioned below, gather a number of versatile cleaning tools that are going to help in each of the following tips you choose:

                  •                Earbuds

                  •                Toothbrush (preferably old and used)

                  •                Cotton

                  •                A bowl of warm water

                  •                Clean cloth

• These items and methods can be applied to all the headphone types, be it over-ear, on-ear, and in-ear. If your device has detachable parts, just separate them and clean exclusively in detail to ensure smooth and visible results.
• You should better replace the ear tips if you have in-ear headphones, the ideal duration to use each pair is 3 months.
• Use a soft microfiber cloth whilst cleaning surfaces and not the extra-soft wool cloth that leaves behind the wool traces.

1- Alcohol

Now Alcohol is something that is readily available in every European household and can be grabbed instantly to have a quick cleanup session. If you have proportioned alcohol like isopropyl alcohol and rubbing alcohol, well and good, or you can distill it yourself by adding some water in the edible alcohol. It’s like, 2 spoons of water in 1 spoon of alcohol.

How to do it:

• Take an earbud.
• Dip it in the alcohol solution.
• Pull and push it in all the holes of your headset where it can reach in the areas your fingers cannot.
• Repeat it one more time after a single cycle.
• Take some cotton and dip it too in the alcohol solution and compress the unnecessary water out.
• Rub the headband with it and leave to dry.
• Take the toothbrush having soft bristles and rub it gently on the mesh part of the headset.
• You can rub the complete headset with a damp cloth in warm water afterward if you don’t want the remains of alcohol solution. (Optional)

The uses:

Alcohol works as a disinfectant and using it as a cleaning agent, you are killing that 99.9 % of germs from your audio gear, yes, that 0.1 % is immortal anyway.

If your bulky headset has a metal headband, the alcohol solution will also bring about shine on it, fainting down the stubborn stains and debris away.

Tip: The same strategy can do well in the case of hand sanitizer and hydrogen peroxide if you happen to run out of alcohol.

2- Dish Detergent

Dish detergent, being the asset of the kitchen, can save you a lot of time and money because just a few drops are required to better the headphones as clean as possible. But, the modern liquid detergent must be used and conventional soap detergent must be avoided in such a case.

How to do it:

• Take two bowls and fill both with a cup of warm water each.
• Separate the headset parts that can be.
• Put some drops of dish detergent in one bowl of water and mix the solution.
• Take a clean small piece of cloth and damp it with the solution.
• Remove the excess water well.
• Rub the piece of cloth wholly on the headset.
• Rub this solution for a little more time on the ear pads and then dip them in the separate bowl of warm water.
• Take them out after a minute, squeeze the water and leave to be dried.
• Also, clean the complete headset with another clean piece of cloth damped with simple warm water (no detergent added) and place the parts aside to air dry.

The uses:

The combined use of warm water and dish detergent will be helpful to loosen the glued ear wax and dirt, ultimately ridding your headset from all the impurities.

The after-effects of detergent are shown in the form of a constant sparkle on the surfaces. Moreover, the leftover hair will also be removed due to the warm water and the oil extracts transformed from your skin will also be washed off through the detergent.

3- Baby Wipes

This tip can work ideally every alternative day and at any time you want or feel the need for cleaning, maybe right after gym or cycling.

Even if you don’t have babies at your home and also not their baby wipes, the regular wipes or the makeup wipes can do the same performance anyhow.

How to do it:

• Separate the detachable headset parts.
• Take a wipe leaf out.
• Run it all over the headset, mesh, headband, earpads, inside and outside the ear tips, and almost everywhere.
• Repeat it if you feel like the dirt is still there.
• Let it dry.

The uses:

As a fun fact, the reason I started using this method every alternative day is a sweet scent the wipe leaves on the parts. I inquired into the effective approach of this tip last year when I bought one of my favorite wireless earbuds and was attempting hard to put extra years into it. Not sure if it was my struggle or the productivity of the earbuds that I still have them working great chosen from this list. Click here [  https://www.headphonesradar.com/10-best-true-wireless-earbuds-under-50/  ]  to know more about the top 10 best wireless earbuds.

Plus, being regular on this tip makes me skip the weekly and biweekly cleaning routine. Hence, I jump straight to the monthly cleaning because my headset feels so fresh and clean after this.

What Is One Evergreen Tip To Protect The Headphones?

By the word evergreen, this tip can be submitted to the headphones of any kind and it will work to add life, keep not only the dirt at bay but also the moisture and hence, you will want to attend to it forever.

So always keep your headset in a flexible-but-befitting soft case and put a packet of silica gel in it.

If you are a sports person, you must swear by this tip because your headset will be moistened of your sweat most of the days which means a warm welcome to the dirt to sit and stick to it.

Silica gel can be found easily from any superstore and in the packages of some of the newly bought household products.

Once you will start keeping it in the case, forget the smell.

Conclusion

Keeping a state of cleanliness among your everyday used items can pave a way to maximize its life span and it’s you who will gain at the end of the day, right.

All these tips can be picked up weekly, biweekly, and even monthly to strengthen your device only if you are eager to use them for long enough!

The post How To Clean Headphones Using Simple Household Items appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Context : when I first saw the Frequency response curve of the Diamond, before its actual launch, I expressed my disappointment regarding the elevated bass on head-fi, and Otto [Jürgen Kraus] from https://www.audioreviews.org/​ instead of taking offense, contacted me to arrange a sample sent to me in exchange for a review, stating that he was pretty sure I’d like it anyway.

I accepted, so the disclaimer is that I got this IEM for free, but in no way does it affect my opinion. I have not watched or read any review of this IEM so far to avoid external influence.

The Diamond is a single dynamic driver, with diamond-like carbon coating applied on the membrane, and measures at 16 ohms.

Let’s start with the non-audio stuff : the packaging is quite substantial, and a good surprise. While not looking as premium as say, Moondrop offerings, it certainly looks way above what KZ or TRN provide.

We get some foam tips I won’t comment on, because I can’t put this material in my ear canals, 2 sets of short wide-bore ear-tips, a good-looking, and rather pleasing cable (maybe slightly rubbery feeling if I’m being picky) and a very nice leathery carry case, all arranged in a spacious box.

The shells themselves feel very solid and well-machined. While not a fan of carbon on anything but windsurf masts or formula ones, it really doesn’t look overly “need-for-speedy” on the final product as I was afraid of, and the metal part is a nice grey, not the greeny tint that was on the mockup, looks better in reality. The nozzles are very well machined, and well grooved so the ear-tips are locked in place and don’t slip.

Next comes what is probably the best part about this IEM : the fit. A-ma-zing. As I didn’t find rolling ear-tips to make much of a difference (tried the stock ones, various spin-fits, and TRN stock tips), I settled with the short stock ones, and the diamond sits flush and is incredibly comfortable for me, to the point it’s a pleasure to wear. I’m not exaggerating.

That being out of the way, let’s move on to the audio part.

Here I’m more reserved. As I suspected, this IEM has too much bass for me. While the bass is not particularly slow, it’s not super fast either, and it sounds overall soft and lacks some punch in my book. This is obviously due to the exaggerated v-shape tuning. Too much has been detracted from a flat response and it sounds like a band-pass filter was applied. The Diamond doesn’t sound very natural to me, frequency and timbre wise.

This is especially apparent for jazz, jazz kicks are often subdued and need good attack retrieval to be heard clearly, while the walking bass often takes the lead. It’s missing here. Timbre wise, while I’ve heard other IEMs perform worse on double-bass rendition, it’s nothing to rejoice about either. Details of strings attack especially, are missing entirely, due to the 1khz region being so recessed. It does perform ok for slow vocal stuff but won’t be your best choice for a bebop trio session.

However on rock and folk music, where the kickdrum is much more forward, it comes rather nicely together. Jeff Buckley, Pink Floyd, Neil Young, all plays nice with a coherent bass / battery rendition, lively, warm but not overly so. I suspect it was tuned with this type of music in mind.

There’s a bit of bass bleed into mids, but it’s not a problem for me, I actually like it for Rock. Low mids are otherwise not very present, and high mids are more prominent which can cause a bit of fatigue at higher volume, but enhance nicely female voices and guitar solos. It remains a v-shape which is not my preference, but should work quite well for the average western ear.

Trebles are quite inoffensive with good speed and detail retrieval, reasonable extension and an overall airy feeling that helps a lot with the sense of space this IEM provides. Despite having only 2 small vent holes, it sounds quite spacious to me with a good soundstage and avoids the “congested” feeling that many chinese IEMs share.

Testing was conducted with a mix of DSD and flac files, on a Redmi Note 7, a Zishan DSD pro, a Ziku HD-X9 and on PC with a Hidizs Sonata HD.

Comparisons:
Vs Tin T2
The KBEAR can’t compete in any way for people who like accurate renditions. The Tin is as flat as it gets on budget and is a vastly superior iem if one is after that type of sound. The KBEAR will take the lead for those who love their V and generally a warmer and less bright tuning. The T2 remains my favorite flat-ish IEM by far.

VS Moondrop Kanas Pro Edition
I feel the KBEAR missed the mark of what I’d hope it to be, a more affordable KPE contender. While the KBEAR is ok timbre wise, its v-shape and overly elevated bass recess the very frequencies that makes acoustic music so much more natural and lively, like the sound of fingers sliding on strings, which the KPE retains. The KPE also has more sparkle in the highs, at a frequency that never gets tiring for me, adding to the enjoyment. The KPE remains my favorite non-flat but musical IEM by far.

VS Blon BL-03
I don’t own this one anymore, because it could not keep up with fast bebop tracks, but I remember it well and can say it sounded less capable than the KBEAR on fast material, quickly losing cohesion, but better timbre-wise because of the FR. I’d chose the Diamond over the BL-03 because an iem that can’t play fast tracks well is a deal-breaker for me, and the Diamond is competent in that domain.

Conclusion : The Diamond is a well machined, very pleasing to wear IEM which unfortunately was tuned too aggressively on the V side to allow what single dynamic drivers usually excel at, timbre, to shine in direct comparison to some of its competition. While a clear upgrade in my book from the KZ ZS10 pro and the likes timbre, soundstage and imaging-wise for those who like their V, it probably won’t suit those like me, who prefer a more linear frequency response, or a U at most.

Nontheless, tuning is a personal matter, but the packaging, machining and quality of the complete kit is impressive and one more step in the right direction for Chi-Fi.

The editor: in the meantime, Biodegraded offers a mod to flatten the V, that is altering the tuning towards a more neutral signature. You find it HERE.

MY VERDICT

Our rating scheme

You find an INDEX of all our earphone reviews HERE.

FURTHER READING

KBEAR Diamond Review by Loomis

KBEAR Diamond Review by Jürgen

Modding the KBEAR Diamond (flattening the V) by Biodegraded

Photos Of The KBEAR Diamond

First Impression: KBEAR Diamond vs. Moondrop Kanas Pro Edition (KPE)

Second Impression: KBEAR Diamond vs. BLON BL-03

Tuning The KBEAR Diamond – A Killer Earphone Ready To Go!

KBEAR Diamond レビュー-ダイヤモンドは永遠に！

KopiOkaya Explains The Different Driver Coatings

The post A Third KB Ear Diamond Review (3) – Aggressive V-Shape appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Doubt exists that TRN T1 “Tiger” does not have ALL 8 cores connected to the jack (it means TRN selling fake 8-core cable). The two-part video documents a brand-new TRN T1 cable being dismantled, from start to finish, to show the inside cores are INDEED soldered to the jack and are all good.

WARNING: You may fall asleep over these two videos!

The post Dissecting The 8-Core TRN T1 “Tiger Cable” appeared first on Audio Reviews.