At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Transports: Samsung smartphone and tablet, two different Windows 10 laptops, Sony NW-A55 DAP – Stock silicon eartips – 16/24bit-44.1/192KHz tracks

Physicals

Build

Sirius Pro TWS’ carry & battery recharge case is very, very nice design-wise, both in terms of aesthetics and of phyisical conception. The shell is fully metallic, with a sort of “unlockable cage” on the upper side safely keeping the buds down in their recharge position. The design follows a very well calibrated cyberpunk style, clearly clinging at such theme lovers but staying a small but decisive step “not too far” on that path, resulting in an item that can still stafely be taken out during an informal business meeting for example.

The metal case is complemented by fancy LED lighting – up to the user selecting their color by cycle-clicking on a button at the bottom, or disabling (!) them – and it’s very uncommon “open-body” shape indeed doubles as a bottlecap opener. Again: strong styles aesthetics design involved, but always with an eye at not really “overexceeding”, the result being still possibly compatible with the taste of an old somewhat conservative old european sole like myself for example. YMMV, needless to say.

I couldn’t devine what material are Sirius Pro TWS’ bud housings themselves made of – the manufacturer talks about zinc-alloy. Whatever, they are apparently very solid, and IPX5 certified which means they can bear moderate watering (like rain, or of course sweat) – no submersion or big water splashes tho so remember that when going to the beach or so.

Sliding the buds out of the battery case gets some… creativity, at least the first times you try. Their backsides are conic shaped and short, and they are almost impossible to safely grab with a fingertip pinch to pull them out both due to their shape & size and to the magnetic force applied between them and the case. The trick at least for me is to start pinching on the case (!) right below where the buds start emerging from it, and pull up while letting fingertips slide on the structure: this way they come out easilly and aergonomically as (I suppose) intended.

Access to the battery case is regulated by a metal “gate” which besides being aestheticall in-line with the overall style also serves the function of keeping the two buds safely into their case when pocketing them, and last but not least ensuring their bottomside contacts do fully match those on the receptacles, to initiate recharging when the buds are homed.

Fit

Sirius Pro TWS bud shells are very reasonably lightweight and their shape is quite anatomical. They fit easily into my ears but be warned: they need to be orientated the “right” way. Simply put, you have to make sure the “octopus legs” are pointing towards your lobe, and this for two reasons: one to get the best fit of course and two to avoid the mic hole being occluded. This is also properly mentioned on the manual (RTFM, FFS! )

Nozzles are oval shaped (à la Ikko OH1S, to give an idea) so are the bundled eartips. I must say this is one of those rare occasions where stock tips are perfect for the job. Caveat: it may be not so simple finding third party spares.

Comfort

Once properly fitted I found Sirius Pro TWS very comfy, also for prolonged usage timeframes – both listening and/or office calls. I presume this is another achievement coming from all the industrial design attention which was obviously applied to this project and product.

Tapping once on more on the housings allows the user to issue the usual commands e.g. track fwd, track backwards, play, pause, answer call, reject call, etc. Tunneling voice commands to Android assistant is also supported.

Connectivity and battery

Sirius Pro TWS support Bluetooth 5.2, but sadly only SBC and AAC codecs. No aptX, no LDAC. So forget hi-res audio in the first place with them, although as I will report more below that’s not their worse audio drawback.

Pairing with all the transports I tried them with was straightforward, no annoying bad surprises. Long-clicking the button at the bottom of the batterycase resets all BT pairing by the way.

The buds themselves turn ON when take off the battery case, and OFF when put back in. After pairing the two to a given source, they can be used together or one at a time as preferred – just leaving one of the two inside the case.

The battery-case on its turn has a USB-C port for recharging of course.

The small batteries inside the buds offer up to 4 hours of operation time, and the case can fully recharge them for 3 times, up to a theoretical autonomy of 16 hours. But : earbuds take 1.5/2h to recharge ! So if you imagine to use them continually until they are fully discharged you will have to bear a quite sizeable downtime every 3.5/4h. In more practical terms you can expect to use Sirius Pro TWS for more than a full working day (including even long commuting time) for calls, and for listening to music during free time, as long as you take them off into their case for a while every now and then to restore some juice up.

Sound analysis

As all TWS earphones/headphones, Sirius Pro of course carry their own small DAC-AMP which is in charge of analog reconstruction starting from the digital stream received via BT. Barred a few very high end (and expensive) cases, the overwhelming majority of budget-priced TWS drivers carry quite basic-quality DAC-AMP circuitry, from which of course we can’t reasonably expect top sonic results.

Sirius Pro TWS are no exception. Simply put, they offer some pleasant music rendering experience when evaluated under “non-audiophile” standards, while – like most of their peers – they fall way behind critical listening / audiophile quality standards offered by even more modestly priced wired options.

Sirius Pro TWS also carry some DSP capabilities offering the user 3 pre-set audio modes – Music, Gaming and Movie – each offering a different overall presentation which the user can switch onto on the fly by simply tapping on the buds’ housings.

Music Mode

Music Mode is probably the zero-DSP mode, i.e. the situation where I am direct listening to the unaltered Sirius Pro DAC voicing.

Tonality on Music Mode is V shaped, on a warm, dark-ish timbre.

Bass range is moderately extended, sub bass is hinted but does not deliver proper rumble. Midbass is pushed up, and too much proactive for acoustic music where it comes accross almost booming. May be liked by EDM and other non-acoustic music lovers.

Mids are evidently recessed and seriously overshadowed by the midbass. Highmids are also quite timid so even on female vocal prominent tracks the ryhtm section steals the scene to the leader. Trebles are inoffensive and unshrilling, at least that, but (quite coherently with the rest of the presentation) they clearly lack air thereby not succeeding in properly “counterbalancing” the overall experience.

Technicalities are very basic. Soundstage is intimate, with just a bit of depth. Imaging is hampered by the midbass. Microdynamics are nowhere near audiophile ballparks.

Gaming Mode

Gaming mode evidently expands the soundstage, a distributes imaging better on the X axis at least.

Midbass gets less invasive which makes at least female vocals come up more natural.

Movie Mode

Movie mode delivers a stage similar to the gaming one, and stretches (so to say) bass similarly too, so midbass is also less invasive, which is good of course.

The less good part is that mids are pushed forward and end up quite artificial from the sound fidelity perspective. Good for watching movies (as intended!), not for listening to folk singers nor jazz or most pop stuff of course.

Latency

Latency is very modest, and simply put it does not get in the way any seriously when watching movies. And that’s good.

While gaming… well, it depends on gaming levels. I expect an hardcore FPS gamer to underline the ever so slight delay Sirius Pro TWS deliver, but then again that individual would probably not choose a similar pair of TWS buds for his most engaging plays anyway.

Calls

I could quite successfully use Sirius Pro TWS for business calls, and I was very positively surprised by that.

As previously mentioned, it’s crucial to appropriately orientate the housings into the ears to get the best fit and properly expose the mic’s hole (again: RTFM). When that is taken care of, mic quality and Environment Noise Cancellation (ENC) is above decent at the very least – not comparable with professional vertical products of course, but way beyond usable.

On calls I ended up preferring Sirius Pro TWS on Gaming mode in terms of vocal quality.

Specifications (declared)

Considerations & conclusions

TWS earphones are no doubt a huge technical challenge in terms of achieving true audiophile results, comparable with wired alternatives.

Firstly, there ain’t such thing as “lossless BT communication” so that is an apriori negative bias no matter what technology or competence goes into the buds themselves.

Even more importantly, by definition TWS earphones must carry their own DAC-AMP. Think to how much did you spend for your DAC and your AMP, and/or for your DAP, add the cost of your preferred IEMs, then compare that with the budget you are investing into a pair of TWS IEMs : this will give you a rough measure of the expectations you may reasonably set in terms of output quality from TWS buds.

Indeed, it’s even worse than that: earbuds are small. The smaller the size, the more complicated (and sometimes impossible) it is to fit truly high quality DAC and especially AMP technology in.

With all the above in mind, looking at their asked price Gravastar Sirius Pro TWS are a wonderful piece of industrial design in terms of construction, ergonomics, features set and not least aesthetics (although carrying a definitely sided style at that). On the flip side they evidently lag behind in terms of pure hires sound reproduction quality – which I quite simply rate “no audiophile grade” – and make themselves more appreciated as a multipurpose music, office calls, gaming, movie watching audio gadget instead.

The Sirius Pro TWS set I assessed have been provided free of charge by Gravastar Europe, to whom my thanks goes for the consideration and the trust. They can be purchased from Gravastar web site, here. 16% off with discount code AUDIOREVIEWS.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Gravastar Sirius Pro TWS Review – Wonderfully Industrial appeared first on Audio Reviews.

At-a-glance Card

Features and description

Externals

IKKO ITM01 is more or less the size of 2 AA batteries, a bit thinner than those, and much lighter in weight. It’s actually small and lightweight enough not to represent a significant burden to a smartphone once connected to its USB-C port.

The chassis is plastic, and its black satin finish is quite prone to scrathes, besides feeling not particularly resistant vs possible traumatic compressions or such. Still, perfectly adequate to normal daily use including quick pocketing/unpocketing during communing etc.

Internals

IKKO declares that ITM01 is developed around an ESS custom chip codenamed ESS9298 featuring low noise and high current output. I couldn’t find better specifications by searching on Esstech websites or around, sadly.

Face value specs are interesting, as the chip can accept out to 32bit / 384KHz PCM and up to DSD 128. No MQA support is offered though.

Output power is declared at 2V (125mW) @ 32 Ohm load, but with the big (positive) caveat represented by an adaptive gain to properly support more demanding loads – more on this later.

Input

Only digital input over USB is allowed into ITM01, with the specialty represented by a priorietary magnetic cable connector.

Unlike most competitors, the USB connector on IKKO ITM01 main body follows a special design encompassing a magnetized connector offering very quick disconnection capabilities while keeping extremely firm and solid connectivity while the plug is in place.

Among the advantages of the proprietary magnetic connectors is system resilience in case someone inadvertedly pulls the earphone cable: the magnetic plug will be “weak enough” in such case as to get disconnected rapidly, avoiding mechanical stress on other parts of the line.

IKKO ITM01 ships equipped with 2 replaceable short cables, one ending in a USB-A plug, the other in a USB-C plug. An Apple Lightning plug option is also available and can be separately purchased.

Output

The sole output port available on ITM01 is a 3.5mm single ended audio connector – with a quite uncommon specialty though: it fully supports microphones built into the connected drivers.

Which means that with ITM01 one can seamlessly switch from music listening to handling calls exactly like I would with a mic-equipped earphone directly connected to the phone. Or, that one can keep their mic-equipped headphone connected to IT01 and go from watching a movie to playing a game including audio chat.

Volume and gain control

ITM01 has hardware volume buttons on its main body, which are correctly liaised with system volume controls both on Windows and Android hosts: actionating upon the hw buttons host volume control moves up and down smoothly and without the need for any driver to be installed.

ITM01 also comes with a load sensing system, which switches to high gain mode when higher impedance drivers are connected. The threshold is not documented, based on my empirical essays I would say it’s around 32 ohm.

Other features

Tuning presets

ITM01 comes equipped with 3 “preset tunings”. Each “tuning” modifies the sound presentation, offering a different impact to the user.

The user can quickly select and cycle-through them by long-pressing the central button on the main device body. When each tuning is selected, a led on the chassis side will light of a different colour:

• Music (Yellow led)
• Movie (Blue led)
• Game (Purple led)

More on them below.

Ikko ITM01 Zerda Sound

Let me start by considering the “Music” (Yellow led) tuning preset.

One good thing that’s immediately noticed when using ITM01 is the significant power this unassuming thingie is able to feed into so many different drivers I could pair to it.

ITM01 delivers a lot of current into low impedance, low sensitivity loads (E3000, E5000 & such). And, it also drives HD600 or SRH1540 with authority in terms of powering, most certainly thanks to the selfswitching gain following the internal impedance adapting tech.

With that said, sound quality is in line with the device cost (50 bucks) so don’t expect big wonders: DAC reconstruction, while surely better than my phone or my PC’s built-in systems, is not particularly extended nor resolving, generally quite neutral with some bass accent.

The amping module lacks in dynamic range and most of all transparency. In addition to the general low budget situation, ITM01’s adaptive-gain capabilties present their bill here.

The situation with amping gets a bit better when ITM01 is connected via an appropriate USB conditioner (eg my Nano iUSB2), or to a less-noisy host, e.g. a battery based transport. But even with that, “pure” sound quality is not the reason why one would want an ITM01 in its pockets.

Switching to Movie mode (Blue led) the most evident change is in mid frequencies which are pushed significantly forward, both in terms of power and imaging. The soundstage gets narrower horizontally, but deeper, definitely more intimate. Imaging gets also trickier due to a sort of “central panning” switch.

Game mode (Purple led) can be seen as the opposite of Movie mode in a sense: instead of shrinking and concentrating the scene towards the center, and the mid frequencies, Game mode sorts of “furtherly distributes” the instruments along the horizontal axis, presenting a wider but almost totally flat soundstage. This is good while gaming to facilitate on steps / noises / events positioning although definitely not organic when it comes to music.

An important caveat: mode switching is not totally seamless nor totally instanteneous. In particular, volume jumps may happen between one and the next mode so it’s recommended to pause playback before switching.

Considerations & conclusions

At the end of the day everyting is relative in life.

On one hand I could say that IKKO ITM01 does not shine in tems of audiophile finesse. On the other hand, though, all better devices I heard cost at least twice as much.

IKKO ITM01 offers some very nice, and even unique features which make it worth considering as a very inexpensive, general-purpose, entry-level dac-amp dongle for music listening, gaming and even office communication support.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Ikko ITM01 Zerda Review (2) – Second Opinion appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Originally priced at a substancially higher level compared to the regular version – which still retails for $249,00 – such Anniversary model is now discontinued. Externally identical except for the finish – available either in silver or gold variant – internal specs are very similar between the regular and Anniversary models.

A friend lent me his personally owned Anniversary Edition Groove recently for me to try it it parallel vs my “regular” Groove(s) and spot any possible audible difference.

Differences on paper

Firstly, please refer to my other article about Groove for a general and quite indepth description of the product, its specs and performances – which I wont report here as it wuold be redudant and tedious.

Looking at official Apogee information, the sole published differences between original Groove and Anniversary Edition Groove are the following:

Everything else, including input power requirements and output power delivery are declared unchanged.

Differences in my ears

Quite simply, I plugged both devices for as much as possible “in parallel” on my existing infrastructure and I auditioned a few key tracks, using some neutral-ish and most of all well-known (by me) drivers such as Tanchjim Oxygen on the low(ish) impedance front, and Sennheiser HD600 on the opposite end.

Long story short: there is some sound difference, yes. But a very modest one at that.

Anniversary Edition does sound marginally cleaner – spatial reconstruction is a little yet audible bit furtherly airy – and modestly more effortless, furtherly uncompressed – microdynamics are maybe a 5% better.

Apart from that, the two devices behave identically in terms of pairing capabilities (and limitations), output power levels and such.

Worth noting I guess that as always all the above is exclusively consequence of direct subjective audition, I conduceted no “measurements”.

Considerations & conclusions

As a known Groove fanboi of course I’m gelous of the Anniversary unit I got as a kind loan, and I’m of course returning now.

On the other hand, performance differences are indeed marginal and in pure honesty I would not say that the Anniversary Edition is an upgrade to die for vs the original Groove. Nice to have, especially if a good condition preloved unit can be found for a good price around, but that’s it.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Apogee Groove Anniversary Edition Review appeared first on Audio Reviews.

This piece is to report my experience with a glorious piece of old world technology, Scottish RHA’s CL2 planar IEMs. A privately owned sample was sent to me by an audiophile friend for assessment, and I now understand his love and jealousy for the item indeed.

Currently discontinued, these IEMs were marketed for around €900 back in their day (some 2-3 years ago).

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Apogee Groove+Burson FUN / E1DA 9038SG3-3000 – final E clear eartips – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Tonality

RHA CL2’s tuning as it comes out of the box is – simply put – just flawed. Based on a somewhat wide-v general shape, highmid frequencies (2-4Khz) are ununderstandably over excited which inevitably stirs the presentation into a bad sort of shout party. Sub-bass could also do with some more body physicality, but that’s minor in comparison. Highmids, as is, are just undefendable.

That’s bad, but that’s at least as bad as it gets. The great news instead is that RHA’s driver’s elasticity vs even important equalization corrections is close to divine. Using an ordinary PEQ you can push and pull frequencies as you please and CL2 will follow you pretty much into the tonality you exactly want.

The general timbre is that of a (high end) planar driver, so clear, defined and neat, therefore don’t expect what you can’t possibly get, e.g. DD-style attack in the bass, but within that you are free to think to CL2 as a blackboard to draw the tonality curve you prefer on, and that will be nibly delivered.

For my taste fast drivers (like planars) strictly relate to acoustic music like bebop or classical, and that’s why I shaped a sort of mild Vshape, with elevated high mids within the classical DF boundaries on one end, leaving the existing midbass where they are. More on this here below.

Sub-Bass

Sub bass is extended but less prominent than midbass. Especially for acoustic jazz application, a nudge up is really beneficial to standup bass and similar key instruments. A low shelf of +2 / +3dB is recommended.

Mid Bass

CL2 midbass is just great within its planar category. It has pretty much everything you can dream of: speed, definition, texture, detail retrieval – with the sole important limitation of gutt-felt attack which is of course technologically offlimits. Forget any distortion, barred of course that coming from your source so – beware! – CL2 are totally unforgiving on that. Use a clean source, or be ready to hear how dirty your source is. Musically speaking don’t feed them with Pink Floyd, just don’t. Feed them with Andrew Cyrille.

Mids

As previously mentioned, the first thing to do here is removing that elephant from the room: high mids need to be tamed down. I’m putting -3dB around 2.5/3Khz and another -4dB around 4Khz. Then we can talk: mids are now clear, defined, engaging, very detailed and somewhat lean.

Vocals

Vocals are a bit lighter than organic, both male and female although in slightly different ways. An (optional) way to add a bit more body to lower mids vocals in particular is by adding a +3dB high shelf hinged at around 7/800Hz. In such case of course the previous negative bell values at 3 and 4Khz need to be negatively increased by the same quantity. Don’t take notes here, I’ll add an EQ suggestions recap at the end 

Highs

CL2’s trebles are very good, sparkly, detailed, while making sure to stay on unoffensive territory. Even too much. Too much christiandemocrat, if the term makes sense to you. Beyond sonic preference, this is another example where CL’s agility vs equalization offers you an experimentation liberty that’s simply missing elsewhere: go head, adventure into pumping air trebles and last octave up … until you like or can bear. Just push: CL2 will follow, no distortion.

Equalization Recs recap

Technicalities

Soundstage

CL2 offer very good space sizing both accross and in depth. Not the “most huge” room I heard yet in line with expectation on this price level, and vis-a-vis the other high quality technicalities on the product.

Imaging

Macrodynamics are very good, instrument placement is correctly executed in all occasions and casting on the stage comes accross as credible an fully natural

Details

Detail retrieval on highmids and trebles is finely granular and inoffensive / unfatiguing at the same time – an extremely difficult and therefore rare balance to achieve per my experience. Very good detail extraction also happens from mids and bass, with the sole already mentioned caveat regarding planar timbre necessarily keeping bass just a shiff south of truly organic, which also impacts on the realism of their details of course.

Instrument separation

Separation and layering are beyond beautiful; precision and definition are really outstanding and fully worth the price tag and much beyond.

Driveability

CL2 are extremely demanding in terms of amplification. They require a “high minimum” in terms of current delivery, and furtherly positively scale with the amp’s qualities. Amongst the multiple and diverse sources I have available in the end only desktop gear gave CL2 some serious glory, with the sole notable exception of E1DA’s 9038SG3 and 9039D. Pretty much everything else I have at hand right now doesn’t “open” them up appropriately due to scarse current delivery.

CL2 also easily pick hiss up from the source (in my case: Burson Fun), while on the other hand they prove quite resilient to FR skewage even when the amp pair offers a sub-idel damping factor (again for my case: Burson Fun).

Physicals

Build

Ceramic shells following the classical RHA shape are at the same time solid, resistant and – for my taste – greatly stylish to look at

Fit

CL2 fit rather well into my outer ears, although they tend to stay not perfectly still especially vs mandibular movements.

Comfort

Comfort is ok once fitted. The shape is not 100% ideal to me, but its rounded surface helps minimising pain points and such. Above average anyway.

Isolation

Passive isolation is rather average.

Cable

The privately owned unit I borrowed came with a third party cable so can’t comment on stock one(s).

Specifications (declared)

Comparisons

7Hz Timeless

An unfair comparison looking at price tags: €200 for this chifi thingie, €900 for the scottish one – the latter better be really good ! Dual unfair insofar as per my previous piece on Timeless I don’t find those particularly brilliant even in their own price class. I’m mentioning them mainly due to their recent hype.

Similarly to CL2, ootb Timeless presentation also comes accross as flawed: a major distortion point at 9300Hz introduces a nigh-ridiculous, very invasive artificial tint to the timbre, which must be eliminated or the product is just unaudible, to me at least. Timeless also can benefit of some further sub-bass elevation, again like CL2 does. End of the similarities.

Timeless’ driver is very obviously less refined than CL2’s (heck! at 1/4th the price…) and this results in a much more pronounced, and unpleasant, “inevitably planar” timbre in the first place, and a dramatic lack of texture and detail in the bass line which is dull, uninspiring.

Timeless’ highmids are less shouty than CL2’s out of the box, but they still need EQ correction. No problem, if not for the fact that when downtamed Timeless’s high mids become dull, while CL2’s stay fully vivid, and extremely pleasant.

Even more importantly than all that precedes, Timeless’ technicalities are a joke compared to CL2’s: instrument separation is underwhelming at the very least on Timeless (even vs some non-planars by the way), microdynamics and detail retrieval are nothing more than average un the highs, inexistant from the bass, and soundstage depth is MIA (as in: Missing in Action), whereas CL2 ticks all those boxes with great competence, with a sole sub-top remark reserved to microdynamics which could be even better weren’t for the superfast driver nature of course.

Campfire Andromeda [2020]

Based on a totally different driver setup (5 x BA vs 1 x Planar) comparing Andromeda with CL2 is significant on 2 counts: their sonic presentation (speed, detail, timbre) and their prices categories (€900 vs €1100) are close enough.

You may read my take in detail on my earlier piece about Andromeda [2020], here let me go straight to the point: beyond their differences, Andromeda and CL2 share an almost magically spot-on balance between detail retrieval and control, resulting in smoothness all accross the board.

Neither are my exact cup if tea in terms of timbre: both is too fast, too technical for me. Of the two, CL2’s planar timbre is less pronounced than the (in itself decently moderately at the very least) Andromeda’s BA. What’s totally stunning on Andromeda, and even more so when directly compared to a single-driver product like CL2, is their tonal and timbral coherence across the entire spectrum, and the 5 different drivers working under the hood.

Conversely, and correspondingly, CL2’s single driver needs not pay any toll to the 5 (say: five) different drivers employed inside Andromeda in terms of bilateral extension, articulation, detail retrieval.

Both on my scoreboard excel on the same macro points: the already mentioned resolution/smoothness balance and timbre cleanness and clarity line up in both cases with superb treble delivery, and beyond good imaging, separation and layering. Again, both show their limits on bass texturing and microdynamics in general – which is of course inherent to the very nature of the driver technology of choice in either case.

Andromeda are much less elastic to heavy eq compare to CL2, on the other hand they require much less as their presentation is way more than viable already out of the box. They require much less “power” to be driven, but not a much “cheaper” source anyway: dealing with their very high sensitivity and very low impedance without turning into hiss or distortion in general is not easy.

Considerations & conclusions

RHA CL2 are just spectacular IEMs and they would still be worth every single cent of their price tag if they hadn’t been discontinued as a part of RHA’s disengagement from the higher segments of the audio market. The sole possibility is now finding a good preloved unit.

They deliver an incredibly refined clear and lifelike presentation – a mixture that’s as desireable as rare to effectively find. They can (and must) be freely equalised to have their tonality shaped precisely as per the user taste, and deliver a nothing short of stunning level of technicalities.

Sincere thanks to Simone Fil for the loan and assessment opportunity.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post RHA CL2 Review – Hands Down The Best Planar Yet appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Note: this earphone was first released as KZ ZEX, later as KZ x CRN ZEX. They are all the same earphone.

I have no direct experience with KZ products. Most of all, as my 15 readers know very well, I’m never enticed about overhyped products in general. If something, hype works towards distancing me from something, not the other way around.

That being said, I’ve recently been sent a pair of privately owned KZ CRN with a request for an extra assessment in light of the known (and let me add: quite pointless) drama emerged on social platforms a few weeks ago, which I won’t bother you with the cloying details of here.

KZ CRN (a.k.a. KZ ZEX Pro) are still available for purchase on multiple Ali Express shops for prices around 30-35€

Here’re my findings.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle M12 / E1DA 9038D – stock white silicon tips – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

One can guess that KZ CRN presentation may have been originally intended as a U shape, although the design intention was evidently missed due to a bad job done someplace, revealing itself most of all on the treble segment.

With that said, and within the limitations and the issues I will say more about in a bit, the ensamble – once corrected – comes accross as not tonally bad at all, and this should definitely be underlined.

The timbre is what mainly “reveals” the product’s (corrupted) multidriver nature. Long story short, one can clearly hear timbre incoeherence between bass and mids+trebles, and most of all a major timbre mixup all over the highmids and presence trebles.

A suspect about the origin of the latter issue is the crossover setup being completely screwed, and instead of separating BA / MEST drivers’ frequency scopes it lets them overlap for a large area. In more vulgar words it’s as if I’m hearing “both” a BA and EMST timbre… aka as “a mess”.

Again mine is a guess. I don’t know what’s precisely going on inside KZ CRN really (and/or inside the specific sample I received, of course). What I do hear is that their tonal levels are more than decently calibrated accross the most part of the spectrum, while such good job is depleted by some evident cause screwing the overall experience. Such effect is totally obvious. I wonder how could developers/tuners approve a product like this, which type of customer did they think this would be liked by? Whatever…

Bass is fully extended and strongly elevated – sub bass more than mid bass. The (inexpensive) driver itself proves unable to deliver big wonders on the tech side so apart from a nice volume, and not overly sloppy transients, we are left orphans of organic note weight and most of all texture.

Mids are surely the best part of KZ CRN’s presentation. Quite organic, well rendered, organically calibrated. Nice. On the low side they suffer some timbre incoherence with the midbass but not an excessive one. No sibilance on the upper hand. Really commendable vocals for such a low price.

Trebles is where the main disaster happens. There’s first of all a major flaw at 8 Khz where a sharp peak keeps polluting the entire tonality, delivering unnatural metallic notes. As is, they are just unaudible to me, period. Technically, this can be aposteriori greatly mitigated by a sharp EQ intervention: a narrow negative bell by at least 5 / 6dB, or even a band stop filter if you wish, centered on exactly 8khz will bring me back into audible territory.

In addition to this, presence trebles are dramatically rolled off shortly above the aforementioned peak, from approximately 9-10Khz on. Again, a “substantial” high-shelf filter helps recupe the situation into a much better result.

As I already mentioned above, this situation on the trebles region makes me suspect a screwup at the crossover level, with the MEST on one hand inappropriately overlapping the BA, thereby potentially generating or exhalting the 8K issue, and on the other hand being excessively tamed thereby resulting “audible enough” to contribute with its timbre (also in negative, where mixed with the BA’s one), yet not enough to deliver enough air up above.

Hence the surgical intervention of a high-shelf above 9 / 9.5K, to bump the MEST up, but only above a certain frequency range, thereby adding air back without (overly) exciting the aforementioned BA/MEST interference.

While we’re talking corrections, a slight taming on midbass might also help making them a bit faster. You won’t get better texture from the driver there though.

I would consider at this point legitimate to wonder wether one should invest competence and resources on doing what the manufacturer wasn’t able or willing to do, and “fix” an unhearable 30€ product into a decent one, or just bin it. The answer is very personal I guess.

Technicalities

If EQ-corrected KZ CRN’s tonality can be called “good” not the same can be reported about their technicalities. I presume there’s not much to dig to understand why here: little money pay for short blankets, compromises do apply.

Soundstage is nicely extended, but one-dimensional. KZ CRN almost totally lacks space depth.

Instrument separation and layering are not bad, yet imaging is close to tragic: whenever more than 2 or 3 instruments are playing together macro dynamics fail quite rapidly and spatial positioning goes down the drain with it. There’s no fix.

Physicals

One very surprising aspect of KZ CRN is the incredibly ergonomic fit. They are seriously comfortable, wish many of my other much better sound quality (and higher priced) drivers were half of this.

Passive isolation is also not so bad. Can’t say much about the cable, it looks pretty solid in terms of construction.

Specifications (declared)

Comparisons

Senfer DT6

An historical low cost (< 30€) tribrid designed around 1 DD ,1 BA and 1 Piezo driver.
Out of the box DT6 is tonally warm, with a significant midbass presence, very good low mids and trebles and tamed highmids. As is, it’s not bad at all. An optional EQ correction pushing the highmids up, adding +2dB to the entire treble line, and (for my taste at least) lowering the midbass by -2dB makes DT6 presentation close to spectacular when put in perspective to their negligible price.

Comparing DT6 vs KZ CRN “after the corrections”, KZ CRN delivers more neutrality and clarity, yet much less “substance” (note body & texture) behind that, while DT6 sounds warmer, more musical, more engaging. Timbre incoerence on DT6 is less than KZ CRN. Technicalities are monumentally better on DT6, unlike KZ CRN, offering near-holographic soundstage and very good imaging and separation.
DT6’s fit may be an issue though, and a serious one for some.

Final E1000

To me (and I reiterate that) the absolute best and therefore sole rational choice below 30€, E1000 carry a single DD driver, and masterful tuning which makes them extremely enjoyable already out of the box.
A perfectionist might want to apply some finetuning EQ to raise the too timid sub-bass (< 80/90hz), and help up the highmids and trebles with a modest bump up from 1.5/2K on, to my taste just that. Such EQ finetuning is even “more optional” than in DT6 case.

Comparing eq-corrected KZ CRN vs E1000, and taking timbre coherence off the table for obvious reasons (easy win for E1000 of course), E1000 first of all comes off better for stage drawing, and most of all imaging; detail retrieval is a give&take (much better E1000 down low, somewhat better CRN on mids/highmids). Timbre is clearer and tonality more neutral on KZ CRN, but their underlying note aridity is bad; I do prefer E1000’s warmish coloration on top of much more organic, credible notes accross the spectrum.

I find E1000’s bullet shape comfortable but that is subject to wide personal variations. E1000 has a fixed cable and this might irritate the senses of some phobic – I will never understand them frankly, not on a 30€ device really.

Considerations & conclusions

Simply put, and without needless sugarcoating, KZ CRN are a flawed project.

Out of the box they are close to unaudible to me. Well ok, you know, I’m an exacting (read: nasty) reviewer. Let’s tame this into saying they must be clearly addressed to very undemanding customers. Whatever.

Applying some aposteriori EQ the situation can be made dramatically less tragic. In a sense, this makes my general opinion even worse about this: even within all the logical limitations connected to the inexpensive parts which need to be involved on such a low cost finished product, the problem is clearly not in the hardware per se, but exclusively in the competence – its lack thereof really – of the people involved in the development and/or at least the final approval of this specific model. It’s been my first experience with a KZ product. I hope my second will be better, or I guess I’ll hardly find the time for a third.

With all that said, once severely corrected KZ CRN are more than audible, actually quite nice really – especially on the tonality side, while more limited on the technicalities front.

Disclaimer

A deep thank you to Simone Fil for the loan, and our always so rich opinion exchange on audio topics.

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At-a-glance Card

Features and description

Externals

The Go Blu is a minuscle device, approximately the size of a 9V battery but much lighter in weight (just 26g).

It carries an on-off button, an options button, and a volume knob which also has a button as its central part.

Phone outs, and a status LED are on the top side of the device. On the bottom there is the USB-C port, the microphone hole, the power LED, and a futher pin hole for hard reset.

The accessories package is quite limited: GO Blu comes with just a short USB-A/USB-C cable and a soft carry pouch. No USB-C/USB-C cable, let alone Apple cable are included, nor – oddly enough – a shirt clip is bundled inside the box.

Internals

Unlike so many competitive alternatives on the market, GO Blu is not designed around one of those “single chip does it all” items, but is rather a fully articulated dac-amp device, with separate communication, dac and amp sections, just “miniaturised” to fit an extremely small and lightweight footprint.

Connectivity is assigned to Qualcomm’s QCC5100 chip, the latest or one of the latest releases in its class by the wireless techology leader. The DAC section is centered on a 32-bit Cirrus CS43131 chip, sided by a separate hi quality precision clock. The amp section follows a full dual-mono design, and exploits some iFi proprietary technology called “Direct Drive” whereby they avoid using output coupling capacitors to get an even cleaner result on even other conditions.

Input specs are quite limited in terms of accepted formats: just PCM and only until 24bit / 96KHz. No higher res PCM. No native DSD. No MQA. The meta-message by iFi is quite evident here: focus on doing less, at higher quality.

Output specs (find them all here) are quite impressive: up to 5.6V @ 600ohm load on balanced output (half of that on single ended) and a promising 245mW @ 32ohm load on the opposite end (always on BE). Output impedance is below 1 ohm on both ports.

There’s a 6dB gain which is applied “automatically” as volume goes up – read more under Volume Control, here below.

The on-board battery while small features 450mAh capacity, and offered me – based on my typically low-ish playback volume, and always top-rank digital resolution – around 9-10 hours of operation.

Input

GO Blu is mainly conceived as a BT DAC-AMP device, and BT performance is in facts ace both in terms of features and results. The pairing process is straightforward and I had no problem with any of my owned devices (phones, computers).

GO Blu supports BT 5.1, and a whopping array of different codecs including AAC, AptX (Adaptive, HD and Low Latency), LDAC and LHDC/HWA. The LDAC/96 implementation in particular is very solid and – when paired to another known-good-LDAC capable device – I was able to get at least 10 meters away on open path, or 7-8 meters with 2 walls in the middle, with zero dropouts.

The USB-C port on the bottom of GO Blu main body can be also used as a digital input. Again, connectivity proved straightforward both when attached to my PC (directly, and via the Nano iUSB) or to my Android devices – on which I use 3rd party sw players e.g. UAPP and Roon.

Didn’t try Apple ecosystem devices, which are declared as fully supported nonetheless.

Existing connectivity type will take priority: if GO Blu is connected somewhere via BT, a subsequently established USB connection will “not to work” – and similarly, if I have GO Blu on BT pairing mode, but not yet BT-connected to anything, plugging it into a USB data source will kill the BT pairing process, which will not resume for as long as the USB link stays on.

Finally, GO Blu has a very good working microphone on its bottom, which is straightforwardly used for calls and phone assistant interaction. The mic quality is above average at the very least, and Qualcomm’s built-in ANC works a charm: I could use it as an office tool for a while with great satisfaction.

When using GO Blu as a bi-way communication device, short-pressing once on the volume knob’s central button answers the incoming call. Long-pressing ends the call, or activates the phone assistant.

Output

GO Blu comes with two phone output alternatives: a Balanced 4.4mm option and a 3.5mm Single Ended (S-Balanced, actually). The former is by all means the one to go for whenever possible – more on this later.

Neither is configurable as a pure Line Out.

Volume and gain control

The volume knob is apparently well designed and feels solid and precise. iFi is particularly proud on the Swiss tech they added on that, I got no competence to confirm or dismiss but a fact is I couldnt appreciate any audible volume unbalance above 2% or something, and I did witness supersmooth and cracklefree operation for my entire (long!) assessment period.

On the GO Blu iFi chose to integrate gain control within the volume knob excursion – they call it “automatic gain”. In a nutshell, GO Blu is offering low gain until 60% volume level, then it quickly applies a +6dB gain from there on.

In general, I’m not a high gain fan to say the least: the higher the gain, the higher the compression especially on budget (read: sub-multibuck) class devices. High gain to me can and should be used with high impedance loads only, and that’s why I don’t particularly mind having a classical separate “gain switch” for that.

On the other hand I do see the point iFi designers are making on seamlessly integrating gain and volume controls, clinging at non-specialistic users who will simply not want to care on learning why and how they should or should not engage High Gain, and just want a device that “does it right, automatically”.

What makes the equation solve correctly in GO Blu case is that that little device delivers a whopping high level of current already at low volume marks. Which means that most if not all mid & low impedance devices I connected to GO Blu went nicely loud and dynamic (!) already at moderate (way sub 50%) volume levels, thus never needing to engage the High Gain mode. Plugging my HD600 required a deeper volume knob excursion, and -correctly- ended up into +6dB gain territory. Good job!

Other features

Software and Firmware

Like all iFi devices GO Blu allows for easy user-operated firmware flashing. In this specific case, operations can exclusively carried out from an Anroid host though, so be aware!

There’s currently only one GO Blu firmware version available, released last January 2022 – which must be flashed in should the device come with an earlier version as previous one(s) were, frankly, buggy as hell.

On the other hand, iFi offers no host software to remote-control / remote-configure GO Blu. Nothing in the line of what E1DA does for 9038x, or Fiio for BTRx, etc is available. Too bad.

Alternative reconstruction filters

GO Blu firmware includes a sort of “easter-egg”, allowing the user to switch onto an alternative DAC reconstruction filter by following an undocumented button-pressing sequence.

To access such feature one needs to turn on and connect Go Blu (BT or wired, doesn’t matter), then triple-short-press the Power Button. At this point, single short-pressing the Options button (the one below the Volume knob) will toggle between two DAC filter alternatives:

• Minimum phase filter (upper LED turns Purple)
• Standard filter (upper LED turns Green)

The setting is saved, and will resist powering the GO Blu down.

XBASS and XSPACE

On the GO Blu too iFi added two of their most appreciated “extras”, namely XBASS and XSPACE.

Both implemented on the time domain – i.e. on the already calculated analog output coming off the DAC – for superior quality results, XBASS is a bass/sub-bass enhancer, i.e. a filter enhancing all bass frequencies without impacting on the rest of the presentation, while XSPACE is a crossfeed filter, i.e. a system whereby, vulgarly speaking, “a bit” of the left channel sound will be hearable on your right channel too, and viceversa, which brings the headphone/earphone listening experience closer to that of full size speakers of course.

Both are great to have – especially on such a modest budget device – and being a late-50ies / 60ies acoustic jazz lover I’m especially fond of XSPACE, which “magically” compensates on many of those early stereo hard-panned masters with John Coltrane “fully stuck to the left”, for example, making them even more enjoyable.

To activate XBASS and/or XSPACE all it takes is to cycle-press the options button on the right side of the device, just below the volume knob. 1 press = XBASS, 2 presses = XSPACE, 3 presses = both, 4 presses = reset to none. The options led on top, near the 4.4 port, will light of a different color accordingly.

Sound

GO Blu sounds seriously well.

The presentation range is very well extended both down low and up high, notes have very good body accross the board, and a particular mention is deserved by bass being very controlled. Highmids come accross a tad too evident, on the other end. Trebles are way airier than one may expect from such a small – therefore necessarily hw-limited – device. Perhaps most importantly, instrument separation and microdynamics are nothing short of outstanding.

Comparing by memory (I sold my unit quite some months ago) with an overall similar-featured device, GO Blu sounds significantly better than Fiio BTR5 for example : definitely cleaner, more extended, more macro and micro-dynamical.

Comparing instead with a different-featured but similarly priced device by the same manufacturer, GO Blu’s presentation is not the same as Hip-Dac – the latter is warmer down low, and less hot up high – although the “general sound quality” impression I can get from either is definitely on the same league.

As for probably 95% of sub-1K$ devices I auditioned to date, on Go Blu too single-ended output delivers much lesser quality than the balanced option next to it.  Simply put, I would recommend Go Blu for Balanced only – and skip it if your main drivers are all single-ended and you don’t want to (or can!) plan on swapping cables.

Some caveats now.

One: In spite of a quite low output impedance (below 1 ohm), GO Blu’s Balanced output produces significant hiss on very low impedance + high sensitivity loads (Andromeda and such).

Two: GO Blu’s USB connection does and will charge the battery while playing, when connected to a host providing power on the VBUS wire. As a consequence, USB-connecting GO Blu directly to my PC produces audibly worse (closer, more compressed, less dynamical) output compared to connecting it through my Nano iUSB3, or to a battery-powered pure transport (eg a Tempotec V1).

Some educational pairings

Final E3000

I would call this an unreal pair in terms of amping authority, if it weren’t for the fact that E3000’s fixed cabling forces me into the Single Ended option on the GO Blu, and sadly it shows. With that being said, GO Blu’s amping module makes E3000 open up and sing quite well, so much as to make the pair an incredibly good “compromise option” e.g. when adopting GO Blu as a BT device and mid-fi digital sources e.g Spotify or similar.

Final E5000

Not the best pair in the world at all for those but waaaay better than so many alternatives. E5000 is the empyric proof, if one is ever needed, of how vivid current GO Blu outputs already at very low volume positions, making E5000’s bass not “melting” into a too dark presentation as on most other lowcost stuff I heard it on. Very well done here.

Sennheiser HD600

GO Blu drives HD600 with great authority powerwise, even from the single ended out which is the sole I could test as I don’t care putting a balanced cable on my HD600, Groove pair being endgame for those at my place. GO Blu’s “automatic gain” works greatly here.

Considerations & conclusions

The main thing about GO Blu is that, quite simply, it sounds surprisingly good – especially so via its Balanced Ended output, which is the part I would recommend it for anytime really.

This little kid impressed me quite a lot for its very good DAC reconstruction quality, its more than decently clean amping stage, its capacity to drive low impedance and high impedance loads equally well, and the incredible life it delivers to most of my drivers.

Weren’t this enough add supersolid BT 5.1 (!) connectivity, XBASS and (to me, especially) XSPACE, and great performance for office calls, too.

What else can one want? The man on the road would probably, and justly, respond “nothing, just take my money now”.

I’m an old grumpy fellow so I always go around looking for flipsides, and GO Blu does have a few of course too:  Single Ended output quality is rather unimpressive for one; output power although good is not enough for planars and such; Balanced output hisses off on very low impedance loads; well… that’s it really.

Also due to some unwanted external interferences I got in the past months, I took my sweet time assessing this device and I feel I need to particularly thank iFi Audio for the patience they had after supplying my loaner review unit back last december already!

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Featuring a single dynamic driver and a $219,99 price point Falcon Pro compete on a quite interesting market segment, populated – as usual – by a lot of underwhelming (or downright garbage) competing products alongside a few very solid longstanders.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R / Ifi hip-dac2 / Cowon Plenue 2 – final E clear eartips – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Some critical comparisons

vs Tanchjim Oxygen ($260)

The comparison is pertinent on the “similar” pricing and technology (1DD) standpoints, although it must be noted that Tanchjim Oxygen are by designed tuned towards a “lean harman”, neutral organic target, Falcon Pro towards a V shaped warm one, which of course should set different apriori expectations from either product.

With that being said, Tanchjim Oxygen’s midbass is way faster, more controlled and articulated. Mid bass, down to sub bass notes are much more textured and technical on Oxygen compared to the bloomier ones issued by Falcon Pro.

Although not a detail monster by design, Oxygen also retrieve significantly more subtleties both from highmids/trebles and bass. Note weight is leaner on Oxygen accross the spectrum – maximally so on midbass, but on mids and trebles too. Oxygen are better at layering and separation.

Overall, Oxygen are obviously preferrable on acoustic music (classic, jazz), Falcon Pro’s “meatier” personality may be preferrable on folk, progrock & such.

vs final E4000 ($149)

Oppositely from the previous case, there is quite some common ground between Falcon Pro and E4000 in terms of intended tuning as both are clearly designed aiming at a warm-colored tonality.

With that being said, E4000’s tonality is evidently more balanced, with a much less invasive, color-imposing, slow bidbass, a bit, but definitely, clearer highmids and trebles.

On a more technical level, Falcon Pro deliver more solid note weight in the trebles, but less definition on trebles and everywhere, really. Falcon Pro offer a somewhat more extended stage size (both on width and depth), E4000 are way better in terms of layering and instrument separation.

Falcon Pro are easier to bias, E4000 require more current to properly open up.

Considerations & conclusions

Dunu Falcon Pro are honest, well executed single-DD IEMs, exuding design and construction quality from all the angles you can watch them from. Their tuning is very sided, so to say, towards a warm, laidback, intimate presentation which clearly aims at pampering the user more on the overall musical experience then at stunning on technicalities.

Their features do not coincide with my personal preferences neither from the audio nor from the musical standpoints, but that’s of course totally personal.

I received a sample unit kindly provided by co-blogger Kazi.

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Once I “got” its purpose though I found it so usefeul, and so effective, that it became a fundamental part of my audio toolbox. Indeed I even own 2 units! In Europe they can be bought for € 59,00.

While the technical reasons behind IEMatch utility are quite tricky for a neophite, this article will try to share my experience in simple and practical terms. I will add references to some more technical material for those who feel keen (and prepared) to acquiring more in-depth information.

At-a-glance Card

Some common issues

Audible noise floor

Every audio amplifier produces some “noise”. The reasons for this are multiple but in maximum simplicity such noise mainly comes from the amp’s power circuits, and of course the higher the power the higher the noise to be tamed by the designers.

Low noise on high power amps is mainly obtained by adopting very sophisticated power circuits – which have the bad habit of being expensive and physically big. Which is why the cheaper & physically smaller an amplifier is, the more prone it fatally is to have an audible “Noise Floor”, and the more so if we long for a small and powerful amp.

The noise floor is like a sort of feeble “unwanted music” generated by the AMP itself. Not very sensible headphones will “not hear that”, that’s because the noise signal is feeble enough to not being able to move their drivers and produce sound. Sensible headphones / earphones, instead, will catch that and produce a sort of “background hiss”.

Such noise is indeed annoying but quite modest, and stays fundamentally unchanged when we raise the amp’s volume control. Unless the amp is really awfully engineered, it will in facts not amplify its base noise but only the signal received on its input. Which means that beyond a certain volume knob position our amp will make real music “loud enough” to overcome the Noise Floor level. However, the Noise Floor will stay as a background dirt polluting all notes, and will re-emerge on silent passages of course.

Excessive volume sensitivity

Suppose you own a very powerful Headphone amp, designed to muscularly feed your little-sensitive, power-hungry planar cans. Now suppose you plug your low impedance, supersensitive IEMs (a pair of CA Andromeda, for example?) onto that same amp. You’ll be forced to keep the volume knob very low, as already at 10, maybe 15% of its excursion your IEMs will start yelling unbearably loud.

And worse than that, you’ll notice that moving the volume knob by just a tiny angle makes Sound Pressure Level change quite substantially on your ears. The volume control gets “too sensitive”, in a sense.

This is of course bad for two reasons. One: you seriously risk to damage your hearing at anytime by inadvertedly turning the knob. Two: you can’t finetune SPL, as no matter how delicate you are on turning the knob, SPL varies by “too big steps” up or down.

Digital volume control quality

The overwhelming majority of the portable DAC/AMP systems out there have either no volume control, or a digital volume control. This is due to cost and size compression priorities of course.

As naming suggests, a “digital volume” control actionates upon the digital stream, i.e. on the 0’s and 1’s while and before they get into the DAC, while an “analog volume” control actionates upon the analog stream, i.e. on the result of the DAC’s job, just before it is sent to the headphones (or the speakers).

Opposite of the most common semanthics, from the sound quality standpoint “digital” volume control is in this case a “less quality” choice. You can find many online resources explaining why, at various technical depth levels. One good compromise between technicality and vulgarity is this article by iFi Audio if you wish.

Very synthetically said: the Dynamic Range is the range going from the feeblest audible note to the loudest audible note in a signal (a note). The wider the Dynamic Range, the more articulated, detailed and smoother the music is. Actionating upon a digital volume control means to move the loudest audible edge of the signal up or down. At 100% digital volume the edge is the highest allowed, so we’ll have the widest possible Dynamic Range. As we reduce the digital volume position, we lower the upper limit, consequently making the Dynamic Range smaller (“compressed”).

For completeness: an analog volume control operates on the DAC’s output, changing the signal overall amplitude, not its contents. Assuming the DAC operated at 100% digital volume, it will have carried its job out on the full available Dynamic Range, and the subsequent analog volume control is bound to operate on an “unhampered quality” analog wave. Perfect, or not? Sadly the world is not perfect, nor analog volume controls are: as any circuitry, they add noise! High quality (highly clean) analog volume controls require physically big and economically expensive components. This is why most mobile budget sources need to bend their necks on the digital volume quality compromise.

The (low) impedance riddle

I know by experience that this is a difficult topic for the non-technical amateur to grasp. There is of course a lot of ready-made resources online which you can tap to get various levels of technical information. I find this video by Hans Beekhuyzen quite nice for example.

Again, I’ll try to explain in even more vulgar terms here.

One of the electrical specifications attached to our headphones / IEMs is called “impedance”, and is measured in Ohms. 150 / 300 / 600 Ohms are “high” impedance values, typically found on overear headphones. 30 / 50 Ohm are medium impedance values, also typically found on overear headphones, often when equipped with so-called “planar” drivers. 20 / 16 / 12 / 8 are low or very low impedance values, typically found on IEM drivers.

Amplifiers (and DAC-AMPs too of course) also have an impedance feature, called “output impedance” in that case. For the sake of its output’s high quality, the lower the amp’s output impedance the better. 1 / 2 / 8 Ohm are to be considered relatively high values. 0,5 / 0,2 / 0,1 Ohm are decent values. Higher end systems carry values like 0,0[…]01 Ohm, to give you an idea.

As you may guess, designing distortion-free low output impedance amps is not a joke, it requires competence, additional physical circuitry, and more money. Which is why the mobile+lowcost devices market is flooded with non-superlow output impedance devices, and/or with devices speccing into low nominal output impedance values but delivering a sound quality which I wouldn’t write home about, and/or with devices accompanied by let’s say… not very accurate spec sheet figures.

Ok but why is this a riddle?

It is because – I won’t explain here technically why – there needs to be a certain minimum proportion between the amp’s output impedance and the headphone / IEM / speaker (called “loads”) own impedance.

By the way, when the proportion is mantioned the other way then how I just did ( load impedance divided by amp output impedance) then it goes by the name of “Damping Factor”. Just a name convention, the concept is always the same.

Some – probably the most competent and experienced – argue that the situation is not really black/white, the ideal minimum Damping Factor does not always need to be 8 according to them. They offer a range of potentially good values between 2.5 and 10, to be verified basically on a pair by pair basis.

Specific numbers apart, what’s important for us now is that when (let’s say) “a certain” minimum ratio is not respected, there will be some distortion in the frequency response of the headphones / IEMs. Typically, in the bass region (but not only).

So for example a 16ohm IEM connected to a 1ohm DAP is good (DF =16). A 12ohm IEM connected to the same DAP should be good too.

Or is it? Well… not always. (Told you it’s a riddle…)

Why? Because supplying enough current to low impedance IEMs is not a joke for mobile and/or cheap-design amplifiers – again, I won’t articulate on “why” here.

So, even when the Damping Factor is arithmetically OK, your amp may have a serious hard time “feeding” a very low impedance IEM, especially if that also carries a very low sensitivity. The very same amp would have a much less hard time getting a vivid amount of current flowing if – on equal low sensitivity – that IEM had a higher impedance. This is amongst the reasons why – in addition to output impedance – some AMP / DAC-AMP spec sheets also report a “minimum recommended / supported load impedance”.

Summarising: 1) make sure headphones / earphones have an average impedance “a few times higher” than that of the amp / dac-amp you want to connect them too; 2) make sure your IEM don’t undercut on your source’s minimum supported / recommended load impedance.

IEMatch description

IEMatch is a device aesthetically similar to one of those plug format adapters – those short cables used for example to connect a 2.5mm plugged earphone onto an amp’s 4.4mm output port. The difference is that there is some extra circuitry inside the housings.

Operatively, you plug its male connector onto the Amp, and you plug your headphones / IEMs onto the female connector.

Different versions of IEMatch are available to accomodate for 3.5 / 2.5 / 4.4mm plugs, but they also have some electrical differences. Let’s talk about those later not to lose focus on the main concepts, give me some rope here.

When it is plugged in by its male connector, IEMatch always presents the Amp with the same “load impedance” – being 16 Ohm – regardless of the actual impedance of the headphones / earphones plugged onto its female connector.

At the opposite end, IEMatch always presents the Headphones / Earphones connected onto its female connector with just two possible Output Impedance values – being either 1 or 2.5 Ohm, user-selectable by flipping the switch on the female connector barrel – regardless of the actual Output Impedance of the amp the opposite, male connector is plugged onto.

Thirdly, IEMatch also acts as an attenuator. In practice it acts as the opposite of an amplifier: it introduces a “negative gain”, it reduces (instead of enhancing) the strength of the analog signal passing through it. The attenuation is applied in the value of either 12 or 24dB, user-selectable by flipping the switch on the female connector barrel, the same used to select IEMatch’s Output Impedance.

As I mentioned above, iFi markets 3 different IEMatch versions, carrying some differences in these values but I’ll report and recap them all later on. For now let’s focus on the most common product version called IEMatch+.

The available choices on IEMatch+ are: 2.5 ohm output impedance and -12 dB attenuation (“High” setting), or 1 ohm output impedance and -24 dB attenuation (“Ultra” setting).

How it solves our problems

As it should be clear by the description here above, by plugging an IEMatch in between our AMP and our ‘Phones we get 3 fundamental “things”, at the same time:

1. “Fake” our AMP into believing our IEM has a 16 ohm impedance, whatever its real impedance is (even much lower!)
2. “Fake” our IEM into believing our AMP has either 2.5 or 1 ohm output impedance, whatever the real value at the AMP connector be
3. Again, “fake” our AMP into believeing our IEM is much less sensible then it actually is – so much so that on even power level output by the amp the resulting Sound Pressure Level onto our ears will be 12 or evel 24dB less loud

Clear until now? Good. Now let’s see how this contributes to solve or at least reduce our issues mentioned in the first section.

Noise floor cancelling

Recall: low impedance, high sensitivity IEMs are prone to make high power amp’s Noise Floor audible in form of a continued background hiss. This is because, for how feeble the noise signal is, it’s enough to move our supersensible IEM’s transducers.

Plug IEMatch in the middle. Its attenuation features practically mean that our IEMs will present a much lower sensitivity to the AMP than their real one. The feeble Noise Floor signal will basically be unable to “overcome” the extra “resistance” offered by IEMatch (even its lower -12dB setting is more than enough), and the hiss will not be audible anymore.

Smoother volume control

Recall: plugging low impedance, high sensitivity IEMs onto high powered AMPs designed to adequately cope with higher impedance and/or lower sensitivity cans results in being stuck at the lowest end of the amp’s volume excursion, and in excessive sensitivity vs volume control variations.

Plug IEMatch in the middle. Same as above, IEMatch will “present” a higher sensitivity to the amp. Unlike when the IEM is directly plugged onto the amp, now we will need to turn the amp’s volume knob quite a sweeter bit up in order to obtain “loud” sound off our IEMs. Even more importantly, now a tiny variation in the amp’s volume knob position will not result in a “big” SPL change, but we’ll have a much “smoother”, more normal control SPL control.

Reduced digital volume quality loss

Recall: digital volume controls – extremely common on mobile DAC-AMP / DAPs – can pass the original digital file full resolution along to the DAC only when set at 100% volume position. When operated at intermediate positions, as it happens during normal auditioning, they apriori cram the available Dynamic Range. Such depletion is the stronger the lower the volume is set at (i.e. the higher the pre-attenuation is applied to the digital data).

Put IEMatch in the middle. Again same as above, IEMatch will “drain” quite a lot of the power coming from the amp before it reaches our IEMs. Which means that to get the same Sound Pressure Level out (i.e. the same musical loudness into our ears) we will need to “turn the volume more up”, and being this a digital volume, the higher the volume position, the smaller quality loss we will have.

In other words: if you apply attenuation to the signal after the DAC job is done, you can afford not to apply the same attenuation to the digital signal before sending it to the DAC, thus better preserving the final result quality.

Clear till now? Good. Then let’s consider a couple of caveats.

Please note: 3dB attenuation corresponds to hearing music 50% less loud. So 12dB attenuation is a lot, and 24db is a huge lot!

So, first: there may be cases where your source has to work at 50% volume position or less when your IEM / HP is directly connected to it, but it will reveal to be not powerful enough to compensate even for IEMatch’s lower -12dB attenuation setting when we plug that in, and even pushing your source at 100% volume, you won’t have a satisfactory loudness coming out of your drivers. In such case well… too bad: IEMatch can’t help you.

Furthermore: suppose your source is not much overpowered vs your IEM / HPs, and IEMatch’s -12 dB attenuation setting makes it bring the volume control near its ideal, fullscale position, while still getting loud music and vivid dynamics out of the drivers. But… the -12dB attenuation requires the “High” setting which comes with a 2.5 ohm output impedance presented to your IEM / HPs. Should that be too high, for example because you are using a very low impedance IEM, then you might be forced to use IEMatch’s -24dB attenuation setting (“Ultra”), featuring a much lower 1 ohm output impedance. If, of course… your source doesn’t run out of juice now, like for the previous caveat case!

Impedance adaptation

Recall: you should always make sure your HP / IEM’s impedance is at least a few times (many say 8 times) bigger than your source’s output impedance – otherwise you will hear some unwanted tonal changes in the ouput. Furthermore, even when the “8X rule” is met, your HP / IEM’s impedance should not be lower than the lowest recommended impedance mentioned on the amp’s literature.

This means for example that you won’t likely get good sonic results by pairing a 12 ohm IEM with an amp offering 2 ohm output impedance. Nor by pairing the same 12 ohm IEM with an amplifier offering 0.5 ohm output impedance, but recommending loads above 16 ohm anyway.

Put IEMatch in the middle.

Firstly: the AMP from its own standpoint will “sense” 16 ohm on its output connector, and will effectively behave accordingly, even if our IEM is 12 ohm (or less). This will make the amp “work within the manufacturer’s recommended range”, which is of course a first fundamental good thing.

Secondly: whatever the actual AMP’s output impedance is, the IEM from its own standpoint will exclusively sense IEMatch’s output impedance, which is as low as 1 ohm – so perfectly viable in terms of damping factor even the IEM carries 8 ohm or less of internal impedance.

The same power-related caveat mentioned about the previous point applies of course: especially if we need to pair IEMs with 16 or less ohm impedance, we’ll need to operate IEMatch on its Ultra position, which “costs” -24dB attenuation. Our amp gotta be really powerful to be able to counter that.

IEMatch models

IEMatch is currently offered in 3 different variations.

(*) S-balanced is the name iFi assigned to a special wiring scheme which is at the same time full compliant with a single-ended connection, and with a balanced ended connection. Considering there are very few if any balanced architecture devices around equipped with 3.5mm TRRS ports, this feature in practice means that IEMatch+ can be paired with any regular Single Ended 3.5mm phone port, and that it will pass-through iFi’s S-Balanced connectivity when paired to most of iFi’s mobile AMP / DAC-AMPs.

While the difference between IEMatch+ and IEMatch 2.5 is only about Single Ended / Balanced cabling support, it’s worth noting that IEMatch 4.4 is not a mere pentaconn-plug variation of the 2.5 model, but it comes with different electrical data.

IEMatch 4.4 is intended to be used it with high(er) powered balanced-ended AMPs. The much higher (up to 50 ohm vs 16 ohm) impedance it presents to the source will force the AMP to work at a higher “volume” level, thus at a higher voltage, and ultimately at a higher power.

On the flip side IEMatch 4.4 offers a minimum output impedance of 3.6 ohm (significantly higher then its siblings’ 1 ohm)

Questions and curiosities

Won’t a much cheaper impedance adapter be enough?

Simply put: no.

An “impedance adapter” is a simple resistor, which is plugged in series between two devices – typically a dac and an amp, or a preamp and an amp.

The most evident difference between a mere “impedance adapter” and an IEMatch is that the IA will present the same impedance on both its ends.

Some may be tempted to use impedance adapters (e.g.) when plugging a low impedance IEM onto a certain phone, or budget dongle, to “trick” the source into sensing a higher impedance load (IEM) connected, and “switch to high impedance mode” delivering more output power.
Or, to “cancel” the hiss on low impedance IEMs.
Or, to help an amp better cope with the power requirements of lower-than-minimum-supported-impedance IEMs (read above).

From the amp’s (i.e. the phone / dongle) standpoint that’ll be ok: using (say) a 32ohm IA the phone will sense a 32ohm load and will behave accordingly. E.g. it will switch to high(er) output voltage swing. So far so good.

From the IEM’s standpoint though, that’s far from OK – the IEM will now sense the IA’s value (in our example: 32ohm) as the source’s “output impedance” – which is a very high value.

In more technical words, the IA will screw the pair’s damping factor (read above), and this will be very hearable in terms of frequency response, the earphone presentation will be skewed.

If you want, the adjective “adapter” applied to a common “impedance adapter” turns out to be quite deceiving in the above scenarios

Won’t IEMatch actually make my damping factor worse?

If your amp has an output impedance below 1 ohm, then a IEMatch with its 1ohm (or more) impedance will surely reduce the damping factor. But on IEMatch typical applicative scenarios this very rarely if ever will be a problem – most times it will be an improvement.

First and foremost: while you need a certain “minimum” Damping Factor to avoid FR skewing, it is conversely NOT true that the higher the damping factor the better (I omit the explanation here).

Secondly let’s consider a classic example: a Campfire Andromeda (12 ohm impedance) connected to a sub-1ohm output impedance source. DF is above 12, good. Too bad the Andros are also extremely sensitive and pick up hissing from that amp.

Plug IEMatch in between. Output impedance will now be 1 ohm, so the DF will be “just” 12, which is nevertheless absolutely OK. And, we won’t have hissing (as explained above)

Considerations and conclusions

If we consider the situations where IEMatch makes itself useful we notice they all have to do with pairing low impedance and/or high sensitivity drivers (typically: IEMs – hence, evidently, the product’s name) with sources optimised for high(er) impedance and especially (much) low(er) sensitivity.

Looking at the consumer / pro-sumer audiophile market higher quality, higher powered amplifiers are typically optimised for pairing with high impedance dynamic drivers, or low impedance planar drivers – and plugging most of IEMs on them reveal a number of shortcomings, such as the ones we talked about today.

If we want to be true to ourselves, we should serenely acknowledge that each should be given its own: big cans require a certain “type” of source, IEMs work best on a different type.

So do we have to duplicate our stacks ? Maximalistically speaking: yes. And honestly speaking, I did – with great results !

For the less purist, IEMatch helps close the gap. And, it still proves useful in a number of situations to “double stackers” like myself.

A very final note: I recently came accross iFi’s Micro iDSD Signature, a really remarkable mobile DAC-AMP which I truly appreciated as I tried to outline on my piece about it.

I reckon that today’s article about IEMatch may make it even clearer why – amongst the multiple benefits offered by Micro iDSD Signature – the one that totally stunned me is its provision for an easily user-selectable “ECO” (read: reduced power) amplification mode. Micro iDSD Signature is the sole one device I encountered to date which offers uncompromised optimal amping for both cans and IEMs in the same product.

iFi offers such feature both on Micro iDSD Signature and Diablo. That’s such a logical and winning choice for mid/high end mobile devices like those ! Wish more quality manufacturers get involved on this soon…

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The new version of iFi’s recently discontinued hip-dac, amongst the few low cost mobile dac-amps featured of our Wall of Excellence, is marketed at a very similar price (€ 189,00) compared to its precedessor.

At the end of the day, my opinion about hip-dac2 could be condensed in a simple one-liner: as good as Hip Dac, so very good for this price point, with the addition of a higher MQA reconstruction quality.

As I never published an article about original hip-dac I will take this opportunity to deliver an extended article on the “hip-dac franchise”, so to call it. I will clearly mark the differences between hip-dac2 and hip-dac within the text. Let’s go through it.

At-a-glance Card

Product analysis

Key features and general description

hip-dac2 (like its precedessor hip-dac) is a battery-equipped slim-bodied easily pocketable USB DAC-AMP.

Size-, weight- and shape-wise it’s just wonderful. The full metal shell is sturdy, greatly pocketable, and at the same time superbly stylish from the shape and finishing points of view. It “pairs” very well with an average smartphone when used in conjunction with that.

Sole audio input is the USB data port.  The input connector is the “usual” iFi USB-A recessed male plug. A USB-A(f) to USB-C and a USB-A(f) to USB-A(m) short cables are supplied free. No UBS-A(f) to micro-USB nor USB-A(f) to Apple Lightning are offered in the package.

No coax, optical nor analog input available. hip-dac2 (or hip-dac) can’t be used as a pure amplifier.

Two phone outputs are available: single ended (S-balanced, actually – more on this below) 3.5mm and balanced 4.4 mm.

No line-out analog output is available, which means that hip-dac2 (or hip-dac) can’t be used as a “pure DAC”, plugged into a downstream amp device. It still can be further amplified but the internal amp section will anyhow be involved as a “pre-amp”.

The internal battery cannot be charged via the digital input USB port. A separate charge-only USB-C port is dedicated to charging (a short USB-A to USB-C cable is included in the package). This is good as it cuts on much of the source-incoming noise typically carried by an active VBUS line. On the other hand it means that even when USB-connected to (say) a laptop the hip-dac2 / hip-dac will always only take power from its internal battery, and will eventually run out of juice.

Battery autonomy as always depends on usage (highres files and high volume listening consume more of course) but you can count on some good 6-7 hours of “common spec” listening. A full recharge takes like 3 hours.

When referring to similarly priced portable DAC-AMP devices, hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s power specifications are nominally impressively high vs high impedance loads (6.2V vs 600 ohm, just wow!) and a good step above average vs mid impedance loads (400mW vs 32 ohm).

iFi doesn’t table specs vs low impedance loads (< 16ohm) though, nor hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s output impedance on either of its phone out ports is declared.

Similar to what happens for most if not all of their devices, iFi offers a selection of easily user-installable firmware alternatives for Hip Dac 2 – ultimately yielding into alternative choices in terms of digital reconstruction filters.

Lastly, the device offers a manual High Gain button (labelled “Power Match”) and an XBass+ button. More on these later.

How does it sound: DAC performance

Considering hip-dac2 / hip-dac lack a proper Line Out, DAC performances are only partially assessable as some will be influenced by the integrated amp stage.

It is nevertheless quite evident that hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s voicing is very good when looking at pretty much any other similar portable DAC-AMP on this level of budget. Auditioned from its Balanced output port (more on why later) range is very well extended both towards the bass and the highs. Bass notes are well bodied, not particularly enhanced. Treble is smooth while more than nicely airy, and mids are quite evidently the best developed section.

There’s a quite evident warm tonality – difficult if not impossible to say which section (DAC and/or AMP) contributes to that most. But it’s there. If I have to compare with my experience with other iFi devices offering Line Out options (Nano iDSD Black Label, Micro iDSD Signature) I am ready to bet this is mostly AMP-related but again… it’s a guess.

Good DAC performance doesn’t come by chance. iFi adopts high-standard components even inside their budget products like hip-dac2 / hip-dac, and this is surely one good first step – but this often happens on many chi-fi devices, which on even or very similar “internal stuff list” condition in the end sound apparently much worse. The real key is engineering competence, really – and that can’t be so easily “cloned”.

One aspect: a fundamental requisite to obtain good performances from a DAC device is avoiding interferences on the incoming digital data. Not talking about human-audible interferences, of course. You might want to read this other article of mine to get a flavour of what I’m talking about. As already mentioned above, hip-dac2 / hip-dac don’t take power from the USB data cable, this way apriori cutting a lot in terms of noise “collection”.

Another aspect: unlike the overwhelming majority of the other budget mobile devices, hip-dac2 / hip-dac offer an analog volume control, not a digital one. The reason why this is way better for DAC performances is quite technical (check here for a good, reasonabe vulgarly-explained article) but putting it very simply: digital volume controls act upon the digital stream before it reaches the DAC, and deliver a “integral” digital data to the DAC only at their end-scale position (so at “100% volume” position); intermediate volume levels are realized by applying attenuatin to the digital data which de facto corresponds to reducing their digital resolution.

An analog-volume device like hip-dac2 / hip-dac always feeds its DAC chip at full digital resolution, and attenuates the analog output aposteriori only. Why not every device has this ? Quite simply because analogue volume controls are more expensive to implement and more complicated to design

Firmware options

Like most if not all other iFi DAC devices, hip-dac2 / hip-dac can run a range of firmware variants, each offering different features or optimisations. Firmware packages and the apps required to flash them are freely available on iFi’s web site, here.  The flashing process is really easy and straightforward, at least on Windows platform.

The 3 significant versions to choose from for hip-dac2 are:

For the original hip-dac a very similar option is available although it may be interesting to note here that there have been two hip-dac sub-versions, one tagged with serial numbers beginning with 54010 and the other with serial numbers beginning with 54040. The latter generation accepts the same 7-generation firmware packages as hip-dac2 (labelled respectively 7.2, 7.2c and 7.2b), while the former older generation accepts older versions of the same packages ( labelled respectively 5.3, 5.3c and 5.2).

DSD is a very interesting standard but I don’t de facto currently own nor plan to own music files sampled above DSD 256, so the two options which get my attention are 7.3 and 7.3c.

Their fundamental difference is one only but a significant one at that: with 7.3c iFi’s own GTO (Gibbs Transient Optimised) filter replaces Burr Brown’s native reconstruction filters.

I strongly recommend you read iFi’s whitepaper about why and how this may be technically desireable, or not.

The paper focuses on throughly illustrating GTO’s output features while leaving another important aspect in the background: with 7.3c hip-dac2 will systematically upsample all digital input coming from the USB port up to 32 bit / 384KHz resolution prior to feeding the DAC chips. For what I seem to have understood this is fundamentally required for the GTO filter itself to work as intended.

I already experienced iFi’s GTO implementation in conjunction with Micro iDSD Signature and Nano iDSD Black Label. Simply put: on Nano iDSD BL the GTO option “sounds worse” than the native ones – for my tastes at least. Oppositely, GTO performance on Micro iDSD Signature is very significant, offering important analog reconstruction improvements on redbook-standard (16bit / 44.1KHz) tracks compared to the non-GTO firmware option.

Very similar is my experience on hip-dac2 / hip-dac, and this is one of the few notable differences between the two generations.

hip-dac2 GTO implementation (fw 7.3c) offers a very good alternative option compared to non-GTO (fw 7.3).

Oppositely, when I tested this on a first-version (ser# 54010xxxxx) original hip-dac I got a very similar result as the one I got with the Nano iDSD BL: GTO firmware is basically not worth for me. I didn’t have an opportunity to test a latter-generation hip-dac (ser# 54040xxxxx).

MQA

This is quite evidently the most important aspect about which hip-dac2 represents a significant upgrade from hip-dac: MQA reconstruction performance is evidently better.

MQA royalties and consulting fees apart, as one may easily imagine different enabling hardware makes a big difference on such a computing intensive process as MQA unfolding. Newer generation iFi models (hip-dac2, Diablo, ZEN DAC v2 etc) carry a 16 core XMOS chip with a much higher capacity and computing power (2X the clock speed, 4X the internal memory, latest USB standards compliance) so – simply put – it can “do more at the same time” than the predecessor model.

The improvement in the audible result is quite evident, and totally in line with theory. When applied to MQA-authenticated tracks hip-dac2 reconstructs a much airier, defined and detailed sound compared to the job done by hip-dac as mere Renderer on the very same tracks.

On the other hand, though, I think it’s worthwhile here to remember that – like it or not – MQA is not any sort of magical way to make a DAC sound better then it technically could when applied to a non-MQA, full resolution version of the same track.

A very easy comparison example for me is with Apogee Groove. While of course hip-dac2 will reconstruct/reproduce an MQA-master track at a higher level of audible detail and resolution compared to what Groove will do when connected as a non-MQA DAC on the same track, on the other hand Groove’s range extension, dynamic range, bass and treble control stay on a superior level even in such an “handicap-started” race. Even more evident is the DAC reconstruction quality difference of course when applying hip-dac2 to a given MQA-authenticated track, and Groove to a high-res non-MQA version of the very same track.

Long story short, I guess it all boils down to a quite trivial conclusion: MQA is no magic wand, it’s got no “hardware upgrade power”. Of course.

How does it sound: AMP performance

Based on experience I stopped expecting that low budget devices offer similar amping quality results from both their single and balanced ended outputs. It fundamentally never happens.

The fact is that in these cases balanced amping architecture is primarily adopted as an inexpensive, easy-implementable way for many manufacturers to offer a decent or above-decent output quality (cleanness, transparency, dynamic range) off of apriori difficult situations such as small / ultrasmall and low price tier pocketable devices.

Clean amping is mostly dependent on high quality power management, and in a small and/or relatively inexpensive “box” there is little “room” (physical and virtual) to fit appropriate power management circuitry. Clean power is a challange on amps of any size, and a very steep one the smaller the form factor and the budget get.

As size & cost go up it starts to be possible to encounter devices e.g. the Micro iDSD Signature whereon Single Ended and Balanced phone outs present a power difference, but negligible quality differences. Below that size and budget, I just encountered white flys. Groove, to name one, which Single Ended output is a few times over cleaner, more transparent and dynamic-extended than any other Balanced-equipped device below $300 I happened to hear. Another good case is Sony NW-A55. I have a serious hard time naming a third.

From this point of view, hip-dac2 / hip-dac follow the mainstream. Do not expect wonders from their Single Ended outputs, as in facts you won’t get any. The other way around is rather true: hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s Single Ended output is unimpressive – dull, compressed, closed-in. This, in spite of the good deeds of their S-Balanced tech.

Different story for the Balanced Ended 4.4mm output, which comes accross evidently airier, better bilaterally extended, with a very good level of control on bass and smooth trebles, and most of all a quite nice dynamic range and good microdynamic rendering. In a word, the solid impression is that on hip-dac2 / hip-dac BE out is the sole one with enough cleanness and transparency as to offer some justice to the preceding DAC stage.

As I already mentioned above, there’s a distinct warm coloration. Is this coming from the DAC or the AMP? Difficult to determine as hip-dac2 / hip-dac don’t offer a pure Line Out option, and thus a chance to use a third-party amp like it happens on other iFi models like Nano iDSD BL or Micro iDSD Signature is precluded.

A small difference can also be identified between hip-dac2 and hip-dac’s overall output quality, namely the former being a bit more sparkly in the highs, and just a whiff less intimate as far as soundstage goes.

I didn’t mention soundstage yet, which is definitely not a shiny aspect for hip-dac2 nor hip-dac. Quite narrow, really. Is this due to scarce spatial reconstruction skills at the DAC level or due to unclean AMPing? Again, impossible to say due to the lack of a Line Out option – and after all useless to know either, as it’s not something the user can do anything about.

Lastly, I think it’s worth noting that some hiss is picked by very sensitive loads (CA Andromeda, anyone? ). While definitely an imperfection taken per se, I guess it should be conceded to hip-dac2 / hip-dac that it’s a very common one, almost irregardlessly of the device budget.

Extra features

There are two toggle-buttons beside hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s volume knob, named Power Match and XBass.

Power Match is nice attempt at a layman-friendly naming for a Gain switch. Activating Power Match puts hip-dac2 / hip-dac in High Gain mode, which is of course recommended (only) when a low-sensitivity driver is connected. Attention though: on low-sensitivity and low-impedance devices the suggestion is flipped – Low Gain is typically a much better option.

XBass behaves like what an EQ expert would call a low shelf positive filter. By ear it pushes lows up by 2dB-ish from 100Hz down. Might occasionally turn out to be handy to help some bass-shy drivers, or as a compromise to compensate for some drivers requiring a higher level of current delivery than what hip-dac2 / hip-dac can deliver to express their best on their bass lines.

Notable pairings

You find some significant pairing impressions reported in Kazi’s article, which I already mentioned above.

I find myself totally in line with what Kazi wrote when referring to final Sonorous-III and Dunu ZEN / ZEN Pro which I also had a chance to directly test with hip-dac2 and hip-dac. Ditto for my experience with a pair of high-impedance cans, which is HD600 in my case – ultimately showing that hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s nominal 6V @ 600ohm spec is less effective than it may seem when put to the real work.

Let me just add a few other experiences here.

final E3000

Biasing-wise the pair is technically good, insofar as hip-dac2 and hip-dac both definitely deliver enough current to E3000 to open them up properly, keeping their bass transients controlled and delivering a good sense of space. The unavoidable down side is that due to E3000’s fixed cable it’s impossible to exploit hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s best amping output (the Balanced one) so the forced-single-ended pair is bound to unavoidably suffer from some dullness and lack of dynamics.

final E5000

Even when paired on the Balanced output hip-dac2 and hip-dac don’t seem to deliver enough current soon enough to brighten-up E5000’s bass line. The result is an overly thick presentation which is what very commonly one gets on E5000 from budget-tier sources.

Ikko OH-1S and Tanchjim Oxygen

Although different, the two IEMs react very similarly to hip-dac2 / hip-dac pair. Both get turned on very nicely by the balanced output, delivering much of their competence in terms of technicality. Both get “warmed up” by hip-dac2 / hip-dac’s coloration, which may be a welcome variation to many in comparison to their otherwise slightly-bright/neutral tonality. Hip-dac2 pushes both’s highmids up, luckily without passing the glare limit. Nice ones.

final Sonorous-II

Similarly to what happens on Sonorous-III, the pair has lights and shadows. Good is bass (a case where the XBass switch delivers a pleasant alternative at the user’s fingertip), and microdynamics. Less good is high-mids which get a bit too hot.

Shure SRH-1840

This is a really good pair. Power available on Low Gain is already more than enough to make SRH-1840 sing pretty well, and there’s no overdoing on the high-mids. Some treble extension is lacking. General warmth may be considered bearable in this case due to the fundamental pure neutrality of the phones taken on their own. Too bad for the narrow stage, but at this price level I’ve yet to find a better pair for SRH-1840 if I exclude Groove.

Notable comparisons

Again, some notable comparisons are already mentioned on Kazi’s article, which I once again encourage you to read. I do share his opinion about hip-dac2 vs hip-dac entirely.

vs Apogee Groove

The comparison is apriori dishomogeneous as Groove is a high-power-demanding dongle with a unique, not-general-purpose amping architecture while hip-dac2 and hip-dac are designed with full-horizontal applicability in mind. Performance differences found between the two devices should be put in the correct perspective.

That said, Groove’s DAC and AMP refinements, where applicable, are significantly better compared to hip-dac2 / hip-dac.

Hip-dac2’s DAC reconstruction prowess does challenge Groove’s resolving power exclusively when applied to MQA-authenticated tracks. On such very tracks, hip-dac2’s Full Decoder capabilities deliver superior resolution and air, while on the other hand still falling short vs Groove on range extension, bass control and treble vividness. On non-MQA material there’s no game instead.

vs Hidizs S9 Pro

Another dishomogeneous therefore “unfair” comparison, which I’m mentioning basically only due to S9 Pro’s popularity. Similarly to Groove, Hidizs S9 Pro is a battery-less dongle featuring a high host-power demand. Different from Groove, it carries a general-purpose amping architecture free from apriori pairing limitations.

Like hip-dac2 / hip-dac, S9 Pro also comes with dual phone outputs (Single Ended and Balanced Ended), and again similarly in both cases the Single Ended option, well, might also be omitted, for how underwhelming they are compared to their Balanced Ended alternatives.

That said, the sound quality difference between the two devices is nothing short of dramatic. Hip-dac2 / hip-dac are better resolving, have better estension, better dynamics and better features. Last but not least, when connected to a “noisy” host (e.g a laptop) S9 Pro degrades its cleanness and spatial reconstruction performance quite evidently, and benefits of a noise filter adoption (e.g. an iFi iSilencer or an AudioQuest Jitter Bug), while hip-dac2 / hip-dac is much more resilient off the bat.

S9 Pro costs 35% less than hip-dac2, that must be noted, too.

vs iFi Nano iDSD Black Label

Similarly priced and after all not so differently-sized, the two devices do behave similarly.

Overall, hip-dac2 comes out ahead when used as a complete (DAC+AMP) system, even more so if applied to MQA material as Nano iDSD Black label is a mere Renderer not a Full Decoder. On the flip side, Nano iDSD Black Label offers a pure Line Out option which is the big “missing bit” from hip-dac2 / hip-dac, which allows the user to “upgrade” the device with an external amp – possibly a desktop one? – and fully exploit the really nice quality of its internal DAC.

Considerations & conclusions

Hip-dac2 is an outstanding device, quite evidently the best sub-200$ battery powered pocketable DAC-AMP on the market today. It delivers very good DAC reconstruction capabilities, significant amping power, and remarkable cleannes, dynamics and air from its Balanced Ended headphone output.

Compared to its preceding version, hip-dac2 offers MQA Full Decoding which represent a solid further improvement for Tidal fans. Apart from that, its features are identical and its sound quality are so close to the preceding version that a current hip-dac owner may safely hold on to his existing investment in case Tidal Master is not his streaming service of choice.

Disclaimer

As always, a big thank you to iFi for the continued opportunity they offer me to keep assessing their products.

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The post iFi hip-dac2 Review (2) – Still The Best appeared first on Audio Reviews.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R / Ifi HipDac / Cowon Plenue 2 – donut foam covers – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Comparisons

vs K’s Earphone Bell-LBs (€59,00 street price)

By design K300 indeed offer a different tuning compared to Bell-LBs: warm and V-shaped vs neutral. K300’s sub bass is very audible and delivers nice rumble, on par with quite a few IEMs actually, and unlike Bell-LBs where it is just hinted. Mid bass is more elevated, bloomier, denser on K300 vs Bell-LBs’ leaner, faster, punchier one.

Mids are obviously recessed and also leaner on K300, vs unrecessed bodied and organic on Bell-LBs. Highmids and trebles are similarly elevated on both, but obvsiouly cleaner, sparklier, airier on Bell-LBs, and brushed, warmed and inoffensive on K300.

Soundstage casting is very similar, in both cases absolutely holographic, a further bit more extended on K300. Imaging and separation are evidently much better on Bell-LBs as a direct consequence of much faster transiets all over the spectrum. K300 is somewhat harder to drive due to its 300 ohm impedance, and less expensive.

Considerations & conclusions

K300 are another definite hit by K’s Earphone, the same makers of BELL-LBs. They deliver a very well calibrated warm-bass tonality and a stunning holographic very extended stage, offering a really pleasing, relaxing musical experience.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post K’s Earphone K300 Review – Warm Relaxing Pleasure appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Here’s my analysis of K’s Earphone “Bell-LBs” model, which I recently personally purchased for € 59,00

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R / Ifi HipDac / Cowon Plenue 2 – full foam and donut foam covers – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Comparisons

vs Rose Mojito (was $ 259,00 – now discountinued)

Both are designed for with a neutral presentation in mind, but when directly compared Bell-LBs comes out “flatter-neutral” while Mojito sounds a bit more “balanced”.

Mojito delivers more sub-bass and a modest rumble vs just a hint of that on Bell-LBs. Midbass are similar in note body, Mojito offering a bit more elevation. Mids and vocals are equivalently refined and organic, very difficult to tell which is better. On both, male are “just good”, female are “wonderful”.

Neither driver ever scants into sibilance, but Bell-LBs do occasionally concede to shoutyness, which Mojito is totally free of. Stage casting is similar, Bell-LBs being just a bit deeper.

Imaging and separation are surely better on Mojito mainly thanks to the absence of treble shoutiness. Bell-LBs are way easier to drive and pair.

vs Rose Masya (was $ 129,00 – now discountinued)

Masya offer a bright-accented presentation vs a virtually pure-neutral coming out of Bell-LBs. Both buds deliver a just hinted sub-bass, with barely audible rumble. Midbass are similar, with Masya showing a bit more elevation.

Mids are better tuned on Bell_LBs which deliver thicker tone body and higher organicity. Vocals are hands-down better on Bell-LBs, female even more than male. Both drivers present a tendence to (occasional) shoutyness on trebles on some tracks, Masya more than Bell-LBs.

Technicalities are also very similar, with Bell-LBs showing just a bit more stage depth in comparison. Bell-LBs are much easier to drive and pair.

vs K’s Earphone K300 (€58,14 list, € 29,10 street price)

By design K300 indeed offer a different tuning compared to Bell-LBs: warm and V-shaped vs neutral. K300’s sub bass is very audible and delivers nice rumble, on par with quite a few IEMs actually, and unlike Bell-LBs where it is just hinted.

Mid bass is more elevated, bloomier, denser on K300 vs Bell-LBs’ leaner, faster, punchier one. Mids are obviously recessed and also leaner on K300, vs unrecessed bodied and organic on Bell-LBs.

High mids and trebles are similarly elevated on both, but obvsiouly cleaner, sparklier, airier on Bell-LBs, and brushed, warmed and inoffensive on K300.

Soundstage casting is very similar, in both cases absolutely holographic, a further bit more extended on K300. Imaging and separation are evidently much better on Bell-LBs as a direct consequence of much faster transiets all over the spectrum.

K300 is somewhat harder to drive due to its 300 ohm impedance, and less expensive.

vs VE Monk SM (Slim Metal) (€ 22,39)

Monk SM tonality is bright-neutral vs Bell-LBs being almost pure neutral. Both have just hinted sub-bass. Mid-bass is similar on both, a bit more elevated and organic on Bell-LBs.

Mids and especially vocals are monumentally better on Bell-LBs, whereas Monk SM sound deeply artificial, in addition to lean and untextured.

High mids and trebles are also arguably much more organic on Bell-LBs, shouty and fatiguing on Monk SM. Monk SM cast a deeper but narrower stage.

Detail retrieval on Monk SM is not as bad as their high mids and treble lack of refinement might imply, but Bell-LBs keep the lead with good margin. Microdynamics are also evidently better on Bell-LBs.

Both drivers are quite easy to bias power-wise, but Monk SM is way more capricious in terms of pairing (some sources excite their highmids making them sound like a portable transistor radio from the ’70ies).

Considerations & conclusions

K’s Earphone BELL-LBs are a pair a earbuds that acoustic and vocal music lovers may easily fall in love with.

They tick so many boxes at once: neutral tonality, spot-on timbre, comfortable fit, high resolving power, holographic stage casting and good technicalities, all paired with decent driveability and an affordable price.

Sure there is better at higher budget levels, but I couldn’t find anything remotely close in terms of sound quality on an almost purely neutral tonality at such a modest cost.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post K’s Earphone Bell-LBs Review – Budget Neutral Reference appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Subsequently followed by other models named Masya and Maria, all of these including the original Mojito are now discountinued to leave the field to the latest iteration called Maria II, which is the sole Rose Technics earbud model currently available.

I’ve had a chance to extensively audition both Mojito (originally priced at $259,00) and Masya, both being privately owned samples, and this article is about my experience with the former, with some comparison notes to add hints about the latter at the end.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Questyle QP1R – stock full foams – Stock cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Comparisons

vs Rose Masya ($ 129,00 – discontinued)

Masya is the model released by Rose Technics just after Mojito, and can be considered its economical (50% lower priced) version in a sense.

Unlike Mojito, Masya offers a bright-accented presentation to begin with, with a tint of warmth added to the lowmids to counterbalance a bit. Sub bass is almost entirely absent, while it’s very present and generating nice rumble on Mojito. Midbass are similar on Masya and Mojito, with Masya showing a somewhat less note body there.

Mids are more forward on Masya, I would say equivalently detailed and organic as on Mojito, and still free from any sibilance of sort, but Masya’s high mids do have a tendence to get shouty, and trebles are sometimes even slightly splashy on Masya, which does not happen at all on Mojito. Technicalities are also similar: Masya presents just a bit less of stage depth, and its instrument separation capabilities, especially on trebles, are limited on the upside when the driver goes shouty.

vs K’s Earphone BELL-LBS (€ 59,00 street price)

Bell-LBs are the sole example of almost purely neutral tuned earbuds which come at least somewhat close to Mojito’s refinement that I could find (at a fraction of Mojito’s asking price).

Sub-bass rumble is indeed present on Bell-LBs, but at an evidently lesser elevation compared to Mojito. Midbass on Bell-LBs and shares the same speed and punchyness with Mojito, but notes are a bit leaner and less textured (on Bell-LBs). Mids and vocals behave very similarly – ob both drivers females are better than males, which sound leaner and somewhat hollower. Female vocals and highmids some rare time get somewhat close to sibilance on Bell-LBs, which never happens on Mojito.

Trebles are well refined on Bell-LBs, there’s no shoutyness that I can assess much like it happens on Mojito. Treble balance in the general presentation economy is more prominent on Bell-LBs, which sound airier nonetheless. Technicalities are very similar, with the sole notable difference being that Bell-LBs cast a less deep stage.

Considerations & conclusions

Rose Mojito are no doubt, and by far, the most refined sounding earbuds I have ever auditioned. So much so that it’s not even appropriate to “compare” them with the overwhelming majority of the “most popular” earbuds, with which the sole real common part is frankly just the form factor category itself.

Oddly enough, if I had to define and introduce Rose Mojito to someone never having heard them I would say: consider them as a pair of openback headphones… in miniature size. Mojito deliver a spectacularly extended holographic sound field, high-end resolving power and superb instrument separation on a virtually pure-neutral presentation, and a 100% organic acoustic timbre. Listening to acoustic music on Mojito is nothing short of pure pleasure.

I wish I had the opportunity to audition their currently marketed evolution: Rose Maria II. You never know what may happen…

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Rose Mojito – Honorable Progenitor appeared first on Audio Reviews.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R / Ifi HipDac – foam tips – Stock cable cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Selected comparisons

Vs Tin P1 ($169,00)

P1’s uber-neutral tonality sounds obviously sterile compared to Timeless, which at first impact come accross more engaging and vivid, especially due to the ostensibly more elevated bass line. That said, P1 are significantly better in terms of resolving power, midbass texturing (quite terrible on Timeless), instrument separation and organic timbre.

Both are quite underwhelming in regards to stage drawing, with Timeless a bit better in terms of width, and P1 easily better in terms of depth (easy win there). Both are tip-capricious, P1 more of the two. P1 require higher amping power.

Vs Ikko OH10 ($199,00)

This comparison seems particularly meaningful to me due to very close pricing, and very similar presentation tuning on the two products, based on totally different technologies: single planar for Timeless vs hybrid DD+BA for OH10.

OH10’s sub bass is more extended, more elevated, while still very clean. OH10’s midbass is waaaay better in terms of resolution and texturing, so much so as to not sound offensive let alone invasive in spite of its even higher elevation. OH10’s mids are more recessed – V shape for OH10, U shape for Timeless – yet male vocals in particular sound roughly on par vis-a-vis Timeless’ (relatively) leaner note body there.

OH10’s high-mids and presence trebles are fuller, sparklier, more organic and most of all way more refined than those coming out of the Timeless. Unlike Timeless’, OH10’s timbre never scants into artificial. In spite of their hybrid driver structure OH10 do not loose points in terms of horizontal coherence vs Timeless – if something it’s actually the other way around, due to Timeless midbass’ lack of refinement facing their often shouty, somewhat artificial timbred trebles.

OH10 are no soundstage size monsters, yet they still draw a bit bigger space than Timeless, definitely deeper, while they excel hands down in terms of imaging and most of all instrument separation. Neither IEM require huge amping power.

Considerations & conclusions

I remember when I was a young IT enthusiast playing with my Apple II, back in the 80ies. I was so in love with technology that I just “assumed” that pretty much everything was going to be automatically “better” for the very sole reason of being processed in such innovative ways.

Sadly – or not even sadly, actually – of course my assumption was wrong. There were very selected tasks for which my Apple II was unbelievably brilliant, while quite a few if not most of the other things I insisted on doing with it would arguably have been much better, easier, and faster done “the traditional way”. Woe to those who dared pointing this out to me though! I would promptly call them ignorant, obscurantists, or both. The more so if they had my mother’s face, of course

Technology is still enthrilling 40-something years later, more and more so indeed, and legions of people (not necessarily youngsters …) fall into the same pithole everyday that I was in back then. There’s a new piece of technology. There’s a couple of really brilliant products / application based on that. Ergo: all products based on such technology will be superior. No, it’s indeed a non sequitur.

I’ve yet to hear a really outstanding planar magnetic IEM below $500 which is worth its money. To clarify, by “worth its money” I mean “producing sensibly better results than similar priced products based on alternative technologies”.

7Hz Timeless IEMs are no exception.

Sure they deliver a vivid and engaging presentation, departing from other too algid same-tech competitors.

Yet, simply put they are technically lacking when compared with similarly priced non-planar alternatives: mid bass lacks texture, timbre has a slight but annoying artificial tint, and trebles are too often shouty and fatiguing. Good intent, lacking realization. Maybe we should long for a future iteration ?

In the meanwhile, it all comes down to the purpose of the game as always. Die-hard technology enthusiasts should give Timeless a spin, no doubt: depending on their tastes, their musical preferences, and their gear they will probably find it better, or even much better than other “inexpensive” planar alternatives. Music lovers looking for they highest quality IEMs in the $200-ish region, instead, should keep referring to our Wall of Excellence.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post 7Hz Timeless Review (1) – Nice Try But… appeared first on Audio Reviews.

With this spirit I’m assessing a pair of Smabat Proto 1.0 modular IEMs which I got from the manufacturer for this purpose. Their street price is currently $79,00 – so not one of those excessively cheap chifi thingies – and you can find them on their website, besides multiple distributors on AE as always.

At-a-glance Card

Modularity for everyone

Extensive modularity on a finished product like IEMs is commercially a very interesting idea, clinging to all those who feel enticed by DYI but (right or wrong) look at themselves as impaired or more simply too lazy to take that route. With them in mind, Smabat Proto 1.0 is the closest thing to a Lego project box.

With Proto 1.0 you can:

Swap the main dynamic driver transducer.

You can take the transducer coming with the main package, and replace with a different version, sold separately, supposed to deliver a different sound presentation.

The housings can easily be opened and closed by bare hands, revealing that the driver’s cabling features a small plug/unplug fixing.

Sadly I only got the basic package, in particular I got none of the alternative drivers to check.

Add a filter onto the main sound output nozzle, to tune trebles behaviour.

The default being “no filter”, inside the box a blue little item is available which is supposed to be optionally plugged onto the nozzle to smash highmids and treble frequencies flat down by a whopping -7dB (!!). Not a small nudge at all, rather a dramatic intervention on the entire upper part of the presentation.

Roll another filter, installed directly on the housing, to tune bass behaviour.

By default a gold-colored little cap is installed, which is part of the house-tuning so to say.

Inside the box 2 alternative cap pairs are provided, carriying different mesh filters, and distinct by their colours: silver ones are supposed to smash mid and low frequencies (from 1KHz down) down by -6dB, while red ones are supposed to kick them way up by the same, opposite sign amount: +6dB. Again: a major intervention, not at all a fine tuning thingie.

Comments

Before getting to the sound analysis, I feel a few comments are in order here about Proto 1.0’s modular design.

Housing dampeners are very difficult to take out, the more so with the bundled tweezers, which I suspect are more aimed at facilitating plugging/unpligging the main driver’s connector. My wife’s “professional” eyebrow tweezers helped better with those colored dampeners. I suggested Smabat to finetune their design.

Proto 1.0 come equipped with a 10mm Titanium Diaphragm, 16 ohm impedance driver. According to Smabat, such driver is supposed to offer a warm, mid-centric presentation, good but not overly powerful bass, and rich and clear high frequencies. As you will read further down, this is not entirely true – but that’s not the point here.

As previously mentioned, both treble (nozzle) and bass (housing) dampening filters apply a nothing short of brutal variation to the “default” tuning. It’s quite evident that a lower-impact version of such filters would be very interesting to test. Questioned about this, the manufacturer commented “Regarding the silver damper, we will add some bass in subsequent adjustments”.

When I got this sample unit a few weeks ago on their Ali Express shop Smabat advertised 3 alternative drivers:  a Beryllium Plated Diaphragm (32 ohm) supposed to offer a “levelled presentation accross the entire frequency spectrum”, a Fiber Membrane (16 ohm) driver supposed to offer a more V shaped alternative, and a Dome LCP (22 ohm) supposed to offer a bright-enhanced alternative.

I obviously asked for those to be sent to me for a direct comparison, particularly the Beryllium Plated one (why that? simply because the default Titanium one is too warm, missing sub-bass and dominated by awfully bloating midbass – so I’d like to check how one which tuning is defined “levelled” in Smabat’s language would sound).

Sadly, the manufacturer’s answer was: “Other drives will be delayed, we are still testing to confirm. You can publish your assessment first.”

It’s worth noting that after a couple of weeks I checked again on Smabat website and there was no mention for a Beryllium Plated Diaphragm spare driver anymore, whilst a Titanium Plated Diaphragm (20 ohm) spawned in its place. Who knows if at least the range is to be considered final now, and when will those, or at least a few of them, be actually ready for shipping ?

Lastly, in addition to the two “user side” main vent openings (the main nozzle, and the other hole near the nozzle supposed to be equipped with bass-tuning dampeners), there is a third small vent opening on the housings’ back plates. Being a backside vent that is of course impacting on bass behaviour. Looking on the inside part of the removable backplate I can see a small white filter is installed. Oddly enough, Smabat does not offer spare / alternative filters to be rolled on that position. Why ?

All’n’all, everything seems to suggest that “Proto 1.0” is a quite meant naming for this product: it’s a prototype, and the first version thereof too!

Enough intro, let’s listen.

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove / Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Questyle QP1R / Cowon Plenue 2 – final E clear tips – Stock cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Considerations and conclusions

Smabat Proto 1.0 is first of all a nice idea. Not a totally new one for Smabat, which indeed applied the same concept to their M-series earbuds before (a full review of Smabat M2s Pro will drop ReallySoonNow(tm)…), but at least to my knowledge this is the first time I see this applied to IEMs.

As I very quickly mentioned at the top, Smabat 1.0 is the closest thing to a Lego-project-box applied to IEMs. Let me add: it is so both in the pros and the cons. As for the pros, those are totally obvious: you really can “build your own IEM”, and you can even separately order “alternative” pieces to develop variations of your project to experiment with.

There are cons too, though. First of all, such alternative items are still somewhat work in progress at Smabat. I’m a positive thinker, and I want to believe this is just a temporary situation. What’s more serious, instead, is that the output sound quality – at least that coming out of the stock elements I got with the package – is not competitive with the best (non-modular) alternatives on the same price range. Without getting too far, a pair of final E3000 cost sensibly less, and run circles around Proto 1.0’s stock titanium drivers, for how hard you may try and combine filters on that.

Proto. Like “Prototype”, I guess. And even the first version of it (1.0). A first attempt. Good, as an appetizer. Now let’s wait for the main course.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Smabat Proto 1.0 – Work In Progress? appeared first on Audio Reviews.

This model has been released almost 4 years ago if I am not mistaken but it still holds the test of time as a very good mid-tier IEM pair, with some added uniqueness for extra measure.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Apogee Groove + iBasso T3 / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R – Acoustune ET07 tips – Stock iBasso CB12s cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Some possibly significant quick comparisons

Tanchjim Oxygen ($ 259) is an obviously unfair comparison insofar as the Tanchjim IEM carries just 1 single DD driver for all frequencies, and is sold at a 50% lower price. That being said, Oxygen’s timbre memory has been pretty much the first to come up in my brain upon my first IT04 audition, and that’s why I jotted down some notes on the differences.

The tonality, first of all, is not the same. Both strive for neutrality but Oxygen ends up with a slight bright accented balanced tonality, IT04 with a warm-ish one. Bass is where the two IEM are extremely similar. From the mids up the situation changes pretty dramatically insofar as IT04 deliver better articulation, better accuracy, and more air while (and that’s the real point) never adding too much BA timbre on top of (or underneath if you wish) it all. IT04 is a 1+3 multidriver showing a tonal coherence pretty much equivalent to that of a good lower-tier single-DD driver, e.g. the Oxygen, while being able to extract as much BA-personality as possible from those 3 units up there.

Oriveti OH500 ($ 499). The comparison this time is between quite homogeneous alternatives: OH500 features 1 DD 4 BA while IT04 1 and 3, both drivers are sold at the very same list price. Both IEMs can be categories as “warm-balanced”, too. And, technical prowess on all the various singular aspects of the products look like just about a tie too, small differences excluded: technicalities are in both cases extremely good, and tuning shows srious competence being applied.

Simply put, their difference can be summarised as OH500 being tuned to deliver more energy, IT04 to deliver more smoothness. OH500 lets bass hit harder (if you want, maybe a little tad too loosely, depending on personal preferences), and highmids come out hotter and stronger, while IT04 pays all possible attention to keep everything as nice as possible, but as homogeneous as possible. Another not-secondary difference is driveability: OH500 is much source-pickier.

Conclusions

I liked IT04 on two different counts.

One is the more direct one: they sound very well They carry a wonderful timbre and deliver a very pleasing, slightly warm, balanced tonality which is perfectly applicable to the acoustic music I like best.

The other is on a more abstract level: IT04 is a multidriver which is kept coherent not by trying at all cost to tune a DD as fast as possible not to sound sloppy compared to its BA companions, rather by tuning the BAs in a way as to stand their position on mutual ground vis-à-vis their companion DD’s naturally thicker body. An uncommon choice, really, and a successful one!

On the flip side I would say I’d have preferred to hear something “more” in terms of vividness and energy, and some extra effort in terms of treble detail retrieval. Perfection is not of this world, I guess.

As mentioned above, this sample was loaned to me by its private owner who paid for its out of his own pocket – this is not a review on a loaner/free unit provided by the manufacturer nor by a distributor.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post iBasso IT04 Review – A Different One appeared first on Audio Reviews.

So when the other month Tanchjim released Tanya as their first budget model I looked at the news with a sense of oblique smiling condescendence, and a sigh: it was quite obvious that – whatever how many their “great for the price” aspects might possibly be – those would never be a significant upgrade for me. Yet, curiosity was just scratching me and I soon leveraged on their minimal price to “justify” impulsively ordering 1 pair to play with.

Intro

Well… the first audition was a sort of catastrophe. I am not going to report here all the details that I’m collecting below but in a nutshell Tanya sounded like sharply midbass-humped harman wannabes playing from the cheap dirty basement down low, and I was getting their music through a thick velvet curtain for added measure: everything was muffled or covered by sloppy bass, or both. I guess someone might call a similar presentation like “relaxed inoffensive sounding”… Well, tastes are subjective what else can I say. I hate sloppy muddy bass.

Given such preference, as you can imagine all of my sources are carefully selected to have superior bass control – so pairing couldn’t be the issue. 

How about rolling tips?  “On a $24 headphone? How much time do I have to waste?” As it happened, one Sunday last month I did have quite some time to waste and I spent a couple of hours rolling tips on the Tanya.

In the end, the sole tips which could significantly thin Tanya’s midbass “curtain” down / off were inverted Starline silicons (you all know about them, I won’t digress now).

Too bad that what was left was kinda disappointing: lifeless strings, ghosty one-note male vocals, not much better female ones. Aright, I was wrong in the first place thinking to hear a “good” band playing from the basement. So I put the Tanya on the bench, ready for the bin. Then, I received my first even small box of Spinfit CP-500 tips.

Applied to Tanya, midbass gets bridled – similarly to what happens with the Starlines. No it does not become fast and punchy but stops bleeding like hell, and becomes a “normal” overhump of the harman bass. The difference with CP-500 is what happens in addition to that. Sub bass is not almost inexistant anymore as it was with the Starlines. And… mids! Males gain a 20% more of body at least – now they don’t sound like hectoplasms. Female singers now sound properly articulated and detailed, not flat, grainy 1-notes like it happened with the Starlines. Guitars do sound similar to guitars. Trebles… oh well, you got the idea.

Summarising: for my experience Tanya require Spinft CP-500. Period.

Enough foreword. On to the show.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove / Apogee Groove + Burson Fun + IEMatch / Questyle QP1R / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman – Spinfit CP-500 – Lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

Outro

While I was busy with all the above, I came accross a similar experience shared by coblogger KopiOkaya. Beyond the subjective different opinions on this or that aspect of these drivers, he also obvsiously had to dig deep in his biiiig box of tips to find something suitable. His hint : Tanchjim’s own T-APB tips, and the T300B variation thereof, i.e. the “bass enhancing” ones. Good one, Larry – thanks!

As it happens I do have a (although minimal) supply of such tips, that is only those that came with my Darling sample – and that’s why they were (T300T) equipped on the Darling or (T300B) closed into the Darling box and were not part of my previous investigation.

Long story short: they are very effective on the Tanya too. Unlike Larry, I do prefer T300T over T300B on Tanya as much as on Darling. And, in the end I do prefer CP-500 over T300x, but by a small margin I must say.

So in the end I would say: a) want to get a Tanya? Grab a pair of CP-500 or T-APB tips – or forget it, and b) dear Tanchjim… how about adding 2$ to the price and bundle T-APB tips with Tanya? c’mon!!

Conclusions

Once equipped with Spinfit CP-500 eatips, Tanya are very good, and definitely stand out on the sub-50$ price bracket as organic, full timbred, warm, vivid yet inoffensive performers offering a remarkable musical experience when appropriately biased. Even factoring the cost for the vital tips upgrade, I’d call them a no brainer in their segment for any enthusiast side-grade seeker!

This Tanya sample, and the mentioned Spinfit CP-500 tips, have been privately purchased.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post Tanchjim Tanya Review (2) – With Help From… appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Final Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III are in my opinion the absolute best closed back headphones you can buy for less than 500$ (either costing much less than that actually). You can find them stuck on our Wall of Excellence, and reviewed here.

At-a-glance Card

Why and how

Ear pads – their internal structure, size, thickness, and external fabric – do change headphones sound even more than what eartips do to IEMs. And final Sonorous Earpads are no exceptio.

First and foremost, the distance between the actual sound transducers and the ear modulate low frequency sound pressure, which obviously significantly influences the presentation. Based on this fact, final Sonorous earpads are filled with sponges of different thickness and consistency. Their external material is synthetic leather featuring equal horizontal and vertical flexibility. Finally,

Another important aspect when it comes to closed-back earphones is avoiding sound appearing “muffled” due to lack of backside venting. Final accomodates for this by carving small apertures on the inside and the outside of the pads “donuts”, achieving superb results in terms of sound clarity.

Lastly, final Sonorous Earpads feature a quite ingenious system to facilitate swapping. By direct experience it does work. You may want to take a look at the final’s official quick tutorial video to get an idea.

The range

As I mentioned, final Sonorous Earpads are avaialble in 7 different variations. Here are the lineup specs, directly taken from final’s website.

Model	Surface Material	Sponge	Filter	Stock on	Picture
Type A	synthetic leather	thick, strong standard type sponge	single layer	SONOROUS VI, IV
Type B	synthetic leather	thinner/softer sponge compared to Type A	single layer	SONOROUS VI
Type C	synthetic leather	W-shaped sponge combining Type A and Type B types	3 layer	SONOROUS X, VIII
Type D	synthetic leather	thick, strong sponge	3 layer	SONOROUS III
Type E	synthetic leather	thick, strong sponge	single layer	SONOROUS II
Type F	Polyurethane	expanded foam body with superior breathability and special polyurethane fibers	n/d	D8000
G	Polyurethane + Toray Ultrasuede	expanded foam body with superior breathability and special polyurethane fibers	n/d	D8000 Pro

My direct experience

Final of course issues a number of pairing recommendation for each of such models. You can find the entire story here.

That said, I only directly tested the 4 models which are recommended for my 2 Sonorous headphone models (II and III). Here is a recap of my opinions.

So the aftermath is… I could have saved the money for Type C and B, and just swap stock pads between Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III to reach my preferred configuration on both. But how could I have known it without trying?

Conclusions

final Sonorous Earpads significantly contribute to alter and finetune Sonorous headphones.

They are not inexpensive – retailing from ¥ 5810 / € 44 to ¥ 9300 / € 70 a pair – but their build quality is ace and they are a more than solid recommendation for any Sonorous user.

Disclaimer

All the earpads I tested are my own property, they did not come from the manufacturer or a distributor on review/loan basis.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post final Sonorous Earpads Review – Easy Rec appeared first on Audio Reviews.

Now that these babies have been stuck on our Wall of Excellence though… well, it’s time to act.

At-a-glance Card

Full Device Card

Test setup

Sources: Apogee Groove + Burson FUN + IEMatch / Apogee Groove / Sony NW-A55 mrWalkman / Questyle QP1R – Type-D pads on Sonorous-II, Type-E pads on Sonorous-III – Stock OFC cable – lossless 16-24/44.1-192 FLAC tracks.

Signature analysis

Technicalities

Physicals

Specifications (declared)

A glance at the technology

Quite a few by now know final (yes, they write it lowercase) as a group of incredibly proficient audio engineers, and their products, may them encounter the complete appreciation of the single individual or not, based on personal taste, are anyhow always granted to be the fruit of non-trivial investigations, studies and technological achievements. Sonorous headphones make of course no exception.

Ear pads

Ear pads – their internal structure, size, thickness, and external fabric – do change headphones sound even more than what eartips do to IEMs.

First and foremost, the distance between the actual sound transducers and the ear modulate low frequency sound pressure, which obviously significantly influences the presentation. Based on this fact, final Sonorous earpads are filled with sponges of different thickness and consistency. Their external material is synthetic leather featuring equal horizontal and vertical flexibility.

Another important aspect when it comes to closed-back earphones is avoiding sound appearing “muffled” due to lack of backside venting. Final accomodates for this by carving small apertures on the inside and the outside of the pads “donuts”, achieving superb results in terms of sound clarity.

Lastly, final designed a quite ingenious system to facilitate pad swapping. By direct experience it does work. You may want to take a look at this video to get an idea.

BAM

That stands for “Balancing Air Movement”. It’s the marketing name for final’s project focused on obtaining results similar to open-back heaphones even on closed-back ones, especially in terms of clarity, controlled bass delivery and of course soundstage and imaging.

At final, we decided to focus on developing technology for the reproduction of bass tones and three-dimensional space with the full-range reproduction of a theoretically unproblematic single driver unit, rather than taking things in a multiway direction. We went back to the beginning and reviewed the performance of the balanced armature driver, focusing our attention on something we had previously overlooked : airflow inside the housing. We developed BAM (Balancing Air Movement), a mechanism that optimizes airflow inside the housing through the creation of an aperture in the driver unit, which is usually sealed. While achieving bass tones and deep, three-dimensional spatial representation, which proved difficult with single driver full-range reproduction, we achieved a BA type that at the same time made for natural listening the user doesn’t tire of.

https://snext-final.com/en/products/detail/SONOROUSII.html

And boy, that works! Of course I’m not technically competent enough to say wether the trick is that or “just” that, but it’s a fact that Sonorous earphones do deliver an incredibly clear and vast soundstage, and perfectly controlled bass, actually sensibly better than any other closedback headphone I happened to audition equal or below their cost. On the other hand, reading final’s description we get a hint as to why Sonorous HPs are “less isolating” than other models in their same technological category.

Let’s pad-roll a bit… !

Sonorous II and III are good as-is, i.e. with their stock pads. Period. You can skip this chapter, especially if you are on a tight budget.

That said, given my appreciation for the base configuration I wanted to go all the way through on their available options – at least the official ones, those offered by the manufacturer themselves.

Final makes a number of variations available for their Sonorous headphones line, which are all mechanically compatible with every model in the lineup as the housings chassis are identical accross the board. Each model is named with a letter (Type-B, Type-C, etc). Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III come equipped with 2 different earpad variations already, then I ordered 2 more different ones, and I started rolling…

So the aftermath is… I could have saved the money for Type C and B, and just swap stock pads between Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III to reach my preferred configuration on both. But how could I have known it without trying?

Conclusions

Sonorous-II and Sonorous-III are arguably the best closeback headphones on the market in their price class, and in my experience it takes tapping at Shure SRH-1540 to have something significantly competitive to talk about.

While they feature two quite different timbres, tonalities and presentations, neither is a real all-rounder musically wise. I’d recommend Sonorous-II blind-eyed for cool acoustic jazz, and any other clear-timbre musical genres, and Sonorus-III to whomever looks for a warm-neutral, midcentric, incredibly dynamic driver for prog rock, song writers, folk or such.

Finally, they are not “inexpensive” in absolute terms – so they might well not be one’s first take at overear headphones – but rest assured that they are not by any means “cheap”, indeed they are actually worth each single penny in their price for the quality, the comfort and the musical proficiency they deliver to their owner.

Disclaimer

Both samples I’m talking about in this article are my own property, they did not come from the manufacturer or a distributor on review/loan basis.

Our generic standard disclaimer.

The post final Sonorous-II And Sonorous-III Review appeared first on Audio Reviews.