TONALITY: 8.5/10
TECHNICALITIES: 9.2/10
TIMBRE: 8/10
SOUNDSTAGE: 7.5/10
IMAGING: 9/10
MUSICALITY (subjective): 8/10
CONSTRUCTION: 8/10
SOUND VALUE: 8/10
BGVP is a well experienced IEM company from China that was founded in 2015 and has release diversify IEMs from multi BA DM7 to tribrid with EST DM9 to tribrid with Bone conduction like the DMA i review lately that truely blow my mind with it's sound value and fun bass musicality.
In the past, BGVP release IEMs that was hit or miss in term of tonal balance, yet always try to push sound bundaries value with new tech implementation. Since 2 years, their experience pay off and they improve alot in tuning balance even if they seem to have a sweet spot for bright and energic tonality that highlight technical prowess of their IEMs.
Today I will review the big brother of this DMA i'm so afound off, it's the BGVP Phantom, an 8 drivers using for different type of drivers in dual mode: 2DD+2 knowles BA+2sonion BCD+2sonion EST. All this at a very competitive price of 900$, but if you seek for deals ou might get it for 800$ easily.
My level of excitation was sky high about these due to my intense love of Unique Melody Mest MK3 which i consider as my end game, if i was that excited it's due to my high end sound value quest and the Phantom seem only sub-1000$ IEM using both bone conduction and electrostat drivers.
Yes i'm obsess about the bone conduction driver when implemented in hybrid configuration, in facct this Phantom is my sixth IEM with BC. In term of price range, those are in direct competition with UM Mext that i own too and will compare in this review.
Let see if the Phantom fullfill it's promise of delivering among highest resolution possible. Yet, did musicality will be appealing too? Let see in this review.
CONSTRUCTION&DESIGN
The construction of Phantom is all made of medical grade resin plastic and seem mold in one piece. The plastic is soft and smooth and thick, it feel very sturdy and i personaly prefer this material over metal shell for lighter weight, the fact it can't go cold and its less prompt for easy scratching.
Yet, BGVP upgrade this shell design for a very good reason: the nozzle is very thick and it's shaped like a volcano and like a volcano it throw out the eartips you try to put on cause of lack of nozzle lip. In all honnesty, this is biggest con of my whole Phantom story and this explain i struggle doing this review until i find the savior: Penon Liqueur black. Still, comfort wasn't the best due to the fact we need precise fit that is deep and need to touch temporal skin for proper bone conduction.
As said, i've just been unlucky here since the new version look like this:
Anyway, if you own older version, i urge you to get those Penon Liqueur. Inside of eartips need to have a sticky meterial to hold off plastic conic nozzle.
The on top of the housing we have MMCX connector, this isn't most popular connector and 2pin would have been more judicious choice. Personaly I like it like this because the IEM can swivel for more precise fit. To note: all BGVP IEMs are MMCX.
If you wonder why my pics seem to have different color it's because the Phantom use a special thermochromic died wood shell that change color with heat should it be 30 degree sun like today or your skin that has around 34 degree of temperature.
Ok so overall the construction quality is excellent, the thermochromic is an interesting feature and well, BGVP was fast to upgrade the design issue that make ear tips fit very cumbersome.
The included cable is of excellent quality, it s a modular cable with changeable plug in 3.5mm and 4.4mm. Its a high purity 6N copper silver plated cable with 4 cores. It's thick and sturdy and flexible. It would have been nice to get a 2.5mm balanced plug too, but their none.
The packaging is excellent. It come in small glossy box and it's fullfill with goodies. As it should with flagship IEM of this price range, yet their alot of companies being rubbish in term of accessories, which isn't the case at all here.
We have a nice quality carrying case enough spacious. 9 pairs of silicone eartips in different model. 1 pair of memory foams. A cleaning brush and the excellent modular cable.
All in all everything is great here apart the thick conic nozzle which has been modify for newes batch of Phantom.
SOUND IMPRESSIONS
The overall tonality of Phantom is balanced bright W shape. It’s both bassy and technical and even lean towards analytical due to greatly boosted sense of resolution that bone conduction and electrostat drivers achieve. We have notable boosts in mid bass, upper mids and upper treble. Sense of speed and macro dynamic energy is magnified yet avoid fatiguing harshness as well as macro muddyness due to excellent sound layering capacity of these 8 drivers used.
In term of musicality, the experience is crisp, intimate and holographic, your suck up into an incredibly rich holographic soundscape with infinite amount of micro details that are effortlessly deliver but not forced on listener apart vocal and instrument presence which is extremely focused on a center stage your part of and not pull away from.
The bass is more thumpy than thick and sustain in rumble and has excellent layering capacity, it always stays layered behind the mid range due to the bone conduction ‘’cheat’’ i’ll try to explain further in next frequency range section.
It’s this special kind of bass that lifts both sub bass and bass line presence and mid bass dynamic intensity in punch which get a notch warmer when their impact yet feeds the lower mids density to avoid plasticky tone and timbre.
The impact warmth permit to glue bass by behind and avoid the infamous ‘’detached bass’’ that can feel cold and unnatural to some, me included, but it mean it’s isn’t clean and edgy in punch definition too, it’s hard to find the contour or kick drum presence for example even if the dynamic impact is there.
Then for the bass line, it’s different. Even in a complex speedy track it’s easy to track it and it never gets mushy and loose in the mix. Still, I would welcome more texture and fine details because all other drivers are sharper in resolution and not as loose in impact.
The Phantom uses a dual DD that delivers thick round bass slam, it's more tactile in dynamic than informative in texture details, the performance is very good even if mid bass is colored a bit. Both digital and acoustic kick drums don’t lack weight or roundness.
Those aren’t hard hitting nor rumbly enough for basshead purposes, and if it wasn’t for this bass boost I would consider the Phantom monitor neutral.
It’s a balanced bass response that doesn't dominate the mix yet has an extra punch to a bassy track.
Double bass sound quite good-realist, snappy, speedy in attack and with natural resonance to it’s attack release that don’t feel boomy or overdone, while for cello it’s not as realist, it can be confused with violin due to lack of grunt and attack release vibrancy.
All in all, I find the bass cohesive in tonal and timbre balance and that’s quite an achievement, yet it shines more with electronic instruments than acoustic ones in lower range. Phantom adds much needed punch and bass line cues to pop, soul, R&B, EDM, rap, rock and some jazz.
The mids are energic, clean, bright and clear, thanks to bone conduction cheat that sticken extra presence details layers and dynamic intensity that blossom in your head and mix cohesively with out of your head air transmission. This adds extra focus on mid range instruments especially vocal that are sharply extra and articulated, extremely informative in texture and timbre details as well as edgy in presence envelope contour. Think about air transmission doing the draft of music drawing and bone conduction adding meticulous contrast and details.
Sure, the sonion BCD aren’t covering as wide frequencies range as the UM Mest MK3 BC driver and in fact have familiarity with balanced armature, so the result isn’t too heterogeneous in drivers timbre here, BA and BCD covering mid range together fluidly.
But all this driver's mix leads to a clean but closed up and intimate center stage that feels concentrated in your head and in fact upper mids can sound quite loud and intense when it comes to high pitch vocals and instrument, yet this doesn’t induce shouty fatigue, it might create headache at high volume though.
Lower mids aren’t as intense in dynamic so the piano notes are not very weighty, they are tapping fastly but lightly. The note release isn't the longest and I heard a bit of hazy euphony in the release.
The transparency isn’t the greatest and more limpid, yet this mean timbre isn’t too thin too. Instrument presence is colored with a lot of texture details that thicken but compress timbre too.
Nonetheless the macro presentation is very articulated and can keep its sound layers differentiated even with a polyphonic ensemble.
Fans of ambient music with a lot of synth patterns will be in awe here since each layer is wide and multi staged effortlessly with a hint of BA lushness to them, it’s rare that I can appreciate synth patterns that well.
So it seems again electronic instruments will shine even more, with the exception of vocals which this sonion BCD specialize in fact.
The mids never get veiled by bass which stay in the back in its own soundscape stage, this means it doesn't mix into mids harmonic the same way as single or hybrid driver without BC. This stole air and silence around the instrument with subtle resonance and vibrancy especially after a big bass impact but not only. So if you expect open and airy mids, I'll go instead with BGVP DM9 and avoid bone conduction that adds sound info to silence too. I could say this for all IEM using BC, yet in a different way, due to different levels of transparency achieved by different bone conduction technology, again, UM Mest MK3 being the end game of this quest for now but at a very big cost (that worth it).
Their no doubt treble is master of the show here, we have all BA, BC and EST to magnify this frequencies range and level of micro details and attack energy and control is very good. Yet, it must be noted the Phantom uses 2EST and those expecting a similar sparkly, air and vivid snappy attack edge of 4EST configuration might feel wanting more like me.
The fact bone conduction stole air around the instrument limited the proper sparkle perception that needed cleaner and crisper spatiality. But be reassured, it’s still more sparkly than most IEMs out there not using EST.
Here the EST add bite to attack so percussions have more intense accent in attack lead, it’s energetic and crunchy, free of splashing, the sense of speed is magnify and induce captivating euphoria to complex rhythmic pattern.
Oddly, the instrument I was truly blown away with was the clavichord, one of hardest keyboard instruments to fully restitute and even if I would like longer brilliance release, each note was super clean,weighty in attack (yes, unlike piano!), fully bodied yet not dry and well extremely realist and well resolve, i can follow more complex Scarlatti or Bach composition played feverishly by Pierre Hantai and nothing mix together, the articulation and layering is top notch, the texture inside sustain release is round and just a notch euphonic, adding natural vibrancy within each note stroke. Truly mind blowing.
Other instruments that shine with Phantom are both electric and acoustic guitar. It seems that IEM loves instruments with metallic strings, pulled way more so than rubbed way since the attack of guitar has more bite than violin which is dryer and leaner even if quite bright and energetic.
Sens of speed and immediacy is boosted with this IEM, but we don't have this extra air that open spatiality, here it's a bit similar to something like Kinera Urd even if the Phantom is a league above in all technical deparment.
The soundstage isn’t the highlight of Phantom especially if you like it very wide and deep, it’s taller than both this aspect in fact and quite intimate. I feel like wearing a VR helmet where i’m part of music but not in a very realistic way spatiality wise. It’s a holographic experience concentrating on the listener's proximity. If I have to draw it, it would look like an equilateral triangle where my head is in the middle touching all 3 sides of the space.
But thanks to bone conduction cheating again, the imaging is excellent. Especially in term of sound layering you can extract freely big presence chunk should it be vocal, bass line, percussions, this is why i consider these near analytical. It's very easy to track percussions too, which has their own space, not far away in a too stretched stereo presentation. I can see this being use as monitor.
SIDE NOTES
At 12ohm of impedance and 107db of sensitivity, the Phantom are rather easy to drive and versatile for wide range of source. Yet, to fully wake up all drivers, i feel it need proper amping so a minimum of at least 100mw is suggested. Clean source with warm timbre but energic and weighty dynamic is suggested, more the source is detailed more the Phantom will show it's true nature too. Bone conduction is very revealing ot timbre texture too, so if too bright and grainy, it will show it, better go for natural and smooth timbre.
In term of cable upgrade, since those are MMCX I don't have true upgrade cable to test, i just know tribrid and BC is sensitive to noise and micro distortion affecting clean clarity, so logically, they will be a good contender for cables flavoring.
Then ear tips, ok, i've already complaint about the nozzle shape and lack of lip to hold ear tips steadily, but if it was so complex of a quest it was to achieve proper sound projection too, for ex, Azla Xelastec don't work well even if they were holding well enough around nozzle, their were a small gap that make the sound boxy, at least for my ear canal shape. Again, from all my 30 model of eartips only Penon Liqueur work andd it's not even hyping here, just fact. Those are stick tips all the way with wide bore (black).
COMPARISONS
VS LETSHUOER CONDUCTOR (1DD+3BA+4EST-1000$)
The Phantom sound more analytical, W shape and bright, while Conductor is crisper, airier and more U shape in balance.
The bass of Conductor has more slam energy and rumble release, its more boosted in sub bass while not as thick and round in mid bass punch which is more textured and punchy with the Phantom but not as airy and clean in definition, bass line feel more opaque and grainy with Phantom..
Mids are more forwards and focus with the Phantom, the bone conduction add presence fullness which make vocal notably richerin texture and wider thicker in presence as well as louder and more intelligible, it’s not as transparent and airy as well upper mids aren’t loud in same way, so this make Conductorr feel a bit shouty and unbalanced in harmonic density. We have more sound info with Phantom, it feel more mid centric and focused, it’s superior in all department but amount of natural air around instrument which has extra presence boost too with Phantom.
The treble is darker in micro details amount with Conductor, yet sparklier, more brilliant and airy too. The Phantom highs will have more crunch that show greater amount of texture richness while Conductor will focus on ultra highs snap and air, offering thinner percussions but with sharper and faster energy, this make acoustic guitar sound more metallic but more scintillant too as well as cleaner, less thicken with whole sound envelope richness. I wish i can have both air and resolution with bone conduction but it add an extra resolution layer, a bit like oversampling but for the psychoacoustic part of hearing.
The the soundstage sure sound more in your head with the Phantom, this is something to note with IEM using bone conduction, it do stole natural air flow. So, in term of spatial perception i can just feem its slightly taller, while COnductor is notably wider and way way deeper, but it’s the center stage their, it’s not that good to be that far.
Imaging is superior with the Phantom due to greater mid range resolution and fuller sound layers presentation that can cohabit a compressed yet very holographic and articulated soundscape.
Ultimately, their no doubt the Phantom is slightly superior technically, but that doesn’t mean it’s musicality will appeal everybody, the EST benefit is more evident with the Conductor wich is airier, snappier and sparklier, so if you favor transparency and bassy vivid crispness I’ll go Conductor, and if bright analytical neutral with slight mid bass boost is your thing, Phantom is the way to go.
VS UNIQUE MELODY MEXT (1DD+4BA+1 wide range BC-1100$)
The Mext is warmer and darker, more U shape and less analytical and W shape than brighter, crisper and more energetic Phantom.
Bass is faster, tiger and more punchy with the Phantom, punch is warmer and more mellow with Mext and bass line are muddier when kick occurs, bass quality is way higher with Phantom, cleaner, more articulate and resolved, less prompt to euphonic distortion. Another game for this very section, the dual DD used is from another league.
Then the mids are brighter, upper mids is more upfront with the Phantom, here quality of Bone conduction go to Mext in the sens vocal are lusher and wider in presence, less peaky and i will never encounter in head sibilance or shouting at high volume, yet it mean its a notch warmer and less dynamic, leaner than Phantom which as more extracted sound layering with less bass fog darkening macro resolution.
The highs is this time superior with Phantom, the extra EST is the game changer, micro details are more sharply define, percussions too, we have more sparkle and attack snap, it's more air and crisp afterall while more hazy in definition edge with the Mext, which is typical of balanced armature high, in other word treble feel darker and more rolled off with the Mext, less vivid in attack too.
Soundstage is notably wider and more out of your head with the Mext, while it’s taller and deeper with the Phantom.
Imaging is notably better with Phantom due mostly to higher resolution and more multi-layered spatiality. Next feel hazy so accuracy of instrument placement is less sharp and precise.
All in all, Phantom delivers superior technical performance in all departments but mid range due to superior bone conduction of Mext that cover wider frequencies range. Tonaly wise, Phantom is more W shaped and energetic and captivating, while i can find Mext boring, lacking dynamic authority of Phantom.
VS BGVP DMA (1DD+2BA+2BCD-300$)
DMA is bassier, just a notch warmer mids wise and not as crips and snappy and airy in treble.
The bass hits harder and has a chunkier rumble too but not as good layering. Phantom bass is more speedy and tighter, it's cleaner and more edgy too, both these IEM have excellent bass quality so her quality is just slightly superior, this is logical since Phantom uses 2 DD while DMA uses one.
Mids are very very similar since both IEM use very same dual BC, but definition is sharper and crisper with the Phantom, presence is more centered and focused, we have less euphony that can affect layering of instrument too so more refined mids afterall.
The treble is where Phantom is cleaner superior to DMA, but not that much, it’s mostly about brilliance and attack control which is more snappy, percussion is cleaner, crisper, less prompt to hazy sustain-release, less prompt to slight splashing too.
Soundstage is notably wider and more holographic with the DMA, this is surely due to nozzle type but it might be extra bass headroom too, Phantom sound quite ‘’in your head’’ compared to DMA.
Imaging is crisper and sharper and less hazy with the Phantom, these can be used as monitor IEM, while for DMA it's too colored and bassy.
All in all, I was expecting a higher sound benefit difference from Phantom compared to excellent DMA, yet, it only underlines how crazy is the sound value of DMA. Phantom is brighter and more neutral afterall, and more refined in balance as well as cleaner and sparklier, but those extra EST don’t deliver as much sparkle and micro details one should expect so in that regard the diminishing return hit way harder than DMA.
Subjectively, i prefer the more fun, open, holographic and bassy musicality of DMA over more serious sounding Phantom, this is due to the fact im addict to out of your head soundstage as well as lively macro dynamic, so while i would use Phantom for classical and jazz, for anything else with beat, it will be DMA.
CONCLUSION
The BGVP Phantom are true technical monster that achieve it's promise of delivering a very high resolution sound that couldn't be achieve without the help of bone conduction. They achieve this delivering an intimate and energic musicality that is captivating due to it's dual DD punchy and quality bass that dont mix with mids that are superbly layered on top of low end.
While i would prefer a more open, holographic and out of your head spatiality, these doesn't sound compressed but ultra focused on what's going on in your music. It's highly engaging and well, it's even hard to think or concentrate on anything else than music with those imaging and resolution champ.
If you are into bright tonality with slight bass, upper mids and upper treble boost, you'll most likely be blown away by those.....just don't forget to buy the upgrade metal nozzle version as well as sticking this housing on your temporal bone.
Highly recommended.
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PS: I want to thanks BGVP for sending me this review sample, which is now part of my 300 IEMs collection. As always, i'm 100% free minded and not affiliated to any companies nor making any $ with my reviews.
You can order the Phantom on official BGVP Ali store here (non aff link and don't forget to select METAL CONDUCT!....oh, its different price-970$):
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005680853863.html
