Hi Skedra, thank you for your honest review. It is true, Final is a Japanese brand that makes honesty the first priority, to users, to products, and to music. For A8000 with "Transparency" as its main concept, we want it to deliver output which is as close as possible to the input. Therefore, if it is a bad recording, it tell the truth, if it is a perfect recording, it will make you fly

That is fair thank you for replying , but I think there's still an issue around 7-8k where the driver resonates, verified this on multiple sources with frequency generators and trying to eq down that range. That's the one thing that keeps them from being absolutely excellent for me.

What you see at 7-8k is in fact not caused by the driver resonance. It is set into that way on purpose for the "Transparency" we are looking for. It is totally possible for our engineer to eliminate it trough tuning, but it is quite important to achieve the sound we are aiming for.

Frequency response does not only reflects how the low, mid or high sound like, but they are also affecting soundstage, clarity and many other important perceptions too. Therefore the balance between them is quite a difficult challenge for engineers.

Thank you

Great review @skedra - and many thanks for the report on your frequency sweep! I suspect what you're hearing around 7-8 kHz is not a driver resonance, but an ear canal resonance (this is probably why you don't see any peak there in Jude's measurements, because the GRAS hi-res coupler intentionally damps the ear canal's half-wave resonance mode - but as you've heard, ear-canal resonances still impact the net FR you experience with an IEM). It still looks like an interesting headphone though. @Final Audio - I'm up for that US tour...?!?!?

@skedra, do you have any thoughts on its isolation? Is it vented?

Thank you @csglinux Isolation is about average, it felt (and looked) like they are vented.

@csglinux Soon-ish
@skedra Vented? Do you mean a vent to relieve the air pressure in the ear? A8000 does not have it if that is what you are saying.

I meant more to tune the driver, I assumed it is based on the hole looking thing in front of the driver and another one at the bottom of the iems.

Oh! That is correct. There are 4 places involved in the tuning, The one in front of the driver, and the one under the housing as you mentioned. And another 2 are inside the housing.