It was an impulsive purchase but least did I know these would end up as my favorite IEM in 1 months of time. There's something very unique about Golden Crystal, starting from well textured bass, passing along with clean mids and culminating on sprakly highs. It's almost reinventing and rejoicing my music collection once again.
I'll start with the basics:
Packaging: Nice Fancy leather box with a clamshell case ensconsced comfortably in upper compartment. Lift the compartment with the velvet strip and there lies 3 boxes. One of them contains 3 sets of single flange tips and 3 sets of tri flange tips. One ovoid single flange is already mounted on the nozzles of IEM. I settled for the medium sized non-prodruding-rear tri-flanges for their deeper insertion and perfect fit.
Build Quality: Usual gold plated connectors. Surprisingly small form factor and smallest dynamic drivers @5mm. Shell feels sturdy enough but the plastic reliefs at rear gets me worried as these are not the typical limber strain reliefs. So far no problem at all. Cable ,definitely, is the most impressive of all the IEMs I have. It's braided internally and then sheathed with some kind of polymer. It's not easy to get the cable tangled, a plus point indeed. RE272's wire are close enough but feels a bit fragile.
Comfort and Isolation: Once you tuck them in, it's like you won't realize if you have something in your ears after some time. They just disappear owing to their light weight and small form factor. I can chew food without any perceptible seal issues. So far I found tri-flanges (medium) to be the best at providing isolation and for the maximum bass. No other IEM, I own, come any closer to that. It's accentuated by the fact that I was oblivious of the fact that on of my colleague was tooting behind me.
Sound
Lows: More than enough for that extra fun you are looking for. Quantity, quality and texture is on par with RE272. Packs a good punch and control in comparison to feeble blows of RE272. Good extension at sub bass region (can feel the reasonably good rumble). Owing to the small driver size it's technically limited to match with one of the Xears (TD V III or XE200PRO) or bassier IEMs in sheer quantity. But the texture of bass renders me euphoric to no limit. It's enthralling to the auditory senses.
Mids: Slightly recessed compared to RE272 but still forward to my taste. Clean and lean are the two words to describe it. RE 0 sounds, in comparison, way too thick and colored. RE272 manages to leap ahead of Golden Crystal but not by a fair margin. However on some bad recordings these can sound harsh and revealing.
Highs: Piercingly awesome, crisp and clear ! Yep, that's exactly where these excels again by a fair margin above RE272. Treble extension will blow you away by the tremendous energy, it's like unleashed horse of war mauling relentlessly other beasts competing against it. A word of caution, highs can be way too much for some people.
Presentation: Intimate and aggressive. Perfectly complements the music I listen to (mainly post-rock). RE272 is more laid back and lacks the aggressiveness.
Soundstage: Comparatively narrow but with good depth. I wish it would be as much wider as RE272's but that doesn't limit the fun.
Instrument Separation: RE272 wins by good margin but Golden Crystal is no slouch, although sounds a wee bit congested in complex passages.
Imaging: Again not as good as RE272 but ranks gracefully a few notches down.
Listening to same songs with RE272 and then Golden Crystal gives me a completely different experience. Both are kind of complementing each other. I do feel that these will benefit more from amping as the volume at normal level was way below compared to other IEMs I tested.
One thing I'd like to mention again is that bass magnitude and rumble increased appreciably when using tri-flanges.
Cons: No chin slider, no modular cable(I like RE272's approach here)
