Caveat: Dimitri of MA and Gavin of Tralucent have been most responsive to my concerns and have been working diligently to address them accordingly....
I place my order last week and Voila!, 5 days later Canada Post is at my door...most excitements...!
Open box...no surprises here, everything well packed and in good order....
The items of fascination...
Nice 'n all, but i expected a bit more, actually alot more...no big deal, shiny packaging and display boxes have their place, but i'd rather pay for the actual product...
Quick shot of the 1plus2 burning in on the 160-d....
Initial impressions:
accessories/packaging: below average really....as i mention above, the IEMs, cable, stock bi-flange tips, and otterbox...
build quality: above average, they certain hand made customs, irregularities in acrylic finishing, rough edges, one nozzle screen out of alignment
fit: these things are big, huge in fact....not quite sure how i feel about this aspect...they're almost a cross between and headphone and IEM in a strange way....
they stick way out from my outer ear....almost like a couple of big BT receivers...Gavin recommend a shallow depth fit in the canal so i can't see these sitting any more flush...
isolation: i'll have to wait on this until i receive some proper tips and play around a bit...
first impressions, though are that they seem a bit leaky, perhaps due to the vent...how they are now, lots of ambient noise gets by...hopefully this will improve with better sealing...
sonics: they sounded bright, thin, closed in and in-coherent with the stock bi-flange...obviously i didn't not have a proper seal...
i scoured about and found some suitable tips, not ideal (Gavin is shipping me out several sets)....
i now have a decent seal which i think could be a fair bit better....
so how are they...?
pretty freaking amazing actually, even with only ~10hr on them they certainly are reminiscent of a high end full-size headphone...staging, imaging, timbre all top notch...the low end is a bit puffy and bloated and as noted elsewhere is bleeding upwards a bit, particularly on the 160-d....i a/b with my UM3x and there simply is no comparison....completely different level...like comparing the westone to stock apple earbud....the difference is just stupid....!!!
overall, a bit of a let down...but i'm still holding out hope that i can get the seal and fit dialed in and with that the corresponding improvements in presentation....
Thanks again to Dimitri and Gavin stepping up and being receptive to my concerns.....!!!
more to come....
btw: without knowing the serial numbers on the silver ones pictured a few pages back i cannot be sure but i'm fairly certain the ones shipped to me are the identical pair...
the go dap x sound very nice as well...tiny bit bass shy, however after several hours it started misbehaving with random static pops and clicks...probably a bad ground on the board....back it goes to JPN for warranty replacement