Trinity Audio Engineering - What the future holds
Feb 18, 2017 at 4:52 PM Post #1,306 of 2,949
Firstly I'm a fan of Trinity Audio's products as they provide great value for money, but sadly the website is not clear and is light on details. Please update it with all the facts needed so we can make the best decision on which products to buy!
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Head-Fi should not used in addition to the website to provide facts to consumers, but I think it's awesome that the owner is an active member on the website!
I am wondering if I should get the latest Icarus III IEM, but I have no idea how it sounds compared to the other IEMs. Something helpful would be this https://www.64audio.com/store/u-series has a useful comparison of audio signatures.
 
Also a good point by Tommy C. I wonder if it's just at the start as Trinity Audio is a new company that it is innovating at such a rapid pace or if it will continue to do so into the future as it is its business model.
 
Feb 18, 2017 at 10:13 PM Post #1,307 of 2,949
Totally agree with aBc.CaN! I had been very close to preordering the Icarus III, but I have no idea what it sounds like vs the Master or any other iem. However, I then saw the Icarus IV is only around $30 more (comparing full retail prices) so I might as well wait for details on that while groovin' with my PM4 in the meantime :)
 
Feb 18, 2017 at 11:50 PM Post #1,308 of 2,949
  I ordered a PM4 and was extremely disappointed with the final product, after hearing that the new Master IEM was meant to replace it and I could get it at a cheap price I was ready to give trinity another chance.
 
Now Bob releases the new Sagaris series and I'm not sure the specifics of any of it at all. The webpage is horrid and provides little to no info and is constantly changing so no one really knows what is going on.
 
Bob really needs to sort this lineup out as it gets way too hard to keep track of all the new products when new ones are constantly being released. The PM4 already has a successor after ~1 month of being on sale. Currently I'm tossing up between the Icarus III and the Master IEM, but with the coupon expiring soon (no confirmed date when the coupon expires); I'm not sure which IEM I should get with no clarification in the differences between the two IEMS. 


You can always order the master and cancel the order later if you get some information that suits you..  Just make sure there's no cancellation fees...  They can be a little hidden sometimes.
 
Feb 19, 2017 at 6:33 AM Post #1,310 of 2,949
I do hope the Trinity Audio website gets a decent overhaul. Personally I'd love to see some tables with all the relevant info of all the products, or better still: a 'compare' function by selecting multiple products so picking a new piece of gear would be made easier...in theory
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Feb 19, 2017 at 8:34 AM Post #1,314 of 2,949
While I'm waiting for my Trinity Air & Hunters to arrive I was web searching headphone reviews (as we do) & came across a new US start-up called www.periodicaudio.com 
 
Can't seem to find anything about them on here, but read an interesting post (on a site called audiosciencereview) from one of the owners, Dan Wiggins, which I found very informational. Sounds like he knows his stuff! Here it is:-
 
"Well, after the Beats explosion (I did some consulting for a big name at that time), nearly every factory in China became "a headphone factory". And suddenly you had dozens, then hundreds, then thousands of brands popping up, selling off-the-shelf product from China.

The big German brands - Sennheiser and AKG - kept plugging along. Bose kept going with ANC specific units. And everyone else tried to focus on consumer products. Everyone wanted to be the next Beats (and truthfully, no one will be. Beats was a unique combination of the re-emergence of the sports-star/music-star glamour with the ubiquity of portable music players/phones to carry decent amounts of music. It was a generational shift in consumer behavior and Beats captured the essence of the behavior).

Now, it's all about marketing - how do you pitch what you have, how to do you tweak an off-the-shelf design. No slam, but a lot of the current darling of high-end over-the-ear headphones started by taking off-the-shelf Foster units and changing out earpads, or headbands, or maybe rear cups. Some move up to doing more - like walking the sample rooms at Foster (which are impressive, especially the Panyu, Guangzhou, China facility to which I've been way too many times), choose a stock transducer, and go for a new industrial design.

And as more and more 2nd and 3rd tier companies are making product in China, they will cover your costs on mechanical design, they will do prototypes for you for free, and lower MOQs to hundreds. So suddenly if you fancy yourself a "headphone designer", you can get into the business for $10,000 and some effort and have a stock of units. And probably - like 99% of those in the market - end up selling dozens a year (or less). So you get a proliferation of brands big (remember SOL Republic?) and small (look at dozens that come and go from one show to the next).

It's really a super-low barrier-to-entry to the market, but to build staying power, to actually succeed long-term, takes more than just a slick marketing gimmick and cheap product (and trust me - you can get off-the-shelf product for really cheap - like planar magnetic headphones for under $40/pr, decent 40mm diameter over-the-ear units for under $20, and OK sounding IEMs for under $5/pair). It's why you can find $4.99 earbuds at your local 7-11 store, and also see $50,000 new units. Heck, even big universities are getting into it, like the Warwick Audio 'stats that many are starting to roll (essentially rebranding an off-the-shelf design from a design team from the University of Warwick) for $5,000 a set. Change the cosmetics, give it a unique name - and presto, you're a headphone/IEM brand!

But as all things acoustical, the biggest effects are in the transducers. You can tweak earpads and headbands and rear cups, but you get relatively small changes in performance. Doing a unique driver - something fresh from the ground up - is where big gains are made. Rolling your own transducer takes real engineering chops, some advanced modeling, and lots of sweat. Not many people do this - really, it's AKG (Harman), Sennheiser, Bose (a little), Foster (who designs/builds for LOTS of big names), and then a handful of independent designers/engineers (such as myself). Many of those smaller Chinese factories will "design" their own transducers, but it's usually just taking a well-reviewed product, taking it apart, and cloning the insides as best they can.

I've spent a few decades designing transducers for nearly everyone in the business (I can guarantee my work has been heard, at this time, by everyone in the world - either directly with products like SONOS and Beats and Final, or indirectly via pro work like KRK and Mackie and Event or consumer products by Dell, HP, Apple, or generics from Flextronics and others) and worked with my Periodic partners to do something special. TO do what we have done for dozens of other companies in the past. We wanted to step forward and see if we could do what our clients have done.

Rolling a product from the ground up means more time and effort and more cash, but the results are better. So we started with a clean sheet and went full-focus on the product. Three products, the best we can realize as a platform, and just do sonic changes with the materials chosen. Nothing else. It took us 4 months to realize, but after the time and effort and tooling (which we did not have to remake/redo - we got it right the first time), we came out with something we believe is unique, in terms of performance, price, and positioning. We didn't do the "in thing" which is handfuls of balanced armatures jammed together in a too-small housing, with too-complicated networks. We did what we thought was right - and I think it's going to pay off. The results at least seem to be drawing lots of attraction!"
Dan
 
Be really interested in anyone's views, maybe by PM preferably, as I don't want to go off Trinity message any more than I just have.
 
Feb 19, 2017 at 3:54 PM Post #1,319 of 2,949
 
I was thinking the same thing, lol. I'm like "Link please..."

I suspect he's talking wholesale ex-factory price not retail with all the distributor / manufacturer mark-up price (including packaging, marketing, overheads + profit margins).

 
I'm sure, I was just being a bit facetious. Obviously without someone buying large quantities they wouldn't be able to secure that kind of a deal.
 

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