Preamble As you move up a product line, there is an expectation that you are receiving tangible and easily ascertainable benefits for your dollars. A higher trim on a car yields heated seats and a bucket of safety features you never knew you needed. A higher specced laptop provides you with greater benchmark scores. And a higher end cable provides you with…more sound? It's a bit of a tricky one to explain but as I move into the top of the line cable for Eletech’s Virtues line of cables, I began to expect more and more. And for 529 USD, one would...

Preamble SPC is a bit of the red-headed stepchild of cable materials in my reading. People love pure copper, pure silver or some hodgepodge of metal to create some Frankenstein alloy. SPC is usually connected with cheaper cables you find on Amazon from no-name brands but this is changing somewhat. Effect Audio (EA) Code 24 presented a more expensive cable with SPC and today’s review concerns their direct rival, Eletech’s entry into the SPC market. But can this cable shake off these preconceptions or is it to be relegated to the parts bin? The...

Preamble There are usually a few steps into the world of cable rolling. First, by circumstance or by curiosity, one would usually order a cheaper cable off the list of usual suspects being NiceHCK, XINHS or Tripowin. The next logical step would be a more established and well-known manufacturer such as Effect Audio or Eletech. Before you know it, you’re spending the price of a used car on a PWAudio Orpheus Shielding. But today’s review concerns the cheapest cable in the Eletech family, Azrael. And, despite being the cheapest, the Azrael comes in at...

Preamble Many thanks to @Yifang for lending me his personal unit for this review. There are some items in this hobby of audio that become something of lore. These items seem to transcend their raison d’etre of producing sound into your earholes and become something that essentially dominates the hobby in terms of conversation and benchmarking. From the IEMs such as the Moondrop Chu causing an arms race amongst Chi-Fi manufacturers of a race to the bottom of the price bracket, the Moondrop Blessing 2 Dusk becoming the defacto choice in its price...

Luxury & Precision (LP) P6 Pro (P6P) Preamble Digital audio players (DAPs) harken back to the past of dumbphones and the need to carry around a dedicated device for music playback. From the Walkman to the iPod and now to the modern day DAP, these audio players are far less ubiquitous amongst the general population now and are more specialised devices for the discerning audiophile. But the variety that exists within the ranks of DAPs is something to behold, there are devices that harken back to the iPod Shuffle with tiny screens, devices that...

Preamble The proliferation of Chinese Hi-Fi (Chi-Fi) in the audio scene in the last decade has led to a tremendous growth of audiophiles in the hobby. The barriers to entry have been lowered and appreciation for good quality audio is now in the mainstream. However, it is not all rainbows and candy unfortunately, as the prolific nature of Chinese manufacturers has led to unprecedented levels of choice for consumers. Herein lies the rub, there is now the paradox of people being crippled by the freedom of choice. Today’s review concerns a Chi-Fi...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87 and @EffectAudio for arranging the Australian Head-Fi Tour of the Effect Audio Code 24 and 24C. In the history of product lines, there has also been the sense of wanting more for less but ultimately being sad that you don’t have the best of the best. A Civic Type R pulls up to you in your Si, a WRX STi pulls up to you in your WRX, a Continental GT pulls up to your plain old Continental and there is a sense of wanting. Today’s review concerns the smaller brother of a newly released cable, the Code 24, and whilst limited...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87 and @EffectAudio for arranging the Australian Head-Fi Tour of the Effect Audio Code 24 and 24C. The world of cable rolling is fraught with pitfalls. “Ackchually, there is no measurable difference”, “bro, $1000 on a cable, are you smoking crack?”, “holy crap the XXX cable didn’t do anything, what do I do?”. These are some of the common events that one may encounter in their pursuit of very expensive strands of copper, but is there really a point? I would venture to say yes, yes there is. In my experience on these audio...

Preamble Many thanks to @Damz87 for arranging the Australian tour of these and special thanks to @tfaduh for lending his personal unit for this review. It’s not uncommon to see new entrants in the world of audio but it is less common to see on as prolific as FatFreq. In a short span of time, this Singaporean manufacturer has managed the capture the imagination of many an audiophile through their rather extreme tunings and their rather robust product line up consisting of musician targeted monitors and the Maestro line. Today’s review concerns the...

Preamble Many thanks to @Damz87 for arranging the Australian tour of these and special thanks to @reallynotareview for lending his personal unit for this review. In a world of Harman tuned IEMs, there seems to be a prevailing idea of what constitutes a well-tuned IEM (at least below a certain price point). Adherence to targets with minor adjustments and a FR curve seems to be enough for a not-insignificant number of audiophiles to praise or malign an IEM. FatFreq is a Singaporean maker that is seemingly hellbent on subverting these targets to...

Preamble Many thanks to @Damz87, @Vision Ears and Minidisc for arranging the Australian tour of the EXT and the PHöNIX. Ask anyone on the street about audio brands and the likelihood that they rattle off brands such as Apple, Beats and Bose is very high indeed. Ask people slightly more interested in the topic and you might get the likes of Sennheiser and Audio Technica. The chances of them stating “Vision Ears” are very low, and for good reason. The German company keeps a fairly low profile mostly sticking to CIEMs and some rather high-priced...

Many thanks to @Damz87, @Vision Ears and Minidisc for arranging the Australian tour of the EXT and the PHöNIX. Preamble The amounts commanded by the top-of-the-line (TOTL) IEMs in the market are something to behold. These sums would likely be seen by some to be inordinate and perhaps obscene but what do you actually get from this sum? Some would say that the increasingly high sums that you pay yield less and less results, and that much is true. But how much do you value the last 5% of something? Today’s review concerns a TOTL level IEM, the Vision...

Preamble I would like to thank @Damz87, @Joe Bloggs and Hiby for arranging the tour of the Hiby Yvain. It is not uncommon to see a manufacturer known more for their sources to dip their toes in the pond and put a IEM into the market. And for the most part, these IEMs seem to be overshadowed by IEMs from more established manufacturers in the space. I mean there is a reason why people like Astell&Kern seek to collaborate rather than putting out their own and so today’s review concerns the Yvain, an IEM from storied DAP maker, Hiby. Is the Yvain...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87, @Joe Bloggs and Hiby for arranging the Australian tour of the Hiby R6 Pro 2. Big thank you especially to Joe for providing his personal unit on tour. The digital audio player (DAP) is something of an anomaly among people who do not care much for audio fidelity. Often, they gawk at my oddly shaped brick and query, “what is that?”. To which I must go into an explanation that it is essentially an iPod, and so beings the game of 21 questions as to why I bother when I have a phone and Airpods at my disposal. This is not a...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87, @EffectAudio and Elysian Acoustics for arranging the Australian tour of the Elysian Diva 2023. In the audio hobby there is a tendency to get caught in the hype, a new release comes out, some enthusiastic impressions at a show and before you know it, it’s sold out and impossible to get your hands on it. Whilst this isn’t necessarily the case for the subject of today’s review, within my bubble of Australian tour reviewers, there was a recurring message for at least several months of “Diva 🐐”. And whilst this praise has...

Preamble Many thanks to @o0genesis0o, Linsoul and Thieaudio for providing me with the Hype 2's for a review. It feels as though Chi-fi has a new release every other week and in the midst of that, there are a lot of questions to be asked. What is the best at $XXX? Is it worth the extra $XXX for X IEM? Why does Thieaudio get so much hype (pun intended)? Today’s review concerns the Hype 2, the not really a sequel in that it’s actually Hype2 instead of 2. Thieaudio has garnered significant attention over the last several years with their lineup of...

Preamble Many thanks to @Damz87 and @EffectAudio for arranging the Australian tour of the Gaea as well as the Ares 8W, Cadmus 8W and Code 23. The audio world is quite partial to a good collaboration. From influencers stamping their name on the latest and greatest of chi-fi, to Astell & Kern putting their spin on various IEMs over the years and to musical artists themselves collaborating at length to the point of their names being synonymous with one another. These collaborations can lead to a hit leaving their audiences begging for more, or simply...

Preamble Stupidly I forgot to take pics of all the cables, so please enjoy this one I took of the Fusion 1 and a terrible photo rounding them all up later on. Many thanks to @Damz87 and @EffectAudio for arranging the Australian tour of the Fusion 1, Ares S, Cadmus S and the Code 23. Shoutout to @GiullianSN as well for lending me his personal Cleopatra II Octa for the sake of this review. The IEMs used to for this review included: Fir Audio RN6; Fir Audio XE6; Fir Audio NE4; UM MEST MK2; EA x Elysian Gaea; and Elysian Diva. The world of cable...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87, MiniDisc Australia (http://minidisc.com.au) and Fir Audio themselves for arranging this Australian tour of the Fir Audio RN6, XE6 and NE4. As the beneficiary of a trio of Fir Audio IEMs as part of the Australian tour, I was conversing with the previous reviewer and hearing some of his thoughts regarding this lineup of IEMs. One of the comments that I had found myself making was that the Neon 4 was the red-headed stepchild of this family. Being the least expensive out of the Radon and the Xenon, my expectations...

Preamble Thank you to @Damz87, MiniDisc Australia (http://minidisc.com.au) and Fir Audio themselves for arranging this Australian tour of the Fir Audio RN6, XE6 and NE4. The technology involved in the production of personal music listening, specifically transducers or IEMs is hardly a novel concept at this point in time. Reiterated countless times, one would believe that there is likely little room for innovation for such a mature device. However, there remains those at the ‘frontier’ of the audio space, looking to implement new and exciting...