The package the Answers came in was very well designed and includes a ton of accessories. They showed up in 2 business days which was awesome. Several large, medium and small ear tips with different sized openings to slightly tweak the sound. Also comes with flange style tips. The cable is a little too long for my tastes and I have to roll it up and stuff it in my pocket when I'm walking around with it. The stereo plug is also kind of big and bulky and I would have liked it to be a little smaller and angled so it took up less room in my pocket. These are just minor complaints, and it seems Dita was aiming at providing a quality cable and connector so it's understandable.
Isolation is pretty good, but if somebody walked up to you and said something you'd probably hear it. To me that's a benefit as I use them at work.
The Answers are pretty comfortable and after a few hours, I don't even notice they're in my ears. The flat design actually makes them easier to listen to while lying on your side with a pillow against your ear. They leak very little noise if you're sleeping next to someone and don't want to wake them.
It took me some time to realize everything I was hearing. I think it's because the sound is so balanced and smooth, nothing but the spacial presentation and clarity jumps out at you at first. Instruments are very well separated with a natural decay. This really becomes apparent when listening to jazz, classical music, vocals. There's a really nice stage, not unnaturally wide, but pleasantly large, leaving lots of room for each instrument to have their own place, even during more complicated passages. Dual vocals like in The Pixie's Bone Machine are really a treat in that you can hear both vocals in their own space while clearly separated from all the other instruments.
Listening to Rome - Accidents of Gesture or Gillian Welch's Revelator, the micro-details I normally only hear on my T1's through the Crack appear. All the little flaws that make a singer's voice unique and beautiful stand out. Dynamics jump out at me, explosions of energy sometimes surprising me when I don't expect it. This is a quality in my T1 setup I'd been looking for in a portable setup for work. They are very fast, and can keep up with furious drum passages like Tool's Ticks and Leeches while maintaining the ambiance/reverb.
Metal with gobs of distortion, screaming and double bass drum such as in Deafheaven's Sunbather maintain clear separation, which is a joy because it's one area where many headphones fall short for me. With metal, a lot of headphones and speakers seem to blur all the instruments together, but the Answers give even hectic metal plenty of room to breathe.
Mastodon's Crack The Skye is not mastered well, but is one of the greatest metal albums of all time. It's a great album to reveal peaky highs, and certain passages will judo chop your eardrums if you're not careful. The Answer brings the vocals right up to the edge of what's acceptable to me. Some people may find this too harsh with some recordings. In this way, I feel the Answers are accurate enough that bad recordings are going to show themselves, but not embarrassingly so. They're forgiving and incredibly detailed at the same time which is not something I've heard in a lot of phones, but they might not be the best for people that listen to music that is not always well mastered and are sensitive to a little peak in highs.
Beck's Morning Phase is a great test of how well string instruments can sound with The Answer. You hear the rattling of the strings against the frets every once in a while, and they have this full-bodied texture to them that has me really engaged. String instruments sound particularly exceptional.
Upright bass in Tsuyoshi Yamamato Trio's Midnight Sugar has tons of texture. Bass sounds wonderfully detailed and impactful during slaps. It doesn't get muddied over by other instruments and neither does it seem to drown out other instruments. There is a nice amount of sub-bass but it blends in with the rest of the bass and doesn't stand out unless you're specifically paying attention to it.
I think they're very reasonably priced for the quality you get. In a boxing match with a TOTL headphone, they come out of the fight admirably well, and have a very pleasing musicality to them that will have you listening to all your favorite music over again. They're so natural sounding that it might take some time to really appreciate what Dita has done with this IEM. They also sound really great out of pretty much every source I tried them on, but amping them and using higher quality source material will definitely bring them to another level that is truly exciting. What a great job Dita has done with this headphone.
Can't wait to hear what they make next.
Isolation is pretty good, but if somebody walked up to you and said something you'd probably hear it. To me that's a benefit as I use them at work.
The Answers are pretty comfortable and after a few hours, I don't even notice they're in my ears. The flat design actually makes them easier to listen to while lying on your side with a pillow against your ear. They leak very little noise if you're sleeping next to someone and don't want to wake them.
It took me some time to realize everything I was hearing. I think it's because the sound is so balanced and smooth, nothing but the spacial presentation and clarity jumps out at you at first. Instruments are very well separated with a natural decay. This really becomes apparent when listening to jazz, classical music, vocals. There's a really nice stage, not unnaturally wide, but pleasantly large, leaving lots of room for each instrument to have their own place, even during more complicated passages. Dual vocals like in The Pixie's Bone Machine are really a treat in that you can hear both vocals in their own space while clearly separated from all the other instruments.
Listening to Rome - Accidents of Gesture or Gillian Welch's Revelator, the micro-details I normally only hear on my T1's through the Crack appear. All the little flaws that make a singer's voice unique and beautiful stand out. Dynamics jump out at me, explosions of energy sometimes surprising me when I don't expect it. This is a quality in my T1 setup I'd been looking for in a portable setup for work. They are very fast, and can keep up with furious drum passages like Tool's Ticks and Leeches while maintaining the ambiance/reverb.
Metal with gobs of distortion, screaming and double bass drum such as in Deafheaven's Sunbather maintain clear separation, which is a joy because it's one area where many headphones fall short for me. With metal, a lot of headphones and speakers seem to blur all the instruments together, but the Answers give even hectic metal plenty of room to breathe.
Mastodon's Crack The Skye is not mastered well, but is one of the greatest metal albums of all time. It's a great album to reveal peaky highs, and certain passages will judo chop your eardrums if you're not careful. The Answer brings the vocals right up to the edge of what's acceptable to me. Some people may find this too harsh with some recordings. In this way, I feel the Answers are accurate enough that bad recordings are going to show themselves, but not embarrassingly so. They're forgiving and incredibly detailed at the same time which is not something I've heard in a lot of phones, but they might not be the best for people that listen to music that is not always well mastered and are sensitive to a little peak in highs.
Beck's Morning Phase is a great test of how well string instruments can sound with The Answer. You hear the rattling of the strings against the frets every once in a while, and they have this full-bodied texture to them that has me really engaged. String instruments sound particularly exceptional.
Upright bass in Tsuyoshi Yamamato Trio's Midnight Sugar has tons of texture. Bass sounds wonderfully detailed and impactful during slaps. It doesn't get muddied over by other instruments and neither does it seem to drown out other instruments. There is a nice amount of sub-bass but it blends in with the rest of the bass and doesn't stand out unless you're specifically paying attention to it.
I think they're very reasonably priced for the quality you get. In a boxing match with a TOTL headphone, they come out of the fight admirably well, and have a very pleasing musicality to them that will have you listening to all your favorite music over again. They're so natural sounding that it might take some time to really appreciate what Dita has done with this IEM. They also sound really great out of pretty much every source I tried them on, but amping them and using higher quality source material will definitely bring them to another level that is truly exciting. What a great job Dita has done with this headphone.
Can't wait to hear what they make next.
