My POV:
Historically, I've garnered mediocre measurements in public school audiometric testing, starting with the following in junior high, and continuing on to the literal short bus in high school evaluations:
However, my father managed to maintain a generally above-average gear selection (amongst my peers’ progenitors), so decent speakers and headphones were on offer throughout my formative years: Vector Research VRX-9000 receiver w/270 Ohm H/P outputs, AR91 speakers, Koss HV/1A headphones. My first personal earphone purchase was the Koss Porta Pro. In my 20s and 30s, the Sony MDR-V6 likely contributed greatly towards my current tonal expectations. I tend to gravitate towards neutrality, with increasing help from the sliders as technology trends and nature inexorably diverge.
Evaluation period (as of this review): 2018-07-24…2018-08-27
Build quality:
Excellent fit & finish.
Aesthetics:
Matte titanium/semi-gloss gold anodized colors look nice, and should have broad appeal. Given a choice, I'd opt for something more "pro", such as a matte black body/semi-gloss black trim. I'd trade in for that look for an extra $30.
Comfort/tip fit:
These are the most comfortable earphones of any kind that I've encountered, and I've been using the Sennheiser HD 545 for 20 years, with a couple of OEM pad replacements. From the Head-Fi posts I've seen so far, I think most ears will be compatible right out of the gate.
Part of what contributes to its easy comfort is the way the shell clears the outer folds of the pinna. There is very little force directed along the axis of the ear canal, which means that seal maintenance is completely dependent on the ear tip.
There was an uncomfortable crus helix interference with my ears (and resultant lack of seal) that was remedied once I biased the included L bass tip stems +2 mm up the nozzles with some DIY spacers trimmed off of the M bass tip stems. The picture below shows them at > 3 mm thickness, which I subsequently adjusted to ~2 mm. Once I did that, I found that the FH5 has a very good balance between insertion effort and self-retention. FiiO, please don't extend the nozzles - just include spacers for us outliers. There's no need to change any tooling.
I tried Comply Ts-500 M tips, but the FH5's relatively wide nozzle (measuring 5.88 mm minor dia., 6.54 mm major dia.) suggested that the 600 series would be more appropriate (according to Comply's non-committal support response).
The 500s had excellent isolation, but were uncomfortable for me, and the resultant treble attenuation was not a good match for me with the FH5 (unlike the F9).
@Brooko said his wide canals were properly accommodated with MandarinEs Symbio W tips; however, the S and M Symbio W tips didn't seal for me. I have a pending order for the L Symbios, so I'm still holding out hope for that.
The modified L bass tip is working well for me, regardless.
Other users have reported good results with double-flange or deeper-inserting tips (such as the SpinFit), so I'm leaning towards recommending that FiiO include a couple of double-flange options, instead of the 3 pairs of same-size foam tips. I'd gladly trade the clear hard case for more tip configurations.
Cable:
(1) Single-ended TRS 3.5 mm: P/N LC-3.5B. Length 1.2 m, Ag-plated 24/44 (24 AWG eff., calculated 0.866 Ohms DCR).
Very attractive, supple, and tangle-resistant. The slider is a welcome addition, and the bend radii at high-repetitive-stress cable transitions are confidence-inspiring, in terms of perceived durability. The strain relief closest to the 3.5 mm plug could stand to be a bit more compliant, but is not much of an issue for a right-angle configuration.
The only caveat I can state concerns the unnecessarily thick ear hooks, which can result in mildly-annoying squeaky microphonics with sunglass arms on the move. The angled MMCX connector transitions nicely to the ear hook entry, the connector has a satisfying insertion click & rotation friction, and the increased hook thickness does help with grip when attaching and detaching the cable. That said, if the ear hook covers went away, I'd be ok, too. Overall, nice job, FiiO.
I don't have an issue with the omission of a balanced cable. Twisted GND/signal pairs are maintained all the way from the 3.5 mm connector, so crosstalk is entirely a function of the source. I don’t think anyone is going to have an actual audible problem with S/N, crosstalk, or driving voltage with the FH5, with well-behaved SE sources.
Accessories:
Other reviewers have adequately detailed the tip and case options. I like the soft zippered case and bass tips, and have little use for the rest. My preference, in general, would be for consumer electronics companies and their customers to lose their collective fetish for ta-da! unboxing, and get the packaging down to the essentials. Give me a double-flute Kraft box with some suspension film, let my wife buy her own sewing boxes, and give our landfills some relief.
Sound quality:
The tuning, as described in the summary, probably won't pose an issue for most users coming from down-market IEMs. It is a bit puzzling to me that FiiO went for a modified-V tuning, with such contrast between the lower and upper mids, considering the more discerning expectations of the market at this price point. Are they being influenced by iBasso here?
A modern Goldilocks will rummage around for the figurative microwave oven and memory foam topper (see below). Fortunately, this seemed to work well for me:
The FH5's marketing materials claim the dynamic driver uses a 10 mm "polymer nanocomposite" diaphragm, as opposed to the FH1's same-sized "titanium" construction. Are they the same, or is the FH5 compositing polyether ketone with graphite or graphene, rather than titanium (or TiO2 nanotubes)? Inquiring minds want to know...
At any rate, the FH5's spiral "S.TURBO" transmission line does a better job of taming the DD's bleed away from the Knowles ED30262 midrange BA's lower cutoff, and damping is improved, with noticeably tighter decay. The transition between those drivers Is accomplished much more seamlessly than in the FH1. Bass extends well; let's not get silly and expect ortho performance here, but it's not found wanting in this area for me.
Treble extension is good, once I bumped it up from 8 KHz and up to compensate for my admittedly deteriorated cochlear hair cells.
Perceived distortion seems pretty low. You'd have to compare these a ways up the price scale in IEMs, I suspect, to see a difference. I do wish there were some measurements out there to corroborate this.
Music evaluation:
The FH5 does a really good job with electric bass guitars, in my experience: take a listen to Victor Wooten's opening to “Stomping Grounds” in the Flecktones' Live Art album - it spans a wide swath of frequencies across the dynamic/BA crossover point, and is exceptionally well-located, indicating good phase coherence. The rosiny rasp of the stage-left bass clarinet in its album-mate “Bigfoot” is, likewise, imaged with pinpoint focus.
Soundstage seems intimate, in that, with the EQ I've applied, it doesn't seem as deep as others have reported, but is decently wide, given some boost in the higher frequencies. The source material should be providing the stage width. Audience noises in Live Art seemed to emanate from well outside of my head, though not so much from the front or back. Perhaps low distortion is keeping higher-order harmonics from creating even more of a wide-stage illusion, and I may have EQ'd out some of the HRTF effect. My Phiaton PS 200 had a wider stage, but I'll bet their > 1% high-mid distortion was part of that equation.
However, I can't discount back-wave effects, given the diminished cavity-damping potential of IEMs; there's a reason that the best-imaging headphones are of the open persuasion.
Bass response has just the right amount of extension and punch for me, and never gets boomy. I have a couple of tracks with some tricky low-frequency apportioning, both handled by the FH5 with aplomb: “4 on 6” (Lee Ritenour) and “Someone to Call My Lover” (Janet Jackson). The latter track cost me 6 dB on all my EQ preamp stages (major clipping distortion, if not adjusted!), except for the FH5, which is already -6 dB due to its high sensitivity (and 0 dB @ 31.5 Hz on my EQ).
For the record, Janet's STCML (track 16 on All For You) scores a dismal
on dr.loudness-war.info. Despite that, it still sounds pretty good to me.
Tracks that might sound congested on many down-market IEMs are handily disambiguated on the FH5; witness the swirling, snappy thicket of tom-tom/Chapman Stick/keyboard and alternately hard-panned guitars that opens "Acid Rain" from Liquid Tension Experiment 2, or the swelling crescendi of drumline-style orchestra and rock percussion that features throughout Stewart Copeland's "Grace", from his Orchestralli album.
Driveability:
Excellent; the FH5 is 19 Ohms and 112 dB/mW. Most modern sources below 4 Ohms shouldn't contribute noticeably to their coloration, and volume should not be an issue with any of them. A Topping A30 (~10 Ohms) or similar non-FiiO TPA6120 implementation might require some additional EQ for picky listeners. An impedance graph would be useful, in that context. My Lenovo Yoga 720 notebook’s Realtek headphone output must be low-grunt/high-impedance...very "thin-sounding" would be a charitable description; even my Denon AVR H/P output has a more Platonic relationship with the FH5. An external amp is an absolute must for the former combination.
I tried the FH5 with the iPhone 6s headphone output (and EQu app), the Radsone EarStudio ES100 (with the above custom EQ profile, with iPhone 256 Kb/s AAC and Sony UBP-X800/SACD 990 Kb/s LDAC BT sources), and the Schiit Magni 3, fed by iTunes 256 Kb/s VBR AAC & Foobar2000 FLAC, through a Topping D10. I actually liked the ES100 result best; perhaps it was a better match than the Magni, gain-wise, for the sensitive FH5, or the EQ worked better for me there than in iTunes and Foobar. Really, too close for me to call, definitively.
Comparison:
I don't have any experience with higher-end IEMs, so I can't speak knowledgeably of their differentiation from the FH5. I can compare it to other audio touchstones within my sphere. Without EQ, its relative neutrality blows the doors off of its FH1 and F9 stablemates. I haven't tried the F9 Pro, but I've read that it's more neutral than the other three, excepting the 8 KHz peak. With EQ, the neutrality advantage narrows, but comfort and midrange resolution are still noticeably better, and worth the additional expense to me.
A common non-IEM reference point within the audio community that is now converging in price range with the FH5 is the Sennheiser HD 650, in Massdrop HD 6XX form. That one is a trickier comparison. With the HD 650, you could spend your way well past the FH5, chasing quality amplifiers, but there are affordable options that will satisfy many tastes.
The HD 650 delivered marginally better resolution throughout the midrange, more realistic upper treble cymbal rendering, and a meatier mid-bass punch with both the ES100 (in 2x voltage balanced mode) and the Magni 3, with a potential nod to the desktop amp with regards to amplification headroom and low-frequency agility with the more difficult load - excepting what I perceive as elevated top-end distortion on the M3 at high volume. I think I need more time with the Magni 3 (just got it last week) to appreciate it fully. Note that low bass extension will favor the FH5, regardless.
Still, the fact that I'm even comparing the two says something. If you haven't spent FH5-level money yet, I say heed Tyll Hertsens's advice and get a Sennheiser HD 6xx-series set, a decent amp, and spend 5 purchase-free years acclimating to them. Or, take my advice, and get the FH5 and ES100. You won't regret either.
Historically, I've garnered mediocre measurements in public school audiometric testing, starting with the following in junior high, and continuing on to the literal short bus in high school evaluations:
However, my father managed to maintain a generally above-average gear selection (amongst my peers’ progenitors), so decent speakers and headphones were on offer throughout my formative years: Vector Research VRX-9000 receiver w/270 Ohm H/P outputs, AR91 speakers, Koss HV/1A headphones. My first personal earphone purchase was the Koss Porta Pro. In my 20s and 30s, the Sony MDR-V6 likely contributed greatly towards my current tonal expectations. I tend to gravitate towards neutrality, with increasing help from the sliders as technology trends and nature inexorably diverge.
Evaluation period (as of this review): 2018-07-24…2018-08-27
Build quality:
Excellent fit & finish.
Aesthetics:
Matte titanium/semi-gloss gold anodized colors look nice, and should have broad appeal. Given a choice, I'd opt for something more "pro", such as a matte black body/semi-gloss black trim. I'd trade in for that look for an extra $30.
Comfort/tip fit:
These are the most comfortable earphones of any kind that I've encountered, and I've been using the Sennheiser HD 545 for 20 years, with a couple of OEM pad replacements. From the Head-Fi posts I've seen so far, I think most ears will be compatible right out of the gate.
Part of what contributes to its easy comfort is the way the shell clears the outer folds of the pinna. There is very little force directed along the axis of the ear canal, which means that seal maintenance is completely dependent on the ear tip.
There was an uncomfortable crus helix interference with my ears (and resultant lack of seal) that was remedied once I biased the included L bass tip stems +2 mm up the nozzles with some DIY spacers trimmed off of the M bass tip stems. The picture below shows them at > 3 mm thickness, which I subsequently adjusted to ~2 mm. Once I did that, I found that the FH5 has a very good balance between insertion effort and self-retention. FiiO, please don't extend the nozzles - just include spacers for us outliers. There's no need to change any tooling.
I tried Comply Ts-500 M tips, but the FH5's relatively wide nozzle (measuring 5.88 mm minor dia., 6.54 mm major dia.) suggested that the 600 series would be more appropriate (according to Comply's non-committal support response).
The 500s had excellent isolation, but were uncomfortable for me, and the resultant treble attenuation was not a good match for me with the FH5 (unlike the F9).
@Brooko said his wide canals were properly accommodated with MandarinEs Symbio W tips; however, the S and M Symbio W tips didn't seal for me. I have a pending order for the L Symbios, so I'm still holding out hope for that.
The modified L bass tip is working well for me, regardless.
Other users have reported good results with double-flange or deeper-inserting tips (such as the SpinFit), so I'm leaning towards recommending that FiiO include a couple of double-flange options, instead of the 3 pairs of same-size foam tips. I'd gladly trade the clear hard case for more tip configurations.
Cable:
(1) Single-ended TRS 3.5 mm: P/N LC-3.5B. Length 1.2 m, Ag-plated 24/44 (24 AWG eff., calculated 0.866 Ohms DCR).
Very attractive, supple, and tangle-resistant. The slider is a welcome addition, and the bend radii at high-repetitive-stress cable transitions are confidence-inspiring, in terms of perceived durability. The strain relief closest to the 3.5 mm plug could stand to be a bit more compliant, but is not much of an issue for a right-angle configuration.
The only caveat I can state concerns the unnecessarily thick ear hooks, which can result in mildly-annoying squeaky microphonics with sunglass arms on the move. The angled MMCX connector transitions nicely to the ear hook entry, the connector has a satisfying insertion click & rotation friction, and the increased hook thickness does help with grip when attaching and detaching the cable. That said, if the ear hook covers went away, I'd be ok, too. Overall, nice job, FiiO.
I don't have an issue with the omission of a balanced cable. Twisted GND/signal pairs are maintained all the way from the 3.5 mm connector, so crosstalk is entirely a function of the source. I don’t think anyone is going to have an actual audible problem with S/N, crosstalk, or driving voltage with the FH5, with well-behaved SE sources.
Accessories:
Other reviewers have adequately detailed the tip and case options. I like the soft zippered case and bass tips, and have little use for the rest. My preference, in general, would be for consumer electronics companies and their customers to lose their collective fetish for ta-da! unboxing, and get the packaging down to the essentials. Give me a double-flute Kraft box with some suspension film, let my wife buy her own sewing boxes, and give our landfills some relief.
Sound quality:
The tuning, as described in the summary, probably won't pose an issue for most users coming from down-market IEMs. It is a bit puzzling to me that FiiO went for a modified-V tuning, with such contrast between the lower and upper mids, considering the more discerning expectations of the market at this price point. Are they being influenced by iBasso here?
A modern Goldilocks will rummage around for the figurative microwave oven and memory foam topper (see below). Fortunately, this seemed to work well for me:
The FH5's marketing materials claim the dynamic driver uses a 10 mm "polymer nanocomposite" diaphragm, as opposed to the FH1's same-sized "titanium" construction. Are they the same, or is the FH5 compositing polyether ketone with graphite or graphene, rather than titanium (or TiO2 nanotubes)? Inquiring minds want to know...
At any rate, the FH5's spiral "S.TURBO" transmission line does a better job of taming the DD's bleed away from the Knowles ED30262 midrange BA's lower cutoff, and damping is improved, with noticeably tighter decay. The transition between those drivers Is accomplished much more seamlessly than in the FH1. Bass extends well; let's not get silly and expect ortho performance here, but it's not found wanting in this area for me.
Treble extension is good, once I bumped it up from 8 KHz and up to compensate for my admittedly deteriorated cochlear hair cells.
Perceived distortion seems pretty low. You'd have to compare these a ways up the price scale in IEMs, I suspect, to see a difference. I do wish there were some measurements out there to corroborate this.
Music evaluation:
The FH5 does a really good job with electric bass guitars, in my experience: take a listen to Victor Wooten's opening to “Stomping Grounds” in the Flecktones' Live Art album - it spans a wide swath of frequencies across the dynamic/BA crossover point, and is exceptionally well-located, indicating good phase coherence. The rosiny rasp of the stage-left bass clarinet in its album-mate “Bigfoot” is, likewise, imaged with pinpoint focus.
Soundstage seems intimate, in that, with the EQ I've applied, it doesn't seem as deep as others have reported, but is decently wide, given some boost in the higher frequencies. The source material should be providing the stage width. Audience noises in Live Art seemed to emanate from well outside of my head, though not so much from the front or back. Perhaps low distortion is keeping higher-order harmonics from creating even more of a wide-stage illusion, and I may have EQ'd out some of the HRTF effect. My Phiaton PS 200 had a wider stage, but I'll bet their > 1% high-mid distortion was part of that equation.
However, I can't discount back-wave effects, given the diminished cavity-damping potential of IEMs; there's a reason that the best-imaging headphones are of the open persuasion.
Bass response has just the right amount of extension and punch for me, and never gets boomy. I have a couple of tracks with some tricky low-frequency apportioning, both handled by the FH5 with aplomb: “4 on 6” (Lee Ritenour) and “Someone to Call My Lover” (Janet Jackson). The latter track cost me 6 dB on all my EQ preamp stages (major clipping distortion, if not adjusted!), except for the FH5, which is already -6 dB due to its high sensitivity (and 0 dB @ 31.5 Hz on my EQ).
For the record, Janet's STCML (track 16 on All For You) scores a dismal
Tracks that might sound congested on many down-market IEMs are handily disambiguated on the FH5; witness the swirling, snappy thicket of tom-tom/Chapman Stick/keyboard and alternately hard-panned guitars that opens "Acid Rain" from Liquid Tension Experiment 2, or the swelling crescendi of drumline-style orchestra and rock percussion that features throughout Stewart Copeland's "Grace", from his Orchestralli album.
Driveability:
Excellent; the FH5 is 19 Ohms and 112 dB/mW. Most modern sources below 4 Ohms shouldn't contribute noticeably to their coloration, and volume should not be an issue with any of them. A Topping A30 (~10 Ohms) or similar non-FiiO TPA6120 implementation might require some additional EQ for picky listeners. An impedance graph would be useful, in that context. My Lenovo Yoga 720 notebook’s Realtek headphone output must be low-grunt/high-impedance...very "thin-sounding" would be a charitable description; even my Denon AVR H/P output has a more Platonic relationship with the FH5. An external amp is an absolute must for the former combination.
I tried the FH5 with the iPhone 6s headphone output (and EQu app), the Radsone EarStudio ES100 (with the above custom EQ profile, with iPhone 256 Kb/s AAC and Sony UBP-X800/SACD 990 Kb/s LDAC BT sources), and the Schiit Magni 3, fed by iTunes 256 Kb/s VBR AAC & Foobar2000 FLAC, through a Topping D10. I actually liked the ES100 result best; perhaps it was a better match than the Magni, gain-wise, for the sensitive FH5, or the EQ worked better for me there than in iTunes and Foobar. Really, too close for me to call, definitively.
Comparison:
I don't have any experience with higher-end IEMs, so I can't speak knowledgeably of their differentiation from the FH5. I can compare it to other audio touchstones within my sphere. Without EQ, its relative neutrality blows the doors off of its FH1 and F9 stablemates. I haven't tried the F9 Pro, but I've read that it's more neutral than the other three, excepting the 8 KHz peak. With EQ, the neutrality advantage narrows, but comfort and midrange resolution are still noticeably better, and worth the additional expense to me.
A common non-IEM reference point within the audio community that is now converging in price range with the FH5 is the Sennheiser HD 650, in Massdrop HD 6XX form. That one is a trickier comparison. With the HD 650, you could spend your way well past the FH5, chasing quality amplifiers, but there are affordable options that will satisfy many tastes.
The HD 650 delivered marginally better resolution throughout the midrange, more realistic upper treble cymbal rendering, and a meatier mid-bass punch with both the ES100 (in 2x voltage balanced mode) and the Magni 3, with a potential nod to the desktop amp with regards to amplification headroom and low-frequency agility with the more difficult load - excepting what I perceive as elevated top-end distortion on the M3 at high volume. I think I need more time with the Magni 3 (just got it last week) to appreciate it fully. Note that low bass extension will favor the FH5, regardless.
Still, the fact that I'm even comparing the two says something. If you haven't spent FH5-level money yet, I say heed Tyll Hertsens's advice and get a Sennheiser HD 6xx-series set, a decent amp, and spend 5 purchase-free years acclimating to them. Or, take my advice, and get the FH5 and ES100. You won't regret either.
