I bought the Nuraphones only because I was quite impressed with the Nuraloops. And I have to admit the Nuraphones are even better than the Nuraloops. A great miss is the touchdials you have at the Nuraloops which allow to look for just the right amount of social level. I only have them for some days so I will come back and add more comments to this review.

Since the Nura Headphone Kickstarter campaign in ending in July 2016 I was very interested in the technology. But I had just invested 1000 Dollar in the then ultimately disastrous Ossic X campaign and could not invested in another headphone project. So I just invested 1 US Dollar for the Nura to get all the updates.

So when a as a former Nura “backer” I got the offer to pre-purchase offer for their next project the Nuraloops inEars I had to pull the trigger. Also the price of the Nuraloops was a bit less - while having the same technology as the Nura phones - and the Ossic X drama was something of the past.

With all this projects you have to be patient and hope the companies do not go bust. I had my fair share of suspense with other projects like the Smyth Realizer A16 but also quick wins like the Audeze Mobius. From these projects you can already deduct that I like headphones (just have a look at my profile) but also like technological advancements in the headphone arena.

So talking about the Nuraloops. When they finally arrived I was extremely happy that this project went through.



This is how they look right out of the box. While a cable does not seem to be very nice to the eye, I have to say it is much more practical if I compare it to my other bluetooth inEars like the Apple Airpods or the Creative Outlier Gold. Both of them always need to go back in their case if you do not wanna loose them. Not so with the Nuraloops. They just hang around you neck and often you will forget you have them their until you want to listen to some music or do a phone call.

Setup is relatively easy and the bluetooth connection and the Nura app guides you through this process in a good way.
Doing the profiles is a bit surprising as the results are always different.



My frame of reference for these Nuraloops is build on what I owned but mainly what I own and use most of the time.
I have also ordered the Nuraphones and listening to them too.

So here are the full headphones driven either by Meier Audio Soul headphone and amp, Smyth Realizer A16 or sometimes mobile stuff like the FiiO M11, Sony NW-ZX2 and the iPhone 11 Pro Max. The mobile devices I also use for my inEars. I also own a Meier Audio Classic ff and an ifi DAC but I do not use them so often.

So here are some of my favorite full headphones
Hifiman Ananda
Sennheiser HD 800 (with french Helmholtz mod)
Hifiman HE-500 (without metall grill, ony a thin cloth as dust protection —> before place seven)
Fostex Massdrop TH-X00 Ebony
Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro 250 Ohm
Meze 99
Audeze Mobius
Sennheiser HD-25
Beyerdynamic DT 770 80 Ohm
mitchell & johnson MJ2
Ultrasone Edition 9

Here are my inEars
FiiO FH7
Audeze isine20
Massdrop x Noble X
Audiofly AF78M
Pioneer RayZ SE-LTC5R-T (these I use most often on my dog walks)
KZ ZSA inEar
Hifiman RE-400
Apple Airpods
Etymotic ER4S
Westone 3
Stax SR-001 MK2

Sometimes the name of a product reveals so much more. This is the case with the “Soul”.

I have known Jan Meier now for quite a while. If I am not completely wrong since 2004/2005, when I ended up organizing the first Netherlands Headphone Meet. Over the years I had the chance to try out many of his headphone amps and DACs and also owned and own a few of them. I have observed Jan from the distance designing his new products and often had the chance to listen to the prototypes. But I have to be honest, never have I seen him work so long and with so much passion on a project comparable to the “Soul”. The “Soul” was one where he really took his time to get every detail right.

But one step after the other. In all the inventions Jan Meier made over time, the “ff” or “frequency-adaptive-feedback” technology was for sure one of the biggest ones, at least for me. I know many are raving about his perfect Crossfeed implementation, and while I see that it has its use, I did not realy need it. But his “frequency-adaptive-feedback” techology brought so much more transparency into my music listening that I am very thankful. Such a genius technology.

So when the Daccord DAC and the Classic became available with “ff” I ordered both and was in audio heaven. Honestly, after optimizing some digital and audio cables, I thought, this is it. It can not get better than this and I even started selling of my other headphone amps from other companies.

One day Jan showed up (I live conveniently on his travel route back home to the Netherlands, so he sometimes stops by to say hi) and he had hard wired connected the DAC output of his Daccord with the amp section of the Classic. So while they where still two units he just avoided a lot of inbetween pathway and circuits. He left this strange looking Siamese Gemini with me for 2 nights while he was in the Netherlands and wow, this was again a huge difference in blackness. Voice and music just appeared in the darkness of the night. It gave me chills.
I couldn’t believe what a difference the “melting” of the two units already meant.

This also as consequence was his switch to balanced because the signal from the DAC was balanced and to keep it is in its purest form, it meant to also go balanced in the output. I had many discussions with Jan over the years about this topic, and for a long time he was clear that with his “active balanced ground driving” technology there was no immediate need to ask headphone enthusiasts to get their cans recabled. But when he decided to create the best DSP/DAC/AMP unit he could, he switched to balanced without looking back.

But this was still just the start of his journey. Over the months and months whenever we talked about the “Soul” I was surprised that there was so much more he was building into this endgame machine. I guess the use of a DSP and programming of a DSP was also something new for Jan. But it allowed Jan to take one step of his “ff”-techology to the digital realms. Anothe important milestone to more transparency.

Under the hood:



Jan presented one of the new features of the Soul to me one day with his latest prototype, which looked already quite similar to the current layout of the switches etc. We all know that our headphones have a certain resonance frequency or spectrum, which some find very troublesome and others do not care so much about. Extremly famous is the Sennheiser HD 800 6kHz peak which drove Tyll Hertsens - former innerfidelity - nuts. Many mods were created by the community and finally Sennheiser created a 2.0 model - the HD 800s - which comes with Helmhotz resonator included.
Would we have had Jan’s Soul a bit earlier, this might have not been necessary. The built in 6 dB notch filter of the Soul allows you to dampen very effectively a very small frquency region without otherwise changing the sound.


Only when you are freed of a resonance you can value how much better the overall quality of the sound becomes. I have to be honest, I am no Tyll, I wouldn’t have figured out why the HD 800 was a headphone I found great but used very seldom at home, although it one of my most comfortable headphones. But suddenly with the peak gone, you have much more relaxed sound. Using the innerfidelity measurements one can do this too for other headphones and yes, the result is pretty astonishing.


Thanks to Jan I could test the Soul prototype also in his latest stages for over a week with different sources to drive the Soul. While the computer worked phantastic, my tries with iPad pro etc. via the apple camera adapter where not that promising. Seems that the Apple products doe not output bit perfect. Make sure you use the Soul with a device offering he digital signal unchanged. Quite important.

In the meantime I received my Soul which will stay with me.

With so much cleaness in the sound coming from the ff-techololgy being digital first, the notch-filter, the complete balanced design and so much more, you have to readjust your listening. Music does not sound like it sounded before. And the brain takes a while to re-adjust but this goes quickly and then the joy of having found a new level of listening will stay for a long time.

This DAC/equalizer/headphone amp offers clarity and precision in a never before heard quality. The acoustic room of the recording opens far and wide and you can kind of see the musicians playing.

Update March 2019: I asked Jan to re-cable two more of my headphones to XLR so I can use them with the Soul. Namely the Fostex Massdrop TH-X00 Ebony and the mitchell & johnson MJ2. I have to be honest, I was shocked how reveailing the Soul is when it comes to the audioquality of the headphones. I had used the mitchell & johnson MJ2 mainly with my pseudo-balanced Sony NW-ZX2 player and liked them so far. With the Soul you realy start to hear the original sound signature of the different headphones. Unfortunately without the gold glow of the Sony NW-ZX2 the mitchell & johnson sound quite trashy. So the extra cable will be unfortunately seldomly used.
The Fostex massdrop TH-X00 ebony sounds amazing, even if the fun tuning shows. After using the notch filter in the 10,4 kHz (-1 from the right side) the sound has improved strongly. Usualy the Fostex TH-X00 should have his hump at 11 kHz, but with my more comfortable, deeper Dekoni pads, there is more room and I guess by that the resonance frequency went a bit down.
I also used the 2nd tone control to decrease frequencies below 500 Hz. This makes the Fostex Massdrop TH-X00 a much more neutral headphone.
I am totally impressed how strongly the Soul can help to make a decent headphone to a great one.

I bought these new in May 2017 from an official dealer in Germany. I receive and received no benefits from Audeze or any other party to write this review. This is only my personal opinion.

These were my first Audeze headphones and my second pair of planar-magnetic headphones. The other planars being a Hifiman HE-500 which I bought as an alternative for my Sennheiser HD 800. You will find a list of my headphones at the end of this review.

The reason for buying these was that I read a lot of good reviews about the Audeze Sine 20 and I was looking for something to connect directly to my iPhone and iPad to listen to my favorite streaming service Qobuz.

Since I bought the Sine 20 Audeze offered a 50 Dollar replacement program for their Cipher-Lightning cable, which is a 24bit DAC and DSP, and I used the offer. Especially since the original Cipher had some problems with my devices. There was often a low level, high frequency tone sometimes left, sometimes right, sometimes both sides when I stopped a song using any iOs app. This happened not always but very often. The tone sometimes staid at the same frequency and sometimes changed to a different frequency. The tone staid for approx 3 - 4 seconds. None of the firmware updates changed this, but with the change to the new Cipher cable the problem is gone.

I use the Audeze HQ app with the Sine 20 which offers two presets and a 10-band equalizer but after several tries based on proposals here on headfi, I only do a 4db plus lift in the 4kHz region, maybe because I am above 50. The sound signature of the iSine 20 with the original Cipher has changed considerable and is now more laid back and less forward.


Audeze offers the iSine with the Cipher and without the Cipher. The price difference is only 50 Dollars, which I find very fair. The US market price being 599 US Dollar including the Cipher.

I tried different EQs without the Cipher cable offered by Dr. Karthick Manivannan, Director of Research at Audeze, he offered under the alias KMann on my Sony NW-ZX2 with the Onkyo app and also the Audeze Reveal Plugin for Windows 10. All of these options deliver a very similar result as using the Cipher cable.

I compared my iSine 20 with the LCDi4 inEars at the former German distributor in June 2017.

And without any doubt the LCDi4 are a completely different league also price wise with 2495 US Dollar at the moment of the review.

When considering the iSine 20, they are inEar but at the same time completely open. Which was one of the reasons for me buying them, as it makes me approachable while listening to music and it is even possible at the typical low volumes I use for listening, to have a short conversation.

Since I bought the iSine 20 I also bought via Indiegogo the Audeze Mobius, and as you can see from my personal ranking list, I would rate them very closely.

The iSine 20 are great inEars which makes it easy to listen to for a long time. They are resolving enought to hear differences between 16bit and 24bit files and they are easy to EQ to your own taste. They also sound great at low volumes and louder volumes which is a clear plus. If you are using them without the Cipher cable you have to EQ them since they sound in my opinion realy bad without EQ.

Sonically there are no negatives and only if you have listened to the LCDi4 you know how much more deep bass would be possible. With the LCDi4 I was not sure sometimes if someone had turned the loudspeakers on, in the show room of the former German distributor. A mistake that would never happen with the iSine 20.

Audeze offeres two possibilities of attaching the iSine 20 with either Clips or with so called Earhooks. I also bought the additional Clips and eartips they offered when they brought the LCDi4 to the market. To be honest none of them worked for me. So I ended up trying different eartips and finally found in the SpinFit which are specifically designed for the iSine. I can fully recommend them. When it comes to the clips I also had finally settle for a third party solution as Audeze clips where just too thin and too uncomfortable. Also they break easily. So I bought 3D printed clips which attach to the iSine from a fellow headfier and which allow clips from other inEars to be attached. Now the solution is great but I wished Audeze would have come up by themselves with great eartips and clips. But you can not ask everything.

Besides these caveats, I can full recommend the iSine 20 because of their good imaging, versatility to become the inEars you want them to by by EQing and their open build which is good for work environments and partners who want to be able to address you at all times.


Ranking of headphones I own:
1. Sennheiser HD 800 (with french Helmholtz mod)
2. Fostex Massdrop TH-X00 Ebony
3. Audeze isine20
4. Audeze Mobius
5. Beyerdynamic DT 1770 Pro 250 Ohm
6. mitchell & johnson MJ2
7. Hifiman HE-500
8. Sennheiser HD 630 VB
9. Sennheiser HD-25
10. Beyerdynamic DT 770 80 Ohm
11. Audiofly AF78M
12. Pioneer SE-LTC5R-T
13. KZ ZSA inEar
14. Hifiman RE-400
15. Ultrasone Edition 9
16. Etymotic ER4S
17. Audio Technica Sovereign ATH-EW9 Clip-on Headphones
18. Westone 3
19. Harman Kardon BT
20. Stax SR-001 MK2
21. Audio-Technica ATH-ANC7
22. iGrado

Previously owned:
AKG K-1000 with BAP 1000
Audio-Technica ATH-ESW1
Audio-Technica ATH-W1000
Audio-Technica ATH-W5000
Sennheiser HD 650 (with Cardas cabel)
Beyerdynamic DT 911
Stax 4040
Stax 4070
Stax Omega 2
Beats by dr dre studio original