Kaiser Encore: Early impressions

Please note: This review is posted only so I could share my (very) early impressions, as I know many are eager to hear about the latest Noble (co-) flagship. I've had these beauties for less than a week.
 
As detailed as the Katana, but with a warmer touch. A bit kinder with poor recordings than the Katana, but not as forgiving as the K10. The price you pay for super realism is that you get… the truth, no sugarcoating going on here. Trash in = Trash out. Well, almost. The bass gets a solid boost, but it’s never overpowering. The mids and highs are still there with impressive detail levels, but the bass...Oh boy do you get some bass. It’s quick, it goes looooooww and it will hit you HARD. Don’t mistake these for EDM monsters tho. With the Encore I suddenly started enjoying Macy Gray’s “Stripped” album a lot more. Binaural jazz is probably not what most of you will be buying the Encore for, but give it a shot anyway. It’s extremely well recorded and mastered so you truly get the sense of “being there”. The Katana handles this album very well, but only the Encore can make that biiiig bad bass sound as imposing as they do up close when you hear them IRL. On the recording you have the guitar way out left and a bit to the front, Macy Gray dead center and that bass is just to your right. Both the Katana and the Encore lets you pick out any part of the recording and focus on just that bit, but the Encore wins this round in my book, simply because it has the lower register muscle needed to reproduce the bass realistically. The original K10 does that as well, but you lose a bit of detail and the soundstage is slightly narrower. The warmer K10 sound works wonders with Macy’s vocals though…
 
Perfect Darkness by Fink is a long-time favorite of mine. I love it with the K10 because those drums go so damn looow and I love it with the Katana because it renders the guitars so crisp. K10 does acoustic guitars very nicely too, the Katana just does it a bit better.  The Katana can go low for the drums as well, but not with as much authority as the K10. With the Encore, I get the best of both worlds, absolutely phenomenal.

I know I’ve mentioned Hans Zimmer’s soundtrack for “The Dark Knight” rises before, but it’s just so damn good. My favorite track from it is probably “Imagine The Fire” - strings, wood & brass winds and kettle drums. Ooooh those kettle drums! If you love classical music, big ol’ symphonies with lots of strings, the Katana is your best bet. If you love vintage recordings of classical, go for the K10. If you (like me) love action packed symphonic soundtracks… Encore is what you need. You get the resolution, the speed, the soundstage - and the low-end grunt. This is the IEM version of having your cake and eating it too.
 
If you’re into electro and the Encore is within your budget, you can stop reading now and just buy them. Well… if the recordings are up to snuff, more on that in a bit. Not strictly electro, just a Brit with a piano and a computer, James Blake’s version of Limit To Your love is just a downright hoot with the Encore. I don’t have much truck with FR graphs, but I sure would like to see one that compares the K10 and the Encore. I swear, the Encore goes lower than the K10 or maybe the bass has just been given an extra dusting of Wizard magic. Whatever the case, I love it.
 
Next up on my playlist was London Grammar’s version of Nightcall. For this particular track, the K10 mops the floor with the competition. I absolutely adore their cover version of this song, but the recording and/or mastering leaves a bit to be desired and the K10 elegantly smooths over the flaws while keeping the details intact whereas both Katana & Encore reveal everything. Same goes for Muse’s awesome live album from Rome: The Wonder Twins Katana & Encore serve up every riff, every slap on the tambourine and every hit on the drums just like the K10 does, but also politely point out that the mastering is pretty damn flat. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not that bad recordings are unlistenable on the new units, the K10 is just a bit kinder to those less-than-optimal albums. Anyway, K10, Katana or Encore, listening to Resistance on any one of them still makes me want to ride out and fight bravely for… something. IDK, better mastering maybe?

Conclusion so far

The Encore has turned out to be exactly what I hoped for: The resolving power of the Katana plus the low-end grunt of the K10. If you want one endgame CIEM to do everything, look no further. Unless you value hyper-realism higher than bass, then the Katana is you
 
 

(Reposting from The Noble Thread)
 
After a some days with the Katana, I’d like to jot down a few words about my experience with them. This is not a full blown review, just me trying to convey some early impressions.
 
One of the songs that really impressed me on the Katana is “Grand Canyon” by Puscifer. Fittingly, the third line of that song goes “Grant, Holy Mother, grant me clarity” because oh boy the Katana delivers that in spades. After 3 years with the K10 as my go-to headphone, the Katana is like a breath of fresh air, like an ice cold glass of crystal clear spring water. I’ve lauded the K10 for it’s ability to handle everything you throw at it without breaking a sweat, but the Katana is on a whole new level. Every note is so clear as to be almost tangible, you feel like you could reach out and touch the sound and the Katana does this so effortlessly, never straining, never missing a mark. Opeth is one of my favorite bands and some would probably write them off as angry swedes making a lot of incoherent noise. But listen to their music on a set of Katana or K10 and suddenly the music opens up, the cacophony turns into a symphony (granted, a somewhat aggressive symphony at times) as you can now pick out the guitars, the bass and every hit on the drums and cymbals. Using the K10 you glide comfortably through the music, enjoying the ride, but still able to pick out the individual components of sound as they flow by. With the Katana, you’re in the driver’s seat of the bullet train, every single little thing so clearly in front of you, nothing obstructing your vision and you begin to truly appreciate the sheer level of technical skill that Opeth is showing off.
 
Don’t get me wrong, the Katana isn’t some sort of musical scalpel; hyper-detailed monster. It’s still musical and has The Wizard’s trademark coherence across the spectrum, it’s just that the musical image so amazingly crystal clear. Put on an album like Steven Wilson’s “Hand Cannot Erase”, packed cover to cover with complex arrangements full of detailed layers and exceptionally well mastered and the Katana will really shine. The (great) music is still there, but you’ll hear every single pick of the strings, every delicate tap on a cymbal, every stomp on the bass drum pedal. The K10 can do that as well, but with a more laid back presentation so the details are there for you to find whereas the Katana will have them all laid out in front of you, crisp and clear.
 
Now, I don’t consider myself a basshead, but if the music has bass, I want to feel it. While the Katana is far from anemic in the lower parts of the spectrum, the K10 has spoiled me. Both go deep, both are fast, but the K10 bass has a good deal more weight behind it when it hits you. For one of my favorite songs, “Monument” (Inevitable End Version) by Röyksopp I clearly prefer the K10 and its hard-hitting beefed up bass - But listening to that song on the Katana made me notice the male backing vocals for the first time, despite having heard that song hundreds of times before. Now that the Katana has pointed them out for me, I can hear them on the K10 as well, I just never noticed them until now.
 
Oddly enough, this super clear, ultra-resolving iem works incredibly well for Spotify straight out of my phone. I had been using them strictly with lossless files (16/44.1 to DSD) via the Chord Hugo and Mojo so I was expecting the worst when I plugged them straight into my Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge and fired up Pineapple Thief’s latest album on Spotify. Much to my surprise it was pretty damn good. I am honestly having a very hard time wrapping my head around this fact as I can’t find any logical explanation to how it’s possible. I most definitely was not expecting them to mimic the K10 in that regard, being able to play nice with almost any source.
 

Update: November 12th, 2016 (2 months later...)

 

 
I'm falling more and more in love with the Katana. The effortless performance, the seemingly unlimited resolution and the way they somehow manage to stay musical through it all. I have previously commented on how surprisingly well they behave with lossy files and less than optimal devices (as in Spotify straight from my phone on the bus to work), but feed them quality and ye gods you will be rewarded. I'm a pretty big fan of Rammstein and own all their albums (and some of the singles) on CD. Today I laid my grubby hands on the "XXI" vinyl box set, as a near-flawless 24/192 rip. All their albums had been remastered for the box set and the dynamic range had been literally doubled. I spent a couple of hours rediscovering some of my favorite songs with the Katanas today and found myself cranking up the volume louder than I usually do. When the material has great dynamics and the headphones have superb resolving power as well as "punch" and accuracy, the end result is fantastic. On "Wiener blut" there's quiet, almost silent passages followed by shredding guitars, thunderous drums and Till Lindemann's powerful, almost beastly voice - an absolute thrill on the Katana/Mojo combo!

Savant universals, with “Wizard Design” faceplates.
 
The Noble Savant is an IEM available as a $600 universal and as a $1600 custom “Prestige” version. The Savants use the same (tiny) acrylic housing as the rest of the Noble universal lineup and can be used with a wide selection of tips. For me, the medium foam tips gave me the best combination of reliable seal and comfort. Like the Shure “Olives”, the foam is closed cell so you can clean the tips rather than having to throw them out when the gunk and wax builds up. Both the universal and Prestige custom version uses standard 2-pin connectors for the detachable cables. I tested the Savant using the balanced output from my A&K AK120II with a Linum Super Balanced cable as well as with the Noble BTS connected to my Android phone. Source material was 24/192 FLAC, Spotify streaming and everything in between.
 
After two years of using my $1.600 ($1.900 if you count the Wizard design option) Noble K10, the Savant is the first headphone to impress me. Sure, when I bought the Philips Citiscape Uptown for $20 on sale, I was impressed by the sound quality you could get at that price - But the Savant demands respect regardless of the price. The fact that it comes in at a cool $1000 less than the K10 is just a bonus. Will they replace the K10 for me then? No. But this is the first time I’ve actually bothered to carry a second set of headphones to supplement the mighty K10. The thing with the K10 is that it does just about everything really, really well. Highs that just keep going without ever being shrill and thunderous lows that never encroach on those lush, rich creamy mids. Add super high resolution and you have a headphone that makes you get lost in the music, leaning back and just enjoying the flow.
 

AK120 II -> Linum Super Balanced -> Noble Savant
 
But sometimes you need something else. Sometimes you don’t want to lean back and relax but instead you want to hear Skin sitting on your lap and singing 5 inches from your ear on the acoustic recording of Tracy’s Flaw. Sometimes you want to hear just exactly how badly out of tune the piano was during Keith Jarrett’s legendary Köln concert in 1975. Or maybe you remember hearing Fink perform Yesterday Was Hard On All Of Us at that small venue and you want to recreate the sense of hearing him pick the strings just 3 feet away. What you want, then, is the Savant. Compared to the K10, the Savant has a more forward presentation of mids and treble and is lighter on the bass. Not that it can’t do bass, you just have to bump the EQ a bit if you like your music thumping. While not a great fit for bassheads, the Savant excels with vocals, acoustic and classical music - or anything else that benefits from clear, forward mids and great resolution.
 
Speaking of resolution, the Savant likes a good source. It’s still very enjoyable for streaming Spotify 320kbps from your phone, but like the K10 flagship, they scale very well. Even using my phone (HTC One M8 and LG G4), it was very obvious if I was listening to 320kbps Mp3 or a lossless FLAC version of the same track. With the mids and highs being more forward and “in your face” on the Savant than on the K10 also makes them less forgiving.
 
“Hey, I’m not a basshead, should I pick the Savant over the K10?” Well, that depends. The K10 wins on soundstage and imaging, but the Savant rules vocals and acoustic recordings. Sure, the sound is more in your head with the Savant, but there’s also $1.000 more left in your wallet. Unless, off course, you opt for the $1600 Prestige option and get a set of Savants carved from a single piece of acryllic-infused wood or maybe the “Carbon Glass” or “Space Zebra” options are more your cup of tea? I wear my IEMs all day at work, so the added comfort of customs makes a huge difference to me, compared with universals. Not that the universals feel bad, but after a couple of hours you’ll start feeling them.
 

Savant universals with the (brilliant!) $99 Noble BTS
 

Conclusion

My taste in music is eclectic, to put it mildly. Within the space of an hour I can jump from Beethoven to The Prodigy to Rammstein to Ben Howard. For the past two years, the K10 has been The One for me. It could do everything and do it well, so I rarely bothered carrying other headphones. But then came the Savant… And while the K10 is still my top pick for a do-it-all headphone, the Savant has become my IEM of choice for music like Daughter, Ben Howard, Agnes Obel, Keith Jarrett and Fink. For me, they’re the perfect sidekick to the K10 but if your music tastes revolve around piano, acoustic guitar, strings, woodwinds and well-recorded vocals, the Savant could very well be The One, a Superhero in its own right. 

[size=13.333333969116211px]I got fed up by the cables at my desk at home and decided to get a wireless headset for gaming. I was actually pretty settled on the Logitech G930, right until the point where [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]Logitech [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]told me to just bugger off when I pointed out that they were charging twice as much for the G930 in Denmark as they do in other countries. Despite Logitech being my go-to brand for the past 10-15 years, I decided to go with one of the G930's competitors, the exceedingly awesomely named [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]Corsair Vengeance 2000[/size][size=13.333333969116211px].[/size]
 
    
 
[size=13.333333969116211px]Being [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]dumb[/size][size=13.333333969116211px] an audiophile, my previous setup for gaming was a set of AudioTechnica ATH-AD700 with a Modmic, hooked up to an O2/ODac combo. I use [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]stupidly expensive[/size][size=13.333333969116211px] very high-end custom in-ears every day at work as well, so my standards for headphones are pretty damn high. I wasn't expecting much sound quality from these headphones to be honest. I expected them to get the job done, letting me communicate with my team mates and making me able to hear if a fallen grunt was trying to cut me in half, not much more than that. Plastic-y [/size][size=13.333333969116211px]gamer[/size][size=13.333333969116211px] headphones, even wireless and with faux 7.1 surround at that - everybody knows they must sound like crap, right?[/size]
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[size=13.333333969116211px]Wrong.[/size][size=13.333333969116211px] Oh boy was I wrong. Sure, I'm used to a brighter, cleaner sound where these have a very forgiving, slightly "warm" sound signature, but firing up Fink showed that these had some real potential. All the details were there, the picking of strings, the whiskers on the snare drum - and pretty nice bass kick as well. So they do music pretty decently, but that wasn't my intended use for them. Last night I had a two-hour Diablo III session with a couple of friends and this is where the Vengeance 2000 (I love that name!) really took off. I was expecting the 7.1 Dolby Pro Logic surround to be a marketing gimmick but holy hell, does it sound awesome! I currently play as a monk (Tempest Rush/Sweeping Wind build for the D3 players out there) and I could clearly hear the sound of the fire circling around me and when charging through a horde of enemies I could close my eyes and still be able to hear where I was hitting my opponents. Enter a cave and I could very clearly hear the drops of water falling around me and exactly where they were falling. All of this while still being able to communicate perfectly with my fellow players, who by the way reported that the mic on these things is pretty good as well. [/size]
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[size=13.333333969116211px]Movies you say? Oh hell yeah! I fired up a few movies for a quick test and the (faux) surround sound did its thing. More importantly, voices were crystal clear,[/size][size=13.333333969116211px]easily[/size][size=13.333333969116211px] outshining my admittedly POS Sony living room setup. [/size][size=13.333333969116211px][/size]
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[size=13.333333969116211px]Comfort was surprisingly good, even coming from the Comfort King AD700. My only nitpick is that when you flip the mic to its upright position (which mutes it, btw), it rubs against your head, at least it does if your noggin is as big as mine. Battery life should be 9-10 hours on a single charge. They're charged using a standard micro USB cable and you can use them while they charge. Setup is a matter of plugging in the USB transmitter and turning on the headphones. Want surround? Download and install the driver. Bam, done. [/size][size=13.333333969116211px][/size]
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[size=13.333333969116211px]At DKK 699/€90/$130 they're hard to classify as cheap, but I really think they are quite a bargain, definitely a great buy if you are considering full size headphones for your computer. And yes, computer only, as they connect via USB. [/size]
 
[size=13.333333969116211px]Updated on August 31st to 4 full stars as charging via regular USB is completely silent. [/size]

 
I've taken down my review of the Merlins and will repost it once I get them back. By now it's been 4 months and I've had them in my posession for no more than two weeks out of those 4 months.
 
Two weeks into the 3-5 week estimated turnaround time for my remolds/fixing and UM have gone back to maintaining radio silence. Not a word, not a single peep, no replies to emails. 
 
I love my Merlins but I'm starting to *really* dislike the customer service (or lack thereof) from UM UK. Just keep me informed, that's all I ask for.