Introduction:
Azla has gained a fair reputation in the field of eartips. Sednaearfit, Sednaearfit Light, Sednaearfit Short, Sednaearfit Light Short, Xelastec, Crystal - all of them are pretty highly appreciated in the audiophile community. I personally have the Sednaearfit Light and Light short, along with the Crystal, and I love them. I very much want to get my hands on their Sednaearfit Vivid edition as well, but cannot find a suitable vendor who will ship to India, and they are not yet available with local vendors also.
While researching Azla, I came to find out that they have some iems as well. I gave them a cursory glance in the past and thought nothing much about them. However, after that my preference changed, and I got completely inclined to single-DD iems. I have kind of a treasure hunter syndrome (coined by myself), I always try to look for those gears (mostly iems) which have stayed out of the limelight, but which might have solid potential. If you’d look at my signature you’d know that. Anyway, that is how my search for a TOTL iem landed me on FAudio Dark Sky. I located it on zeppelinandco, and shot them a message asking for a review sample for a discount. They agreed, and just then, by luck, the Horizon on their site caught my glance. This time, I put some more time into it, looking deep into the tech, combing through the handful of reviews it has online, and decided to play a gamble on it. Asked zeppelin for a similar reviewer’s discount, and they agreed. And that is how I came into possession of it.
Specifications:
- Driver Unit: 8mm new SF ARD(Advanced Research Driver)
- Sensitivity: 103dB
- Total Harmonic Distortion: Less than 0.5%
- Rated Input: 5mW
- Max Input: 20mW
- Impedance: 27Ω ±10%
- Frequency Range: 5Hz - 30kHz
- Weight: 24g (with cable)
- Plug: 3.5mm stereo
Disclaimer:
I bought this from Zeppelin&Co. for a reviewer’s discount in the promise of my honest opinion. I have recorded my impressions below while trying to remain as much as bias-free.
Packaging and Accessories:
Azla has gone with quite the minimalistic approach with the packaging of Horizon. A plain black cardboard box with black sleeve. Although the inscription of the titles feel fairly premium. Inside is a compartment with cavities for the earpieces and the cable. Below that is 2 flat boxes containing eartips. There is some literature in a black envelope as well, but I did not spend much time with it. There was no carrying case or carrying pouch.
The cable that came with Horizon seems to be nothing special, although not particularly cheap. The sleeve seems to be a rubbery kind of material with a pretty high coefficient of friction, and hence very prone to getting tangled. The details of the cable is as below:
Cable For Superior Sound
AZLA fully understands that cable is extremely important. Therefore, researched and developed the best cable through long time, and finally succeeded to apply the result to Horizon.
Urethane-coated high-quality copper wires are built with 128 strands total (32 copper wire, Kevlar/250D*4 cores), present accurate sound with low impedance through various treatments.
Also, applied superior cable weaving method, which is used for high-end earphones only, and finished 4wires cable weaving for L/R, after that, able to experience the quality sound.
Well, from the description it seems to be of fairly good quality, although I am not sure what sonic properties the Kevlar/250D*4 cores provide, or whether it’s just there for structural reinforcement.
The eartips were regular run of the mill short stem wide bore tips. I didn't understand the idea of including the same type of eartips twice. As a saving grace the earpieces came with Sednaearfit M tips attached, but even though I was disappointed, as I found in a previous review that it came with one full set of regular tips and one full set of Sednaearfit tips. I contacted Zeppelin regarding this, and upon checking they confirmed that this is how they received this product. Might be a reshuffling of the packaging. Anyway not a severe deal breaker per se.
The absence of a carrying case or carrying pouch was really something that I disapprove of. At this price range, a carrying case is a given, especially when iems 1/10th of its price are coming with at least a soft carrying pouch.
Build and Fit:
The build of Horizon is quite unique. The actual functioning part is a single metal cylinder that houses the dynamic driver and extends from the back to the front of the earpiece. The middle portion of the cylinder is housed within a polycarbonate (yes, polycarbonate, just regular polycarbonate) shell, which, from the first glance seems to have a lot of empty space save for the pair of cables, but it actually has a different purpose, which will be detailed below.
The nozzle is quite long and reaches deep within the ear. It also is on a somewhat wider side in respect of diameter, about 5 mm wide. Both of these coupled together makes it a tricky fit. Any eartips that I put it on, had either of the two problems: First, it was either slightly narrower than ideal, which, despite the deep fit, did not provide the correct seal; or Second, the eartips provided a snug fit and strong isolation, but also put pressure in such a way that had some effect on the sound signature. It did not become painful or anything, but I could detect that if my ear moves (yeah I can wiggle my ears), the pressure on the inside of my ear canal lessens slightly, and the sound seems to open up slightly more, without breaking the isolation. Despite the strong isolation, I would like to mention that there was absolutely zero driver flex. Also, once I could achieve an ideal seal, I largely forgot that it was even there.
I am not a fan of the PVC shell. While it makes it quite light in weight, the shells themselves are not very hard and hence quite prone to scratches. I am using it as an everyday carry, and while I always keep them inside a cloth pouch, there are several fine scratches on them already. Although I never have any concern regarding the durability of it, it seems to be pretty sturdily assembled.
Tech Inside:
Normally this is not a section I include in my other reviews, however, Horizon is special. It employs some such unique techs inside that I felt obligated to talk about them. I won’t go into rewriting them in my own words to avoid unnecessary hassle, I am just copy-pasting them from their website:
Infinity Advanced Research Driver
SF(Superior Fidelity) Driver: Developed by Professor Shin-Ryeol Lee, the next generation’s driver which removes partial vibration at the driver, enables it to play original sound.
Upgraded SF driver, which is the main part of INFINITY ARD, produced stronger diaphragm by ‘46nanos 3 multi-layers' method, providing minimum partial vibration with shape of diaphragm through scientific 3D scanned analysis.
Characteristics of Sound
The special thing is, fundamentally closed phase distortion due to whole sounds are made from one diaphragm without crossover network. Throughout scientific diaphragm analysis, there is able to minimise partial vibration, therefore it is able to play super high frequency range which is over 30kHz area, and minimised phase distortion and frequency characteristics through the sole diaphragm, which it was unable to reduce with common earphone structure. Especially, by adding ‘Air Flow’ technology, which is a system of Infinity Driver for AZLA, minimises sound distortion and improves staging, space impression and sense of hitting. In summary, the main advantage is to be able to realise the natural acoustic atmosphere and sense of hitting though bass range.
Sound Air Vent Holes
HORIZON is engraft Air Flow technology which is used for AZLA-01R, improves space impression and staging sense. For clearer and deeper sound, applied two holes with Air Flow technology to the metal housing, it finishes INFINITY ARD and provides a very special hitting sense, deep and rich bass and specialised wide staging. Through Horizon, able to enjoy natural sound and concrete low sound,
never experienced before with conventional earphones.
Drawing For Best Sound Quality
Horizon’s design has been started to make earphones as a speaker. For ‘space’, like a loudspeaker, AZLA researched hard and finally found the best design to apply to the production. Material also, after numerous trials and errors, the top grade of polycarbonate housing is chosen and combined with metal housing.
Assembly method of AZLA Horizon is a patent pending method, it is completely new. Regarding assembling different materials, applied ‘sound prefer’ method. Minimised chemical assembly way (bonding), and best sound is provided through screw-finished way, of course whole parts are fixed well. Horizon is applied the best shape for the best fitting at human ears throughout many modelling and tests, after that the user is able to enjoy the best sound with the best and stable fit.
Well, as explained in the
Sound Air Vent Holes section, along with the above line diagram, it is clear that within the polycarbonate housing the metal cylinder has small vents, through which air circulation occurs between the metal cylinder and polycarbonate housing. This, along with the two air vents on the conical portion in the back, might help create such an immersive stage combined with a deep and hard hitting bass. Well, this is purely my guess, because no words regarding that internal airflow is mentioned anywhere in the official product page.
Source:
Qudelix 5K balanced out via bluetooth
Luxury & Precision W2 balanced out
(I deliberately put the Shanling M7 out of this because it was not a good match, provided it’s already fairly on the bright side.)
Sound:
It’s not every day that I fall in love with a iem that has a very crowd pleasing V shaped tuning. I love a bit more balanced sound. Nice bass slam that stays controlled, clean and slightly forward midrange, sparkly highs…more like a W shaped sound. However, Horizon is quite an excursion from that. It has a typical V shaped sound that can be found in some quite popular iems, namely, Ikko OH10, Sennheiser IE300, Kinera Norn. And if anyone has read my reviews, they would know that none of them did particularly catch my fancy.
Well, Azla Horizon changed that.
When I first put them in my ears and started playing, there were three aspects that immediately caught my attention:
- The Big and Bold Bass
- The quite energetic and somewhat sharp highs
- The sense of a well crafted three dimensional space
In that order. While the first one was a guilty pleasure and the third one was a genuine pleasure, the second one was a concern. The Azla Sednaearfit M tips were still on, they came pre-attached. And while they did enhance the three dimensional stage, they also enhanced the energy in the upper mid and highs. Which, from the below frequency response curve (taken from crinacle’s database), is already in abundance.
So, I did a lot of tip rolling, and finally settled on the generic red bore dark grey flange eartips, which are available on Penon and come bundled with a lot of iems. The bass was enhanced slightly more, the stage got slightly smaller (but still providing plenty of satisfaction), and the energy in the upper registers felt dimmed very little bit - which was welcoming nonetheless.
While the stock cable was fine and I used it for quite a while, I finally paired it with the Satin Audio Gaia II, the SPOCC pure copper type-4 litz cable from Satin Audio’s entry level Titan series. Further impressions of Horizon will be with this pair.
Where was I? Oh yes, as I said before, Horizon, in spite of being a V shaped iem, really really captivated me. Now, how did it do that? Well, you see, I was getting bass that was thunderous to a fair degree, and yet a highly transparent midrange, crisp and slightly sharp notes, etched out details, brilliant separation, superb layering & imaging, three dimensional soundstage, and extended sparkling & quite energetic highs (which can make or break it, depending upon tolerance)...it was rare to find all of them together at around $300 mark, so don’t blame me for being enamoured with them! The complete presentation was so dynamic that it shook me to the core and made my foot tap all together!
Let’s get to the details. Firstly, as already mentioned several times and is quite evident in the graph, it boasts a big and bold
Bass. There’s no favouritism here - Mid and Sub, none of them are favoured over the other. Both of them are boosted quite a fair bit, as can be clearly seen in the crinacle’s graph: a clear 12 dB boost from 1khz. And every bit of it can be heard and felt. It slams quite powerfully, digs quite deep, exerts quite a respectable amount of pressure, and reproduces textures with authority. Each drum hit is felt. The bass guitar riffs resonate deep within your soul. And yet never they become muddy or overlap one another. A brilliant track to check is
Deep Purple - Chasing Shadows. There’s a unique rhythm here, consisting of drums, timbales, maracas, cowbell, along with a clearly pronounced bassline almost throughout the track. The drum and timbales hits are thick and commands a quite strong presence right from the onset of the track. And shortly after the bass guitar comes into play, exerting full bodied notes and deep rumbles. However, never once the drum hits and bass guitar rumbles overlap each other or get mashed together - such is the brilliant control and outstanding textures. Being this strong and thick, one would think that the bass will be one note, but that is the farthest from the truth here - the variation in the bass guitar tones are clearly produced and easily noticeable; there’s a clear distinction between the drum and timbale notes as well. This shows how refined the bass is.
To get an idea of the extent of the low end, I played
Bear McCreary-Battlestar Galactica Season 2 OST: Prelude To War. This track has some serious bass drums that slam and rumble in a thunderous way that shook me to the core. And never once did I feel the textures became overshadowed by the thick bodies of the notes. There are also some bass at play which set up a firm groundwork for the track with equally formidable presence.
One would think, given how deep the
Midrange sits behind the bass, that its midrange performance will be quite substandard. And in fact, I felt the same when I was reviewing the Ikko OH10. The curves of Horizon and OH10 are pretty similar, and the midrange performance of OH10 was not anything remarkable. However, the handful of reviews of Horizon that I could find, not one of them bashed it for being unimpressive. And once it started playing, I can clearly hear why.
Immediately after the powerful bass the aspect that stands out the most is the highly clean and clear midrange. The first defining trait that I can detect is precision. It’s rare to get to hear such a cleanly defined and well separated midrange in this price segment. The strong low end never meddles into it, albeit it does add some weight to the lower mid which is highly welcome. There is an edge in the midrange notes which helps to enhance definitions, which is one of the notable aspects of it. One might say it’s prone to being clinical and dry, but thankfully the DD timbre barely saves it from that…but yeah, ‘barely’. Compared to my other DD iems, the midrange definitely feels a bit lean, and yet not that lean to abandon musicality. Lower mids, especially deep male vocals still have that touch of throaty sound which make them sound natural, but as it goes upwards the edges in the vocals can be detected, especially in the finishing notes, and they do sound slightly less organic then - a bit more digital. There seems to be a slightly metallic sheen in the vocals. All these can be experienced in the track
Leonard Cohen - Hallelujah; here his voice starts deep and weighty, but as it soars the sharp edges become a bit accentuated. Rasp and harsh male vocals, like in
Metallica - Enter Sandman and
RHCP - Dani California sound a bit edgy, but not overly thin and unnatural - an acceptable amount of note weight is still present, but not exactly up to desirable degree (I hope this makes sense.) But come to smooth and baritone vocals, like
Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, they sound nothing short of delightful. Sure, I would have preferred slightly more body, but that’s really just me fussing over it, as the DD timbre makes them quite enjoyable nonetheless.
Coming to female vocals, well, Horizon bestows them with a brilliance and extension which perfectly conveys the emotion in them. Be it
Whitney Houston,Madonna, Julia Jacklin, Amy Lee, Christina Aguilera, Cherryl Wheeler, Pink, Yao Si Ting, Charlotte Cardin…all of them sound alive and appropriately full of life. The smooth ones have that sublime depth, the energetic ones soar high with surreal radiance. They do have one thing in common - all of them have a silky nature added to them, which makes them all the more magical. Following the trait of the male vocals, here also the sharpness might sometimes work against the female vocals, and accentuates the peaks occasionally to become slightly piercing and adds that metallic sheen to them, but thankfully that happens in very specific tracks only, and that too quite seldom. However, as I played
Sara Bareilles through Qudelix 5K, the peaky parts of her voice became really uncomfortably accentuated and sharp, slightly sibilant, and ultimately not enjoyable at all.
Yao Si Ting in
Scarborough Fair also had one or two sibilant areas that got slightly piercing for a moment or two.
On the other hand, the instrumental tracks sound outstanding. Each instrument notes sound well defined, details are effortlessly brought out. The slightly sharp notes help here a lot. Especially string instrument notes, such as guitar (both electric and acoustic), sound crunchy. Despite having the sharpness, the notes do not feel dry, and most certainly not flat. May be very slightly thinner in body, but that assists in improving the separation rather than making it unnatural. The most notable aspect of Horizon here is how effortlessly it recreates the detail in the instruments being played in the far background. Despite being in the background they do not feel muted and washed out, rather the microdynamics of them are brought forward quite nicely and I never failed to notice them. Don’t misunderstand, though, it’s not like the background instruments are pushed forward in your face, that will kill the stage depth. They remain situated at the depth of the stage they are meant to be, just they sound quite clear and stand out so prominently that the details become really easy to pick up. This is precisely the reason why I love listening to orchestral and instrumental tracks the most with Horizon, for e.g,
James Newton Howard - Red Sparrow OST: Overture, Cloud Atlas OST: Won’t Let Go, Estas Tonne - Strings Of A Bard, Hans Zimmer - The Dune Sketchbook.
The
Treble of Horizon has a considerably bright and slightly cold nature, despite the steep 20 dB roll off past 8 khz. It still has plenty of energy in the region of 6 khz-8 khz. The high frequency notes have a silky nature, however, they’re not silky SMOOTH…rather silky and sparkling, with slight edges here and there. The utter transparency of the midrange is carried forward to this region as well. These two aspects combined really elevates the treble to an ethereal presentation. The cymbal and hi-hat notes stand out quite well in the mix, even in the busiest tracks. However, this is purely my guess, because of the steep roll off past 8 khz, they never become uncomfortably piercing. Again, this is purely my guess. The crash cymbals notes sound brilliant in the mix and the subsequent decay is quite natural, but even on tracks where the cymbal crashes are at the forefront, they never become overly piercing. I never had to wince once in the tracks
Tool - Stinkfist, Red Hot Chilli Pepper - Dani California, Metallica - Enter Sandman. Specifically, Enter Sandman has a constant hi-hat roll placed quite forward, which has an abundance of sparkle and energy, and never once I had the sensation of getting stabbed in my brain with several icy needles, even though they retained a strong presence throughout the track. In
Stinkfist and
Dani California various cymbals notes are placed in various depths of the stage - some in front while some come from back in the scene. Horizon, while portraying the frontal cymbal notes with sufficient energy but not uncomfortably bright, also manages to bring out the background treble notes to their justified presence. The background treble notes - cymbal crash, ride cymbal roll, or cowbell - everything becomes clearly discernible in the mix, at their respective position, with sufficient details. Even the faintest of notes sounds clear. The layering of the different notes is masterfully carried out.
Granted, there is a spicy nature due to the edgy notes and perhaps a metallic sheen…but then, treble notes generally originate from metal to metal collisions, so the metallic sheen really did not prove to be detrimental for them, at least to my ears. The sharpness of the notes also remains somewhat within control so that they never become too spicy to sound wrong. However, for treble sensitive ears I can clearly see it may provide notable discomfort, as despite the absence of piercing peaks, the general abundance of energy can get a bit overwhelming. For treble heads, well, you’re in for a treat.
Post 11 khz the treble peaks up and recovers some energy, which helps in retaining the air in the treble region. The multiple different types of treble notes never fight among each other to gain prominence - all of them are well separated and have enough room to breathe.
I believe I have already said enough regarding the several aspects of technicalities of the iem. The
stage is sufficiently deep while having a nice width and height, imaging is quite pinpoint and accurate. No need to repeat after myself any more.
Conclusion:
Let me be perfectly clear - Azla Horizon is not a safe choice for everybody. It is very much a specialist iem. Such a sharp V shaped iem at about $300 range ($286 to be exact) is not what most people are looking for at this range. A 12 dB boost in the low end over 1 khz, and a similar boost in the upper mid frequency generally gives off a lot of red flags. And truth be told, I would have definitely preferred a bit less emphasis in the 5khz - 8khz range; however, it is what it is. In spite of so many alarming aspects, Azla managed to tune the final sound in such a way that has definitely drawn me towards it. And that’s where it distinguishes itself from other V-shaped tuning iems. The highly transparent midrange with captivating instruments, just right male vocals, ethereal female vocals, brilliant treble, airy and spacious presentation, immaculate imaging, and all over a very dynamic and engaging sound do not take much time to capture the heart of the listener, the way it did mine, despite the slight nagging of the sharpness of the notes. I cannot recommend it to anyone as a blind buy suggestion, because it takes time and a certain level of tolerance to bright tuning to really adapt to its sound signature and appreciate it. But quite honestly, those who do have these two, would find satisfaction in it - that’s one thing I can swear on. It has become my EDC (every day carry), paired with Qudelix 5K or occasionally L&P W2. The Hiby Lasya is a calmer sister that compliments it. When on the road and I need that energy, that power, to drown out the outside noise a bit to enjoy my music, Horizon fills in that role perfectly for me.