Campfire Audio Cascara Achromatic Review: Purity
The Cascara Goes White
This is a very long review. For a summary of my thoughts and comparisons, feel free to jump to the bottom!
Campfire Audio is a staple brand in the audiophile community. Since the brand’s 2015 inception, they’ve released multiple IEMs that made a lasting impression on the audiophile community; Andromeda, Supermoon, and Solaris to name a few. And while those are fantastic IEMs, my favorites from the Campfire lineup have always been the unassuming, lesser-known models. The Mammoth and Atlas were not particularly popular, but I loved them for their unapologetic nature and emotional tuning. Today we’re looking at a the Multiverse III Achromatic special edition of the Cascara — a spiritual successor to the Atlas. Building on the Atlas’s substantial core, the Cascara brings a range of sonic and ergonomic improvements to the table for a significantly reduced price. Let’s get into the specifics.
You can find the Cascara for sale directly from Campfire Audio in three trims:
- Essential ($499) (Black / Blue)
- Achromatic ($599) (Limited edition, low volume) (White)
- Deluxe ($699) (Black / Blue)
About My Preferences: This review is a subjective assessment and is therefore tinged by my personal preferences. While I try to mitigate this as much as possible during my review process, I’d be lying if I said my biases are completely erased. So for you, my readers, keep this in mind:
- My ideal sound signature would be one with competent sub-bass, a textured mid-bass, a slightly warm midrange, and an extended treble.
- I have mild treble sensitivity.
Testing equipment and standards can be found
here.
Tech Specs
- Driver: Dual-Magnet 10mm Dynamic
- SPL: 94 dB @ 1 kHz: 16.6 mVrms
- Impedance: 23 Ohms @ 1 kHz
- Cables: 3x SPC MMCX (2.5mm, 3.5mm, 4.4mm)
Sound Signature
Sonic Overview:
The Multiverse III Cascara, like its other variants, has a V-shaped sound signature with an elevated treble, solid bass, and subtly-warm midrange. It has excellent upper-treble extension, giving it a good sense of air. Its midrange is natural and cohesive, featuring a warmth that lends a comfortable weight to vocals and instrumentation. The Cascara’s bass is large and robust, but not boom-y. The Cascara’s organic presentation is complemented by its above-average sound-staging ability.
Sonic Breakdown:
Treble: Songs used:
In One Ear,
Midnight City,
Outlands,
Satisfy,
Little One,
Show Me How To Live (Live at the Quart Festival),
Bittersweet Symphony
The Cascara’s treble is forward, and well-extended. It maintains an organic timbre throughout the upper register with an even tone that complements percussion nicely. The high hats and cymbals of
In One Ear crash and fade with precision and control. The Cascara’s treble captures a surprising amount of texture, and in traditional dynamic-driver fashion, naturally fades them out with minimal artifacting and blur.
Overall treble resolution is pretty good, especially for a dynamic-driver IEM. The lazily-stacked layers of string instrumentation in
Bittersweet Symphony are steadily and consistently well-resolved, with the Cascara mostly avoiding smudging. Some fine treble elements do occasionally get clipped, with their fade-outs not lasting as long as they might on a multi-BA IEM.
Midrange: Songs used:
Flagpole Sitta,
Jacked Up,
I Am The Highway,
Dreams,
Too Close,
Little Black Submarines,
Bohemian Rhapsody,
Cash Machine,
Chasm
The Cascara’s midrange is excellently-tuned, delivering detail, texture, warmth, and layering. The Cascara’s energetic and warm presentation emphasizes the joy of
listening to your music, not just
analyzing your music. Case in point
, Flagpole Sitta’s up-tempo journalings-of-a-crazy-person are staged with addicting dynamics that made me want to crank up the volume. The grinding distortion of its electric guitars complement the wiry pseudo-whining of the track’s vocals, each of which are placed in their own spot on the sound stage.
In spite of its warm lower-mids, the Cascara has no problem delivering uncolored female vocals. The ghostly wailings of
Chasm are captured with a natural and organic timbre. That said, I can’t help but feel that the Cascara’s upper-midrange could use some additional refinement. The vocal spike around 2–3KHz and 5KHz can occasionally break form and become somewhat grainy, particularly when listening at higher volumes. I could manage this behavior by using the included foam eartips, but I ultimately switched to silicone eartips for comfort reasons.
Bass: Songs used:
Moth,
Gold Dust,
In For The Kill (Skream Remix),
War Pigs (Celldweller Remix)
When Campfire Audio refers to the Cascara as “bombastic”, they do so with reference to its powerful and responsive bass. All but the most dedicated bass-heads, accustomed to
very aggressive bass, will find the Cascara’s lower register to be generously portioned. The Cascara’s lower register is forward and assertive, but not out-of-control or recklessly exaggerated.
Audioslave’s
Moth makes heavy use of bass-guitar to underpin the track’s desperate and lonely vocals. The Cascara’s cleanly resolves the instrument’s strumming and plucking, though not with the level of intense precision I’ve heard from (much more expensive) IEMs such as the
Astrolith and
VE10. Instead, the Cascara seems to be best at articulating the main body of the guitar, while allowing the very fine details to and micro-texture to blend into the weighty sub-bass background tone.
The Cascara joyfully delivers
Gold Dust’s messy bass line — from its mid-bass slam down to its sub-bass rumble. The Cascara’s excellent pairing of mid-bass and sub-bass response makes it a worthy successor to
my previous daily IEM — a 2x DD + 2x BA IEM from 2017. Take, for example,
War Pigs (Celldweller Remix): the track possess a wide variety of instrumentation and bass implements, most of which are mastered dryly. The Cascara’s careful balance of mid-bass weight and sub-bass body allows to it deftly resolve the track’s plethora of sonic offerings without the bass becoming bloated, boom-y, or overwhelming.
Packaging / Unboxing
Campfire has, for most of their models, simplified their packaging to be simple single-chamber boxes. I don’t particularly mind, but there was something so satisfying about unboxing brand new luxury IEMs from their previous generation of packaging that you simply don’t get anymore with their current setup.
Build
Construction Quality
The Cascara features Campfire Audio’s newest generation of 3D-printed housings. They’re able to create the entire shell from a single, uniform composite. This allows them to carefully structurally tune their IEMs and eliminate unwanted sonic behaviors. Another upside to this approach is that it dramatically simplifies the manufacturing and assembly process, minimizing defects and lowering costs.
On the inside face of the Cascara you’ll find its metal-chiseled nozzles. They may appear stubby, but that’s an optical illusion. The Cascara actually sits pretty far into the ear canal, similar to a CIEM. The nozzle’s perforation acts as a debris filter.
On the top face of the Cascara’s shells are its MMCX sockets. They sit flush within the Aluminum portion of the Cascara’s shell and feel secure.
The Cascara includes three Timestream Metal cables, each with a different termination (2.5mm, 3.5mm, 4.4mm). These are Campfire’s new premium cables and they’re great. They feature a two-wire flat braid and are soft, light, and visually striking. The MMCX housing, termination housing, and Y-splitter are all built from silver-finished metal with impeccable fit-and-finish. You won’t find better-built, ergonomically-sound stock cables with any other brand.
Comfort
Disclaimer: comfort is a highly individual metric — no two people will have the same experience.
The Cascara’s shells are the most comfortable ones that Campfire has built to date. Whatever 3D-printing magic they’re using to sculpt the Cascara (and its sibling)’s shells allows it to sit organically on my ear for hours on end without discomfort. Its unique shape also gives it above-average passive isolation.
Accessories
Inside the box you’ll find:
3x Time Stream Metal cables(3.5mm, 4.4mm, 2.5mm)
White Breezy Bag Sr HiFi carrying case
White RipStop Cable bag
White Breezy Bag Micro two-pocket IEM pouch
Microfiber cleaning cloth & IEM cleaning tool
3x pairs Foam eartips
3x pairs Silicone eartips
The Achromatic edition of the Cascara sits, price-wise, right between the Essential and Deluxe versions. Accessory-wise, the Achromatic inherits its cable variety from the Deluxe version, but curiously, not its cases/pouches. Instead, the Achromatic gets an oversized run of the perforated pouch that comes included in the Cascara’s Essential version.
The Cascara Achromatic comes with the Campfire standard-issue eartip variety which includes three pairs of their Marshmallow foam eartips and three pairs of their silicone eartips. I find these eartips to be generally comfortable, though I wish that the foam ones were softer (like Comply’s eartips).
Among the many bags and pouches included with the Cascara Achromatic is the Breezy Micro IEM pouch. This tiny perforated pouch is a 2-chamber baggie that stores the left and right earphone separately. This is an
excellent asset for keeping the Cascara safe. It adds another layer of mechanical insulation while preventing the IEMs from smashing into each other when in transit. I may purchase a few more of these for my other IEMs — my metal-built Da Vinci X and Andromeda (2019) specifically.
And while I
do think that these are high-quality accessories, I can’t help but feel that they’re a little too… bland for a
Multiverse III Special Edition IEM. Yes, I understand that this is a special blend of limited-colorway accessories, but none of them are unique. The cables are standard Timestream Metal cables. The pouches are standard pouches, just in white. Yes, the Breezy Sr is technically larger than the Breezy standard that comes with the Essential version, but they are functionally-equivalent. Neither protect the IEM from fluid, dust/debris intrusion, or crushing forces. I swapped my Cascara into a
Pelican 1010 immediately on receipt as I have zero faith in the Breezy Sr’s capacity to protect my IEM from anything other than a low-height drop.
I
know Campfire can do better here. They currently sell
yarn,
cork,
canvas, and yes,
leather zipper-cases. All of these offer
real protection from the elements, and the cheapest sells for a mere $30 (which is still $10 more than a Pelican 1010). Maybe my perspective is warped, but I expect a $600 IEM to come with a case that properly protects it. There’s also no rule that demands Campfire to re-use accessories for Multiverse products — bringing unique accessories to the lineup each year would be great incentive to buy these limited-run products. (As of 1/20/2025, zero of the Achromatic models are sold out).
Comparisons
1:
Campfire Audio Atlas ($1300; 2018, $250; 2024)
The Atlas is a less-sensitive, more subtle IEM than the Cascara. It features similar sonic features such as an expressive, forward treble, warm midrange, and weighty bass, but implements them differently. The Cascara’s treble is more extended and slightly brighter in the upper treble, while the Atlas has a comparatively less-emphasized mid-bass. Both IEMs have strong sub-bass presence, though the Atlas may have a slight upper-hand in bass control.
Ergonomically, the Cascara is much improved over the Atlas for anyone who’s ears can accommodate its over-ear style shells. The Atlas’s bullet-style is great for those who prefer such a design, but they are heavy and become tiring for my ears over time. The Atlas comes with a fantastic leather-and-wool carrying case that is vastly superior to the pouches and “wallet” offered with the Cascara. Its cable, however, is strikingly inferior. It is wirey-and finicky and has not aged well. The new Timestream series of Campfire Audio cables are superior to all of the stock cables from the Atlas’ era.
2:
Rose Technics QT-X ($449)
The Cascara is similar in size to the QT-X but is more comfortable, especially during long listening sessions. The QT-X comes with a solid USB-C adapter that offers 3.5mm and 4.4mm connectivity options — the Cascara trades this inclusion for extra cables and baggies. The QT-X
does have a case, but it isn’t particularly protective nor does it have enough space to store the QT-X, cable, and dongle. The Cascara Achromatic’s higher pricepoint and wider variety of accessories are clearly superior here.
The QT-X is a seven-driver hybrid IEM with an emphasis on its midrange. It leverages a complex array of balanced-armature drivers to bring a somewhat broader range of midrange textures into focus, though not with much of a lead over the Cascara’s dual-magnet driver. The Cascara’s more traditional V-shaped sound signature is still organic and natural, with a greater emphasis on treble and bass. The QT-X’s warmer, more forward midrange will suite the exact audience its tuned for: mid-centric tuning enjoyers. Those who are accustomed to V-shaped sound signatures (and bass heads) will likely prefer the Cascara’s weightier and brighter tuning.
3:
Meze Audio Advar ($699)
The Advar is another expensive single DD IEM. It features a smooth, organic shell that is reminiscent of the Cascara’s exotic geometry. Both IEMs are ergonomic, though the Advar’s smaller shells make more widely-compatible with different ear shapes. The Advar has a less impressive cable, but has a fantastic stock case — something that the Essential and Achromatic Cascara sorely miss.
Sound-wise, the Advar is brighter and less bassy. It has a sharp twinge in its upper treble, and tends to resolve complex treble scenes with a little more precision. The Cascara is far more forgiving and trades absolute resolution for a greater emphasis on smooth sound and fun. It has a more expressive midrange and more dynamic bass.
Conclusion
The Cascara is a top-tier dynamic driver IEM. It is my personal favorite IEM, by a long-shot, and my go-to recommendation for anyone who’s budget can accommodate its price-point. But that doesn’t mean it’s perfect. Campfire Audio’s team has an enormous wealth of knowledge, skill, and experience — somewhere along the line I wish that someone objected to transitioning to the Breezy series of pouches. Much cheaper IEMs like the Honeydew and Saber have better-protecting cases and are still on sale through the
Campfire Market program.
Who This is For
- Listeners who are ready for the next-level of earphone quality, but want traditional V-shaped sound
- Buyers who highly-value ergonomics
- People who want an exclusive and limited luxury IEM
- Audiophiles that commonly switch between cable standards
Who This isn’t For
- Those accustomed to reference sound
- Customers who want a complete package and don’t want to purchase 3rd party accessories
- Buyers on a budget
- Listeners sensitive to upper-mids grain
As always, happy listening!
