Thieaudio Monarch

—Do you know Monarch Butterfly?

Monarch pupae hatch in approximately two weeks.

Curiously, the green pupa only becomes transparent at night just before hatching.

A natural made one night only gem.

Now we have that one-night-only-gem readily available at your will.

Thieaudio Monarch hatches





—About myself
===START OF INTRODUCTION ===
—Background
Audio equipment reviewer with over 20year+ of experience in headphones/earphones/IEM/DAP, initially motivated by:
Sennheiser | AKG | Sony | Bose | JVC | JBL.

—Imprinted Instruments Timbre
Drums (TAMA & Zildjian cymbals) | Guitar (Gibson Les Paul & Marshall Amp) | Piano (Yamaha)

—Bio
After spending a decade with full-size headphones, and home audio speakers, I shifted my main listening environment to IEM. Of which, I have over 100 personal inventories —not loaner or review units—purchased with my hobby budget

—On mobile
I enjoyed Lexus’s Mark Levinson system and moved to Mercedes AMG’s Burmester 4D System

—Affiliation
Under the penalty of perjury of the United States of America, 28 U.S.C. § 1746, I’m neither affiliated with any sellers/stores/makers nor given review samples or paid for this review.

I purchased/pre-ordered Monarch from Linsoul’s Official Store at my own will with my own disposable income, for purely my personal entertainment purpose.

=====END OF INTRODUCTION=====
—About Thieaudio
It’s a Linsoul’s private brand, which most of us may already know. It’s a big name now. Thieaudio needs no introductions.

—2 years with Monarch, Post Scripts, and Epilogues
Two years have already passed since we started a new life with Monarch day and night, and her sparkling brilliance has not diminished, at all.

You’ve probably already read about Monarch’s pros/cons, it’s almost 2 years since Monarch shocked the community with her debut.

Thus, here, I’d only like to leave my two years memoir with Monarch.
Things what I like about her.

The Cable has been changed from the original silver EST cable— it changes color by UV of sunlight, a very welcoming moment to see a different faces—


Natural L/R indicator by coincidence


To various other ones, such as LSC08,


Just like what happened to my life, dating a couple of girls, they come and go, but after all, I’m with the same old girl that I had dated before. It’s almost fate that I had to come back to the original EST cable because that made Monarch sound just about right.

Monarch’s face isn’t a fixture. It changes by ear tips and cables because she is set to neutral.

She changes appearance every time when I stare at her, dawn, daylight, afternoon, dusk, sunset, nighttime, midnight, the lighting reflecting on the face of Monarch varies time to time. Just like you and with your beloved.


For tonalities, No sibilance, No harshness, but smooth and not dark, perfect pitch.

After hundreds of ear tips, to further boost Monarch’s sub-bass rumble, yet retain balanced mid to upper registers, Softears UltraClear Tips is my current favorite add-on, aside from the original EST cable.

—Some technical talks
Cross Comparision of Thieaudio Monarch vs my other benchmarking IEMs





—Her legs aren’t very fast
Monarch of course is not god almighty.

It has two technical flaws:

① Due to the slow responding traditional DD subwoofer, the speed lag among BA/EST vs Traditional DD could cause some tracks to sound a little bit inconsistent. Which will cause the Image’s geolocation to be a bit unclear/uncertain at some occasions.

This is the main reason why some people prefer single BA(Ety) or Single Dynamic, lately Planar, as to minimize this coherence issue.

Monarch unfortunately has a pair of slow legs, which will drag her capability in Sound Image coordinate positioning coherence from the S(Flagship)-tier to the A (Great)-tier.

② Due to the same reasons above, when a sound image travels from point A to B, the slow bass reaction will cause a delay in the sound image. As if you are experiencing a jet lag between a high-frequency head to its low-frequency legs. This is what I refer to as Sound Image’s Momentum and Vector presentations coherency, of which Monarch slips from the S(Flagship)-tier to the B (Good) Tier.

The neutral tuning will bring the diffusion stage narrower, so the Diffusion Field is set well above average, a B (Good ) tier.

You can see Monarch’s by-frequency “Tech” column has two B+ due to the DD’s lack of technical capability.

However, even with this clumsiness, I still love Monarch. Hey nobody is perfect, the little clumsiness makes Monarch more humane.

I personally love Monarch’s face plate more than any other IEMs. Sorry Thieaudio, the MKII wasn’t appealing to me simply because of the outlook. People sometimes judge content by its outlook, even if we have been told not to do so. I could only imagine magma sound from the faceplate probably it’s due to my lack of imaginative drawers.

Anyway, This is more of a narrative of what Monarch is capable and not capable of. As a daily listening IEM, Monarch will be second to none in EDM, Full-orchestral, Jazz, and J-POP. Where you don’t find a significant roll in mid-bass. But for the tracks you would need the male voice to sound full and rich, Monarch’s voice is simply not capable enough to materialize those needs.

Nevertheless, here is my impression score after living with Monarch for nearly 2 years:

—Final impression score (based on my HRTF)
Overall | S-
Tonality | S-
Resolution | S+
Overall Coherence | A

1. Diffusion Field coherence | B+
2. Image coordinate positioning coherence | A+
3. Image Focusing Coherence | S+
4. Sound wave momentum & Sound Image vectoring coherence | B+

—Eartip Recommdation
① Moondrop Spring Tip
▶︎Wide Bore, Good soft silicone, elastic bass response, best balance
② AZLA Xelastec
▶︎Sub-bass boost
③ Softears UC
▶︎Sub-bass boost + treble boost
*SpinFits / Spiral Dots / Sony Hybrid / Final E / UM Bluecore / Acostune AET7&8 / AZLA Crystal are not particularly good pairs for Monarch

My other A-rated IEMs:
Truthear HEXA (85/100: A) l Blessing 2 (84/100: A) | Blessing 2 Dusk (85/100: A) | Mangird Tea (84/100: A) | AKG N5005 (A)


My higher than A-rated:
Westone W80 (A+) | Tangzu Wu Zetian (A+) | 7Hz Timeless (A+) | DUNU SA6 (S-) | Moondrop Variations (S-) | Softears RSV (S-) | Thieaudio Monarch (S-) | UM MEST MKII (S) | qdc Anole VX (S+)

Other Technical Charts:


—Want to try something exotic with Monarch?
Sorry this is the best SQ I cloud find. The original album is on amazon japan if anyone interested.

It’s a soundtrack from my favorite old Anime called “Mushishi” a fairy tail style modern musical and artistic set of piece made mainly for matured audiences (not a Disney or Ghibli).

A man Ginko who can see things that others can’t see, it’s his episodes of journey across ancient Japan (no samurai’s battles or sort). Highly recommendable for 30-70yo audiences. No waifu, no battles, just a nice set of piece of modern art (graphical and musical) with main concept highlighting on “what is life”.

It was presented in a form of animation simply because unless the studio is Hollywood class rich, it is impossible to render it other than Pixar/ Hollywood 3DCG. Story is completely pictured from the point of grown-ups.

Note: This is a review for both the Monarch and Clairvoyance. The star rating is for the Monarch.

Introduction

2020 has been a long year. Ignoring the craziness of the real world, the IEM world has had a number of big releases such as the MoonDrop Starfield, the refresh of Campfire Audio's flagship Andromeda and Solaris, the entrance of the heavyweight Empire Ears Odin, and to end the year, crinacle's MoonDrop Dusk re-tune of the hugely popular Blessing 2.

With so many exciting IEMs released in the past year, I figured what better way to end the year other than discussing what's possibly the most lauded ChiFi release of the year: the Thieaudio Monarch and Clairvoyance. Today, I'll be taking a look at these critically acclaimed IEMs and add yet another perspective for those wondering what the hype around these two IEMs are.

Disclaimer: I was lent the Thieaudio Monarch and Clairvoyance as part of Linsoul's review tour program. Below are my honest thoughts on these IEMs. I am not compensated by Linsoul in any other way.



What's in the Box?

For those unaware, the Thieaudio Monarch and Clairvoyance are also referred to as the "tribrids" as they contain a dynamic driver, balanced armatures, and electrostatic drivers. Specifically, the Monarch has a 1 DD + 6 BA + 2 EST configuration while the Clairvoyance removes a single BA from that setup. At $700 for the Clairvoyance and $730 for the Monarch, you could say that extra BA costs $30. The DD used in these IEMs is the same one found in the Legacy 5. The BAs and EST forgo the typical Bellsing drivers found in ChiFi in favor of Knowles and Sonion. Do note that despite being called electrostatic (EST) drivers, they are not true electrostatic drivers as you'd expect from headphone nomenclature. That is to say, they aren't true estats like the infamous Stax headphones or the Shure KSE 1200/1500 lineup. They do not require a dedicated amp with a transformer for power. Speaking of power, they aren't too hungry and can be driven rather easily from my Apple dongle. The Monarch actually requires less power than the Clairvoyance does despite having one more BA driver.

Looks wise, the Monarch and Clairvoyance are pretty much identical except for some shiny orange speckles on the Monarch's faceplate. The pearl-like finish and iridescent sheen is rather eye-catching; the promo pics on Linsoul's website seriously does NOT do a good job showcasing how good it looks. The packaging of the twins are identical with the exception of the labeling sticker on the box. It comes in the standard Thieaudio green cardboard box with a set of S, M, L foam tips, M sized SpinFits, a hard carrying case, and the Thieaudio EST 2.5 mm cable and its corresponding set of 3.5 mm and 4.4 mm adapters. In fact, the packaging is identical to the Legacy 5 and you can read my not-so-positive rant on the EST cable there.

Fit and comfort on both IEMs were about standard for me, though they aren't the most comfortable in the sense that they disappear into my ear. It has a nozzle size of 5 mm which I'd say is a bit above average. While my unit does not have a nozzle lip, Thieaudio has since added it for the newer ones in production. The shell of the tribrids are definitely on the large size and for some reason, I find the Monarch to be slightly more comfortable than the Clairvoyance despite them having practically the same shell. Maybe it's just my ears.



Sound

To be completely honest, I was not immediately blown away by these IEMs. They're both tuned extremely well but I wasn't overly impressed with their technical performance at first listen. Resolution wasn't immediately leaps and bounds better than what I was used to. Soundstage was within the realm of what you'd expect IEMs to be (i.e. eeehh). Admittedly, I had very high expectations of these IEMs from the hype that surrounded their release. To be honest, it was the sound of diminishing returns.

Despite saying all of that, over the next few hours and days of listening, the Monarch and Clairvoyance convinced me that they're worthy of their price tag. The Monarch's tuning is a lot leaner than the Clairvoyance thanks to a very controlled subbass boost and treble forwardness. In my view, the Monarch is an IEM that demands attention. It's not an IEM that you can forget about in the background. On the other hand, the Clairvoyance takes a more conservative approach. It has a lightly warm midrange and a relaxed but still present treble. The Clairvoyance has an easier-to-listen to presentation that fits perfectly into a work from home environment. Between the two, I greatly prefer the Monarch.



Bass:

The Monarch has a heavy subbass focus that hits deep. It both slams and rumbles with a great sense of impact and unique texture. When the right notes hit, it can be very satisfying to listen to. They accomplish this through dedicating the DD and 4 BAs solely to the bass. However, this does come at a cost: I find that the bass performance isn't wholly consistent. Certain notes, especially on the kick drum, have an awesomely deep rumble and weight to them. Other notes that don't fully leverage the Monarch's bass setup are less impressive and more akin to the Clairvoyance. Furthermore, in my initial listening, I could actually hear the blending of the BA and the DD though I haven't been able to notice it again after the first couple of days.

The Clairvoyance's bass is a fairly standard DD affair. It doesn't have that sense of awe like the Monarch does but still provides a respectable performance. While it does rumble when needed, it has much more of a warm, full-bodied midbass focus compared to the Monarch. Where the Monarch flattens out at about the 125 Hz mark, the Clairvoyance is sustained until around 200 Hz, right before the lower mids. This makes the Clairvoyance the bassier of the two to my ears. The Monarch feels like "neutral with a subbass boost" while the Clairvoyance is overall "balanced". There's a good sense of nuance and resolution in the bass, a far cry from its blunt and low-res sounding siblings. Despite sharing the same DD, the difference in bass quality from the Legacy 5 is mindblowing. The choice of BAs working in tandem with the DD makes a serious difference. Transients are very good on the Monarch and decent on the Clairvoyance. For those who want a low end that "fills the room", you'd want the Clairvoyance over the Monarch. The sterility of the Monarch may sound just a little thin for some people. Personally, I really enjoy the Monarch's bass presentation for its uniqueness and often deeply satisfying subbass.


Mids:

The mids of the tribrids are excellent with what I'd consider about an ideal pinna peak placement right around 2.5-3 kHz. While they both have forward leaning vocals, there is a significant difference in tonality. Compared to the Monarch, the lower mids of the Clairvoyance are ever so slightly elevated. Combined with the increased bass presence in the midbass, the Clairvoyance clearly has a lusher tone over the Monarch.

Vocals have a good sense of space on both IEMs, being placed cleanly forward and taking center stage. Both male and female vocals perform just as well on both. Neither are harsh nor sibilant. Vocals on the Monarch have a slightly aggressive front to them while the Clairvoyance are a touch relaxed. This is likely due to the minor mid elevation in the 1-2.5 kHz range. Likewise, electric guitars have a gritter and more engaging sound on the Monarch. Acoustic instruments have a homely tone on the Clairvoyance while they sound sharper and more defined on the Monarch. Overall, I wouldn't say the mids of the tribrids are especially unique or have some romantic quality to them. They're just really good with an instantly agreeable tonal balance, though with a different flavor on each. I prefer the midrange of the Clairvoyance.


Treble:

The treble of the Clairvoyance is present but restrained. It has good extension and provides plenty of clarity without being fatiguing or distracting. Hats and cymbals are tamed but have a very natural voicing to them. I don't notice any outstanding peaks or oddities in the treble. Where most other IEMs fail the treble test for me, the Clairvoyance passes it comfortably without overly dampening the sound and killing transient energy.

On the flip side, the Monarch's treble straddles the line of almost being fatiguing without ever crossing it. It's rather omnipresent and in-your-face for me, like I'm constantly being reminded that I'm listening to the Monarch. Like the Clairvoyance, the Monarch's treble has a natural tone, but is distinctly more crisp with more brilliance in the shimmer of hats and cymbals. There's a great sense of clarity in each note that rings out. In addition, the upper harmonics of brass instruments have just that extra layer of energy to it, making it a treat whenever they appear. The treble of the Monarch falls neatly in line with my preference for treble, though a bit of a longer decay would be nice. Needless to say, I greatly enjoy it.


Presentation:

The soundstage of both IEMs aren't anything amazing. They still have that centered, in-your-head feeling. For the most part, the horizontal soundstage is constrained to between the ears but occasionally they do surprise me with notes that stretch those limits. There is limited height to the soundstage though at times there is good depth, especially on the Monarch. Imaging is quite decent. There's plenty of nuance across the horizontal stage though depth is limited to two planes. These are not IEMs you buy for a vast sense of stage. Notes do seem to fight for the spotlight and layering is limited. The Monarch does a much, much better job here than the Clairvoyance, likely due to the leaner midbass tuning. While far from bad, it's clear that the staging is a relative area of weakness compared to the prowess of the other parts of these IEMs.

While I initially wasn't super impressed with the resolution, I gotta say, after listening to these IEMs for a while and then going back to my more budget range gear, the step up in resolution is definitely noticeable. Rather than a big step forward like I experienced in the Fearless Dawn, it's a lot of tiny little improvements that I notice every now and then that comes seamlessly together. Like the layering, the Monarch has better resolution. While part of it has to do with its more sterile tuning and forward treble, I suspect that its improved transient response really adds a subtle bit of extra clarity. Switching to the Thieaudio Legacy 5, it's like a whole other layer is missing. This is the threshold level of resolution that I expect top tier IEMs to have.



Should You Buy It?

Yes. While I think both IEMs are excellent, having heard both side-by-side, I'd buy the Monarch hands down every time. Personally, when I think about reaching HiFi or endgame, it's more about just tuning or technical performance. I want something unique, something that fills a gap that others leave behind. For me, that is the Monarch. I love its forward treble response and its bass hits like few others do. It's not a perfect IEM but for the price and what it strives for, I think the Monarch is an extremely compelling one-of-a-kind option with nothing yet on the market to challenge it. On the other hand, the Clairvoyance's safer, less aggressive tuning is a double edged sword. It's a great IEM but it doesn't reach for more than that. While the $700 price tag places it firmly below some of its competitors in the Viento and Sony IER-M9, the used market does open a lot of doors to IEMs near the kilobuck range.

If you've made it this far into the review (or just skipped to the end) and want a simple way of thinking about these two IEMs, here's my perspective on them. Get the Monarch if you really focus and listen to music when you do. If you're someone who really wants to immerse yourself in the sound while commuting or lounging. Get the Clairvoyance if you want a very solid and safe set to listen to. If you're someone who listens to music while working on something else and just want some good sound to keep you company. The Monarch is better for more energetic genres like EDM or pop. The Clairvoyance does better with more acoustic music.

Hopefully this review helps clarify things for those still on the fence for the Thieaudio Monarch or Clairvoyance. As I say goodbye to these IEMs and start a new year, I hope 2021 continues to bring IEMs that redefine the limits of sound quality and price performance.

It's always interesting to see a brand grow from its infancy into a full-fledged competitor and this is how I am starting to feel with Thieaudio, Linsoul's house brand of portable audio gear. They started with headphones, and then moved to their bread and butter IEM products with the Voyager (multi-BA) and Legacy (dynamic driver + BA hybrid) products. I've reviewed a few of their products in the past with mixed results, but this latest batch of products -- the Clairvoyance and the Monarch -- come with great anticipation and a certain bit of hype.

Being involved in the community, I've gotten to discuss the tuning and progression of this brand through their owner, as well as these two specific IEM's tuning wizard. It's because of this, and the thoughts behind how it should be tuned that got me most excited to try these two sets out, as they were tuned with an objective and for the most part, I think these two do their tasks well.

This review will be a little unlike others I've done mostly because these are two similar but unique IEMs with slightly different tunings. I'm going to spend most of this article talking about how they differ than anything, but just remember that both of these are top tier IEMs in my opinion and hopefully I'll capture that as well.

The Thieaudio Clairvoyance is $700, while the Monarch is $730, and both are tri-brids featuring dynamic driver, a series of balanced armature drivers, and electrostatic tweeters.
Unboxing
I posted a video of the unboxing experience and will just leave it at that:



To quickly summarize though:

• Same packaging for all Thieaudio IEMs
• Nice brown fake-leather case
• Selection of tips
• 2.5mm white braided cable is nice, however to use it with 3.5mm or 4.4mm requires a very long adapter

Sound Impressions
Both the Thieaudio twins, the Monarch and Clairvoyance, are well-balanced tunings with sort of reference mid-range and treble, but with elevated bass to provide a nice fun, but accurate sound. They do differ across the spectrum though, and I find the Monarch to be much more sub-bass focused and have a shoutier upper mid-range and a brighter treble. The Clairvoyance, on the other hand, is a more smoother overall sound signature, with a thicker bass region that doesn't emphasized sub-bass, and adds more mid-bass to the sound. The upper mids of the Clairvoyance is also slight tamer, as well as the treble presentation, making this one sound a little less technical, but more musical.







When I listened to both, my first impressions were that the Monarch is right up my alley. It has the reference-type sound I really like, with a similar comparison to the Hidition Viento, but with a bigger sub-bass emphasis. Listening to it more and more, and comparing it to the Viento, I did find some things I did not like -- and that was mainly the slightly nasally and shouty upper mid-range. These are very nitpicky issues, and not overly glaring however, but it is something I notice when I listen to piano music where the weight of a piano strike in this range hits harder and with more ringing.

The Clairvoyance is more equally weighted in the low-end than the Monarch. I found the Monarch to have a large subbass emphasis, while the Clairvoyance has more mid-bass, but it's more to put it in equal playing with the subbass. In this regard, the Clairvoyance provides a more natural low end sound, and a thicker lower mid-range, while also having a more unemphasized upper mid-range and treble. The Clairvoyance does lack the deep rumble that the Monarch has, but it replaces it with a more smooth and full sound.

This is a really generic genre chart that I came up with based on music I listen to and a small sample of random music within these genres.



In both acoustic and new wave music, I found that there's trade-offs for both of these IEMs, but both play them well. Depending on the acoustic rock though, I do partially prefer the Clairvoyance more, and with New Wave, I do partially prefer the Monarch more.

In the genres of Bluegrass, Classical, and Jazz, I prefer the Monarch over the Clairvoyance. This is due to my impressions that the Monarch has a little bit of a bigger soundstage, better imaging, and a little improved resolution over the Clairvoyance. The deeper sub-bass also gives double bass guitars a bit more rumble and drive, which tickles my ears.

When I play rock music, pop, and country music, I tend to prefer the more full and smoother sounding Clairvoyance. These genres seem to perform better with the mid-bass addition that the Clairvoyance provides, and the slightly tamer treble, does make electric guitars and any constant high percussions attacks from becoming overly fatiguing.

There's very distinct difference when listening to these two IEMs when I listen to my stable of rock music -- whether it be the layered rock tunes of Sonic Youth or The War on Drugs, or the Seattle grunge originals, Temple of the Dog and Mother Love Bone, or the more catchy tunes of The Beatles and Fleetwood Mac -- I find the performance of the Clairvoyance is much better suited for these bands.

One of the most distinguishing bands that really show off the differences between the two of these IEMs is Daft Punk. I listened through the entire Random Access Memories album on both of these, and there's some very audible differences. In "Giorgio by Moroder", the sub-bass focus of the Monarch really shows its strength towards the end of this track where the heavy bass is skull crushing while it sounded rather tame, but filled-in, on the Clairvoyance.

On "Contact", the final section of this track is a insane mix of sounds, percussions, synths, and a heavy bass line. Many IEMs fail to give proper instrument separation and also clearly define each layer of this multi-layered track. The Monarch handles this song with absolute ease. It's quicker transient response and improved imaging over the Clairvoyance really shows its characteristics here. That's not to say the Clairvoyance fails, because it doesn't but it just doesn't quite have the separation capability nor does it have the raw bass impact that the Monarch provides, and this is why I feel like in EDM music, the Monarch's added clarity and sub-bass focus makes it a more fun and exacting experience.





Wrap-Up + Comparisons
At this point, I just want to reiterate that both of these IEMs, the Clairvoyance and the Monarch, are two of my favorite IEMs that I have listened to, and the fact that they are tri-brid IEMs at a relatively low price makes these two sets a industry disrupter and a market statement from Linsoul and Thieaudio. There's little to not like here, and recommending these sets is easy for me. They work well with a lot of music, and they have a price well below comparable products, and in fact, you can get both for the same price of it's competitors. That's saying something.


Let's talk about some of those competitors....

Hidition Viento-B
The Viento-B was one of the IEMs that I recall was the inspiration behind these two twins. It has some characteristics of both of the Monarch and Clairvoyance, and probably leans closer to the Monarch in general sound, but I kind of feel like it can compete with either one. The Viento is more coherent and I think a more natural tonality than both of these two IEMs, but the Clairvoyance and Monarch both have much better bass texturing and just overall natural bass sound. While the Viento-B does have a nice bass shelf, the Monarch has a bigger subbass shelf, and the Clairvoyance has more bass presence in general. The Viento-B is less shouty than the Monarch and is probably more in-line with Clairvoyance though.

In this case, even though I have the Viento-B, I think I'd take the Monarch over the Viento-B personally.

64 Audio Nio and U12t
The U12t and Nio are two pairs of similar IEMs from 64 Audio that are also in-line with the Thieaudio twins. The Nio is a bit bigger in it's bass presence, in the fact that it hits harder with more slam and impact, but not so much as it's subbass. When looking at that, I think they are comparable to the Monarch. The Nio is probably a good mix of both bass characteristics of the Clairvoyance and Monarch, but more emphasized than both of the Thieaudio products. This is mostly because the treble is more tame on the Nio and U12t than the two Thieaudio IEMs. The Monarch is clearly the set that has the most bright signature.

Unique Melody MEST
I was not able to demo the MEST side-by-side with the Thieaudio Monarch and Clairvoyance, so I don't have any opinion that can be fully taken. From memory though, I feel like the MEST has better texturing and imaging ability than both the TA products. The MEST is a tad narrower at times, but it has a chameleon-like soundstage that morphs around depending on the song. I think resolution of the MEST is top notch, and may be slightly better than the TA, but the Monarch and Clairvoyance have it beat for tonality and are easy to recommend for overall non-fatiguing listening.


Video Review