Remax RM 610D IEM
Another exciting budget Chinese IEM that truly deserves some limelight here. We find an example of winning construction and design elements with a "nothing to not like" sound signature bringing the Remax RM610D up to an amazing value level. Upon first testing we are surprisingly met with "These sound way, way better than they look or cost?" "How?"
Targeted directly at folks who want to replace their original phone IEMs, Remax has over-achieved here, making a set of IEMs 4 times better than the Apple Ear-Pods arriving at pure audiophile land in flying colors.
Let's Get Started:
Your first impression starts with the typical Remax package, a nice box, a group of three silicone tips, a small pouch and both a warranty booklet and instruction manual. Upon reading the instruction manual Remax goes on to suggest an elaborate and long six stage break-in process, starting with low volumes and slowly working up to loud volume levels. Included is the standard Remax 6 month replacement warranty.
Build Quality:
The cable ends up being a flat but less rubbery/heavy TPE and oxygen free copper affair. I'm not a big fan of large flat cables, but will allow them if the sound quality and value really stand out. Still this cable could start to win me over offering a tangle free operation and very low noise harmonic transfer when out and about. Due to the cable being smaller it actually is not heavy like some of the big flat TPE cables out there. We surprisingly find a number of aluminum construction elements starting with an aluminum plug, an aluminum splitter with the model number embossed, as well as a 50% aluminum housing.
It turns out the slightly flat-toned but shinny outer shell you see in the photographs is aluminum and the rest of the shell material is plastic. I thought that the outer ring area was actually a large vent and these were open back IEMs. In reality placing your finger on the port does not affect the sound at all, leading me to think it's an area of the design that just helps your finger push the IEM into your ear. The RM 610D comes in Black, Red, Gold and Silver color.
The IEMs are really small though not as small as the micro-sized ceramic RM702 Remax make. The form-factor ends up a winner as they stay in place and fit perfect with my favorite set of olive tips. Upon close inspection the product seems to show superior construction and design considerations and again a value way above the $10 USD retail price.
Included here are the diagrams showing the 14 piece internal components, along with a custom "PET 8" 10mm driver and neodymium magnet system, detailed at page bottom.
The Selection Process:
Where I do my IEM shopping there always ends up being maybe 20 different fake offerings from both Sony and Audio-Technica from time to time.These products can be super confusing due to having impeccable packaging, detail of construction, and an authentic retail asking price. When demoing products I try and use sound quality to verify quality and to just get an overall feel for the product, as some fakes will start to reveal their true identity in the details. The great thing is the cost of Remax IEMs don't offer a rewarding counterfeit profit platform for the criminals. Remax also does their due diligence to supply hologram stickers and internal documents to verify their products.
The Sound:
First off I really have to comment about the Remax sound-stage. They seem to get things right. All the instruments not only fall in a natural order but nothing overpowers another frequency even with this relatively heavy V shape " fun" signature. I am, and have always been a sucker for a big sound-stage. Still I require an extensive and complete sound retrieval before my heart strings even start to get tugged.
Sometimes the whole process can be put into a short simple sentence.
"These sound amazing!" When you consider the price the concept starts to border on surreal. At this rate of quality to price ratio, it seems the sky is the limit. Every year the bar continues to get raised again and again. It seems in China, if a company does not give the consumer a profound value, the company will not last. A sink or swim style of pressure where we end up winning by taking the purchase risk.
I have just made a purchase of three extremely bass heavy IEMs and I was actually looking for something V shaped but with a tad more mid detail, and that is what the RM 610D provides. Don't get me wrong, these are still bass heavy headphones which excel at the bass driven genres like dance and metal, but they have a point where the bass becomes rolled off. Even with this tuning we have full drum representatives of frequency but just slightly less bass detail. What makes up for it is this incredibly front and center mid-range. Just very musical on a number of levels. I guess the best words to describe the signature would be both dramatic and nice.
Nice in that it playfully gets a really balanced representation going, balanced for a V signature that is. It's a dramatic signature in that it has the classic V shape. Frequency chart at bottom of page here.
Just natural and musical, full bodied drums and a nice air around everything giving the feeling of a much more expensive headphone. And again we have Remax pushing the value envelope and getting a rewarding sound signature which seems to entertain for hours on end. Most of us already know that this price point is flooded with thin, non interesting consumer IEMs revealing boxy sounding drums and a weak sound-stage. Having the Remax RM610D perform like it does almost becomes like a great hidden secret. Few reviews out there don't help matters either. To keep all this in reality, this IEM still would be considered warm and dark in contrast to a pure flat signature, though there is just enough detail everywhere and a forward character which keeps the whole thing interesting and fun.
The cables are non-removable but are designed with the best strain relief in all the right places. The fit and form of the RM610D works on a multitude of levels upon first handling and later continues to perform as time of use goes on.
Back to the sound again!
The Treble:
No worries of these getting strident or sibilant even at high volumes but they still end up being one of the brighter purchases I have made recently. They come off brighter than the Piston 3s and brighter than the KZ-ATEs. The treble is also experiencing that great sound-stage presentation which really make these an entertaining purchase. Typically IEMs are going to measure highs as rolled off in comparison to flat on a graph. This test result in contrast to full-size speakers results from the fact that full size treble sound waves become lost between the floor-stander speaker and your ear drum. IEMs loose very little treble energy in the short distance from the transducer to your ear canal thus a more than rolled off treble would just end up being way too much in the end. The challenge here is getting a treble which still sounds natural, complex and musical. Too much roll off and the treble becomes dark and boring, too little roll off and we risk the chance of arriving at stridency and sibilant effects in loud treble musical passages. This balance is of course a matter of both taste and genre choice, but our favorite headphones seem to be able to have an over all character which effortlessly walks that thin and critical imaginary line of frequency response. The X Factor here is personality, as most every headphone has a distinctive treble personality, with some members perceiving the treble one way and another group hearing it another way in the end. There is also a perception of treble in relation to the other frequency responses, more mids, the perception of less treble, more bass even seems to drown our true perception of treble somehow. In the end one listener's dark is another listener's perfect with one guy's opinion bright as perfect for another's. Not to mention the understanding of upstream equipment synergy causing the end tone of certain models of IEMs to sound different in each individual system. My system borders on bright so many of the darker consumer tunes come off as correct and audiophile.
The Mids:
These definitely have mids. It is maybe the forward placement of the mids that seems to make these so well rounded. They just do all the genres well, still electronic music seems to be what they do best. Listening to the beginning of Hotel California by the Eagles showed a nice warm and spacial harmonic tone, though Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin could have contained more life in contrast to the sonic offering of much more expensive headphones. It's not that these are dry in anyway, it's actually that they walk a fine line most of the time.
The Bass:
Very interesting detail but only going down in frequency to a point going in comparison to heavy bass IEMs.
Playing 2016 Dark Sky Island by recording artist Enya at 16 bit-44.1 KHz FLAC became a rewarding affair and the best these IEMs ever sounded. All the bass response ever required or needed, even to be critical with the lower left-out notes. It was the nice head-stage with an airy placement of detail which was able to convey the mood and feeling of the recording. The reverberation used was not over emphasized like so many low cost IEMs seem to reproduce. The whole experience was tight, musical and true to tone. The difference was inside your head with maybe 40% making it two to three inches outside your head, in comparison to full-size headphones realizing more tones outside you head.
If anything the detail and speed of the bass ends up being of a delicate and detailed quality. They do pretty much everything really well, and the RM610Ds also seem to parley a charming floating bass drive, right above the drums. A nice warm textured and fully bodied round bass response that leaves a listener satisfied though not generating insane bass like some IEMs seem to do. Again everything comes off as middle of the road while still being V shaped and fun. The bass is actually polite and there, but less dramatic as you would find with the KZ-ATE. A more expensive sounding and full bass than the Pistons though still having a roll-off and not being wanting to dig down to reveal the lowest of low-notes on our recordings. Still I can't help but become engrossed in the texture and pace of the lower violin production. These are warm headphones being slightly less veiled than we are used to in the V signature club. Just musical and with fine pace representative of any complexity put into the upstream equipment.
These actually scale up well with better equipment. Just the fact that they continue to scale up with better files and better gear, ends up being charming for what they are.
Equipment Enjoyed In The Test:
iPod Touch 5th Generation with application restriction implementation on
iPhone 4
Cambridge Audio DacMagic Plus
Schiit Audio Asgard One
Woo Audio 3
Apple MacBook Pro with Amarra
PC with Foobar 2000 and WASAPI implemented
Music used as 24/96 16/44.1 and 320 Kbps digital computer files.
In Ending:
These are available on Amazon.com for around $14 and for what they are that just seems like a no brainier purchase if your into V signatures. They are going to fit everyone, they can be driven well off any phone and have a personality which contains nothing not to like. It's going to be fun to find what Remax has in-store for us value IEM buyers in the future? These actually sound so good they could be used at home listening with your best files on your best equipment and keep you in place for an evening. The proceeding is no small task for a $10-$14 IEM. Learning about the company, they seem obsessed with getting the very best materials and technology to the consumer at prices equal to what lunch at the office costs.
The final test is if you can sit listening to an entire album or two and find the experience both emotional and musical, even with 10 other special headphones for choice near? The RM 610D will not have you searching for more, which is amazing considering what they look like and what they cost. It's just that price has no relevance to sound quality if you gel with the fit and signature at hand here.
Like all IEMs getting the best possible sound comes from finding the correct tip. I tend to not use the included tips, shown in the photographs here, still they felt like above average quality. The key to enjoying this level of IEM is at least 50 hours of burn-in with moderate volume music and going through and trying a number of tips until the best air-tight fit is arrived at.
These have such a likable and well rounded style, they are the perfect Christmas gift for your non-audiophile friends with smart phones in their hands all year. They include a mic at exactly the perfect level. They offer hands free control of both Apple and Android with the change of a switch.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer:
These are just one persons opinions. Your millage may very.
Unit size: 10mm(moving-coil speaker)
Impedance: 32
Working power: 100mw
The headset pin: 3.5mm(plating)
Frequency response: 20-20000hz
Acuity: 95+3db
Wire length: 120cm
NOTE:
Compatible with iPhone 6, 6 Plus, 5S, 5C, 5, 4S, 4
iPad 4, 3, 2, 1, Mini, Air
iPod Touch, Nano, Shuffle, Classic
Samsung Galaxy S5, S4, S3, Note 4, Note 3, Note 2
Other Android Smartphones - Motorola, Google Nexus, HTC, Sony, Nokia
Tablets & MP3, MP4 Players
Retail Packaging:
1 x Audio Copper Head In-Ear Earphone (Cable Length: 1.2m)
1 x Silicone Eartips
1 xWarranty card
Edit:
The housing and other parts of this headphone may not be aluminum but ceramic coated material, maybe aluminum.
But I actually wouldn't call the signature v-shaped. It's more upper bass and mids focused to me. Overall I even like to v-shape them a very little via EQ. This product is just done very very right for its price. That's ment especially related to comfort, usability, frequency balance and the general audio quality and listen experience. It's just a very balanced, harmonic and pleasant OOTB-experience for what they are. And it should feel the same for a very wide range of ears and signature preferencies. So I confirm it as a No-Brainer.
If they had a round, tangle- and noisefree cable, with a L-plug, I had absolutly no clue what to do better for less than 10$.