Headroom MS16

It's better to go foamless and grill-less on these. Trust me. Way better fit than MX500 shell and is true open-back.

Bass is clean, tight, a bit textured and isn't overly done (e.g. midbass elevation in red Vido). Earlier roll-off compared to the other buds I've tried in this price range. Mids are rich and lush. Quite forward. This one's for the midlovers, though I feel like almost all earbuds do well in the mids section. Highs are polite and soft. Not splashy at all but definitely takes a step back. Soundstage and imaging is what sets these apart from my other buds. Holographic. Separation and detail-retrieval are so-so, may be average to below average.

In search for a budget grado-like iem/earbud I've come to bought this one just to try it out, I've read Igor's review on this one on his website and pretty much sold to it and fortunately it stays true to his conclusions. but it has some major flaws.



it looks really good, I just wish they've use other color for the cable, i don't hate blue its just that it doesn't work well with silver. (edit: they released a new version with a silver cable)



its feels sturdy and built on quality materials but the metal finishing is not that quite clean, the cables also feels strong but has very little strain relief, better be careful.



having foam tips and without delivers different sound signature that might suit your needs depending on what you like. for me I can't really tell whether I like the one with or without as it has both advantages and disadvantages that I really wished it applies on both.




without foam tips:

transparent and open sounding, but sacrifices low frequencies, this is the one of the most anemic bass ive ever heard in an iearbud.The mids has a huge peak at 2k that overpowers other frequencies, its overly emphasized and fatiguing at some songs, but beneficial at some situations, the resolution is great but not over the top. The highs however is somewhat mellow, maybe bcoz of that overpowering 2k peak.

with foam tips:

the foam tips really helps on bringing up the 250hz-500hz making vocals sound warmer and fuller. unluckily frequencies like 120hz-20hz is still meh. this earbuds definitely lacks sub-bass which is the major disappointment. the transparency is still there though it's still better without the foam. High frequencies remains the same.

With all that said I usually use it with foam tips since it help the music to sound fuller and it fits better in my ears at the expense of sounding narrower than without the foams.

It's a like a mini grado buds, but every unique characteristics the grado have (2khz peak, bass-lite) is being exaggerated by the headroom ms16. but after all that I'm still pleased cause they didn't have those sibilance the grados have, treble region is more forgiving and the one thing I really like about the ms16 is the openness and transparency. it sounded big and spacious unlike other iems or earbuds I've tested.

The Cons:

Now that one thing that I really hate about the ms16 (I hope this issue only occurs on my own unit) is that it acts weirdly on smartphones, the volume controls doesn't work, the earbuds itself doesn't work unless i restart my phone but after that when I unplug it then plug it again it doesn't work again, now i have to restart my phone again in order to use it. It's annoying as hell that's why it doesn't deserve 5 stars. but using it via laptop or dap, it works just fine. idk why is that happening tho I'm really confused. Because of that problem, I would probably not recommend it as a portable choice if you're using smartphone as your source.

Another bad thing is the bass distortion, with the disappointment of the lack of bass, it distorts at high to extremely high volumes. even at some songs that I run on about 60% volume that has huge amount of low frequencies (e.g Mind of the Free-Juno Reactor) the distortions is noticeable. this earbud don't perform well on heavy bass songs.