What's In The Box?
The cardboard box itself is a cute little deal, with the Noble logo and the Wizard's signature. On the top left, the model and serial number are handwritten (apparently I'm the 395th person to bother with these), and the box is sealed with a sticker that tells you not to accept them if it's broken. When I got mine, it was already open, but since I got it straight from Moon Audio, I didn't worry about it. Inside, the carrying case, with everything else inside, is wrapped in a paper sleeve, which also has the logo on it. It's definitely a heavy duty case; there's foam lining on the inside that'll protect the IEMs from drops, the latch is very secure, and it has a hole for a small lock. There are also bits on the side, so you can attach the case to a cord or belt. While it might be good for an actual musician on the road, it's a bit much for your average consumer. The case is way too big for all except the biggest pockets, and the latch is a bit too difficult to open to be comfortable. While it's nice to have, it generally stays in my backpack, and my IEMs in my coat pocket.
Attached to the IEMs is a black stock cable, 4' in length, terminated in a 1/4" gold-plated TRS plug. The cable itself consists of four braided wires, each sheathed in black plastic. The left and ground and right and ground wires are twisted together separately, and then the resulting two cables are twisted together. These two cables separate at the Y, which is taken care of by a short piece of clear tubing heatshrinked over it. Another short piece of clear tubing is left unshrunk for use as an adjustment, but since the Y is only about a foot below the IEMs, I leave it at the Y. At the ends, the cables are heat shrunk with clear tubing along with a stiff memory wire. In theory, it stiffens up the end so that you can put the cable over your ears, reducing microphonics and putting little to no force on your IEMs. That's great and all, but when I wear glasses, the two will squeak as they rub against each other until they settle down and stay in one place. Aside from this, the cable is more microphonic than I'd like, but acceptable. The cable is really flexible, and is overall one of the better cables I've ever used.
Four different sets of tips are included:
SML silicone tips, blue colored center tube - these are pretty good; it fit my left ear perfectly, but not my right
SML silicone tips, thinner flange, red tube - useless unless you mod them by putting some foam beneath the flange
SML bi-flange tips, black - alright; they're what I'm using now
SML foam tips, black, no tube - garbage
Overall, I expected better. Presumably, this is the exact same set that comes with the Kaiser 10U. A $1000 IEM, and it comes with mediocre tips in only three sizes?
Three large Noble logo stickers came in mine. Not the name or sig, just the crown logo in white, ready to be attached to your laptop, notebook, cat, etc. Great if you want to simultaneously confuse non-audiophiles and make audiophiles in your proximity aware of the fact that you currently have several hundred dollars-worth of audio equipment on your person.
A small earwax brush/scraper is included, great for the occasional cleaning that they need.
Lastly, a small card where you can put down your personal info that you can keep in your case in case it gets lost. A thoughtful touch.
Form
The build quality is great. The back cover, complete with crown logo, is held on by three small screws, and I really just don't see it coming off. It may be too early to say, but they definitely seem built to last.
My one complaint is that they're HUGE. They fill up the entire concha of the ear. Just going by pictures, the Westone W40 seems tiny by comparison, with the same number of drivers. This isn't a huge deal now, but for the first week or so, I was struggling to figure out how to insert these, and I had a callus or scar on the ridge above th helix from all the rubbing for a while afterwards. They've definitely caused me the most pain of any headphones I've used.
Sound
Before I get into the sound too much, I wanna talk about tips. I'm sure this isn't unique to the Noble 4, but your tip selection is going to make a huge difference on the sound. I started with the stock blue silicone tips, but found that the bass was severely lacking. Pretty soon, I figured out that I wasn't getting a seal in the right ear. For someone else for whom the tips work, these blue tips might be the only tips they ever need, since my left ear sounded pretty good, but I needed to experiment. After trying a few different things, my next notable attempt was using the red tips and a Sugru mod: http://sugru.com/guides/how-to-make-a-neat-and-easy-custom-fit-earbud-in-ear-monitors. These fit great, but came with a couple of side effects. First, the bass was now overbearing, to the point of bleeding into low mids, and wasn't as precise as it was before. Second, even after trying a few different times, they were just too uncomfortable for regular use. After all this, I tried the 500 series Comply tips, which sounded great. Personally, I used the TX-500, since isolation is a bigger concern for me, and the wax guard gives me a little piece of mind. Using a large tip on the right side and a medium on the left does the trick for me. Also, I cut off the part of the foam that extends past the end of the tube, to prevent the tip from folding over the hole when I insert. I wasn't satisfied with this, though, since I prefer silicone over foam. Next, I used UE 900 tips; they're a little more elastic that the stock tips and have intermediate sizes, so they worked pretty well. Still had some minor fit problems, though. Currently, I'm using the large stock double-flange tips. While they initially felt like they didn't fit right, the sound assured me that they seal just fine.
To summarize, I can recommend the stock blue single-flange tips, UE 900 tips, stock double-flange tips, and 500-series Comply tips, depending on your ears and your preferences.
These impressions will be given using the stock double-flange tips, and using the Fiio X5 as the source.
Bass: The bass response is fairly neutral, maybe leaning towards bass-light. As far as quality, it's very good with texture and detail, and surprisingly, impact. Despite being an IEM, something about the quickness and the texture of the bass makes the bass very realistic, especially bass guitar and drum. That said, the Noble 4 wouldn't be my first recommendation for a basshead. The bass does begin to roll off slightly around 50 Hz, and decreases linearly. This is fine for traditional rock, classical, et cetera, but might make electronica suffer. Personally, I don't equalize the bass, but some might prefer a 2 dB bass boost, along with a more dramatic boost in the sub-bass region.
Mids: Mids are the Noble 4's strong point. I don't think the mids are accentuated as far as frequency response is concerned. Instead, the clarity and subsequent instrument separation make classical, jazz, rock, and vocals very realistic. Further, the accentuated treble (more on that in a bit) brings out a lot of the little details in live instruments and vocals, though you might call this an "artificial clarity". Personally, I'm most impressed with the timbre of male vocals, brass, and guitar. When I listen to Tom Harell, my eyes (and a slightly compressed soundstage) are the only things telling me that he's not giving me a private performance. Electric guitars just seem to sing to me, and every detail jumps out. And, for better or worse, I feel like I'm intimately familiar with every square centimeter of the inside of William Shatner's throat. That's not to say that female vocals or upper mids are bad, though. I'm actually very happy with instrumental upper mids, but I do take some issue with female vocals. I'm not sure why, but female vocals just sound a little dry in comparison to male vocals. Same goes for flute, but to a lesser extent. Take this with a grain of salt, since I don't listen to a huge variety of female vocals or flute, so maybe my source material sucks, or I'm just not used to the sound of female vocals. Plus, the level of nitpicking I'm doing could easily be accounted for by the placebo effect.
Treble: At first, I thought I just wasn't used to the treble, since I was coming from warmer headphones, but now I'm convinced that the treble on the Noble 4 is definitely accentuated. Cymbals and hard percussion jump out in any recording, and guitars and similar instruments have a little extra sparkle. I have no problems with the quality of the treble, though I can't say I'm sure what good or bad treble sounds like. A big issue with this, which I believe is related, is sibilance. There's tons of it. I think it has to do with the mastering of the recording; on Calle 13's 'Multi_Viral' (a free song they released), nearly every 's' is sibilant, but on nicer recordings (like Dr. Chesky stuff) it's not an issue. In the end, most of my vocal music winds up being at least slightly sibilant, but I'm not sure if I should blame the Noble 4 or my recordings. Besides the sibilance, I think that this treble does add some clarity to the mids, but may also be involved with the dryness of the female vocals. Unfortunately, I'm not enough of an EQ whiz to know how to equalize down the treble without losing the sparkle and clarity they give, so I leave it alone.
Miscellaneous: The soundstage is good, but not great. Basically, if there were an imaginary line going through both of my ears, every instrument would be on that line. Instruments that should be forward just wind up being in my head. That said, instruments to the sides can wind up being very far, and the location is nice and detailed. Further, what the Noble 4 lacks in soundstage it makes up with oodles of instrument separation and clarity. It's very easy to pick apart the instruments, making large jazz groups like Snarky Puppy a joy.
Final Verdict - 7.5/10
It's hard to say how these stack up to competitors without having listened to them, so I'll judge the Noble 4 in a vacuum. I would say that if you're a treble-head, listen only to live recordings, or recordings that feature male vocals and instrumentals, these are a very strong contender. Further, if they were priced at $350, I would recommend these to everyone. However, given the problems of tips, sub-bass, female vocals, and treble at a $450 price tag, I have a problem believing that they blast the Etymotic ER4P and Westone W30/W40 out of the water. They're by no means bad headphones, though, and I plan on keeping mine for a long, long time.