Thinksound USP1: The King of Warmth Returns
Thinksound’s been on my radar since the first day I started reviewing earphones: their products look great, usually sound great, and are environmentally responsible. Aaron, the designer of Thinksound’s products actually hand-builds each USP1. As such, I had high hopes for their first metal IEM. How would it sound? Would it still be ergonomic? As it seems, my worries were unfounded.
You can find the USP1 for sale here, on Thinksound’s official website, for $180.
Disclaimer: This unit was provided to me free of charge for review purposes. These words reflect my true, unaltered, opinion about the product.
Preference and Bias: Before reading a review, it is worth mentioning that there is no way for a reviewer to objectively pass judgment on the enjoyability of a product: such a thing is inherently subjective. Therefore, I find it necessary for you to read and understand what I take a natural liking to and how that might affect my rating of a product.
My ideal sound signature would be an extended sub-bass with a leveled, but textured, mid-bass. The mids should be slightly less pronounced than the treble, but still ahead of the bass. I prefer a more bright upper range.
Source: The USP1 was powered like so:
HTC U11 -> USB-C adapter -> earphones
or
Hidizs AP100 3.5mm out -> FiiO A5 3.5mm out -> earphones
or
HiFiMAN SuperMini -> earphones
or
PC optical out -> HiFiMe SPDIF 9018 Sabre DAC 3.5mm out -> earphones
All music was served as MP3 @320Kbps or as FLAC.
Sound Signature
Initial Impressions:
The USP1 makes use of a V-shaped sound signature. It has a well-tuned bass presence, reasonably well-expressed mids, and a boosted treble. Its single dynamic driver has a good amount of detail retrieval and no real smudging to speak of. Tonality is rich and slightly warm, a trademark component of Thinksound’s style.
Treble: Songs used: In One Ear, Midnight City, Outlands, Satisfy
In One Ear’s high hats were well defined and had a natural timbre and decay. This was an example of a song that didn’t suffer from any treble problems. It was light and airy the whole time, expressing the upper register very well.
M83’s Midnight City was also pretty free of sibilance. Drums had a nice treble pop to them, and the synths were fully expressed and cohesive. Treble separation was excellent.
Outlands’s string instruments were naturally toned and very well weighted. Treble detail retrieval was quite good, and many hard-to-pick-up details came through quite easily.
Satisfy was, predictably, a disaster of sibilance. Every single “sss” syllable was hard on the ears, as was each “f”. While the USP1 is far from the only IEM to not perform well on this track, it is in this case that the poor performance here is parallel to some of the sibilance I had heard on other tracks in my collection.
Mids: Songs used: Flagpole Sitta, Jacked Up, I Am The Highway, Dreams
The USP1’s midrange appears to be optimized for genres like rock and alternative: guitars sound simply wonderful. Never once did they smudge out or sound unnatural through the course of Flagpole Sitta. Detail retrieval is above average at this price point, as the USP1 was able to pick up the acoustic guitar strumming in the intro and articulate it well.
The good news continues into Weezer’s Jacked Up. Guitars and pianos both sound great, as do the drums. The high hats are a bit bled out, and as such have a slightly lower level of texturing.
Vocals are a strong suit of the USP1’s midrange. Both male and female vocals have above-average intelligibility and are weighted well. The USP1 seems to be mildly partial towards male vocals.
Bass: Songs used: Moth, Gold Dust, In For The Kill (Skream Remix), War Pigs (Celldweller Remix)
Bass is the main dish of the USP1’s frequency response. While it doesn’t “dominate” the sound signature completely, the USP1’s bass definitely makes itself known, either by expressing itself through an articulate bass guitar such as in Moth or by bringing tons of bass presence to a dubstep drop in Gold Dust. It never loses shape or definition and consistently expresses itself as far down into the 20Hz–50Hz range.
Bass, even in very bass-heavy songs, never bled into the mids to any reasonable degree. Bass and sub-bass smudging didn’t occur either. La Roux and Skream’s In For The Kill’s bass line reached pretty far down and didn’t bottom out.
The USP1 has some of the best overall bass performance of any IEM in this price range, at least among those that I’ve tested. It consistently outdoes V-shaped kings like the K3 Pro and Chord and Major 8'13, so listeners looking for a large, but still articulate, dose of bass should be quite satisfied with the USP1.
Packaging / Unboxing
Build
Construction Quality
The Y-splitter is made of metal and has the Thinksound logo printed on it. It makes use of ample stress relief given the thickness of the cable and the weight of its components.
The cable is made from a responsibly sourced plastic and is of a medium thickness. A consistent point of mine across all of Thinksound’s IEMs is that I want to see thicker cables, but considering none of my IEMs (Rain2, Rain3, MS02, TS03) have broken even during rough use it doesn’t seem to be a big problem.
Comfort
The USP1 didn’t look comfortable to me at first. After all, it’s just a lumpy mass of pewter, right? Wrong. It’s a well-sculpted ergonomic block of pewter. At least, that’s what I think now. After listening to it for an extended period of time I had no comfort issues.
The USP1 also appears to be fully sealed, and as such, it performs well in noisy areas. Very little external sound makes its way in, even in crowded environments like public transit.
Accessories
Summary
The USP1 is the basshead’s friend, but not the wallet’s. Its excellent bass performance and well-toned mids are tempered a by its occasional sibilance. The durable, ergonomic, and attractive pewter housings are offset by the lack of a well flushed-out accessory package. So as such the USP1 is a mix a compromises: so if you aren’t sensitive to treble peaks like I am, and don’t mind the lack of extra eartips, then the USP1 is a seriously impressive offer.