Thank-you. I was trying to make the review as big as the Zen sounds.

Great and detailed review.

Seems like the hype-train just pulled up.....

It's not hype. It's reality.

Yes!

Excellent review as always, Red. Do you have a pair of Believes? I have created an EQ profile that was modelled after the ZEN. I just don't own a ZEN to see how close, if at all, it is to it. Thanks!

The Believes are good. Zen are a level up from them.

As the price suggests they should, I'm more interested to see if this EQ profile moves the needle towards sounding like the Zen.

@bhima
Looks like you have an answer. I myself have not heard the Believe IEM.

That's not the answer I was looking for

Was looking for someone with both headphones that also uses Equalizer APO and have them try the Believe with this ZEN profile to see if it sounds similar, or at least in the same ballpark.

Awesome review. Thanks

Where is the "D"(nanoDLC) in "nanoporous amorphous carbon coating"?

@CT007 Could you clarify what you mean?

@CT007 DLC = Diamond-Like Carbon

@Ranking Yes, but this is "nanoporous amorphous", not "diamond-like". Unless this is a sub-type of DLC. So this would be NAC.

@CT007 We used the term "nanoDLC" because of peoples' familiarity with the term DLC. The main crux is, amorphous carbon is diamond-like carbon. Diamond-like carbon is a blanket term meant to encompass amorphous (i.e. non-crystal lattice) forms of carbon that take on some diamond-like (i.e. sp3 hybridized) properties. The nanoporous amorphous carbon that we coat atop the Mg-Al alloy dome is a form commonly referred as ta-C (tetrahedral amorphous carbon), which is used to describe a DLC subtype with a very high sp3/sp2 hybridization ratio, resulting in a very hard surface coating.

@CT007 Because we're coating ta-C on a metal alloy, we use a high-temperature process called filtered cathode arc deposition (or sometimes referred to as 'arc-PVD'). This kind of high-temperature process is not possible on speaker diaphragms with polymer substrates, because the process temperature is too high and will melt or distort the thermoplastic polymer. Hence, most speaker diaphragms coated with DLC are coated with a process called plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD, or sometimes referred to as PACVD, plasma-assisted CVD). This process results in a variable ratio of sp3/sp2 hybridized amorphous carbon. One of the slides on our announcement page (first post) goes into detail about this.

@CT007 If you're interested in understanding the various types of DLC coatings, their history, and evolution, you can take a look at the following document: https://global-sei.com/technology/tr/bn82/pdf/82-09.pdf

Wow. That's deep

@CT007 If you don't have time to go through the first document, you can peruse this webpage, which introduces ta-C specifically: https://www.ctemag.com/news/articles/need-ta-c