I have the OG with me to try out and compare to the Noir. It is for sure a leaner sound; the separation and staging is stellar. I can understand it being bestowed the crown of king of technicalities. Great layering, highlighting the most intricate detail and rendering minutiae in the music clearly. The way I describe it / compare to Noir is that it is similar levels of detail extracted but they are more present at the widths of the stage; and at the same time - given the leanness of the midbass - it makes them clearer still.
For me personally, it is as if that surgical separation draws quite a lot of attention to itself. I tend to get sucked out of listening to the music as a whole and more to the individual flecks of detail (as impressive as they are), and that is one reason I find more cohesive musicality in the Noir.
Interestingly, whilst I am also treble sensitive, I do not find the OG exceedingly bright. The treble is crystalline, and I rarely find it pushing the boundary other than on inherently forward / brightly mastered tracks. However, there is a “thinness” to vocals, especially female vocal. It is not a glassiness like Trio, but rather a “hollowness”. So it is not sibilant to me, but I do find that my brain interprets vocals as having less “soul”…and maybe that is why I do not connect as much. But as mentioned, that aside, it's an incredible microscope into the music and all its atomic components, with almost unrivalled technicalities.
I had the og for a year I think. And I know that they exhibit less of a hiss issue or those tssss and tshhhh in music when you play true quality recordings that are properly reccorded and are not electric genres. Things like audiophile grade methods and then it sounds superb and clean.
Fourte og is very picky, its really best suited for audiophile music only as it will show a lot odd musical artifacts.
I suspect is the reason why fourte works for you that good cause you don't play it with junkie music
The original fourte is very different to the new Noirs, I know they fixed the incoherency that rarely happened it felt like rarely some notes sounded like it was muted or very fainted. It is an odd glitch for an expensive iem to do that. That effect had a different advantage in music presentation the way echoes and timbres where perceived it had more physical sense and presence.
Og is also very natural and life like sound. Vocals are to cry good so emotional and real.
Bass is something I loved alot in og it was my favorite for edm. But I gave up on fourté at the end cause of the treble.
The noirs has the same hardware with internal wiring and solder tweaks.
The noirs no longer has the treble elevation problem like og, coherent, thicker sound or more meat like folks call it, yeap the bass got bigger too. I think they should of kept og bass and put noir treble.
To wrap up my thoughts on og vs noir, I think they are 2 very complementary iems as 1 sound more party time with full best in class hardware and more forgiving approach and the og a more serious more reference a more realistic sound meant to play music in a more natural way.
I personally love the noirs more as they play my edm superbly and it used to be trio for me before, but trio didn't bring the mids do well as noirs does.
Those are my thoughts on the fourté line
