[aminus]

My only complaint about that study is that it has a sample size of 1 Its possible for burn-in to vary from one headphone to another, depending on the manufacturer's QC processes or lack thereof. It would be cool to repeat that on a larger scale, and maybe IEMs would not be as sensitive to diurnal shifts.

Entirely possible. But it does give a good perspective on what kind of scale of change we’re playing with if we go with the route of “burn in is real” based off of these measurements.
Although Tyll’s rig is fairly sophisticated, so access to something that can reliably enough measure all these characteristics is uncommon. The most popular rig here in Singapore is the now famous IEC mic, and elsewhere of course the MiniDSP Ears are a thing. But I’m unsure how particularly reliable they are outside of measuring FR.

 

[aminus]

FiiO FH7:
It’s those guys that make my converter dongles! And it’s the sequel to the much lauded (at least amongst chifi fans) FH5! What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, a lot.

The bass on the FH7 is tuned somewhat competently. It’s got serviceable amounts of mid and subbass. Maybe it’s a tad bloaty but that’s nitpicking. Decay is fine. Dynamics are passable. However it seems to lack finesse and texture. Everything about it feels one note. Considering this is a hybrid, something tells me ol’ FiiO didn’t pick the world’s most technically competent DD here. The Gates of Delirium by Yes, a track which has glorious amounts of bass texture with Chris Squire’s playing, feels like it’s missing a lot of the rawness and masculinity in his tone. Kickdrums as well are not exempt; aside from dynamics, every kickdrum hit borders on sounding like a trigger. Not Good.

The FH7 appears to have a slight upper mids tilt in the midrange department. The FH7 is a lot less in your face and direct about it, compared to say the Z1R or the FW10000. Which isn’t bad, I guess. However, there’s definitely noticeable amounts of BA timbre in this region, it certainly sounds a little plasticky at times. It’s not N5005 levels of fakeness but there’s definitely something off with this area. Again, somewhat inoffensive tuning marred by poor driver choice.

The treble is where things get wonky. I have not a fraction of a clue what on earth is treble tuning is supposed to be aiming for, but it isn’t good. They seem to have recessed the lower treble and boosted the mid treble with little extension to go with it. This leaves us with particularly lacking stick impact and copious, if not overbearing, amounts of crash and ring, and only a little bit of glimmer with subpar decay. Gorguts’ Obscura has such a strange cymbal tonality, where you have far too much mid treble but not enough lower treble to back it up. This kind of mid-treble oriented tuning gets real fatiguing, real fast. PiL’s Albatross had me wincing at the cymbalwork. Maybe I’m just complaining about something most people wouldn’t care about but I definitely find it noticeable. It’s a treble tonality which I simply can’t appreciate very much.

Mediocre wouldn’t even begin to describe technicalities here. Milquetoast. Middle-of-the-road. Soundstage is also eternally stuck in your head. Everything in this department screams average. Layering is not particularly precise nor clean. If anything, instruments in large ensembles struggle to find breathing room due to the small staging. Like the Rai Penta, I am at a loss for words to describe such a center of the bell curve level of technicalities.

I have the feeling that the tuning of the FH7 was mostly around trying to aim for some sort of consumer friendly sound, something to follow up the success of the FH5. Except they fell short in really pulling it off. There’s just something wrong with this the more I listen. From the bad driver choices in the woofer and midrange to that just abysmally tuned treble, I don’t know what

All listening was done through the WM1A’s 3.5mm plug.

Recommended? Just save your money up for something better. Hell, buying something cheaper but better would be preferable. There’s just not much to go for here. Like the FH5? Stick to it. Want an alternative in the area of decent budget V-shaped chifi? Kanas Pro. Have a little more money and still want DD bass? Xelento. For the asking price of $800 SGD, there’s just no reason to get this. It feels like it’s inferior to everything else on the market, even FiiO’s own models.

Rating: 3/10

 

[warriorpoet]

FiiO FH7:
It’s those guys that make my converter dongles! And it’s the sequel to the much lauded (at least amongst chifi fans) FH5! What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, a lot.

The bass on the FH7 is tuned somewhat competently. It’s got serviceable amounts of mid and subbass. Maybe it’s a tad bloaty but that’s nitpicking. Decay is fine. Dynamics are passable. However it seems to lack finesse and texture. Everything about it feels one note. Considering this is a hybrid, something tells me ol’ FiiO didn’t pick the world’s most technically competent DD here. The Gates of Delirium by Yes, a track which has glorious amounts of bass texture with Chris Squire’s playing, feels like it’s missing a lot of the rawness and masculinity in his tone. Kickdrums as well are not exempt; aside from dynamics, every kickdrum hit borders on sounding like a trigger. Not Good.

The FH7 appears to have a slight upper mids tilt in the midrange department. The FH7 is a lot less in your face and direct about it, compared to say the Z1R or the FW10000. Which isn’t bad, I guess. However, there’s definitely noticeable amounts of BA timbre in this region, it certainly sounds a little plasticky at times. It’s not N5005 levels of fakeness but there’s definitely something off with this area. Again, somewhat inoffensive tuning marred by poor driver choice.

The treble is where things get wonky. I have not a fraction of a clue what on earth is treble tuning is supposed to be aiming for, but it isn’t good. They seem to have recessed the lower treble and boosted the mid treble with little extension to go with it. This leaves us with particularly lacking stick impact and copious, if not overbearing, amounts of crash and ring, and only a little bit of glimmer with subpar decay. Gorguts’ Obscura has such a strange cymbal tonality, where you have far too much mid treble but not enough lower treble to back it up. This kind of mid-treble oriented tuning gets real fatiguing, real fast. PiL’s Albatross had me wincing at the cymbalwork. Maybe I’m just complaining about something most people wouldn’t care about but I definitely find it noticeable. It’s a treble tonality which I simply can’t appreciate very much.

Mediocre wouldn’t even begin to describe technicalities here. Milquetoast. Middle-of-the-road. Soundstage is also eternally stuck in your head. Everything in this department screams average. Layering is not particularly precise nor clean. If anything, instruments in large ensembles struggle to find breathing room due to the small staging. Like the Rai Penta, I am at a loss for words to describe such a center of the bell curve level of technicalities.

I have the feeling that the tuning of the FH7 was mostly around trying to aim for some sort of consumer friendly sound, something to follow up the success of the FH5. Except they fell short in really pulling it off. There’s just something wrong with this the more I listen. From the bad driver choices in the woofer and midrange to that just abysmally tuned treble, I don’t know what

All listening was done through the WM1A’s 3.5mm plug.

Recommended? Just save your money up for something better. Hell, buying something cheaper but better would be preferable. There’s just not much to go for here. Like the FH5? Stick to it. Want a good budget V-shaped hybrid? Kanas Pro. Have a little more money and want DD bass? Xelento. For the asking price of $800 SGD, there’s just no reason to get this. It feels like it’s inferior to everything else on the market, even FiiO’s own models.

Score: 3/10

Quick point of clarification- the Kanas Pro is a single DD.

 

[aminus]

Quick point of clarification- the Kanas Pro is a single DD.

Is it? Huh, guess my chifi chops aren't as good as I thought.

 

[abimanyu]

FiiO FH7:
It’s those guys that make my converter dongles! And it’s the sequel to the much lauded (at least amongst chifi fans) FH5! What could possibly go wrong?

Apparently, a lot.

The bass on the FH7 is tuned somewhat competently. It’s got serviceable amounts of mid and subbass. Maybe it’s a tad bloaty but that’s nitpicking. Decay is fine. Dynamics are passable. However it seems to lack finesse and texture. Everything about it feels one note. Considering this is a hybrid, something tells me ol’ FiiO didn’t pick the world’s most technically competent DD here. The Gates of Delirium by Yes, a track which has glorious amounts of bass texture with Chris Squire’s playing, feels like it’s missing a lot of the rawness and masculinity in his tone. Kickdrums as well are not exempt; aside from dynamics, every kickdrum hit borders on sounding like a trigger. Not Good.

The FH7 appears to have a slight upper mids tilt in the midrange department. The FH7 is a lot less in your face and direct about it, compared to say the Z1R or the FW10000. Which isn’t bad, I guess. However, there’s definitely noticeable amounts of BA timbre in this region, it certainly sounds a little plasticky at times. It’s not N5005 levels of fakeness but there’s definitely something off with this area. Again, somewhat inoffensive tuning marred by poor driver choice.

The treble is where things get wonky. I have not a fraction of a clue what on earth is treble tuning is supposed to be aiming for, but it isn’t good. They seem to have recessed the lower treble and boosted the mid treble with little extension to go with it. This leaves us with particularly lacking stick impact and copious, if not overbearing, amounts of crash and ring, and only a little bit of glimmer with subpar decay. Gorguts’ Obscura has such a strange cymbal tonality, where you have far too much mid treble but not enough lower treble to back it up. This kind of mid-treble oriented tuning gets real fatiguing, real fast. PiL’s Albatross had me wincing at the cymbalwork. Maybe I’m just complaining about something most people wouldn’t care about but I definitely find it noticeable. It’s a treble tonality which I simply can’t appreciate very much.

Mediocre wouldn’t even begin to describe technicalities here. Milquetoast. Middle-of-the-road. Soundstage is also eternally stuck in your head. Everything in this department screams average. Layering is not particularly precise nor clean. If anything, instruments in large ensembles struggle to find breathing room due to the small staging. Like the Rai Penta, I am at a loss for words to describe such a center of the bell curve level of technicalities.

I have the feeling that the tuning of the FH7 was mostly around trying to aim for some sort of consumer friendly sound, something to follow up the success of the FH5. Except they fell short in really pulling it off. There’s just something wrong with this the more I listen. From the bad driver choices in the woofer and midrange to that just abysmally tuned treble, I don’t know what

All listening was done through the WM1A’s 3.5mm plug.

Recommended? Just save your money up for something better. Hell, buying something cheaper but better would be preferable. There’s just not much to go for here. Like the FH5? Stick to it. Want a good budget V-shaped hybrid? Kanas Pro. Have a little more money and want DD bass? Xelento. For the asking price of $800 SGD, there’s just no reason to get this. It feels like it’s inferior to everything else on the market, even FiiO’s own models.

Score: 3/10

I don't understand why these companies are making hybrid. Many BA drivers are able to produce good quality bass now a days.

 

[aminus]

I don't understand why these companies are making hybrid. Many BA drivers are able to produce good quality bass now a days.

I'm in the camp that does think that BA bass is an issue, and that BAs will have a significantly harder time making quality bass compared to DDs. There are exceptions, like the Hidition Violet, and to an extent the A12t, but those are a rarity. The whole problem with companies tackling hybrids is that they're not paying attention to the coherency between the BA and DD sections of an IEM, and they're also forgetting that DDs can also have varying levels of quality. Hybrids are much harder than a lot of the companies jumping onto the hype train realize, and I think it will be while before we stop seeing subpar tacked together hybrids that don't really work well.

 

[redrol]

Agreed with your FH7 review completely. Took me 2 hours to sell my pair. Just really off .

 

[joshnor713]

I'm in the camp that does think that BA bass is an issue, and that BAs will have a significantly harder time making quality bass compared to DDs. There are exceptions, like the Hidition Violet, and to an extent the A12t, but those are a rarity. The whole problem with companies tackling hybrids is that they're not paying attention to the coherency between the BA and DD sections of an IEM, and they're also forgetting that DDs can also have varying levels of quality. Hybrids are much harder than a lot of the companies jumping onto the hype train realize, and I think it will be while before we stop seeing subpar tacked together hybrids that don't really work well.

I've come to agree with this, and have started to pass over hybrids altogether. For instance, always thought that the bass section of the SE846 was an exception, but then got the IE800S and the sub-bass is no comparison.

The IE800S also sounds more "organic"/"natural". Something hard to explain, but I've heard disjointed hybrids (FH5 is a big culprit for example). Perfect phase crossover I imagine is tough to nail, so part of me believes that the effort isn't quite worth it. Something just feels wrong with the answer to accuracy being throwing more BA drivers to cover their specific freq range. I think the focus should be on improving single driver performance.

I'm currently on the KSE1200 and its cemented this notion for me. Though, through all the detail it delivers, the IE800S still significantly edges it was sub-bass performance (a weak aspect of electrostats). Where I am atm is hoping someone in the future can take a single DD driver closer to the detail-retrieving level of an electrostat, if at all possible.

Getting back to the convo above, I found Sony's approach to their latest flagship hybrid (IER-Z1R) interesting. Most use a DD for the low-end and BA for the rest. However, there's a DD on low and high, and BA in the middle. Weird to me. At this point why not just use three DD drivers? What was their rationale for using a BA in the middle instead of DD. Furthermore, we haven't really seen solely multi-DD driver IEMs. It's an interesting thought. Perhaps the reason is that the earpiece would be too big (IER-Z1R case in point).

 

[redrol]

I do like the Sony XBA Z5 Hybrid with the 16mm driver and 3x BAs. I find it very coherent and nice sounding.

 

[aminus]

I've come to agree with this, and have started to pass over hybrids altogether. For instance, always thought that the bass section of the SE846 was an exception, but then got the IE800S and the sub-bass is no comparison.

The IE800S also sounds more "organic"/"natural". Something hard to explain, but I've heard disjointed hybrids (FH5 is a big culprit for example). Perfect phase crossover I imagine is tough to nail, so part of me believes that the effort isn't quite worth it. Something just feels wrong with the answer to accuracy being throwing more BA drivers to cover their specific freq range. I think the focus should be on improving single driver performance.

I'm currently on the KSE1200 and its cemented this notion for me. Though, through all the detail it delivers, the IE800S still significantly edges it was sub-bass performance (a weak aspect of electrostats). Where I am atm is hoping someone in the future can take a single DD driver closer to the detail-retrieving level of an electrostat, if at all possible.

Getting back to the convo above, I found Sony's approach to their latest flagship hybrid (IER-Z1R) interesting. Most use a DD for the low-end and BA for the rest. However, there's a DD on low and high, and BA in the middle. Weird to me. At this point why not just use three DD drivers? What was their rationale for using a BA in the middle instead of DD. Furthermore, we haven't really seen solely multi-DD driver IEMs. It's an interesting thought. Perhaps the reason is that the earpiece would be too big (IER-Z1R case in point).

The whole issue with single DDs is that there’s only so much surface area you can have on a tiny little IEM. The EX1000 is of course the king of single DD technicalities, but look at all the multi BA arrays that outclass it, alongside the likes of the KSE and the LCD-i4. That’s where the hybrid concept comes in: use a dynamic driver to give you the low end that other drivers can’t, and use BAs (one or many) to help out with detail retrieval. Of course, you’re not going to get estat levels of detail retrieval from that: very little does, even in full sized headphones. But that’s down to physics limiting driver designs on that scale, and I do think they come admirably close no matter what.
I don’t necessarily think hybrids are too “tough to nail” to be worth the effort. It’s just a matter of extensive and effective R&D. In my opinion Sony did an excellent job cutting out a huge source of hybrid incoherency in the Z1R by utilizing their T shaped BAs (effectively reducing, if not removing the BA timbre problem entirely). Decay is then the next issue, and probably the biggest argument against hybrids. It boils down to a question of it being possible to have a hybrid that has a smooth decay curve from the low end to midrange, similar to a full sized dynamic driver headphone. I think it is. It’s just something that requires more development into the field (which rest assured, will likely be the future of the IEM market) as time goes on.

 

[redrol]

I tried to get an idea of the larger dual BA Bass drivers surface area vs the Sony 16mm dynamic. My best guess is the dual BA has 1/3-1/5th the surface area. No big surprise then.

 

[aminus]

I tried to get an idea of the larger dual BA Bass drivers surface area vs the Sony 16mm dynamic. My best guess is the dual BA has 1/3-1/5th the surface area. No big surprise then.

Surface area in BAs is not nearly as important as with DDs. In DDs you absolutely need surface area to aid with things like modal breakup, as well as messing around with diaphragm stiffness and material composition (something Sony is incredibly good at, of course). I’m not exactly 100% sure why BAs are so much better at detail retrieval than DDs, but I can speculate that it’s down to diaphragm lightness and the way the driving pin concept works in comparison to the way the voice coil in a dynamic driver works.

 

[joshnor713]

The whole issue with single DDs is that there’s only so much surface area you can have on a tiny little IEM. The EX1000 is of course the king of single DD technicalities, but look at all the multi BA arrays that outclass it, alongside the likes of the KSE and the LCD-i4. That’s where the hybrid concept comes in: use a dynamic driver to give you the low end that other drivers can’t, and use BAs (one or many) to help out with detail retrieval. Of course, you’re not going to get estat levels of detail retrieval from that: very little does, even in full sized headphones. But that’s down to physics limiting driver designs on that scale, and I do think they come admirably close no matter what.
I don’t necessarily think hybrids are too “tough to nail” to be worth the effort. It’s just a matter of extensive and effective R&D. In my opinion Sony did an excellent job cutting out a huge source of hybrid incoherency in the Z1R by utilizing their T shaped BAs (effectively reducing, if not removing the BA timbre problem entirely). Decay is then the next issue, and probably the biggest argument against hybrids. It boils down to a question of it being possible to have a hybrid that has a smooth decay curve from the low end to midrange, similar to a full sized dynamic driver headphone. I think it is. It’s just something that requires more development into the field (which rest assured, will likely be the future of the IEM market) as time goes on.

Your last bit there is exactly my point. Yes, utilizing BA drivers, you can get more detail than a single DD driver. But there's a naturality that's off about it. Subtle but detectable. I didn't know how to describe it, but your comment about decay hit the nail on the head. My problem with this method is that you're trying to "simulate" coherency, or correct it (as your example with the T-shaped BAs). It's a problem that shouldn't be. Essentially, you're getting more detail out of multi-drivers, but you're introducing a problem in its place (a problem of artificiality). Yes, it's a slight problem, and one that will bug people more than others. And many people think the trade-off is worth it. I'm not quite one of those people.

That said, I do welcome improvement. Maybe someone is more likely to make multi-driver IEMs completely tied together acoustically than someone a single DD with next-level detail retrieval.

 

[Tachikoma]

Hmm. I really liked the FH7 when I auditioned it (twice) out of my lowly Samsung S6/2018 iPad. Oh well, to each his own.

 

[aminus]

Your last bit there is exactly my point. Yes, utilizing BA drivers, you can get more detail than a single DD driver. But there's a naturality that's off about it. Subtle but detectable. I didn't know how to describe it, but your comment about decay hit the nail on the head. My problem with this method is that you're trying to "simulate" coherency, or correct it (as your example with the T-shaped BAs). It's a problem that shouldn't be. Essentially, you're getting more detail out of multi-drivers, but you're introducing a problem in its place (a problem of artificiality). Yes, it's a slight problem, and one that will bug people more than others. And many people think the trade-off is worth it. I'm not quite one of those people.

That said, I do welcome improvement. Maybe someone is more likely to make multi-driver IEMs completely tied together acoustically than someone a single DD with next-level detail retrieval.

It’s interesting to note that this war of detail versus naturality doesn’t just exist with hybrids and single DDs. It’s very prevalent throughout headphones and IEMs in general. Take for instance the SR-009. No one can deny that it’s incredible at sheer detail retrieval and technical ability, but at the same time, it lacks a level of organicism in tuning. It’s unnaturally resonant, some would say. That’s why a lot of people have a preference for something like the SR-007, which, while not quite as refined technically, is simply more natural sounding, and more likable. The KSE1200 you mentioned is another subject, a lot of people (myself included) find the tuning to be simply too treble oriented to be tonally balanced, even with foam tips. But I’m not going to lie and say it’s not incredibly good at sheer resolution. I think there’s a balance to be had here that manages to combine both worlds to a reasonable enough extent, with some compromise, of course. But that takes time and effort to develop, and thankfully the IEM industry is taking steps in that direction.