[mvvRAZ]

The DMagic is easily one of the worst things I've heard this year. It's the thinnest, shrillest sounding IEM I have heard to date - I can't believe it's triple DD, usually even BAs are unable to produce a sound that's this thin and just generally awful.

The Odin... I shared some closing thoughts in my thread but the upper midrange is really overloaded to my ears to the point where female vocals in higher registers are unbearable to listen to. Good catch @aminus, initially because of the sheer upper midrange quantity the Odin came off as super bright, but after several sessions I started realising it's the upper midrange that's messing it up for me

 

[RSC08]

ikko OH7:
ikko are a bit of a weird brand. Well, weird as of late, anyways. They started out with the OH1 and OH10, two fairly decent midfi IEMs for the price. Then there was that dongle which got what seems to be a bit of a mixed reception, and suddenly they hit us over the head with this thing. A 90ohm single DD IEM running at about a grand. Jeez. Not sure what to think of the sudden change in pace.

The bass on the OH7 is thick and midbassy. It’s heavy both tonally and in transients; decay is slow to the point of mushiness. Bass guitars and kickdrums get confused and muddled pretty much all the time, and bass texture is really not very good. I’m really surprised by this sudden deviation from their house sound, which was previously characterized by strong subbass emphasis and little to no midbass bloat. There is quite a surprising amount of slam here, which does complement its midbass heavy response nicely. But I honestly find this much bass beyond excessive and bloated, and people usually find my preference in bass to be too much. I’ll let that speak for itself.

The midrange on the OH7 is similarly thick to its bass. The whole thing sounds kind of bloated and overly dense, which is surprising given ikko’s previous models being tuned to a more upper mid slanted signature. In comparison to the tasteful V-shape and slightly recessed lower mids of the OH1 and the OH10, this feels like it needs to cut down on the lower mids. Quite unusually however, the upper midrange here is not necessarily recessed. It’s fully capable of being shrill when called for (not a bad thing, by the way. I’d call it being faithful to the recording), which indicates to me that it's not sucked out in the upper mids. It’s just... bloated. Sludgy. Dense. I would say it’s a matter of there being too much lower midrange bleed, rather than a recessed upper midrange or lack of pinna comp.

The treble response on here is near indescribable. I unfortunately did not measure this IEM, but I’d be willing to guess that it looks like a pit of spikes past 4khz. At times I want to call it lower-mid treble focused due to the tonality, but it has basically no stick impact. Calling it mid treble focused would be inaccurate as well, because cymbal crash is recessed and muffled here. And there’s also a peak somewhere past 10khz which manifests itself as a slight zing and sharpness at times which just adds to the confusing and uneven sound of this IEM. It might be the strangest treble response I have ever heard, because it somehow swerves between sounding like it has no treble and sounding like its treble is too harsh. What a mess.

In terms of intangibles, the OH7 is really not that great. Whatever detail retrieval it has is often smushed over by just how bloated the overall sound is, as well as how sludgy the transients are. Calling it congested would be a disservice, a wall of sound is more accurate. There’s also really not much to say regarding stage (within the shell, as is typical), dynamics (compressed), imaging (blurry and fuzzy) or timbre (smeared). An attentive reader might note I said something very similar about the A8000, and that’s not an inaccurate assessment of both IEMs at once. Both are bizarrely tuned single DDs that don’t really do anything right intangibly to make up for their misgivings.

I really don’t know. I’ve expressed a few times that I’d really love to see the limits of single DD engineering be pushed, but between this and the A8000, it simply isn’t there. The basic stuff, tonality, is all wrong. Nevermind intangibles, which are much, much harder to nail. This is not a tia Fourte situation where I find myself lamenting the tonality because the technical chops are that good. This is a situation where, well, nothing is good. I don’t see much of a difference between this or the tribrid craze of the last year. It’s all just incompetent design trying to obscure itself through marketing gimmickry.

All listening was done out of the WM1A’s 3.5mm jack.

It’s all so tiresome.

Score: 3/10

I was just watching Z reviewing these and the tips they provide are literally Xelento tips. All that bass emphasis you talk about make me think that maybe they wanted to clone the Xelento but failed.

 

[aminus]

Acoustune and the number 7: A Lineup Roundup
1657, 1677 and 1697. That’s a lot of 7’s. Ctrl+F the number 7 and see how many times it crops up in this review.

The 165X series has sort of been the defacto favorite for a lot of people in Acoustune’s lineup with its usage of brass acoustic chambers, which tends to impart a warmer and softer sound to a brand otherwise known for their fairly metallic and rough IEMs. The 1657 is no different in that regard, but from any point of view it’s a pretty considerable departure from the fairly static house sound of the 16XX series. This one is a good bit leaner and more V shaped than the old Acoustunes, while dropping a lot of the upper midrange harshness I complained about in the 1655 and 1695 reviews. This sounds fine and dandy and all, but how do I put this... it’s honestly too lean for my taste. I’m honestly not that into leaner sound signatures anymore these days, which is why the U12t has been getting pretty much all of my eartime. While I still admire the Z1R from a technical point of view, I can’t really say the same about the 1657. It’s got a slight splashiness and drag to the treble transients, and as a whole it’s just not that novel in terms of resolution or imaging ability or anything else. Though that aside, it has a lot of the hallmarks that Acoustunes throughout the years have had, like their sonic wall-less imaging and their (lack of) isolation. A good IEM without a doubt, but maybe too pedestrian. But good enough to be my favorite Acoustune to this date nonetheless. Then again, I've never exactly been the biggest Acoustune fan, so I doubt my say matters much to a staunch fan of their house sound anyways.

The 1670 was infamous for its metallic timbre and sheer harshness, so it didn’t surprise me when the 1677 was more or less a more metallic and bright 1657. Mind you, the 1657 isn’t stellar in timbre either - it’s still metallic and occasionally a bit sharp, but to a far more tolerable extent than the 1677. Simply put, the 1677 crosses the thin line into being uncomfortable to listen to. Especially the treble timbre on cymbals, which sets me on edge given my experience with certain older Acoustunes and cymbal crashes. That aside though, the 1657 and 1677 are honestly more similar than different. Sure, the midrange is ever so slightly leaner, and overall transients might be less clean and defined, but the bass response is more or less the same, and they have virtually identical imaging abilities. What I’m saying is, unless you have some form of high end hearing loss or just really like treble, there is no reason to take the 1677 over the 1657.

Now, the 1697 is a whole other bag of worms. This thing just sounds off. The bass is blunted and mushy, the midrange gives off a skin-crawling-inducing feeling of uncanny-valleyness, and treble sounds strangely wispy and sharp at the same time. Borderline EST-like, actually. The midrange in particular stands out as odd sounding. I can’t quite wrap my head around it, but the general timbre and tone of everything from snares to guitars to vocals to keyboards sounds plain wrong. It almost sounds too lower midrange heavy, except that the lower mids on this IEM are recessed as is typical for Acoustune. Perhaps it’s an overtones vs fundamentals thing, I don’t know. Whatever the case is, this is not a good IEM, at all.

All listening was done out of the WM1A’s 3.5mm jack.

In summary? The 1657 is pretty cool. Avoid everything else, especially the 1697.

Scores:
HS1657CU: 6/10
HS1677SS: 4/10
HS1697TI: 3/10

 

[papa_mia]

Ok who gave Acoustune the idea to adopt Xiaomi's product naming policy here?

 

[papa_mia]

@aminus Excuse me Sir, the Thieaudio train will leave at Dawn, may I see your credentials?

 

[aminus]

ThieAudio Monarch:
It’s that time of the year again. The time where I finally get my hands on the latest chifi hype and dissect it for your reading pleasure.

Last time I was still relatively in the loop, Thieaudio were kind of a joke brand. None of their stuff was particularly impressive despite being praised heavily by certain community figures, and I personally scoffed whenever I found out about the latest one being yet another fluke. So it did take me for quite a bit of a shock when I found out that their 2 latest IEMs, the Monarch and Clairvoyance, were supposedly hits. It did take me a while to finally get around to hearing them, but here it is.

The bass of the Monarch comes off as a little strange. This IEM is, unsurprisingly, yet another tribrid with the obligatory DD woofer, but I can’t help but feel like it’s lacking in bass slam. The control and transients is solid as should be, but the bass rise is abruptly short in my eyes, and results in the Monarch sounding too lean for my tastes. A sub-100hz rise might be great in the eyes of someone seeking something more neutral, but the way I hear it, it fails to amount to anything substantial in most of the music I listen to. In other words, it may as well just be flat to 20hz with how weightless it feels. Another odd thing I've noticed is that the Monarch's bass texture feels poor. I've listened to my fair share of DDs in my time, and while I don't expect every DD to be held up to the standard of something like the Z1R, it's telling when I find my BA driven U12t to be more resolving down low. Extremely concerning, in fact. On the topic of leanness as well, I can’t help but feel that the tuning exacerbates a timbral incoherency between the DD and the BAs in the midrange. I can see why this clarity uber alles tuning appeals to a lot of people, but it sounds dry and disjointed to me.

Speaking of midrange, the, well, midrange of the Monarch. As mentioned earlier, it’s balls to the wall on maximum clarity, which means upper mids. A lot of upper mids. Maybe a bit too much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hardly a FW10000 or Odin, but at times the Monarch can be a bit shouty and slightly honky, helped in no part by how dry its timbre and tonality is overall. This brings me back to the same point I was getting at in regards to the bass. I don’t think that this tuning does the Monarch any favors, at least not in a hybrid configuration. And again, back to the driver incoherency. The BAs in the midrange essentially sound plasticky to me, helped in no part by the particularly honky nature of the upper mids. This clashes pretty badly with the DD, which alternates between lacking texture and having a bizarre upper bass emphasis that accentuates particularly weird details like string rubbing on bass guitars. I don't think this is the only reason the Monarch sounds incoherent either. The particularly snappy midrange transients don't sound quite right in combination with the slower DD decay. While the DD is by no means slow at all (in fact I would consider it relatively fast), the midrange BAs are simply too fast for their own good, and when combined with the aforementioned timbral incoherency make for a listening experience that I find myself questioning and trying to understand rather than just enjoying.

Electret treble... I fondly recall how much time I’ve spent going on about how electret treble was a waste of time, money, and effort for everyone involved. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s as much of an outright negative now that manufacturers actually know how to tune the damn things, but I still don’t see the net benefit of using them over BA or even DD tweeters. The Monarch’s treble is, in essence, milquetoast sounding. Am I complaining? Not at all. For treble to sound normal is a rarity in and of itself, and I’m all the more appreciative of it. I do find myself desiring more extension, and perhaps more incisiveness on attack transients to bring out more stick impact, but I find little fault with the Monarch’s treble as a whole. Granted, it's still hardly as revolutionary in this department as the likes of the Elysian Annihilator, but it's nice to see that Lee isn't the only person in the world doing electret tweeters with their head screwed on right. But back to the first point, I don't see what the point is of using this over a traditional BA tweeter. The extension isn't much better, and the resolving ability isn't anything to write home about. Sure it doesn't sound bad, but considering this driver has been marketed and pushed as the second coming for well over a year at this point, I'd expect better than not bad. Maybe I'm just wary of it based on past experiences, but in my eyes the Monarch's implementation of the electret tweeter really doesn't justify it at all.

On resolving ability, the ultra-clean sound of the Monarch really does shine true. Possibly one of the most resolving IEMs I’ve heard in the macrodetail department, especially in the midrange, and it's all thanks to how in your face the tuning is with the upper mids. But therein lies the double edged sword - the Monarch's intangibles are crippled by the exact same tonal characteristics. Its timbre is adversely affected by its tuning, with the overly forward sound signature doing nothing to mask the BA timbre and plasticky transient behavior with the Monarch. Dynamics also come off as generally upwards-compressed, with quiet sections sounding far too loud relative to the rest of their respective tracks. And I can't help but feel like it doesn't perform as well at layering as it should for how ultra clear its tuning is trying to be. Anything more than 2 instruments panned in the same location in the mix and it starts inevitably burying some, especially if they occupy the lower mids. And as per usual staging is typically tubed IEM, never really going out of the shell. In all, I feel that beyond pure surface level detail and transient attack performance (if you can even consider that a boon in the Monarch's favor at this point), the Monarch is just not that excellent intangibly.

Maybe I'm asking for too much to compare a $700 IEM to a $1000 Viento or a $2000 U12t, but it feels inevitable when these are what I'm constantly hearing the Monarch get compared to. In my eyes, the Monarch fails to capture the same aggressive upper midrange forward niche that the Viento does, and fails to be as intangibly pleasing (at least in my opinion) as the U12t. Its bass resolution and slam is not even close to the Z1R, and it simply doesn't match up even in the tuning department, which is arguably one of Z1R's weaknesses. I'm left feeling blueballed and unsatisfied by an IEM that clearly strived be something but ended up being kind of in the middle of the road at everything. It doesn't even really have the pricing advantage of something like a Blessing 2, which, as much as I really didn't like the tuning all that much, is honestly better tuned than the Monarch. The pricing places it squarely in upper mid-fi, and by upper I mean "edging on summit-fi", and if it were my money I would easily decide to drop the extra cash to go all in rather than settle for a barely passing jack of all trades. And if I didn’t have that extra cash, then I’d rather just settle for something cheaper with way more bang for buck.

All listening was done with the WM1A’s 4.4mm jack.

So in summary, what is the Monarch? I want to say it's not just another chifi fluke and that there is some merit behind it, but the more I listen to it the more I simply feel that it doesn’t appeal to me in the right ways. Is it an admirable IEM? Maybe, but I struggle to like it the more I listen to it. Sometimes I just want a warm cup of tea, and the Monarch is all too dry.

Score: 6/10

 

[1TrickPony]

ThieAudio Monarch:
It’s that time of the year again. The time where I finally get my hands on the latest chifi hype and dissect it for your reading pleasure.

Last time I was still relatively in the loop, Thieaudio were kind of a joke brand. None of their stuff was particularly impressive despite being praised heavily by certain community figures, and I personally scoffed whenever I found out about the latest one being yet another fluke. So it did take me for quite a bit of a shock when I found out that their 2 latest IEMs, the Monarch and Clairvoyance, were supposedly hits. It did take me a while to finally get around to hearing them, but here it is.

The bass of the Monarch comes off as a little strange. This IEM is, unsurprisingly, yet another tribrid with the obligatory DD woofer, but I can’t help but feel like it’s lacking in bass slam. The control and transients is solid as should be, but the bass rise is abruptly short in my eyes, and results in the Monarch sounding too lean for my tastes. A sub-100hz rise might be great in the eyes of someone seeking something more neutral, but the way I hear it, it fails to amount to anything substantial in most of the music I listen to. In other words, it may as well just be flat to 20hz with how weightless it feels. Another odd thing I've noticed is that the Monarch's bass texture feels poor. I've listened to my fair share of DDs in my time, and while I don't expect every DD to be held up to the standard of something like the Z1R, it's telling when I find my BA driven U12t to be more resolving down low. Extremely concerning, in fact. On the topic of leanness as well, I can’t help but feel that the tuning exacerbates a timbral incoherency between the DD and the BAs in the midrange. I can see why this clarity uber alles tuning appeals to a lot of people, but it sounds dry and disjointed to me.

Speaking of midrange, the, well, midrange of the Monarch. As mentioned earlier, it’s balls to the wall on maximum clarity, which means upper mids. A lot of upper mids. Maybe a bit too much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s hardly a FW10000 or Odin, but at times the Monarch can be a bit shouty and slightly honky, helped in no part by how dry its timbre and tonality is overall. This brings me back to the same point I was getting at in regards to the bass. I don’t think that this tuning does the Monarch any favors, at least not in a hybrid configuration. And again, back to the driver incoherency. The BAs in the midrange essentially sound plasticky to me, helped in no part by the particularly honky nature of the upper mids. This clashes pretty badly with the DD, which alternates between lacking texture and having a bizarre upper bass emphasis that accentuates particularly weird details like string rubbing on bass guitars. I don't think this is the only reason the Monarch sounds incoherent either. The particularly snappy midrange transients don't sound quite right in combination with the slower DD decay. While the DD is by no means slow at all (in fact I would consider it relatively fast), the midrange BAs are simply too fast for their own good, and when combined with the aforementioned timbral incoherency make for a listening experience that I find myself questioning and trying to understand rather than just enjoying.

Electret treble... I fondly recall how much time I’ve spent going on about how electret treble was a waste of time, money, and effort for everyone involved. In all honesty, I don’t think it’s as much of an outright negative now that manufacturers actually know how to tune the damn things, but I still don’t see the net benefit of using them over BA or even DD tweeters. The Monarch’s treble is, in essence, milquetoast sounding. Am I complaining? Not at all. For treble to sound normal is a rarity in and of itself, and I’m all the more appreciative of it. I do find myself desiring more extension, and perhaps more incisiveness on attack transients to bring out more stick impact, but I find little fault with the Monarch’s treble as a whole. Granted, it's still hardly as revolutionary in this department as the likes of the Elysian Annihilator, but it's nice to see that Lee isn't the only person in the world doing electret tweeters with their head screwed on right. But back to the first point, I don't see what the point is of using this over a traditional BA tweeter. The extension isn't much better, and the resolving ability isn't anything to write home about. Sure it doesn't sound bad, but considering this driver has been marketed and pushed as the second coming for well over a year at this point, I'd expect better than not bad. Maybe I'm just wary of it based on past experiences, but in my eyes the Monarch's implementation of the electret tweeter really doesn't justify it at all.

On resolving ability, the ultra-clean sound of the Monarch really does shine true. Possibly one of the most resolving IEMs I’ve heard in the macrodetail department, especially in the midrange, and it's all thanks to how in your face the tuning is with the upper mids. But therein lies the double edged sword - the Monarch's intangibles are crippled by the exact same tonal characteristics. Its timbre is adversely affected by its tuning, with the overly forward sound signature doing nothing to mask the BA timbre and plasticky transient behavior with the Monarch. Dynamics also come off as generally upwards-compressed, with quiet sections sounding far too loud relative to the rest of their respective tracks. And I can't help but feel like it doesn't perform as well at layering as it should for how ultra clear its tuning is trying to be. Anything more than 2 instruments panned in the same location in the mix and it starts inevitably burying some, especially if they occupy the lower mids. And as per usual staging is typically tubed IEM, never really going out of the shell. In all, I feel that beyond pure surface level detail and transient attack performance (if you can even consider that a boon in the Monarch's favor at this point), the Monarch is just not that excellent intangibly.

Maybe I'm asking for too much to compare a $700 IEM to a $1000 Viento or a $2000 U12t, but it feels inevitable when these are what I'm constantly hearing the Monarch get compared to. In my eyes, the Monarch fails to capture the same aggressive upper midrange forward niche that the Viento does, and fails to be as intangibly pleasing (at least in my opinion) as the U12t. Its bass resolution and slam is not even close to the Z1R, and it simply doesn't match up even in the tuning department, which is arguably one of Z1R's weaknesses. I'm left feeling blueballed and unsatisfied by an IEM that clearly strived be something but ended up being kind of in the middle of the road at everything. It doesn't even really have the pricing advantage of something like a Blessing 2, which, as much as I really didn't like the tuning all that much, is much honestly better tuned than the Monarch. The pricing places it squarely in upper mid-fi, and by upper I mean "edging on summit-fi", and if it were my money I would easily decide to drop the extra cash to go all in rather than settle for a barely passing jack of all trades.

All listening was done with the WM1A’s 4.4mm jack.

So in summary, what is the Monarch? I want to say it's not just another chifi fluke and that there is some merit behind it, but the more I listen to it the more I simply feel that it doesn’t appeal to me in the right ways. Is it an admirable IEM? Maybe, but I struggle to like it the more I listen to it. Sometimes I just want a glass of warm water, and the Monarch is all too dry.

Score: 6/10

Thank you being the anti-hype figure of this community. Best we all remain judges of what we hear.

 

[aminus]

ThieAudio Clairvoyance:
The monkey's paw. Time and time again it slaps me in the face when I think "man I wish I had X but with more Y". And thus is what happens when I wish I had a Monarch with more warmth.

Or in more pedestrian words, the Clairvoyance is kind of what happens when you get what you asked for, but not what you really wanted. And an example of why compromise can really make or break an IEM.

Where the Monarch was simply too lean and dry for my tastes, the Clairvoyance almost suffers from the exact opposite problem. The bass response of the Clairvoyance is blunt and almost blobby, sounding all too much like an overdampened DD. Not helping this at all is the substantial midbass boost on the Clairvoyance compared to the Monarch. Whatever bass texture and macrodetail that was present on the Monarch is nowhere to be found, and it's not really like there was that much to begin with. And in a certainly tasteless turn of events, the Clairvoyance does in fact make up for the Monarch's rather weak bass slam - it's just that said slam is also incredibly soft and sloppy. What we’re left with is a poetically ironic combination - Thieaudio have added back the much needed midbass that was missing with the Monarch, but at what cost?

A similar pattern follows with the Clairvoyance’s midrange. Where the Monarch was snappy, lean, upfront and maybe little shouty, the Clairvoyance has dialed back quite a bit of the thinness. At the same time however, a lot of the technical ability that made the Monarch stand out so much has been lost. The Clairvoyance is warm and wet in a way that negatively impacts its resolving ability. Particularly ironic considering I last asked for a nice warm drink to quench the dryness stemming from the Monarch. Decay transients often get muddled and in a borderline smeary manner. The extreme clarity that defined the Monarch is effectively nowhere to be found on the Clairvoyance. Is the overall midrange tonality more pleasing than the Monarch's? I mean, I guess so? But what does it say when the only way to achieve something more pleasing than a midrange as dry as the Sahara desert is to completely saturate it and ruin whatever appeal the original had in the first place?

The Clairvoyance also struggles with treble response, just like many other electret tweeters that preceded it. The Monarch did great work of making electret treble sound clean and defined as opposed to wispy and hazy. You know, normal sounding. The Clairvoyance does not follow suit. It is classically electret sounding with how transients sound excessively weightless and soft. I don't understand how this of all things managed to get lost in translation between the two IEMs. It's not really even like the Monarch's treble needed to be toned down; if anything it needed the opposite, especially past 10khz. I genuinely don't get it.

And here comes the real kicker - the intangibles. This IEM is, quite frankly, a mess in this department. Not only does it have most of the same flaws as the Monarch, such as a lack of bass texture or plasticky midrange timbre, but it has more of its own coupled on. It's even less dynamic than the Monarch is, now with the ever dreaded downwards-compression that's no doubt in part due to its transient characteristics. And as aforementioned, the transient attack of the Clairvoyance is straight up blunted, especially in the bass where it sounds rotund and plodding with kickdrums. The midrange is no stranger to this either, and it's not blunted in a U12t way where transients are smoothed in a manner that make it more timbrally pleasing. Rather, it comes off as mushy, fuzzy and overly saturated sounding. This is in heavy contrast to, again, the U12t or even the Dawn, which, while definitely not the cleanest IEMs on the market, never get messy enough to sound smudgy. The Clairvoyance is simply weak at its ability to cleanly define transients and carry its warmer and lusher tone a the same time.

The problem, really, is that Thieaudio have tried to compromise in different ways between the Monarch and Clairvoyance. The Monarch forsook tuning for raw technical skill while the Clairvoyance does the exact opposite. The way I see it, the Clairvoyance is certainly more tonally pleasing than the Monarch, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the severe technical deficiency that this comes with. A good example of an IEM that is well tuned enough to make up for its technical flaws would be something like the Dawn. The Clairvoyance's tuning is nowhere near that, not even close. It also doesn't perform as well intangibly as the Dawn does, which, while admittedly not the fairest comparison when taking into account price, demonstrates why I feel that the Clairvoyance falls flat in its attempt to become a "tuning over technicalities" niche IEM.

"But Aminus!" you cry. "You've barely talked about the Clairvoyance's tuning at all! Almost all of your complaints are about technical ability!". And indeed they are. The problem with the Clairvoyance's intangibles is that they are almost entirely baked in to the perception of its tonality. By that I'm referring to how the blobby bass transients emphasize the midbass (and in turn its flaws) more than sharper transient behavior otherwise would, or how the blunted attack and wet decay make the Clairvoyance's midrange sound mushier than it really should be. Had the Clairvoyance had the attack and resolving ability of the Monarch, I strongly doubt I would have any bone to pick with its tonality. But alas, "what-ifs" and "could-have-beens" make not for an adequate substitute for reality. The Clairvoyance is an IEM that should sound tonally pleasing, or at least tonally acceptable, but I find that it ultimately doesn't due to how it's taken as an overall package.

All listening was done out of the WM1A's 4.4mm jack.

At the end of the day, between this and the Monarch, I honestly think the Monarch is better. Sure, the tuning might not be great, but I will take a slightly below average tuning coupled with above average technicalities over a milquetoast tuning completely ruined by its muddled and confused intangible department. One of these things, at least, has less negative synergy than the other.

Score: 4/10

 

[SBranson]

Ouch.

 

[tgx78]

I freakin love this thread. I always grab a bag full of popcorn before I proceed to read your reviews. Thanks @aminus

 

[papa_mia]

But Aminus!

 

[FastAndClean]

ThieAudio Clairvoyance:
The monkey's paw. Time and time again it slaps me in the face when I think "man I wish I had X but with more Y". And thus is what happens when I wish I had a Monarch with more warmth.

Or in more pedestrian words, the Clairvoyance is kind of what happens when you get what you asked for, but not what you really wanted. And an example of why compromise can really make or break an IEM.

Where the Monarch was simply too lean and dry for my tastes, the Clairvoyance almost suffers from the exact opposite problem. The bass response of the Clairvoyance is blunt and almost blobby, sounding all too much like an overdampened DD. Not helping this at all is the substantial midbass boost on the Clairvoyance compared to the Monarch. Whatever bass texture and macrodetail that was present on the Monarch is nowhere to be found, and it's not really like there was that much to begin with. And in a certainly tasteless turn of events, the Clairvoyance does in fact make up for the Monarch's rather weak bass slam - it's just that said slam is also incredibly soft and sloppy. What we’re left with is a poetically ironic combination - Thieaudio have added back the much needed midbass that was missing with the Monarch, but at what cost?

A similar pattern follows with the Clairvoyance’s midrange. Where the Monarch was snappy, lean, upfront and maybe little shouty, the Clairvoyance has dialed back quite a bit of the thinness. At the same time however, a lot of the technical ability that made the Monarch stand out so much has been lost. The Clairvoyance is warm and wet in a way that negatively impacts its resolving ability. Particularly ironic considering I last asked for a nice warm drink to quench the dryness stemming from the Monarch. Decay transients often get muddled and in a borderline smeary manner. The extreme clarity that defined the Monarch is effectively nowhere to be found on the Clairvoyance. Is the overall midrange tonality more pleasing than the Monarch's? I mean, I guess so? But what does it say when the only way to achieve something more pleasing than a midrange as dry as the Sahara desert is to completely saturate it and ruin whatever appeal the original had in the first place?

The Clairvoyance also struggles with treble response, just like many other electret tweeters that preceded it. The Monarch did great work of making electret treble sound clean and defined as opposed to wispy and hazy. You know, normal sounding. The Clairvoyance does not follow suit. It is classically electret sounding with how transients sound excessively weightless and soft. I don't understand how this of all things managed to get lost in translation between the two IEMs. It's not really even like the Monarch's treble needed to be toned down; if anything it needed the opposite, especially past 10khz. I genuinely don't get it.

And here comes the real kicker - the intangibles. This IEM is, quite frankly, a mess in this department. Not only does it have most of the same flaws as the Monarch, such as a lack of bass texture or plasticky midrange timbre, but it has more of its own coupled on. It's even less dynamic than the Monarch is, now with the ever dreaded downwards-compression that's no doubt in part due to its transient characteristics. And as aforementioned, the transient attack of the Clairvoyance is straight up blunted, especially in the bass where it sounds rotund and plodding with kickdrums. The midrange is no stranger to this either, and it's not blunted in a U12t way where transients are smoothed in a manner that make it more timbrally pleasing. Rather, it comes off as mushy, fuzzy and overly saturated sounding. This is in heavy contrast to, again, the U12t or even the Dawn, which, while definitely not the cleanest IEMs on the market, never get messy enough to sound smudgy. The Clairvoyance is simply weak at its ability to cleanly define transients and carry its warmer and lusher tone a the same time.

The problem, really, is that Thieaudio have tried to compromise in different ways between the Monarch and Clairvoyance. The Monarch forsook tuning for raw technical skill while the Clairvoyance does the exact opposite. The way I see it, the Clairvoyance is certainly more tonally pleasing than the Monarch, but it's not nearly enough to make up for the severe technical deficiency that this comes with. A good example of an IEM that is well tuned enough to make up for its technical flaws would be something like the Dawn. The Clairvoyance's tuning is nowhere near that, not even close. It also doesn't perform as well intangibly as the Dawn does, which, while admittedly not the fairest comparison when taking into account price, demonstrates why I feel that the Clairvoyance falls flat in its attempt to become a "tuning over technicalities" niche IEM.

"But Aminus!" you cry. "You've barely talked about the Clairvoyance's tuning at all! Almost all of your complaints are about technical ability!". And indeed they are. The problem with the Clairvoyance's intangibles is that they are almost entirely baked in to the perception of its tonality. By that I'm referring to how the blobby bass transients emphasize the midbass (and in turn its flaws) more than sharper transient behavior otherwise would, or how the blunted attack and wet decay make the Clairvoyance's midrange sound mushier than it really should be. Had the Clairvoyance had the attack and resolving ability of the Monarch, I strongly doubt I would have any bone to pick with its tonality. But alas, "what-ifs" and "could-have-beens" make not for an adequate substitute for reality. The Clairvoyance is an IEM that should sound tonally pleasing, or at least tonally acceptable, but I find that it ultimately doesn't due to how it's taken as an overall package.

All listening was done out of the WM1A's 4.4mm jack.

At the end of the day, between this and the Monarch, I honestly think the Monarch is better. Sure, the tuning might not be great, but I will take a slightly below average tuning coupled with above average technicalities over a milquetoast tuning completely ruined by its muddled and confused intangible department. One of these things, at least, has less negative synergy than the other.

Score: 4/10

 

[Ryokan]

Score: 4/10

 

[gLer]

Love this thread! A breath of fresh air amid the steam of all the hype trains in these parts.

I should probably be careful what I wish for but @aminus please review the 64 Audio Nio.

 

[CANiSLAYu]

I’ve heard both, but not for as long as I’d like. Based on preliminary listening the Sarda is yet another CE-5/TE-5 variant, but this time I actually think it might be worthy of going up against the original. Need more eartime to confirm. The A8000... I won’t comment on that until the review itself, but let me just say that it’s beryllium in name only.

Had any more ear time with Sarda? Curious on your thoughts on how it compares to ODIN since they graph somewhat similarly up to 3k with the Sarda having a bit more energy up top.