wolfstar76
Headphoneus Supremus
So glad I found this gem, nice review. For me, I am also glad that I will not seek another endgame IEM after Z1R.
Wish you review some DAP in the future.
Wish you review some DAP in the future.
I've been working on a two or three part article series covering a bunch of stuff I missed during my hiatus. The first part is dedicated entirely to 2 DAPs and is largely complete, the second (and possibly third) part will contain a large number of miscellaneous IEMs and portable sources sorted by brand. I just haven't had the time to turn my incoherent notes into readable articles yet.Wish you review some DAP in the future.
Tips used please ?Noble Kaiser Encore:
This review was requested by @Redcarmoose
Don’t think it’s ever been a secret that I’m no Noble fan. Nothing they’ve made has interested me, and their entire marketing gimmick has always felt like a form over function deal. So perhaps it’s no surprise that it’s taken so long for me to finally get around to reviewing one of their IEMs. After all, they mostly specialize in full BA setups, and my interest is in DDs. But something about the Kaiser and the Kaiser Encore seems to be worth mentioning. After all, it is one of the ex-hypetrains of Head-fi, albeit one thats mostly died down now, and is Noble’s greatest claim to fame. They haven’t seemed to have been able to live up to the original Kaiser. The Khan was mostly forgotten due to its notoriously splashy treble and horrible build and QC, and nothing else they’ve made aside from that has tried to usurp Noble’s past glories with the Kaiser. So let us consider this a trip down memory lane, of the current status of what was once one of the most beloved IEMs in the industry.
The Kaiser Encore has no bass. And yes, I get that it’s a BA and all, but even by BA standards, the Kaiser Encore’s bass is flabby, weak, impactless and just all around pathetic. Kickdrums sound like plastic caricatures of the real deal and surface level bass texture is smoothened out. Make no mistake, the Encore’s bass is not merely bad, it’s bad even by BA standards. An especially insulting reminder because there genuinely is good BA bass out there. The Encore just ain’t it.
The midrange of the Kaiser Encore is almost reminiscent of my all time favorite full BA, the Viento. Except for the fact that it sounds oddly sharp and resonant, and feels weirdly lacking in lower mids. The former seems to be an artifact of the Encore’s treble, though I can’t really explain the latter. In either case, the Encore’s pinna compensation is attempting to go for a reference-y sound, and it mostly achieves that if you ignore the dismal lower midrange. It’s weird, because the lower mids sound scooped, but at the same time the upper mids aren’t thin or boosted like such a frequency response would normally imply. I can’t explain it but it certainly threw me off at first, and it did take me quite a while to pin down what was so off about it.
But nothing on the Kaiser Encore is more distinctive than its treble, and boy do I really mean it when I say distinctive. The Kaiser Encore’s treble is sharp and sibilant, and beyond unpleasant to listen to. Cymbals are piercing and brass is violently harsh. On top of that, there is clearly a level of haziness to the Encore’s sound akin to some of the worse offenders in planar treble (looking at you, HE-6) that makes the already offensive treble on the Encore even more apparent. I really don’t know what the point of such an intense treble boost is, because it makes me strongly not want to listen to the Encore.
On the other hand though, the Encore is fairly technical. Aside from the atrocious bass detailing, the Kaiser Encore has solid detail retrieval and good resolution thanks to its upper mid and treble focus. It also layers pretty damn well. Staging is about as wide as the shell (as is typical for tubed IEMs). There do seem to be dynamic issues with the Encore, as it just feels dead boring in general. But to sum it up, there’s no denying that the Encore is a good technical performer. The tuning just sucks.
And this leads me to question the following: why not just buy a Viento? Quite honestly, the Encore is just a way brighter and all around worse version of Hidition’s ex-flagship. Both are going for a reference-esque sound, yet the Encore has some of the worst bass I’ve ever heard along with some damned harsh treble. If you want this kind of pinna compensation and midrange tonality, the Viento is essentially the same concept but better. And it’s way cheaper too. The Encore’s value proposition is basically nonexistent in comparison.
All listening was done with the WM1A’s 3.5mm jack.
Buy a Viento instead and use the remaining grand to buy yourself a nice source and a good cable. Seriously, this is a waste of time.
Score: 3/10
Final Audio A8000:
Beryllium. If any material in DD design were a meme, it’d be beryllium. After the release of Focal’s Utopia it’s been hailed as a wonder material for diaphragm design. Many have tried to replicate this, to varying degrees of success. Final jumping on this bandwagon is, frankly, odd. The Japanese company has always been an oddball in IEM design, frequently prioritizing tonality (and by tonality I mean midrange tonality, and by midrange tonality I mean female vocals) over quite literally everything else. Final’s IEMs have quite a bit of a reputation for poor technical ability, haziness, and generally being real underwhelming for the price. That is, unless you listen to Japanese female vocals, otherwise known as weeb music, in which case you find yourself in Final’s target market.
So, one might ask, what do weeb vocals and beryllium DDs have in common? Well... I’m equally as perplexed. Beryllium DDs are prized for their speed and extremely high technical ability, yet neither of these are Final’s specialties. One questions just how much performance Final will be able to milk out of such a driver.
The answer is not a lot.
The first thing that sticks out to me with the A8000 is the flabby, loose bass. It’s got this pervasive and annoying warmth to it that doesn’t really help either. Almost like a timbral coloration similar to the CE-5, but borderline obnoxious instead of being quite nice with the right music. There’s also a really odd lack of slam to it, reminiscent of the Tanchjim Oxygen. Which is just plain odd, because it’s not even like the A8000 lacks in bass quantity. I’d argue it has too much midbass, even. It just sounds weak and lacking gravitas. Disappointing for a dynamic driver, nevermind a beryllium one.
The second thing that sticks out is the unnervingly recessed lower mids and boosted upper mids. Almost like the IEX-1 but without having gone off the deep end. Well, barely, at least. Shrill is a pretty apt descriptor here, with lead guitar and synth lines often being just plain thin and rough. Male vocals sound prepubescent at times. I can almost sort of tell what Final was going for here, this ultra-clarity super refined sort of sound. Except you can’t just conjure clarity out of thin air by recessing the lower mids to oblivion and boosting the upper mids to the point of unlistenability. It just doesn’t work like that. Everything sounds unnaturally lean and sucked out.
Treble response on the A8000 is characterized by some grit in the lower-mid treble followed by a pretty extreme rolloff. In other words, you get stick impact and cymbal crash... and not much else. Cymbal decay feels cut short and neutered, and crashes on higher pitched cymbals often feel suppressed. But at the same time, the cymbal crash that is present is often slightly harsh, and sibilance from vocals isn’t uncommon either. This treble response is just cut and dry bad, no matter how you look at it.
And it’s not even like the A8000 has the technical chops to justify its existence. Textural rendering is mediocre on a good day, and nonexistent on a normal one thanks to the horrifically recessed lower midrange. Staging is often congested and small, which is really odd considering the advertised acoustic chambering on it. Dynamics are compressed and lack punch. I struggle to write much here because the A8000 simply doesn’t have much to offer. It’s just odd sounding and lacks the resolve to rise above its tonal quirks.
What this exercise goes to show is that hype and showmanship is, well, hype and showmanship. There was never really any substance behind the A8000. Beryllium or not, it’s still tuned to Final’s target market, and that market excludes the vast majority of people. At the end of the day, implementation trumps technology, and not even the greatest of miracle materials can save a badly, or just oddly tuned transducer.
All listening was done out of the WM1A’s 3.5mm jack.
As said before, this IEM is tuned for certain people, and I’m not one of them. Most (normal) people won’t be either. And it’s for that reason that I’d stay away from the A8000.
Score: 3/10
Campfire Audio Andromeda:
Here it is: undoubtedly the most popular kilobuck IEM of the last half-decade, if not the last decade as a whole. Campfire’s claim to fame, and probably their only one. I recall hearing this a long time ago and was wowed by it. And then I heard better, and moved on and forgot about it. Needless to say I was somewhat curious when, all this time later, I approached it again. My tastes have changed drastically with time, so just how much would today’s Aminus agree with noob Aminus?
Apparently, not at all.
A lot has been said about the Andro’s bass response, probably more than necessary. But just to drill it in, the Andro’s bass is nothing short of atrocious. One note, nonexistent decay, nonexistent subbass, nonexistent slam, plasticky timbre... the Andro’s bass is everything wrong with BA bass. The offensively poor decay on the Andro sounds like it’s missing entire milliseconds of sonic detail. And that’s probably because it is, considering how smoothed over bass texture is on it. Kickdrums have no sort of body or weight, and sound like flabby thuds with no conviction. It really cannot be exaggerated, just how bad the Andro’s bass is.
The Andro’s midrange is characteristic for its lack of pinna compensation, and it really shows. Everything on the Andro sounds veiled and hazy, if not straight up smothered. Violins and female vocals sound incredibly buried and muffled. I get the violent mental image of someone being suffocated to death with a pillow when I hear this. Instruments in the lower mids like guitars and brass lack bite. This is perhaps tonally the most offensive part of the Andro; the upper midrange on these has effectively ceased to exist. In comparison, the lower midrange is overly thick and emphasized - I’m reminded a lot of how the Empire Ears Legend X’s tonal balance mostly consists of sub/midbass and lower treble, except in the Andro’s case it’s lower mids and mid treble. While some people enjoy such a thick and dense response, it sounds unnaturally imbalanced and fatiguing to me. Again, the suffocation metaphor comes into play. It feels... claustrophobic. I crack a lot of jokes in private about Campfire not knowing what pinna compensation is, and the Andro justifies the admittedly cruel humor. It just sounds completely sucked out thanks to what appears to be a fundamental lack of understanding of IEM design.
As for the treble, I’ve frequently heard amongst fellow Andro detractors that its treble is its only saving grace. Unfortunately I cannot agree. It has next to no stick impact leading to an uncanny and unrealistic effect where drummers sound like they’re hesitant to hit their cymbals, which is something I also noted on the tia Fourte. It also has far too much cymbal crash; while not inherently harsh or fatiguing, it’s really bizarre and fake sounding due to the lack of lower treble and poor extension. Add to that a healthy dose of consonance in male vocals thanks to the treble peak and, well, I’m frankly unimpressed by the Andro’s “sparkly” treble.
Ah yes, intangibles. No one will deny that Andro’s staging and imaging capabilities are to die for. Well, no one except me. Quite honestly, the Andro doesn’t project that far out of its shell. It does a little, which is better than most IEMs, but 3 years down the line it’s absolutely outmatched by its own older sibling the Solaris, and not to mention the Z1R or the Fourte. And sure, those IEMs are much more expensive than the Andro, but it just goes to show how much the competition has caught up to it. Image sharpness is decent, but pales in comparison to the M9, and that’s just its direct competition in price and design. The point of this is not to imply that the Andro’s staging and imaging are necessarily bad in the grand scheme of things, but more to point out that they’re dated, even amongst IEMs that directly compete with it. Time has not been kind to it in the slightest.
And as for everything else, well, I don’t know what to tell you other than that it’s just as unspectacular. Detail retrieval is decent, but it too does not hold up to the modern day competition. I would argue that something like the FDX1 or the EX1000 (ironically an IEM that’s what, 10 years old now?) give the Andro a run for its money in the detail department, not to mention actually having some semblance of resolution and a decent tonal balance. In addition, thanks to the obnoxiously thick midrange response, the Andro borders on sounding congested, completely ruining clarity and layering. There also appear to be odd transient problems with the Andro, namely a blunted midrange attack. This probably has something to do with the nonexistent upper midrange, and may not be a true time domain related issue at all, but in any case it exacerbates the already borderline mushy sound. That and the fact that the Andro struggles with basic dynamics, to the point that the M9 I had sitting next to it sounded lively in comparison (and to think dynamics have always been the one thing I’ve disliked about the M9...). Unlike the Solaris, the Andro doesn’t really have all that good of intangibles, thought admittedly the tuning is less immediately offensive than the Solaris OG. Both end up being underperformers in my eyes, irregardless of price.
Really, the main part of me is appalled that I ever liked this. It’s shockingly bad compared to the last time I heard it. And yes, I know that the Andro is a picky scoundrel with impedances, and that my WM1A’s 4.4mm output (which is cited to have an impedance just under 1 ohm, though I don’t know just how accurate that is) is not an ideal source. But that’s sidestepping the fact that my main issue with the Andro is that it lacks pinna compensation. No amount of impedance meddling or source rolling will change the fundamental issue with the Andromeda: that it has next to no pinna compensation, and sounds asphyxiated and dense because of it. Not to mention, a large majority of Andro users don’t actually use 2 ohm output impedance sources with it. The number of Andro users who run it with Apple dongles or RME ADI-2 IEM outs (both under 1 ohm) far outweighs the certain clique of ZX2 toting Andro fanboys. Simply put, there is not much that can be done to change my issues with the Andromeda, and making minor tweaks to try and make it ever so slightly not as bad in irrelevant departments is not worth the effort.
And while we’re at it, allow me to make a point: having an IEM with massive impedance shifts is bad design. Ultimately, with BAs being fickle things and having varying impedances, having some level of impedance curvature is fine. But when your impedance curve shifts to such a massive degree that your IEM absolutely necessitates (according to some at least) a specific output impedance on the source, that’s just a halfassed design. And not to target or attack Campfire, but their IEMs almost universally have unusually low impedances (at 1khz, at least) and high SPL/mW sensitivities compared to more or less every other brand. One wonders why their designs are so needlessly sensitive and reactive to output impedance. But what about using impedance to tune the IEM?, you say. Well, that’s just a glorified and unpredictable EQ, isn’t it? I’m not exactly a proponent of EQ, but when you think about it, there’s really no difference save one being comparatively out of one’s control. It’s a poor justification for what’s ultimately an unrefined electrical design. But hey, that’s just my opinion.
Sorry Campfire fanboys, I just don’t see it like you do. Shame on me for not having Van Gogh’s ears.
Score: 3/10
I was not aware of new DDs from Dita. While I am interested in the new FAudio, they are notoriously difficult to find distribution of. The only reason I ever got to hear the Minor was because I was in Shanghai at the time, and I don't think I ever released my review of the Major due to concerns of significant unit variance. I will certainly have to look out for one, though I can't promise anything. As for Dita, I know where to look, though the question is if they will have a demo unit.Will you include the new DD's from FAudio and Dita? Also very interested in multiple releases/prototypes tuned by the Subtonic team.
I don't write these reviews to please owners by attempting to roll every combination of source, tip and cable in existence in some attempt to find a combination that fixes the IEM for the company. Everything in them is largely left stock, because if it was good enough for the store showcasing them, it's good enough for me.Tips used please ?
Cable ? (the horrible stock cable ? Except for comfort)
Another victim of the lack of optimisation of eavesdropping ?
It was the first of april, right?
So, not a surprise too...
I'm sorry someone on the internet had less than positive things to say about products that you own. It must be such a personal insult.And not a surprise here too.
Do these exist at all though?
Ah, right. I forgot about its predecessor, A12, which indeed can be marked with title "easy tuning" more or less. Lost interest in 64 audio after that, too overpriced for what it offers.U12t = the archetype.
Just my advice.
Ah, right. I forgot about its predecessor, A12, which indeed can be marked with title "easy tuning" more or less. Lost interest in 64 audio after that, too overpriced for what it offers.
I was talking about the Dark Sky, which is more in line with the Minor based on limited impressions (apparently, Zepp carries this particular model, along with recently released Acoustunes). Dita's current flagship is called Perpetua, that price increase though...I will certainly have to look out for one, though I can't promise anything.
Yep, I'm aware of the Dark Sky. I did look into it after making the post and while Zepp does carry it, that doesn't always guarantee a demo unit. Won't stop me from asking for one though.I was talking about the Dark Sky, which is more in line with the Minor based on limited impressions (apparently, Zepp carries this particular model, along with recently released Acoustunes). Dita's current flagship is called Perpetua, that price increase though...
Ah, right. I forgot about its predecessor, A12, which indeed can be marked with title "easy tuning" more or less. Lost interest in 64 audio after that, too overpriced for what it offers.
I would have my doubts. Firmware plays an important part, but cannot correct the inherent sound of specific components or the sound of an OS' audio stack, especially when that OS is Android and not custom.In before, a firmware modification can address all this for Sony daps.