carps
Head-Fier
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Somehow I prefer EA Ares 2 over EA Thor 2. Sounds more natural to me. Not sure about the experience of others. (Andromeda SS driven by AK norma
Campfire Audio - Introducing 2 new models Hello Andromeda and Nova
- Thread starter KB
- Start date
Picked up the Andro S as a complement to my Katana. Seems almost redundant but I've been looking for something a little more musical to match the surgical Katana, without deviating from "neutrality".
They sound very different from my memory. Andro (blue edition) is definitely a lot warmer than Katana
candlejack
Headphoneus Supremus
I borrowed the silver Atlas cable from my local dealer for a week yo use with the Andro S.
I'm sure there are differences and I might be able to hear them if I could swap from the silver to the stock at the press of a button. However, in the kind of not very well controlled test environment that I used it, the differences were insignificant and the silver cable did not change how I experienced my music.
Hi! I'm really new to this forum, but I've actually been wanting a Campfire Audio IEM for the longest time. Decided to finally pull the trigger when I received an e-mail from Alo Audio deals and ordered a B-stock Andromeda S - which arrived yesterday!
I'll be honest and say that when I tried it out with the Final audio tips, and while I could, of course hear that it's way better than my UE 900s, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. It definitely wasn't $650 USD better (I got the UE 900s new for a really great price lol). I was a little disappointed but I didn't want to give up, I know how pretty much everything matters when it comes to these things in general. I purchased some spinfits before so I decided to try that too. I could already hear a HUGE improvement, however, it just wasn't enough for me still.
I somehow knew I just didn't have the right ear tips despite my very limited experience with IEMs. So I scoured the internet and ordered some Symbio W's yesterday. However, what I really wanted to use though were my Westone Starfit (red) ear tips. My sister was able to help me put them on my UE900s and it made them sound SOOO much better, so I thought if only I could put them on these... I'm sure they'd be the right ones for me. I like that they're long enough so I don't have to jam them in my ear like the spinfits (and final audio tips). It might be my ear shape but it's really a problem for me. The Symbio W's looked really short too, so I was worried about that part as well.
Seriously, it took 30 minutes of struggling to put them on. I even accidentally tore one of them while I was trying to stretch it to make it easier to put on. orz But wow was it worth it! I read so many threads and some people mentioned about having a super narrow stem? (sorry I really don't know what they're called) for wide bore IEMs will make everything sound compressed/narrow or something as well. Totally NOT true! It actually did just the opposite, it opened it right up, I heard a lot more details and everything sounded SO much better. Again, I am not sure if this is because of my ears but that's how it was like for me.
Anyway, I still want to improve the sound more so I started looking for cables. I don't know anything about them so I did a general search and kept looking up reviews until I happened upon Penon GS849. I don't know if it's the colors or what but I actually fell for how it looked at first if I had to be honest. Not that I would buy it because of that though, haha. I looked up some reviews first to decide. I was pleased to find out that, while there aren't many reviews for it yet... they were all actually quite good! I also read that Andromedas sound great with hybrid cables so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they'll be a great match when they get here.
Yikes, sorry - I guess I am too excited about them that I ended up typing a lot lol.
I'll be honest and say that when I tried it out with the Final audio tips, and while I could, of course hear that it's way better than my UE 900s, it just wasn't what I was hoping for. It definitely wasn't $650 USD better (I got the UE 900s new for a really great price lol). I was a little disappointed but I didn't want to give up, I know how pretty much everything matters when it comes to these things in general. I purchased some spinfits before so I decided to try that too. I could already hear a HUGE improvement, however, it just wasn't enough for me still.
I somehow knew I just didn't have the right ear tips despite my very limited experience with IEMs. So I scoured the internet and ordered some Symbio W's yesterday. However, what I really wanted to use though were my Westone Starfit (red) ear tips. My sister was able to help me put them on my UE900s and it made them sound SOOO much better, so I thought if only I could put them on these... I'm sure they'd be the right ones for me. I like that they're long enough so I don't have to jam them in my ear like the spinfits (and final audio tips). It might be my ear shape but it's really a problem for me. The Symbio W's looked really short too, so I was worried about that part as well.
Seriously, it took 30 minutes of struggling to put them on. I even accidentally tore one of them while I was trying to stretch it to make it easier to put on. orz But wow was it worth it! I read so many threads and some people mentioned about having a super narrow stem? (sorry I really don't know what they're called) for wide bore IEMs will make everything sound compressed/narrow or something as well. Totally NOT true! It actually did just the opposite, it opened it right up, I heard a lot more details and everything sounded SO much better. Again, I am not sure if this is because of my ears but that's how it was like for me.
Anyway, I still want to improve the sound more so I started looking for cables. I don't know anything about them so I did a general search and kept looking up reviews until I happened upon Penon GS849. I don't know if it's the colors or what but I actually fell for how it looked at first if I had to be honest. Not that I would buy it because of that though, haha. I looked up some reviews first to decide. I was pleased to find out that, while there aren't many reviews for it yet... they were all actually quite good! I also read that Andromedas sound great with hybrid cables so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping they'll be a great match when they get here.
Yikes, sorry - I guess I am too excited about them that I ended up typing a lot lol.
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candlejack
Headphoneus Supremus
No problemo, thanks for sharing. But before you splurge a lot of dough on all sorts of accessories, keep in mind that the Andromeda are really sensitive to output impedance of the source and will sound:
- Zout < 1 Ohm: very bassy and congested
- 1 < Zout < 3: various levels of "just right" (depending on your personal preferences)
- Zout > 3 Ohm: very thin and trebly
And of course, as you already noted, a good seal and fit should be your number 1 concern.
Enjoy the AndroS!
@candlejack I understand the difference with high Zout, but I confess that I don't understand why the Andros should sound bassy and congested with Zout< 1 ohm ... shouldn't a Zout as low as humanly possible be what all sources aspire to ?
Amazed they didn't all tear, Just Googled them, you weren't kidding when you describe them as 'super narrow'
Also, my Andromeda Greens sound superb out of an AK70 Mkii using Balanced cable (apparently that's 3 ohm)
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I'm no sound science expert, but believe it's too do with the impedance curve of the bass drivers in the Andro. Lower impedance source gets more output from the particular bass BA being used, so keep pushing the Zout down and the bass keeps going up (and vice versa), leading to the difference in tuning.
Agree that most audiophile sources are aiming for <1 ohm these days, but this isn't always the case - the Shanling M2S has an output of between 4 and 5 ohms, for instance. I only know that as I used to own that and a 64 Audio U8 - the U8 was designed to work with "stage" sources used by musicians (typically carrying a much higher output impedance), and sounded bassier with typical sources but a lot leaner and less congested with the M2S, as this was producing the intended sound.
On a sidenote, I know 64 Audio adopted their LID technology to avoid these impedance curve issues in the current Tia lineup, so they now sound the same from all sources.
Apologies if you already knew all of that!
candlejack
Headphoneus Supremus
I'm hardly the expert here, but as far as I understand, it has to do with the fact that the different drivers used in the Andromeda have drastically different FR as a function of Zout. If all drivers become equally quieter as Zout increases, then the overall signature of the headphone wouldn't change with Zout, but that's not the case with the Andromeda. [I looked for the measurements that support this, but couldn't find them]
But I think you're right, in general an output impedance of zero is the grail.
I'm no sound science expert, but believe it's too do with the impedance curve of the bass drivers in the Andro. Lower impedance source gets more output from the particular bass BA being used, so keep pushing the Zout down and the bass keeps going up (and vice versa), leading to the difference in tuning.
Agree that most audiophile sources are aiming for <1 ohm these days, but this isn't always the case - the Shanling M2S has an output of between 4 and 5 ohms, for instance. I only know that as I used to own that and a 64 Audio U8 - the U8 was designed to work with "stage" sources used by musicians (typically carrying a much higher output impedance), and sounded bassier with typical sources but a lot leaner and less congested with the M2S, as this was producing the intended sound.
On a sidenote, I know 64 Audio adopted their LID technology to avoid these impedance curve issues in the current Tia lineup, so they now sound the same from all sources.
Apologies if you already knew all of that!
Thanks for the info, and no apologies needed
- I did know some of that, though not about the apparent response of the andros's bass drivers to very low impedance outputs... my original point was that I knew that higher Zout can be bad, especially for low impedance multi BA IEM, precisely because it could do what @candlejack mentioned ("thin and trebly"), but I always thought that that happened only with TOO HIGH Zout, and that you should be safe if you stuck with the 8-multiple rule (your Zout should be less than 1/8 the impedance of your phones). And I also believed that, supposedly, a "perfect" amplifier whould have a Zout of 0, so I always thought that DAPs having Zout of less than 1 were BETTER than those with slightly higher Zout.Apparently that last does not apply to Andros? Because their bass drivers have an optimal requirement of Zout of 1 to 3 Ohms?
And I apologize myself if this has already been discussed extensively in the thread... I confess that I subscribed to it when I got my pair of Andros S, but I did not read all of it
Thanks... though it looks quite a bit different from this : https://www.head-fi.org/threads/cam...romeda-and-nova.805107/page-268#post-13476936 .
From the above graph from this thread, it would look to me like a 0 ohm Zout should = no change at all in the original FR. Maybe Campfire Audio tuned the Andros to sound as they intended with Zout of 1-3 Ohms ? Even though, once again, from what I thought I knew, if you stick with a Zout of 1/8 or less than your 'phones impedance, things should be fine. Which should mean, given that the Andros's nominal impedance is 12.8 Ohm (at least, that's what I thought it to be), anything with a Zout of 1.5 Ohm or less should sound the same?
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