Hello all,
I’ve taken delivery of my CL2 and am loving them despite only having about 25hrs on them. I’ve heard enough to draw some conclusions and also come up with a hypothesis on why they are such a marmite IEM.
First, some background on my biases and prejudices. I apologise if some of this sounds like a rant and if it is ill informed, please go easy on me and correct me gently!
My main area of listening experience is with what most would consider to be a serious full size rig (Wadia CDP/DAC, Modwright Valve preamp, EAR 509 valve mono blocks feeding Quad ESL989 electrostatic speakers). I prize a liquid and organic sound with a natural timbre. I have played in orchestras and attended enough live concerts to know what a real instrument or performance sounds like.
My headphone experience includes 2 years with hifi man RE01 followed by the last 4 years with Earsonics SM64. I’m not a gear-head so I don’t chop and change equipment lightly.
I’ve had to look into a replacement for my SM64s as I was getting an intermittent problem on one channel. I have auditioned the Earsonics ES3 and InEar SD2 and SD5 as potential replacements.
What has surprised me, coming back to the headphone forae, is how far away from the reproducing the intent of the recording a lot of the products have become. The ethos and approach is totally different to the full size side of things. For example, EQ is anathema to me. So is the idea of V or U shaped tuning. Outside the headphone world, it’s called ‘loudness’ and is performed by the press of a button on cheap Japanese boom boxes. I also don’t subscribe to the idea that a product can be good but only suitable for certain genres of music. If it can’t reproduce everything with aplomb then it can’t be good.
I also find the focus on soundstaging and separation to be an understandable but misleading preoccupation with headphones. It’s understandable because the presentation of headphones ‘inside your head’ makes it easier to analyse the soundstage. It’s misleading because nobody goes to a concert and picks out the instruments’ and vocalists’ positions - because you can’t; the room interaction gets in the way. What seems to have happened is that products now have an over emphasised bass, and major in detail and separation but in the process have lost the musical message by concentrating on the hifi. The fact that Chord is so well regarded makes me wince (and yes, I’ve heard the mojo).
The final thing I find utterly perplexing is the assumption that more BA drivers = better. In the full size speaker world, few drivers = better.
Which brings me to the CL2. One driver. That’s it. I recognised the sound signature instantly - just like that of my Quad ESLs. The music is presented as if cut from the same sonic cloth. There is no crossover to get in the way, no difference in timbre between drivers. No interference, no distortion. The bass is also much more natural and true to life.
Most consumers don’t know what real bass sounds like. They have been conditioned to box colourations and this is why ‘popular’ IEMs with ‘fun’ tuning have a boosted bass response. I will never buy another Earsonics product again if the ES3 is now representative of their ‘house’ sound. It’s a travesty.
And I think this is where people are hearing the CL2 as ‘peaky’. The ability of the driver to go very loud very cleanly is prompting people to listen at higher volumes than normal to get their expected bass punch. What that does is it makes the treble too loud to bear and is crossing a pain threshold.
From what I can tell from sonion’s application notes, the FR that RHA has endowed the CL2 delivers a notionally flat response in the ear. I am certainly not hearing the peakiness that some complain of.
What I am loving about the CL2 is that it captures the performance of the artist. Sure, the hifi attributes are there, but they also gel to immerse you in the performance as a whole and transport you into the emotion of the music. In contrast, the SD5 was supremely competent in extracting all the detail of the performance but it felt like the performers were not in the same band and remained separate. There was no musical ‘whole’.
The CL2 succeeds where multi BA IEMs fail due to the crossoverless top to bottom coherence that a single planar driver provides.
When people criticise the ‘unnatural’ timbre of the driver, I find it hard to understand where this is coming from. Instrumental timbre sounds perfect to me. I do understand the comments about ‘light bass’. Planar bass takes some getting used to but again, it’s acoustically correct.
With the ‘theoretically flat’ tuning of the driver, RHA have created a perfect monitor for listening to your music. Unlike many monitors, it is musically satisfying as well. Not everyone likes the perfection of a freshly churned vanilla ice cream made with best Madagascar vanilla pods. Some people like the addition of anchovies and I’m okay with that. They just won’t like the CL2...
