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So over the weekend, I had about 25 hours play with the Pearl Bundle.
Didn't encounter any major issues nor any problems with heat. Latest firmware; volume issue (after some time when screen has turned off) persists but no hiss on any settings or output configurations.
One thing I did notice is the leather that's used for the case; Boy, when the N30le Pearl gets toasty, the smell of animal hide can really hit you when you're not expecting it!
So one additional observation; the Amber Pearl IEM is very tip sensitive and I highly recommend experimenting before drawing final conclusions.
If you wish to increase midbass and reduce treble, foam tips achieve this. I've found the included Xalastec tips to be good for increasing upper treble and reducing midbass (but also subbass). The stock UM tips sit somewhere between foam (closer to foam) and Xalastec tips, but for now I've been using a selection of Spinfit double flanged and normal tips as they work best for my anatomy.
I've tried the different combinations but ended up mostly preferring my original settings of P+, AB, Tube, Classic/Modern. The only thing is I now exclusively use it on low gain.
I tried Hyper and there is a noticeable increase in dynamics but honestly, with the Amber Pearl, Hyper on is like turning up the heating when your house is on fire.
I've been hesitant about whether to write this post so I sincerely apologise to those who contemplated whether to go for the Pearl Bundle or not, but please bear in mind these are my experiences and others' opinion on the Pearl Bundle might differ and also that I don't own any of the current crop of $5k+ IEMs to test extensively with the N30le (just the Multiverse).
I was really hoping that there would be other users who would post their detailed feelings on the Pearl Bundle because it would make it easier to say what I'm about to say, without the risk of my head-fi postings losing credibility but after spending around 30 hours with the bundle and knowing there is more burn-in to go, I'm going to claim that in my opinion; irrespective of what anyone thinks of the cost, I guestimate 95-99% of people would consider the sound presentation of the Pearl Bundle to be endgame... and I don't mean (along with any other IEM/DAP you can get for $13k) I mean 'I don't need to buy another system again' endgame.
Over the 25 odd years I've been in this hobby, I've seen the evolution of technology and audio but we're at such a high level of fidelity now that most flagships will offer a ridiculous level of performance... so this goes beyond just a 'synergy' thing. There are many systems and combos which have good synergy but there are very few which have that 'X Factor'. Since receiving the Pearl Bundle, I've tried to think about what that X factor is;
I personally find the Pearl Bundle to have that same particular 'X Factor' that the HE-1, Shangri-La and Amperio possess. It does what Quantum AMOLED technology does for visuals, but for audio.
Today I brought The Pearl bundle along to a small gathering where someone had the IBasso DX300Max Ti+Subtonic Storm and another the Hiby RS8+Audio Campfire Trifecta and we all tried different combos. Both agreed that the Amber Pearl bundle is something else entirely. I feel more confident posting this as at least I know a couple of others hear the same.
It will take me a long time to burn this unit in because its sound is not something I can indulge on a whim. It would feel like getting into a Lambourgini to pop down to the shops.
Anyway, I was wondering whether I'm the only one who feels this way about the Pearl bundle and I'd be very curious to hear impressions from the international show model too. Either way, if you get the chance to hear this bundle, I recommend you do because I think it might be something special.
The Pearl Bundle is what I would like reality to sound like.
Didn't encounter any major issues nor any problems with heat. Latest firmware; volume issue (after some time when screen has turned off) persists but no hiss on any settings or output configurations.
One thing I did notice is the leather that's used for the case; Boy, when the N30le Pearl gets toasty, the smell of animal hide can really hit you when you're not expecting it!
So one additional observation; the Amber Pearl IEM is very tip sensitive and I highly recommend experimenting before drawing final conclusions.
If you wish to increase midbass and reduce treble, foam tips achieve this. I've found the included Xalastec tips to be good for increasing upper treble and reducing midbass (but also subbass). The stock UM tips sit somewhere between foam (closer to foam) and Xalastec tips, but for now I've been using a selection of Spinfit double flanged and normal tips as they work best for my anatomy.
I've tried the different combinations but ended up mostly preferring my original settings of P+, AB, Tube, Classic/Modern. The only thing is I now exclusively use it on low gain.
I tried Hyper and there is a noticeable increase in dynamics but honestly, with the Amber Pearl, Hyper on is like turning up the heating when your house is on fire.
I've been hesitant about whether to write this post so I sincerely apologise to those who contemplated whether to go for the Pearl Bundle or not, but please bear in mind these are my experiences and others' opinion on the Pearl Bundle might differ and also that I don't own any of the current crop of $5k+ IEMs to test extensively with the N30le (just the Multiverse).
I was really hoping that there would be other users who would post their detailed feelings on the Pearl Bundle because it would make it easier to say what I'm about to say, without the risk of my head-fi postings losing credibility but after spending around 30 hours with the bundle and knowing there is more burn-in to go, I'm going to claim that in my opinion; irrespective of what anyone thinks of the cost, I guestimate 95-99% of people would consider the sound presentation of the Pearl Bundle to be endgame... and I don't mean (along with any other IEM/DAP you can get for $13k) I mean 'I don't need to buy another system again' endgame.
Over the 25 odd years I've been in this hobby, I've seen the evolution of technology and audio but we're at such a high level of fidelity now that most flagships will offer a ridiculous level of performance... so this goes beyond just a 'synergy' thing. There are many systems and combos which have good synergy but there are very few which have that 'X Factor'. Since receiving the Pearl Bundle, I've tried to think about what that X factor is;
I will to try to explain what that X Factor is but first I will have to do this by framing my perspective a little;
To begin with, the Pearl Bundle is not what I understand to be reference and as I've mentioned before I do not consider the Sennheiser HE-1 to be reference either. There are appropriate parallels to be drawn between the Pearl Bundle and the HE-1 because despite how much the HE-1 costs, you will very rarely hear anyone who has heard it and didn't say it sounded incredible, irrespective of the price. So why is this?
In headphones there are a few setups which have this certain 'X Factor' and can thus demand the price tags they do; The Sennheiser HE-1, The Hifiman Shangri-La Sr, Warwick Acoustic Aperio are the ones I know of. You will rarely, if ever, read criticism of how they sound nor will you hear many alternatives which genuinely compare. While there are amazing sounding headphones and IEMs with certain amps and DACs which can also reach that level, the one thing those three units have in common is they have been designed using the cutting edge of very experienced companies, carefully optimising every element of the amplifier and headphone to achieve things which clearly I've never thought about properly.
This level can sometimes be achieved by individual headphones but in my experience it tends to be when a third party company has developed an amplifier specifically for those setups; eg. Wells Audio for the Abyss AB-1266 and/or optimised amps/transformers for the Stax SR-009 are two I've experienced. It's more often heard this achieved with speakers, but I've only experienced it on systems whose components cost more than my entire headphone collection... and frankly, terrify me. I've never come close to experiencing it with IEMs. That's not an exhaustive list but that's my experience and some of you will have your own and know exactly what I'm refering to.
Firstly let's establish that reality isn't 'real' and we experience each of our realities differently based on how our individual brains interpret the information fed by our senses and neural pathways. How we experience the world differs from person to person and thus where subjectivity is rooted, however how our senses work remains the same. At the end of the day we can influence this experience of perception by choosing how we feed our senses and it is through this medium we are able to trick the brain into how it hears what it perceives it hears.
Let me define 'Reference' as I interpret it; it is the reproduction of a raw, unfiltered, unaltered signal in as high a resolution as possible. If you want to hear a reference sound then go to a quality local studio and listen to the reproduction of a recording on a perfectly setup monitor system. That is reference; it is clean, uncoloured and full of detail but I doubt it sounds like your favourite personal audio setup.
So why is that?
It's easiest for me to use visual reproduction as an example and compare it to audio;
Firstly; when it comes to films, a studio is filming the 'best' visual version of what is happening with the best lighting, sharpest cameras and perfect filters so what you are viewing is not what any of us would actually experience in reality; it is more vivid, more detailed, more focused.
The same is true with audio and if you objectively compare any concert heard 'live' to a mastered live recording... the reality of hearing is not what the studio is trying to achieve in a recording in the first place. That quality is even more true for a studio recorded song where the sound engineer has complete control over each individual element of a composition.
The aim is to produce something realistic and compelling but not real. The difficulty is finding a way to make the output sound realistic enough for us to believe it is real.
Secondly; Film editting is undertaken on calibrated IPS panels because these are extremely accurate in their visual renditions, however the high end consumer TV market is flooded with rich, super colour saturated, high contrast AMOLED panels which are not accurate but are more visually stimulating.
The same is true with audio where recording studios will use highly calibrated studio monitor headphones to master but the consumer market lies in the most vivid, dynamic and rich reproduction of this sound (delta-sigma vs R2R, Solid State vs Tubes, Planar vs Dynamic vs BA vs Electrostats) and also why your favourite setup can sound instrumentally accurate but likely doesn't sound like a reference monitor system.
Thirdly; So what do I believe is the 'X Factor' which makes endgame?
A few years ago I visited a friend who had just bought a Samsung Quantum AMOLED TV and I remember watching an 8k test video and thinking 'this looks so real'... then I looked out of the window and realised... no it doesn't. It looks better than real; detailed, saturated with rich colours, black blacks. It all looked realistic but it didn't look like reality, I wanted reality to look like this. That 'X Factor' is where you detach from the screen and come away thinking 'that just looks incredible'.
In audio; This level is much rarer but the best way I can explain it is when you hear a piece of music being reproduced in such a way that you become detached from the speakers/headphone/IEM and come away thinking 'that just sounds incredible'. It doesn't just sound realistic, it sounds real.
To begin with, the Pearl Bundle is not what I understand to be reference and as I've mentioned before I do not consider the Sennheiser HE-1 to be reference either. There are appropriate parallels to be drawn between the Pearl Bundle and the HE-1 because despite how much the HE-1 costs, you will very rarely hear anyone who has heard it and didn't say it sounded incredible, irrespective of the price. So why is this?
In headphones there are a few setups which have this certain 'X Factor' and can thus demand the price tags they do; The Sennheiser HE-1, The Hifiman Shangri-La Sr, Warwick Acoustic Aperio are the ones I know of. You will rarely, if ever, read criticism of how they sound nor will you hear many alternatives which genuinely compare. While there are amazing sounding headphones and IEMs with certain amps and DACs which can also reach that level, the one thing those three units have in common is they have been designed using the cutting edge of very experienced companies, carefully optimising every element of the amplifier and headphone to achieve things which clearly I've never thought about properly.
This level can sometimes be achieved by individual headphones but in my experience it tends to be when a third party company has developed an amplifier specifically for those setups; eg. Wells Audio for the Abyss AB-1266 and/or optimised amps/transformers for the Stax SR-009 are two I've experienced. It's more often heard this achieved with speakers, but I've only experienced it on systems whose components cost more than my entire headphone collection... and frankly, terrify me. I've never come close to experiencing it with IEMs. That's not an exhaustive list but that's my experience and some of you will have your own and know exactly what I'm refering to.
Firstly let's establish that reality isn't 'real' and we experience each of our realities differently based on how our individual brains interpret the information fed by our senses and neural pathways. How we experience the world differs from person to person and thus where subjectivity is rooted, however how our senses work remains the same. At the end of the day we can influence this experience of perception by choosing how we feed our senses and it is through this medium we are able to trick the brain into how it hears what it perceives it hears.
Let me define 'Reference' as I interpret it; it is the reproduction of a raw, unfiltered, unaltered signal in as high a resolution as possible. If you want to hear a reference sound then go to a quality local studio and listen to the reproduction of a recording on a perfectly setup monitor system. That is reference; it is clean, uncoloured and full of detail but I doubt it sounds like your favourite personal audio setup.
So why is that?
It's easiest for me to use visual reproduction as an example and compare it to audio;
Firstly; when it comes to films, a studio is filming the 'best' visual version of what is happening with the best lighting, sharpest cameras and perfect filters so what you are viewing is not what any of us would actually experience in reality; it is more vivid, more detailed, more focused.
The same is true with audio and if you objectively compare any concert heard 'live' to a mastered live recording... the reality of hearing is not what the studio is trying to achieve in a recording in the first place. That quality is even more true for a studio recorded song where the sound engineer has complete control over each individual element of a composition.
The aim is to produce something realistic and compelling but not real. The difficulty is finding a way to make the output sound realistic enough for us to believe it is real.
Secondly; Film editting is undertaken on calibrated IPS panels because these are extremely accurate in their visual renditions, however the high end consumer TV market is flooded with rich, super colour saturated, high contrast AMOLED panels which are not accurate but are more visually stimulating.
The same is true with audio where recording studios will use highly calibrated studio monitor headphones to master but the consumer market lies in the most vivid, dynamic and rich reproduction of this sound (delta-sigma vs R2R, Solid State vs Tubes, Planar vs Dynamic vs BA vs Electrostats) and also why your favourite setup can sound instrumentally accurate but likely doesn't sound like a reference monitor system.
Thirdly; So what do I believe is the 'X Factor' which makes endgame?
A few years ago I visited a friend who had just bought a Samsung Quantum AMOLED TV and I remember watching an 8k test video and thinking 'this looks so real'... then I looked out of the window and realised... no it doesn't. It looks better than real; detailed, saturated with rich colours, black blacks. It all looked realistic but it didn't look like reality, I wanted reality to look like this. That 'X Factor' is where you detach from the screen and come away thinking 'that just looks incredible'.
In audio; This level is much rarer but the best way I can explain it is when you hear a piece of music being reproduced in such a way that you become detached from the speakers/headphone/IEM and come away thinking 'that just sounds incredible'. It doesn't just sound realistic, it sounds real.
This is not just synergy because for me, synergy is careful curating a source to enhance its abilities (and mitigate the inabilities) of a particular component eg. pairing a dark source with bright headphones, pairing a dynamic source with a dynamic headphone for sonic punch etc.
A system with 'X Factor' will already have near perfect tuning because too much or too little bass/treble/imaging/dynamics will leave us wanting. That 'X Factor' is the quality to be able to pull you away from the equipment you are listening to and only hear the music.
It is thus difficult to describe the qualities of what it sounds like, because it is more of an experience and less a sound and if you've only experienced darkness, it is difficult to describe light... you are not listening to sounds which are music, you are only listening to music. It is, coloured for the ears, in the way Quantum AMOLED is for eyes.
A system with 'X Factor' will already have near perfect tuning because too much or too little bass/treble/imaging/dynamics will leave us wanting. That 'X Factor' is the quality to be able to pull you away from the equipment you are listening to and only hear the music.
It is thus difficult to describe the qualities of what it sounds like, because it is more of an experience and less a sound and if you've only experienced darkness, it is difficult to describe light... you are not listening to sounds which are music, you are only listening to music. It is, coloured for the ears, in the way Quantum AMOLED is for eyes.
I was A-Bing the Multiverse and the Amber Pearl with the N30le Pearl, and the Multiverse is 95-97% of what the Amber Pearl is. The biggest differences being the Amber Pearl having slightly more subbass, forward mids & treble and slightly higher dynamic contrast, resolution & clarity, but it's obvious they are of the same DNA however, despite the law of diminishing returns, there is a big difference between paying double to bring your system from 9.5/10 to 9.7/10 and doing the same to bring your system from 9.7/10 to a 9.9/10.
In listening, the difference between the Multiverse and the Amber Pearl is the sensation that the Multiverse sounds realistic while the Amber Pearl simply sounds real. Despite that realism, the huge dynamics make every track sound gorgeous; even poor quality recordings have an energy and realism that I rarely hear. Literally every genre sounds incredible and rich on it. Even tracks which have never really engaged me before.
I also tried the line-out of the N30le into Shure KSE1200 electrostats (which is basically a 'tool' more than an earphone) and it is immediately obvious there is a heap of texture and harmonics being provided by the hybrid tube DAC implementation. Pass that through actual tube amplification and into something with the presentation of the Amber Pearl and it's just a whole different level of 'colour' and contrast.
There is also a physical element to the experience and probably why speakers can achieve this more easily and my experience being that the few headphones that do, do so because they are large and move a huge amount of air. I was trying to think how the Amber Pearl manages this (though the Multiverse does a little too) and I think it has to do with the bone conductor giving genuine physical body to the low frequencies. The Amber Pearl's increased subbass response adds significantly to this physicality and a grand, out of head sound.
The other thing is that while I said I can see Unique Melody perhaps releasing a universal version of the Amber Pearl, having compared the Amber Pearl to the Multiverse and now knowing that 97/100 is nothing like 99.5/100; I feel the 1-2% tweaks made to the N30le in the Pearl bundle are potentially more significant to the overall package than I initially thought they might be.
In listening, the difference between the Multiverse and the Amber Pearl is the sensation that the Multiverse sounds realistic while the Amber Pearl simply sounds real. Despite that realism, the huge dynamics make every track sound gorgeous; even poor quality recordings have an energy and realism that I rarely hear. Literally every genre sounds incredible and rich on it. Even tracks which have never really engaged me before.
I also tried the line-out of the N30le into Shure KSE1200 electrostats (which is basically a 'tool' more than an earphone) and it is immediately obvious there is a heap of texture and harmonics being provided by the hybrid tube DAC implementation. Pass that through actual tube amplification and into something with the presentation of the Amber Pearl and it's just a whole different level of 'colour' and contrast.
There is also a physical element to the experience and probably why speakers can achieve this more easily and my experience being that the few headphones that do, do so because they are large and move a huge amount of air. I was trying to think how the Amber Pearl manages this (though the Multiverse does a little too) and I think it has to do with the bone conductor giving genuine physical body to the low frequencies. The Amber Pearl's increased subbass response adds significantly to this physicality and a grand, out of head sound.
The other thing is that while I said I can see Unique Melody perhaps releasing a universal version of the Amber Pearl, having compared the Amber Pearl to the Multiverse and now knowing that 97/100 is nothing like 99.5/100; I feel the 1-2% tweaks made to the N30le in the Pearl bundle are potentially more significant to the overall package than I initially thought they might be.
I personally find the Pearl Bundle to have that same particular 'X Factor' that the HE-1, Shangri-La and Amperio possess. It does what Quantum AMOLED technology does for visuals, but for audio.
Today I brought The Pearl bundle along to a small gathering where someone had the IBasso DX300Max Ti+Subtonic Storm and another the Hiby RS8+Audio Campfire Trifecta and we all tried different combos. Both agreed that the Amber Pearl bundle is something else entirely. I feel more confident posting this as at least I know a couple of others hear the same.
It will take me a long time to burn this unit in because its sound is not something I can indulge on a whim. It would feel like getting into a Lambourgini to pop down to the shops.
Anyway, I was wondering whether I'm the only one who feels this way about the Pearl bundle and I'd be very curious to hear impressions from the international show model too. Either way, if you get the chance to hear this bundle, I recommend you do because I think it might be something special.
The Pearl Bundle is what I would like reality to sound like.
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