This is my first impression on N6, I am using a not-so-popular in-ear monitor Flat 4-Kuro as that is my daily earphone, if you are want to find out more about this headphone, you can check it out:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/663725/ocharaku-flat4-kuro-appreciation-thread
To make it easier to compare the performance of N6 against different player and headphones, I have shortlisted the following 10 tracks and put them into a designated order within a folder in my TF card, a few of these tracks are coming from popular Chinese music or HiFi sampler from Hong Kong, they probably are not a familiar choice to you guys, I’ll provide an online link whenever possible.
1. The Eagle, Hell Freeze Over, Track 6 - Hotel California
2. Naum Starkman – Chopin Piano Works, Track 2 - Scherzo for Piano No.2 in B Flat Minor, Op 31, CT.198
3. Carol Kidd, All my tomorrow, Track 6 - When I Dream
4. Tsai Chi, Folk Song (蔡琴民歌), Track 10 Just Like Your Tenderness(恰似你的溫柔)
5. Harry Belafonte at Carnegie Hall, Track 7 - Jamaica Farewell
6. (Guitar) Antonio De Lucena, Guitarra Clasica Espanola, Track 3 – Carman
7. (Harmonica) FIM sampler, Audiophile Reference 2: Popular Music, Monteiro, Jeremy & His Orchestra, Track 15 - Alone in My Chamber(獨上西樓)
8. (Violin) XUE Wei, The Romance Of Cremona (名琴名曲), Track 7 - Meditation (Massenet)
9. (Drum) YIM Hok Man (閰學敏), Poems of Thunder or Mater of Chinese Percussion (炎黃第一鼓), Track 1 - Poem of Chinese Drum (鼓詩)
10. Karajan with Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, Karajan Gold, Disc 2, Track 2 - Beethoven: Symphony #5 In C Minor, Op. 67 - 1. Allegro Con Brio
Hotel: N6 can drive and control the Kuro satisfactory. Kuro has four 10mm dynamic drivers in total, two in each side. I won’t call it a bass head but it does offer a lot of bass, especially if your amplifier is not “tight” enough in the bass department. I have tried quite a few DAP with Kuro, I am impressed with N6 on this area particularly and rate it as the best (i.e. not one of the best) I have laid my hand on, and that included the famous DX100 and the very expensive AK240. I have compared N6 against DX100 side by side on this track and prefer the soundstage, imaging, separation, detail and density of N6, DX100 excels on the high and low end extension, punch and transient. N6 makes you feels everything is in good order, you can hears the guitars line up one by one right in front of you. On the other hand, DX100 makes you feel the strength and the overall presentation is more up-front.
Naum Starkman (Chopin - Scherzo No. 2 in B flat minor, Op. 31) is definitely my favorite reference track in equipment audition and to compare system before and after certain tweak (e.g., changing a cable). Naum almost hit all the key on the Boaendorfer in the first minute, so if you are familiar with the track, you can immediately tell whether a system is balanced in sound, or whether a tweak is working as intended. The N6 and Kuro pair certainly pass this track with a fuzz, I would say the bass is still a little more than desirable but this won’t affect music enjoyment, and maybe this will improve the popularity from audiophiles. The can hear the piano keystrokes tail off very gradually as a percussion instruction should sounds like. My only concern on this track is that N6 sounds a bit polite in the overall presentation, I’ll appreciate more authority when the player strike really hard on the piano key.
Vocal is always the most important part of my daily listening so I always move into vocal tracks immediately after I have a general understanding of the equipment. Carol Kidd and Tsai Chi are my choice of female vocal test track. Tsai Chi probably is not a well-known singer outside Asia, I’ll describe her as Barbra Streisand in Chinese community. This is one of her signature track and you are welcome to check it out if you are interested:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cGvl7Aw_KU&list=PLvFdmVAbDIcE7ugq-F7nCi2O_X1x_Z5YY&index=4
The guitar from When I Dream is my checkpoint on vocal/music balancing; the bass string of this track can easily overwhelmed and affected the emotions and essence of the song. N6 again demonstrate amazing handling capability. Both Kidd and Tsai Chi are warm and smooth from N6 and not the very sweat-sounding type of vocal presentation, the emotion is there and is slightly glorified, Kidd is slimed and Tsai Chi seems a little bit younger then what I previously heard. I am very impressed that Chinese DAP finally go beyond the norm of powerful and dynamic sound signature and move into a more refined and delicate sound signature.
Jamaica Farewell from Belafonte is remarkably good from N6, I actually prefer the male vocal from N6 more than the Divas. You can almost feel the aspirate and laryngeal movement as have the singer right in front of you, and the ambience from Carnegie Hall is reproduced very well, if the double bass can be trim off just a little bit, I’ll call it my reference of this particular track with my IEM experience.
I switched to Acoustic Instruments immediately after I finished my Vocal tracks, and I have picked music pieces from guitar, harmonica and violin. I want to check out the fidelity, harmonic and micro-dynamic of the equipment through these tracks. To summarize, I think N6 is slightly lacking on the high frequency extension but shined in fidelity, you can hear rich and detail harmonic from all three instruments, I can feel the bouncing from guitar strings, the resonance from wood chamber of the violin and the vibration of metal plates inside the harmonica clearly. I was drag into the music within seconds and I credit these to the outstanding handling and control of N6 once again.
I always include a drum track in my audition; this is the ultimate test in dynamic and low frequency department. The track I frequently used is this drum solo composed by Tan Dun (譚盾), a Chinese contemporary classical composer and conductor, most widely known for his scores for the movies Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon as well as composing music for the medal ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This is THE drum track in Hong Kong audiophile community, I have located a Youtube demo but turst me, the dynamic is compressed and you are not hearing the original dynamic of the drum properly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwK3HFKAOzY&list=PL7xBDhzUtrx3luthmATPLjpqH2ameAigY&index=5
I was a bit worried before I try this track as N6 tends to be a bit polite, can it live through this ultimate test? Well, it indeed is not the strongest and fiercest version I heard, but the dynamic is beautiful, you won’t find the slightest sign of compression throughout the 10 minutes drum solo, at time, I can almost visualized the drum master hit at the middle of drum hard, and then the low frequency gradually roll out from the complete drum surface. Big drum is always the weak link with in-ear monitors and this combo offers something closest to a full-size headphone in my experience.
How can we miss the orchestral tracks, especially when N6 demonstrate very good soundstage and instrument reproduction in previous tests? I picked Karajan’s Beethoven: Symphony #5 because both conductors and the music piece are very popular among audiophiles. I definitely recommend N6 to Classical lovers, the soundstage and imaging are the strong suit of N6 and that is a no-lose situation on classical music already. The dual 1792A offers a lot of information, but you won’t feel buried by the detail. The BTL circuit offers the best separation you can expect from a DAP, so what more can you expect from a portable player in terms of audio performance?
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If I didn't find any obvious error in this impression, I'll update this to my page 1 opening post tomorrow, English is not my first language, so all comment are welcome, especially if you spot any typo or language mistake in my writing.
By the way, how can I embed a youtube window in my posts? I have two youtube links here and I tried the video icon but is not working very well, I had done that before but lost touch on that already.
