Classical Impressions for the NRA
I've been listening to classical mostly the past several days with the NRA connected to an SPC 16-core cable on the balanced output of my btr3k, both in LDAC bluetooth mode and Digital Output mode over USB on my Linux desktop. LDAC over BT is about the same to my ears as digital out mode over USB.
One of my musical preferences is basically what a lot of people on this site would probably describe as murder treble.
For this task, my go-to device is my studio monitor overears, which I have always preferred over many audiophile styled gear for their ability to resolve crazy (some might say uncomfortable) amounts of detail while also leaving the recording uncolored. I used my Shure SRH840's on my desktop dac/amp for comparison between the NRA and BTR3k.
Yes, this is apples and oranges, but I wanted to get a sense of quality regardless of type of device or price. What matters to me is how it sounds, and whether or not I'm going to enjoy listening to them. I do not buy gear just to review. It either has a place and a purpose for my catalog or it eventually disappears and isn't replaced. I've never really been into audiophile superlatives and I prize hearing transparent playback from high fidelity recordings. I am drawn toward an active listening experience that puts me on the edge of my seat with deeply furrowed brows and looking quite constipated, just as one should when actively listening to music, like my old orchestra conductors. With a new toy in the collection, what I wanted most was to get a sense of what the NRA's technicalities are when pushed to both theirs and my own ears' limits. Any sound quality or coloration in a headphone that isn't baked into the recording is, to me, a defect or unnecessary. The kinds of folks who like tube rolling and are addicted to planars are usually a very different kind of listener than I am, which is not at all wrong or unjustified, just different. I'm in a minority, so I leave this statement as a caveat.
Today's piece is provided by the
sadist genius Dmitri Shostakovich, a Soviet composer of the 20th century. Now, before we get into it, consider that the highest fingered note possible on a violin is generally accepted to be A7, at 3520 Hz. Link courtesy
@AmericanSpirit (great resource!), visit
https://onlinetonegenerator.com and tap in 3520 (watch the volume!) Ok, now tap in 12000, then use the up arrow key to slope up to ~ 13000. These are insanely high pitches. Everything above ~4k is basically extra acoustics generated by instruments and equipment that the do various things in our brains to convey harmonics, timbre, and the "edges" to a note. I stop hearing anything over 15k with this tool. Based on recorded frequencies, noises are still detected by up to 17 kHz from violins despite the actual highest playable note being way back down there at 3.52 kHz. Cymbals are another interesting instrument, as their frequencies have been recorded up to 40kHz, roughly double that of human hearing and are still quite strong at 20,000 kHz depending on the type, strike etc.
With the technicalities out of the way here, now perhaps you'll understand why I like to enjoy this
masochism piece with parametric EQ on the treble range adjusted to
plaid levels to allow every nuance of the bows and the edge on the brass and percussion to reach my ears. If you tried this profile on pop or rock music you'd want to rip the phones out of your head immediately after being assaulted with a sibilant and intolerable hell screech. Just remember that you're not dealing with boosted frequencies in a studio recording when listening to recordings of live music. Especially for old recordings in classical music, you need to overboost treble to try to reclaim what's been lost to the sands of time for old tech and methods, and often a bottom end boost for old recordings that didn't capture a lot down in the bass and lower mids regions.
So the
torture analytical section begins @ the 2:09 mark with a bit of flute to dry lube the ears up a bit before the violin soloist resumes with sharper instruments. There is blurt of brass here, and then a nails-on-the-chalkboard sequence that begins innocently enough with plucking (pizzacato) behind the solo and then turns to short screeching jabs by the entirety of the violin section next to the solo's continued run. Brass fills in at the 3:00 mark for a few bars, providing some relief via the lower mids before the assault continues in a lower register and is supported by timpani and low, tight percussion. The speed, control, and technique displayed by soloist Nicola Benedetti on this piece is really stunning and it's a modern, very high quality recording from 2016. Listen to it ... now increase the volume to just below what hurts, and listen again. Glorious!
To my ears, the NRA really belongs with higher priced equipment when evaluating the treble
. It scales up in the same way as my C12s do in terms of raw treble detail and has what I'd estimate to be about 8/10ths of the output at the same volume setting (C12 are dangerous treble canons under EQ and volume, maybe even more so than the BA12). To (what's left of) my ears, I think strings and horns in the upper treble regions are better than the C12 or my DQ6.
If my SRH840 are their own bar at a 10, when compared to these sans-EQ and also for both headphones under similar EQ curves, I'd rate the NRA as follows against it:
| Category | No EQ for either | Notes | EQ for both | Notes |
| Detail retrieval | 6.5 | There is a lot of detail missing in the upper treble roll-off to my ears for this style of music. For rock and electronica it's good enough to be considered "detailed" without EQ. For jazz and classical, my ears need a lot of help. There is just not much air with the stock tuning. | 9.5 | Superb detailing with EQ boosted. There is nothing left on the track here relative to SRH840 that I can tell. Even the speed and weight on bow technique is coming through very good on the NRA. |
| Imaging | 9.0 | Imaging is still quite good on its own, largely owed to the superb clarity of this set. | 9.0 | the reduced staging still hurts imaging just a bit relative to 840s. TBH there's really not much more in it. |
| Sound Stage | 8.0 | 840 is already an intimate set, some say narrow. It's a closed back monitor - you're not going to get an expansive staging out of them. Even so, NRA is a bit narrower w/o EQ compared to sans-EQ 840. | 8.5 | There is more natural reverb and reflection acoustics heard in the 840s, which is difficult for an IEM to reproduce IMO. I don't hear the same sound stage in BA10 or GK10, either fwiw. |
All in all this is asking a lot out of a $24 device compared to a $150 headphone (used to be closer to $200). Many feel the 840 is a bright headphone, and there are others that say it's too warm to be neutral. That's the audio game in a nutshell. I do feel that the 840 is a legitimately good monitor on its own merits and not really designed for casual listening.
Without EQ, the NRA is just
not quite detailed enough to enjoy treble heavy classical music for me. Piano and violin concertos are going to need help for analytical listening. I find that I need to boost 6kHz - 8 kHz by 5-10 dB to regain an adequate amount of staging and detail retrieval. To get that crispiness and all the crazy harmonics on offer in the recordings, I boost 12 - 17kHz by as much as 15 dB. In terms of the driver's raw capabilities, I find my pair to be extremely good. Brass timbre is nearly the same as out of my studio monitors. Strings are rendered clear and crisp, mallets have a nice edge to the note, and the rest of the percussion section can be easily picked out and savored, like rolling a Jolly Rancher around in the mouth.
Moving lower on the frequency spectrum, cello sounds are really dependent on how much midbass is dialed in.
Without EQ I find the NRA to be great for cello pieces on both timbre and tone. Are planar hybrids better? Quite possibly. Compared to my loudspeaker driven overears it's still great. As to what sounds "full" or "thin" sounds like for viola and cello is all really dependent on the ears making the judgement, the base FR curve of the headphone, and what tweaks are there on the EQ. As it's abundantly clear by now, I don't really care much about the stock tuning, but David Darling's album "Cello" (R.I.P., good sir) from 1992 has some great stand alone pieces, including Darkwood 1, the opening track. Even without EQ this is still a nice listen with nuanced bow work and a very emotional composition.
If I enable the EQ back to Plaid I can hear all the microdetails again and edges to the bow strokes, and there's a greater sense of sound staging again. If you're into that kinda thing. Some people are, and some aren't - it's just a matter of preference.
I'm out of time today but I'd like to make a better comparison this weekend against high brass and run through some marches. I can say for certain that a quick tour through Aaron Copland standards was a very rewarding experience, and I'm once again surprised with the quality, weight, and clarity of the bass on the NRA.
Summing up, I think for classical lovers who aren't afraid of EQ and have a good source, this set is again punching far, far above it's weight. In the budget segment, I am wishing that I had a pair of HZSOUNDS Heart Mirror to compare against, which is reported to have a more neutral bass and mids profile, and still very strong technicalities. I think I'd probably enjoy those a lot. Maybe I'll nab a set during the 11.11 sale.
does sound change appears on the graph, or just audibly better? also electret is a type of mic, right? now they use same config to make driver..
