crinacle's IEM Ranking List
Hello,
This is in response to our valued customer and member of the 64 audio family @crinacle, as well as @echineko and the rest of the Head-Fi community.
First and foremost, we are very sorry to hear about your experience with your custom N8. We want to help and will do everything in our power to rectify the situation.
We believe with all such situations there comes a silver lining. That silver lining is the opportunity to learn, to improve, and ultimately, to make our customers happy. After thoroughly investigating on our end, we believe we understand why this happened and will confirm when we get the unit in for investigation and repair.
To answer questions regarding the tuning as seen in @crinacle’s custom pair, and whether it is intended going forward, the answer is, no. This was not the intended tuning. The two sides matching could be the result of performing the same process to both sides during production. Our demo units provide the intended sound signature and we translate that signature to all custom units. The custom and demo should look very similar across the frequency spectrum.
The N8 is a special product in our lineup. It shares a tubeless low frequency dynamic driver similar to our Fourte and Trio products. After thorough investigation, we believe that the discrepancy in sound signature is most likely caused by a difference in air volume inside the shells. In the design stage the original tuning of N8 was achieved with a representative internal air volume of the shell based on an average ear size. This translates consistently to the demos because they use a universal shell that is properly sized for this average internal air volume. Early on, we suspected that there could be changes in the low frequency response of custom N8’s depending on the actual air volume of shells among different customers. However, we ran tests in the development stage that showed only slight variances among different shell volumes that fell within our established tolerances..
Although more investigation is needed, it is possible that @crinacle’s ear shape yielded an internal volume of air that is beyond the predicted ranges that we designed for. The FR deviation we are seeing from the measurement supports this, but again, we will investigate further once we receive the units.
At the end of the day, we have a customer that is not satisfied and that’s not ok. We are hoping that this initial response helps shed some light on a possible explanation while we dig further. We will follow up with the community as soon as we know more.
Thank you,
Vlad Belonozhko
64 Audio / CEO
This is in response to our valued customer and member of the 64 audio family @crinacle, as well as @echineko and the rest of the Head-Fi community.
First and foremost, we are very sorry to hear about your experience with your custom N8. We want to help and will do everything in our power to rectify the situation.
We believe with all such situations there comes a silver lining. That silver lining is the opportunity to learn, to improve, and ultimately, to make our customers happy. After thoroughly investigating on our end, we believe we understand why this happened and will confirm when we get the unit in for investigation and repair.
To answer questions regarding the tuning as seen in @crinacle’s custom pair, and whether it is intended going forward, the answer is, no. This was not the intended tuning. The two sides matching could be the result of performing the same process to both sides during production. Our demo units provide the intended sound signature and we translate that signature to all custom units. The custom and demo should look very similar across the frequency spectrum.
The N8 is a special product in our lineup. It shares a tubeless low frequency dynamic driver similar to our Fourte and Trio products. After thorough investigation, we believe that the discrepancy in sound signature is most likely caused by a difference in air volume inside the shells. In the design stage the original tuning of N8 was achieved with a representative internal air volume of the shell based on an average ear size. This translates consistently to the demos because they use a universal shell that is properly sized for this average internal air volume. Early on, we suspected that there could be changes in the low frequency response of custom N8’s depending on the actual air volume of shells among different customers. However, we ran tests in the development stage that showed only slight variances among different shell volumes that fell within our established tolerances..
Although more investigation is needed, it is possible that @crinacle’s ear shape yielded an internal volume of air that is beyond the predicted ranges that we designed for. The FR deviation we are seeing from the measurement supports this, but again, we will investigate further once we receive the units.
At the end of the day, we have a customer that is not satisfied and that’s not ok. We are hoping that this initial response helps shed some light on a possible explanation while we dig further. We will follow up with the community as soon as we know more.
Thank you,
Vlad Belonozhko
64 Audio / CEO
Alright, my 64 Audio N8 just arrived and I am extremely, extremely disappointed. Figured I should just post about it since I've already given 64 Audio the benefit of the doubt once.
DISCLAIMER: It has been less than 24 hours since I've received my custom, but my initial impressions are so bad that I doubt they will change too much over time. Plus, the measurements pretty much tell the whole story.
So originally, most of my impressions on the N8 was based on the universal demo unit back in Music Sanctuary. It was great, it was amazing, I had to have one and so I did. I wrote a few impressions (more notably in my hybrid IEM article) and just waited.
First time my customs came, they were fine. They weren't completely perfect; it was a little thicker and heavier (sound wise) compared to the demo unit but nothing too major. The subbass still had its exceptional reach and decay and the mids/treble was fine, except from channel imbalance in the 2-5k region. So okay, I can still kind of live with the channel imbalance, but hey I paid good cash for it. So I decided to have it sent back and fix up the channel imbalance.
And here we are. The second round. And boy, it's bad; well, bad relative to what I expected anyways. YES, the channel matching is now basically perfect. Unfortunately, now it sounds like a typical generic hybrid with one-note bass, which is definitely not what I paid for. I paid for the thing I heard back in MS, not... this. Now there's a midbass hump and the subbass is barely articulated even on my bass-specific test tracks. I don't even feel the desire to listen to this; the FiiO F9 gets me better bass for crying out loud.
I usually don't post graphs in this thread but I think it visualises exactly what is going on here.
I'll definitely be sending this back again if 64 Audio accepts yet another RMA. But at this point, I can't even recommend anyone get an N8 due to all these inconsistencies. And hell, I'll have to wait another 2 months just to get my N8 fixed if it even gets properly fixed at all. If they can't, well, I'll just have to vote with my wallet and just eat the reshell + depreciation costs by selling it.
Current unit
Current unit (red) vs demo unit (green)
Current unit (green) vs pre-RMA unit (red)
There will also be a "stealth" readjustment of the ranking based on what I'm hearing with this custom unit in the coming days. Only fair after all.
@crinacle Vitaliy (our founder) and I would like to setup a video chat with you to talk about your experience while your N8's are on there way back to us. I'll PM details.
Full transparency update:
At the request of Lark Studios, I will be removing their entry from the list as they claim that the demo unit I heard in Music Sanctuary was not the final tuning. I will revisit it whenever the final production demo units become available.
At the request of Lark Studios, I will be removing their entry from the list as they claim that the demo unit I heard in Music Sanctuary was not the final tuning. I will revisit it whenever the final production demo units become available.
Fastknight45
Head-Fier
Nice to see 64 audio support coming in strong
BananaOoyoo
1000+ Head-Fier
I got a chance to briefly try both the early and final LSX (final one is available at a local distributor, and someone happened to have the older tuning with him when I visited once) - while I did personally prefer the finalized version, I didn't think it was anything game-changing compared to the original.
I do love how they don't charge for customization options though. With most CIEM companies, that can add up really fast.
Campfire Solaris fan bois confirmed. Solaris ranked B-
DaveStarWalker
Headphoneus Supremus
Solaris or PO-laris ? 
It seems to me that many audio guys are so hard on the latest CA's IEMs :-/ Is Andomeda still so-called flagship (technically and soundwise) among CA's IEMs?
NickleCo
Previously known as DatDudeNic
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2016
- Posts
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- 1,516
between vega and andro id take andro any day.
BananaOoyoo
1000+ Head-Fier
I'd also take Andromeda over Atlas/Vega any day. Early reviews are really high on Solaris, however, so am reserving judgment on that.
Ye, the Vega's bass strict orientation will remain at the top compared to other CA's IEMs for a long time :-D
Solaris probably needs more reviews. My only almost certain conclusion from what I've read and saw in the photos is that the fit is veryyy tricky
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