As you may know by now FIBAE 3 is out and ready for pre-order.
https://thecustomart.com/fibae-3/
Pre-order starting price for both silicone and acrylic is 1680PLN or equivalent of €420 versus 2100PLN (€525) MSRP. This time pre-order is not limited by number but rather by time and we plan on it to last till the end of January 2018 allowing everyone, who is interested, to jump on the train. By now we received all necessary components and the IEM is ready for production.
We will be sending demo to your local distributor at the earliest convenience - again - so that everyone has a chance to audition it and make the decision in time.
Pricing strategy comes after our experience with Music Two - Ei.3 pair when we gave our customers choice based solely on sound signature, rather than dictating it by number of drivers or price.
Many have been asking me to reveal sound signature or more details about the IEM. I decided to prepare a write up about FIBAE 3. My reviewing skill might be a little rusty - haven’t done this in a while - so bare with me. I don’t want it to be a review
per se either, rather a (hi)story behind a product - of how it came be and my aims for its sound signature.
FIBAE 3 comes as a natural continuation of Custom Art’s line up. The concept was straightforward - simple design; three separate drivers - woofer, midrange, tweeter; target sound - flat, reference, but not boring.
In my years in this industry I came across variety of IEMs with flatter signature that produced unappealing, “dry” sound. While I understand that listener might want to “dissect” the music with surgical precision of a scalpel and overanalyze every bit of information produced by an IEM, my position is that we couldn’t do this at an expense of engagement and emotions - that wouldn’t be a Custom Art’s way.
Still, after months of working on the project I realized that achieving desired sound signature won’t come easy. See.. when you are trying to forcefully solve issues in the IEM you’re tuning, you start to overcomplicate your design by adding more and more unnecessary components, and still going nowhere.
I was quite set on how I want to implement midrange and tweeter speakers but the low frequency driver kept throwing everything out of balance. I had tried about every off-shell woofer on the market before I came to conclusion that I needed to approach things differently this time. I turned to driver manufacturer with a special request to create a
true single woofer with output only within certain range of lower frequencies. I can hear you asking: “but why not use standard driver and just use heavy damping - like other manufacturers do?”, or “why not reuse the same driver and filtering method from your own Ei.3 - it’s proven to work?”. Well the answer is simple - “progress”. I want our drivers to be improving on what's available for the industry, instead of having to rely on recycling same drivers over and over with designs varying ever so slightly from our competitors. Custom Art has always been experimenting with untypical (for personal audio) drivers and successfully implementing them into IEMs, that way CA IEMs’ always manage to create “not-so-obvious” sound, our customers cherish.
With the brand new woofer driver FIBAE 3 tuning started once again, but this time as a
carte blanche - all previous schemes have been scraped. Expectedly the design started to come together instantly and results were more than promising. I was happy with the output I saw on the graphs and thus first listening of the prototype began. It became apparent that the IEM lacked just a tiny bit push at the sub lows and resolution of the highs still wasn’t what one could call “reference”. Further test and tweaking commenced. One thing to note is that tuning IEMs with FIBAE technology is immensely complex task, the driver’s (and whole IEM’s for that matter) impedance changes, the driver’s electrical phase changes, the actual frequency output changes too! Add an extra driver and the problems start to multiply. I also didn’t want to add
that much more bass, all I needed was that 1 extra dB. The solution was one more time an “out of-the-box” one, which allowed me to gradually change the output in small steps, and set on the level I meant to achieve.
Surprisingly, subsequent exploring and tweaking with new set up proved that I could push a single tweeter’s output to its boundaries, resulting in crystal clear highs extended flat past hearing threshold, simply unattainable from just a single BA up till now.
So how does FIBAE 3 actually sound?
It can be described as reference without sacrificing low end punch or being harsh or sibilant. It strikes a balance between sub-lows, forward, bright mids and airy open highs. Despite high frequencies being in focus of FIBAE 3’s signature they have been shifted to range responsible for presence and airiness, rather than sharpness. This allows FIBAE 3 to retrieve details at new levels for any Custom Art IEM. Lows are fast-paced, well controlled with gentle sub-bass rumble appearing only when needed. Mids are unmistakably Custom Art’s - inspired by our flagship.
F3 takes its highly musical and engaging character after older big brother - Harmony 8.2; consequently offering high coherency Custom Art is known for.
Soundstage is open and airy with fine depth.
FIBAE 3’s overall signature reminisces of electrostatic headphones with unmatched in its class extension from bottom to the top. Perfect for variety of genres and those who like analytical sound.
I'm happy to say that FIBAE 3 stands as a new reference what can be achieved with only three balanced armature drivers.
