I Think I’am off with testing these Tingos TG-38s.
I write this review based on my first batch, I will update this post as soon as I will receive and finish burning my second batch in the days coming.
My tingos received a bit more of 100 hours burning. Finally there was some kind of changement during burning process. I always used PK1 donut foams to them (like any of my earbuds).
As I said before, at the beginning, I really thought my pair was defective but after reading comments here and after finishing my burning, it looks that I have a normal one, because there is a lot of trueness and same facts as many of you.
Build quality is so far superior than the concurrence, clearly the best I’ve ever seen. Plugs and cable are very nice and this chrome color/aspect on the earbuds itself looks well finished.
Soundly speaking, this earbud is (to me) definitely not the king one. It depends on which kind of music you listen to.
I found TG-38s to be solid and excells in vocals, piano and jazz musics. But the problem is I rarely listen to this kind of, since I’am more electronic lover and I really needed some brain burn-in to get used of these tingos and begin to appreciate them. This bud is exceptional because it’s the first one that I found not needing any EQ to get very detailed highs and nice mids. It’s the first of his kind I would say. Soundstage is very good and the best I’ve ever seen on any earbud. Highs are still sibilant and can drive you crazy sometimes (which is strange because even if EQ is flat, some songs can be horrible and some very nice, so I think it would be an house casing problem related rather than the driver itself, but unfortunately, I’am bad at modding).
Another problem is the bass domain. Flat : they sound inexistent to me, so thin, not rumbling, nothing. They are also very unnatural. Amped (with the only amp I own which is the FiiO E11) and set with bass boost to +2 from it and boosted via my computer EQ to max also, it sounds better : they are finally here (hurray!) but are still quite unnatural and sounds like a “boombox”, probably the baddest earbud I tried in the bass domain. We are at a million miles away of PK1 bass level.
I’am wondering if my pair isn’t defective in the sense I have some crackling in the left earbud, the right one looks ok. They don’t saturate but with those crackling it’s very annoying.
Another problem is the lot of power needed to sound their best. They requires a lot of amp to sound their best. Even the Yuin PK1 requires less power I would say and it’s a 160 Ohms earbud.
To conclude, I think TG-38s is definitely not designed for electronic and general fast musics. This earbud is done to make some sense to emotional and slow ones only.
My current ranking so far is now as the following:
Blox TM7 (sold) > Awei ES10 > Yuin PK1 > Tingo TG-38s > Yuin PK3 (sold)