How does it cope with metal?
Outstanding! Speed, pressure and aggression. A lot of drivers (3-4-5 or more) can not do this as a single driver. Multiple drivers headphones need to reconcile each driver, so the power and rush of music is lost. This is probably why the FINAL products do not have multi-driver in ear headphones at all. Keep it up!
My experience is exactly the same as yours, ninaraduga !
The Piano Forte are fantastic for metal, by far my favorite IEM for metal and better than many headphones.
First, the only point where they do not shine, bass, is not bad (see my post above):
- a little less than the Sennheiser IE 800 (which lacks the speed required for metal)
- more than the AKG K3003 (fast, but awfully sibilant in metal, I can't listen to metal with them)
- way much much better than the super expensive JH Harvey Laya.
With EQ 32 Hz remains 0 (non existent), 45 Hz goes to about half normal volume, and 63 goes to about full.
So with EQ you will not miss much.
Now the great stuff:
First,
they are very fast and resolving and can handle the extreme speed of metal
where all expensive planar headphone will fail at the restitution of metal music (being too slow),
and very few full-size headphone will be fast enough without being bright
(the only acceptable for metal for me are the Utopia, the Sonorous X and the Sonorous VIII, the other dynamic ones are either too slow or too bright)
(I can't speak for the Elear yet, but this one may be OK too).
Second,
as usual with them, the voices will be fantastically beautiful,
e.g. the female opera vocals of symphonic metal: Nightwish, Epica, Sirenia...),
the superb voice of Manowar's singer...
But this is limited as often the vocals are meant to be kind of ugly in metal, and yet there the PF will even often shine with the following....
These voices...
Third,
there is this thing about the PF (and quite some other products from Final, e.g. Sonorous, but the PF beat the Sonorous in "mystics", but the Sonorous X and VIII do have full bass)
what some call magical, what I personally call mystical.
This is what I used to like the PF for:
listening to sacred music (e.g. renaissance polyphony) gives me the impression of being in heaven, of feeling God,
wonderful...
but I would never have thought this would be great for metal.
And yet ...
Listen to pagan Celtic folk metal like Eluvietie : you feel like there is a real shamanic ritual taking place around you !!!
Listen to black and you feel the place, the demons and monsters are real!!! SCARY!!! you 're trapped in the reality of these hellish places...
Listen to funeral doom and you feel that doooooomy atmosphere
Listen to epic atmospheric (Summoning, etc.), and you are in Middle Earth!!
Listen to true metal (Manowar) and you are in the world of Conan the Barbarian....
However this " magic" will not work so well for some metal genres which do not have such spirituasl or fantasy atmospheres,
it will work to a lesser extent for death
it will simply not work for trash.
[fourth]
And I am passing on their unmatched imaging (especially of the PF X),
take a live metal record, you here the singer and band members and each persons in the audience,
as if it were real.
But these are expensive items.
A great inexpensive IEM for metal is the Focal Sphear
(very fast, punchy, detailed, clean, neutral; great bass; but the highs get mixed up sometimes).
I you don't have much money, I would save money for the Utopia, so go first for the Focal Sphear,
and when you have bought the Utopia, only then I would buy an expensive Piano Forte
ideally buy directly the X. I first bought the VIII, then the IX, then the X...
same with the Sonorous : first the Pandora Hope IV, then the Sonorous VIII, then the X.