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Hello,
I've come back to this Forum after many months (been very busy with work) and was pleasantly surprised to see this thread!
Some of you, like James444, will know of my passion for FAD. For those who are not familiar, I have owned the 1601SB for two years, and the BA-SS for the past one year. I enjoy them both immensely, especially the BA-SS - for me it's the perfect IEM, so satisfying that I have not been tempted to even think of any other.
Having read thru this entire thread, just one point I'd like to make is that I agree with James - I did not find that much difference between the 1601SB and SS - the SS was slightly more refined, the SB, in my opinion at least, had better bass. I listened the 1601SC too - that one was highly refined but for my taste, slightly light weight in the bass. That's just my opinion, others would perceive the differences differently I guess...
James, I look forward to your impressions of the 1602!
Hello and welcome back firoze!
So I've been going back and forth between the 1601s and 1602s for some time and find myself constantly struggling for words to describe their differences adequately and at the same time do these very special phones justice. Yes, I could be talking about how FAD not only brazenly ignored to address the 1601s' weaknesses and went ahead to make the 1602s sound even more off-beat. I could rant about how the 1601s at least had a massive soundstage to accompany their shamelessly mid-centric presentation and how the 1602s even deprive you of this and at times make you feel like
Nipper, poking your snout into one of those old horn-speaker's openings. I could go on about strange echoes and resonances from their metal housings and how I could EQ the 1601s to a pretty decent "normal" sound signature, but would fail miserably at doing the same with the 1602s, 'cause they just seem to throw an all-enveloping veil of nostalgia over everything I listen to. I could... but that would mean to completely miss the point.
The truth is, much like MuppetFace and music_4321 have said, that you have to accept these Final Audios for what they are, not fight them. If you don't feel comfortable with spending that much money for something so idiosyncratic, then please do yourself a favor and stay away from their 160x models.
So, since I'm obviously at a loss for words, why not let pictures do the talking?
Here's how a real street scene might look like - and any accurate, true-to-the-source type of phone would render it just like that:
Here's how the 1601 would render the same scene, the very highs and lows shifted towards a colorful, glowing midrange:
And finally, the 1602s: that strange midrange glow's still there and probably even more intense, but everything's tinted in sepia, like an old movie or photograph:
Disclaimer: of course, none of this is to be taken literally and in reality the 1601s and 1602s sound much closer to each other than the pictures would suggest.
In fact, this is not so much an attempt to visualize sound signatures as an illustration of how I'd envision these pictures while listening to said phones.
Am I still making sense to you? I fear not. But then again, take a closer look at the pics...
