Ethereal Sound
500+ Head-Fier
I am seriously considering the flare golds but I really wish I could have auditioned them prior. It does seem like a great deal but it's still a decent amount of money.
These are all great value at the moment! Those who have older models though shouldn't feel too stressed that the Pro 2 or Gold is massively better and you must upgrade. They really aren't. One can only tweak the balance of an IEM when you're using the same driver on each one. And the Gold material per se can not do anything for the sound, its just making it look more expensive! You can't squeeze any more resolution out with a different enclosure, obviously you can make some frequencies more pronounced than others, but that is just perception. Fundamentally they are all the same IEM.
My personal opinion on these is that you can change the balance more easily by changing the tips rather the swapping the models. For me though the best ones are still the Flare Audiophile ones, of the 5-6 others I've tried.
I agree the margins are small between all three models, but I'd say housing material can make a change to the overall sound quality.
Different housings and surfaces will resonate differently, introducing a different tonality and potentially distortion or interference with the sound wave being produced by the driver. This is easier to hear on over-ear headphones; models like the Massdrop TH-X00 or the ZMF models use different wood for the driver enclosure to vary the sound signature.
Not 100% convinced by the gold plating, but the main shell of the Gold is actually made it of brass rather than titanium, so that will be a different set of resonance characteristics altogether.
Very difficult to differentiate SQ from tuning, but maybe the tuning of the Gold is done in such a way that it eliminates some masking in the frequency response somewhere.
Any way you slice it, to my ears, the Gold is a slight improvement on the Pro 2, but I definitely think the Pro 2 is very close, making it a no brainer for the original price differential.
Hey guys. Pls welcome another user with flares pro (price was too god not to get those)
Few questions.
1. Bluetooth module volume is to low... It fills like volume stopped at 50% and that's it. is it my version only or this is a feature not a bug?
2. Highs are bit piercing. I have a test song (sting Mylene Farmer - Stollen Car) Anything can be done to calm down that peak at 5-6khz? Pads change won't help.
3. They are hard to drive. I have LG v20 and im maxing my volume to hear it on the lvl i like... is it only me?
Anyhow i really glad to get those... Probably the best IEMs under 500$
So they just released a new model: Flare® PRO 2HD
yes... they added "HD" to the name, so we know it has never been HD untill now....
anyways they look real big somehow...and kept ugly Y-splitter
and my beloved old R2A and Pro1 are discontinued, and stopping their repair support as well :'(
my only chance is to wait till 2HD will be on clearance sale as well - or £100 discount on first 100 sales.. hmmm.. nah