For those enjoying their Oriolus Traillii in this thread, here's some interesting stories about the somewhat obscure brand. (Feel free to add more details or correct me if you know more!) Despite the fact that they market themselves as a Japanese brand in overseas markets, they're well known by the Chinese audiophile community as "Mini-Audio" or "The Old Man's Workshop" (more about the origin of the names in a bit), a small company specialized in Hi-Fi audio gears in the magical town of Shenzhen. Just take a look at their actual official website: http://www.mini-audio.com/miniaudio/, it's rather... "unassuming".
I don't know whether Oriolus is trying to play into the stereotype consensus where Japan and Germany are the "countries of craftsmanship" (it's probably not needed though, considering how HiFiMan etc. were able to make their name without the sugarcoating), or Cyras or Hibino actually has teams that contribute to R&D, but the founder of Oriolus, Rao You Liang, is most definitely the lead engineer behind Traillii. I recently read an article about Rao, after being blown away by Traillii in an audition: https://post.smzdm.com/p/a78eo3ql/, thought I should translate and share a few takeaways here.
First off, the "old man" himself (he'll be 52 this year) in his workshop:
And the place where he does his research:
1. He was nicknamed "the old man" by his colleagues in his early career because his family name "Rao" and the word "Lao" (meaning "old") are (a bit) homophonous, and he had a balanced attitude towards work (like a senior). He kind of accepted the nickname and has been using it himself since.
2. His company's branding is a bit messy (he has used Mini-Audio, Raosound Studio, The Old Man's Audio Workshop, and Oriolus), because he's been running a small business for years and thus he wasn't incentivized to build brand awareness back then (and he couldn't register the "mini audio" name he seemed to prefer due to legal reasons). He has mostly settled on the Oriolus name these days, although he still prints "Raosound Studio" and "The Old Man's Audio Workshop" on products on sale in China probably because the community is very familiar with them by now.
3. His products are a bit controversial within the Chinese audiophile community, but he doesn't care that much about public opinions (probably explains the pricing of Traillii and why he didn't launch it officially in China). In fact, his company doesn't have a marketing department at all, which might explain Traillii's humble packaging. He dedicates most of his resources to R&D and manufacturing, and leaves almost everything else to agents (Cyras, MusicTeck, etc.). He believes he should focus on making good products and letting them "speak for themselves", and "we can't cater for everyone, who has the freedom to choose, but the ones that love our products".
4. I saw some headfi-ers exclaimed over how Traillii could outshine many competitors without proprietary tech. In Rao's own words, he believes most of the Hi-Fi gear manufacturers don't actually own real core technologies because they're limited to downstream development; all they're doing (including his) is essentially customizations over what component manufacturers provide them (very true IMHO in many cases, although I’d still like to point out exceptions such as 64 Audio’s Apex tech, which vastly improves wearing comfort over long period of time). His team tries their best to keep in sync with the latest technologies upstream offers and research how to adapt them for their products. For instance, they got their hands on the electrostatic tweeters the moment Sonion announced the first version.
5. It's actually quite interesting to see Traillii included only BA and ES, considering Rao claimed in the late 2018 interview that "BA will never sound like DD", although he followed that he would still explore full BA architecture, with Oriolus Mellianus as an example (as some may know, Mellianus, or "the Silver Oriole", is their previous flagship IEM in 2018). We can see that Rao eventually followed Sonion's guidance on a BA + ES architecture in his next flagship Traillii, but tuned the BAs to a point where they sound very close to good DDs (IMO this is one heck of an achievement).
6. Rao actually care(d) about pricing! He said in the 2018 interview that "we'll also feel sorry for our customers if we priced (Oriolus Finschi) too high (because of cables)" (lol). He also believes in cables (another mystery solved lol), saying the reason he didn't include a cable with mic for Finschi, which mostly targets smartphone users, was "they mostly don't sound great, also custom ones are very expensive".
I don't know whether Oriolus is trying to play into the stereotype consensus where Japan and Germany are the "countries of craftsmanship" (it's probably not needed though, considering how HiFiMan etc. were able to make their name without the sugarcoating), or Cyras or Hibino actually has teams that contribute to R&D, but the founder of Oriolus, Rao You Liang, is most definitely the lead engineer behind Traillii. I recently read an article about Rao, after being blown away by Traillii in an audition: https://post.smzdm.com/p/a78eo3ql/, thought I should translate and share a few takeaways here.
First off, the "old man" himself (he'll be 52 this year) in his workshop:
And the place where he does his research:
1. He was nicknamed "the old man" by his colleagues in his early career because his family name "Rao" and the word "Lao" (meaning "old") are (a bit) homophonous, and he had a balanced attitude towards work (like a senior). He kind of accepted the nickname and has been using it himself since.
2. His company's branding is a bit messy (he has used Mini-Audio, Raosound Studio, The Old Man's Audio Workshop, and Oriolus), because he's been running a small business for years and thus he wasn't incentivized to build brand awareness back then (and he couldn't register the "mini audio" name he seemed to prefer due to legal reasons). He has mostly settled on the Oriolus name these days, although he still prints "Raosound Studio" and "The Old Man's Audio Workshop" on products on sale in China probably because the community is very familiar with them by now.
3. His products are a bit controversial within the Chinese audiophile community, but he doesn't care that much about public opinions (probably explains the pricing of Traillii and why he didn't launch it officially in China). In fact, his company doesn't have a marketing department at all, which might explain Traillii's humble packaging. He dedicates most of his resources to R&D and manufacturing, and leaves almost everything else to agents (Cyras, MusicTeck, etc.). He believes he should focus on making good products and letting them "speak for themselves", and "we can't cater for everyone, who has the freedom to choose, but the ones that love our products".
4. I saw some headfi-ers exclaimed over how Traillii could outshine many competitors without proprietary tech. In Rao's own words, he believes most of the Hi-Fi gear manufacturers don't actually own real core technologies because they're limited to downstream development; all they're doing (including his) is essentially customizations over what component manufacturers provide them (very true IMHO in many cases, although I’d still like to point out exceptions such as 64 Audio’s Apex tech, which vastly improves wearing comfort over long period of time). His team tries their best to keep in sync with the latest technologies upstream offers and research how to adapt them for their products. For instance, they got their hands on the electrostatic tweeters the moment Sonion announced the first version.
5. It's actually quite interesting to see Traillii included only BA and ES, considering Rao claimed in the late 2018 interview that "BA will never sound like DD", although he followed that he would still explore full BA architecture, with Oriolus Mellianus as an example (as some may know, Mellianus, or "the Silver Oriole", is their previous flagship IEM in 2018). We can see that Rao eventually followed Sonion's guidance on a BA + ES architecture in his next flagship Traillii, but tuned the BAs to a point where they sound very close to good DDs (IMO this is one heck of an achievement).
6. Rao actually care(d) about pricing! He said in the 2018 interview that "we'll also feel sorry for our customers if we priced (Oriolus Finschi) too high (because of cables)" (lol). He also believes in cables (another mystery solved lol), saying the reason he didn't include a cable with mic for Finschi, which mostly targets smartphone users, was "they mostly don't sound great, also custom ones are very expensive".
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