[FSTOP]

Broke down and jumped on the caboose last night! Hoping the it00 is the blon03 upgrade. Now just to

 

[Sam L]

Broke down and jumped on the caboose last night! Hoping the it00 is the blon03 upgrade. Now just to

It is. But, to be fair, the blons are substantially cheaper and are super impressive for bringing such high fidelity at that price point. I still recommend the blons to my non-audiophile friends.

 

[FSTOP]

I agree, still think they're impressive actually, for the price. (I think I helped sell at least a few pairs of bl03s after I bought them early on). It's come a long way in just a few years!
Any more SQ comparisons between bl03 and it00?

 

[baskingshark]

I agree, still think they're impressive actually, for the price. (I think I helped sell at least a few pairs of bl03s after I bought them early on). It's come a long way in just a few years!
Any more SQ comparisons between bl03 and it00?

Fit:
Fit wise, no contest, BL-03 has an infamously short nozzle that necessitates most westerners to use aftermarket eartips or do spacer mods to get a good fit. IT00's accessories and fit are good to go OOTB, no need to mess around. Accessories are better than BL-03, wide selection of tips and zip case and even spare filters. BL-03 comes with some lame sackcloth pouch, thin stiff cable and tips that are pretty much useless for most of us.

The MMCX connectors on the IT100 are a bit stiff though, and IT00 does have some driver flex. I do prefer the 2 pin connectors of the BL-03 due to longevity, but the BL-03's 2 pin housing necessitates some unique fit and not all 2 pin aftermarket cables can fit it (ask in BLON headfi thread for more details).

Isolation:
Isolation is slightly better on IT100.

Tonality:
IT100 is more U shaped and balanced than the BL-03 (which is more harmanish with a midbass hump). BLON BL-03 gets hot in upper mids with louder volumes (Fletcher Munson curve), haven't found this yet on the IT100. IT100 has better treble extension than BL-03, without being sibilant/harsh. BL-03 is more warm and analoguish.

Technicalities:
From brief listening, I think technicalities are better on the IT100, maybe except imaging may be slightly better on BL-03 or on par (still doing A/B testing to confirm this). They are both single DD sets, so at this price bracket, the multi BA/hybrids will still trump them in terms of pure technicalities (though the multi BA/hybrids tend to have poorer timbre and/or crossover/coherency issues).

BL-03 has midbass bleed and the bass can't keep up during fast or complex bass movements. Bass quantity especially midbass is more on the BL-03, but bass quality is not as good as the IT100. IT100 has faster bass and a more linear bass from midbass to subbass. I find the IT100 to be lacking a bit in texture in the bass though, but maybe burn in will change this.

Timbre:
Still doing some tests, but BL-03 has thicker note weight than the IT100. With regard to vocal and instrumental timbre, still doing some A/B tests, but offhand, both have quite good timbre as per most well tuned single DD sets.



They are selling at different price brackets, but the IT100 is superior for sure. BL-03 is still a special landmark single DD CHIFI that everyone should at least try. It changed the way we view a sub $30 CHIFI. BL-03 aces timbre and tonality, but is pretty weak in some other areas. And actually if one factors in an aftermarket cable/tips to get a good fit on the BL-03, I think the BL-03 may come close to $40 - 50 USD (depending on how extravagant u wanna be), and just by topping up $20, one can possibly get an upgrade in the IT100.

 

[james444]

iBasso IT00 "burn-in" measurements

So this little snow-white beauty arrived yesterday and it went straight to my usual "burn-in" measurement procedure.

• brand-new out of box = blue graph
• after 1 minute of playing pink noise @110db = cyan graph
• after 5 minutes of playing pink noise @110db = green graph
• after 15 minutes of playing pink noise @110db = orange graph
• after 60 minutes of playing pink noise @110db = red graph

(all measurements are DF-compensated)

Zoomed-in on midrange:

Zoomed-in on upper mids / lower treble:

Bottom line: slight changes during the first few minutes, that tend to decrease with "burn-in" time. However, the IT00 seems to change a bit more than other IEMs I've measured.

 

[jasswolf]

Fit:
Fit wise, no contest, BL-03 has an infamously short nozzle that necessitates most westerners to use aftermarket eartips or do spacer mods to get a good fit. IT00's accessories and fit are good to go OOTB, no need to mess around. Accessories are better than BL-03, wide selection of tips and zip case and even spare filters. BL-03 comes with some lame sackcloth pouch, thin stiff cable and tips that are pretty much useless for most of us.

The MMCX connectors on the IT100 are a bit stiff though, and IT00 does have some driver flex. I do prefer the 2 pin connectors of the BL-03 due to longevity, but the BL-03's 2 pin housing necessitates some unique fit and not all 2 pin aftermarket cables can fit it (ask in BLON headfi thread for more details).

Isolation:
Isolation is slightly better on IT100.

Tonality:
IT100 is more U shaped and balanced than the BL-03 (which is more harmanish with a midbass hump). BLON BL-03 gets hot in upper mids with louder volumes (Fletcher Munson curve), haven't found this yet on the IT100. IT100 has better treble extension than BL-03, without being sibilant/harsh. BL-03 is more warm and analoguish.

Technicalities:
From brief listening, I think technicalities are better on the IT100, maybe except imaging may be slightly better on BL-03 or on par (still doing A/B testing to confirm this). They are both single DD sets, so at this price bracket, the multi BA/hybrids will still trump them in terms of pure technicalities (though the multi BA/hybrids tend to have poorer timbre and/or crossover/coherency issues).

BL-03 has midbass bleed and the bass can't keep up during fast or complex bass movements. Bass quantity especially midbass is more on the BL-03, but bass quality is not as good as the IT100. IT100 has faster bass and a more linear bass from midbass to subbass. I find the IT100 to be lacking a bit in texture in the bass though, but maybe burn in will change this.

Timbre:
Still doing some tests, but BL-03 has thicker note weight than the IT100. With regard to vocal and instrumental timbre, still doing some A/B tests, but offhand, both have quite good timbre as per most well tuned single DD sets.


They are selling at different price brackets, but the IT100 is superior for sure. BL-03 is still a special landmark single DD CHIFI that everyone should at least try. It changed the way we view a sub $30 CHIFI. BL-03 aces timbre and tonality, but is pretty weak in some other areas. And actually if one factors in an aftermarket cable/tips to get a good fit on the BL-03, I think the BL-03 may come close to $40 - 50 USD (depending on how extravagant u wanna be), and just by topping up $20, one can possibly get an upgrade in the IT100.

Currently listening to my own IT00 and enjoying it, but finding a lot in common with my Takstar Pro 82, which also has a somewhat U-shaped signature. I think generally I prefer the timbre and the smoother presentation of the mids in the Pro 82, and they both do the highs really well - especially at the price point - but the IT00 has a smidge more bass quantity, particularly the low-bass and sub-bass. Separation is better on the iBasso, but the angled drivers and tuning of the Pro 82 give it a larger soundstage.

I know you haven't used the Starfield, but I'm still interested in your thoughts on the BL-03's presentation of timbre versus the graphene-coated drivers of the IT00 and (I think?) the Diamond. Does the CNT-coating make a difference in terms of creating a more natural presentation of most instruments to the point where it's worth owning both driver technologies? While I expect a step back in detail retrieval, how far back is it?

 

[baskingshark]

Currently listening to my own IT00 and enjoying it, but finding a lot in common with my Takstar Pro 82, which also has a somewhat U-shaped signature. I think generally I prefer the timbre and the smoother presentation of the mids in the Pro 82, and they both do the highs really well - especially at the price point - but the IT00 has a smidge more bass quantity, particularly the low-bass and sub-bass. Separation is better on the iBasso, but the angled drivers and tuning of the Pro 82 give it a larger soundstage.

I know you haven't used the Starfield, but I'm still interested in your thoughts on the BL-03's presentation of timbre versus the graphene-coated drivers of the IT00 and (I think?) the Diamond. Does the CNT-coating make a difference in terms of creating a more natural presentation of most instruments to the point where it's worth owning both driver technologies? While I expect a step back in detail retrieval, how far back is it?

Wow I haven't tried the Takstar Pro 82 but would be keen to try it one day. Read good stuff about it. I think it would be comparing apples and oranges when going head to head between IEMs (IT00) vs headphones (Pro 82) though. Generally the headphones will win in soundstage but might lose in subbass/isolation and possibly separation to IEMs.

I'll do some A/B testing for the Diamond and BL-03 and IT00 this week and get back to you. Yeah I don't have the Starfield though, maybe one of the others can help for the Starfield comparisons.

The KBEAR Diamond is supposedly a Diamond-Like Carbon (DLC) coated PET driver, not graphene I think. That's how the Diamond obtained its namesake. Though for these novel materials for dynamic drivers, my personal view is that at the budget segment, there is possibly some element of marketing gimmick.

I wrote this in a previous thread:

Spoiler

All these special materials, be it beryllium, graphene or diamond or whatever, needs to be coated and implemented properly to truly make a difference. In fact if you coat it wrongly it may make the driver sound worse by affecting its physical properties.

Slater has a good post here about this issue and he does have a comparison of some driver materials: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/chinese-asian-brand-iem-info-thread.820747/page-1874#post-15293524 -> see the last paragraph, if the material is sprayed on improperly or not implemented well, the driver may actually sound worse.

The official DUNU folks here on headfi made some interesting comments about the lining/material of drivers: https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-discovery-thread.586909/page-2968#post-15288735
"The PVD layer has to be thick enough and the microscopic grain pattern has to be regular enough to confer that pistonic motion beryllium is so famous for. That's why our sub-$100 products (DM-380 and DM-480) are still titanium drivers. Even the TITAN 6, at $139, is only coated on one side."

We discussed this previously in the CHIFI thread, personally I have a sneaky suspicion that at the budget CHIFI level, some of these novel material applications on drivers may be an element of marketing gimmick, to stand out from the fierce competition at that price range. For all we know they are just sprinkling a few flakes of certain coatings on their drivers instead of uniformly applying it in the prescribed quantities to truly be effective.

So DUNU says they have difficulty implementing this Beryllium coating in their sub $100 USD gear. And we already see unit variation in macroscopic areas in these budget CHIFI in terms of sound and build, so forgive me for being skeptical that some CHIFI budget IEMs can ensure good QC for all their units when it comes to microscopic application of these novel materials in the proper layering. Well maybe things have changed from last year (when we discussed it), so who knows, maybe with economies of scale and cheap labour/materials in China, these budget CHIFI companies can still turn a profit with these coatings that are implemented professionally.

Beryllium coated dynamic drivers seem to be all the rage nowadays eg Urbanfun YBF, Fiio FD1, Jade Audio EA1, Moondrop SSR etc. Not saying these beryllium sets don't sound good (I like the Urbanfun a lot), but I think tuning is more important than driver material or driver count (disclaimer: I'm not an expert, so any materials expert please advise us!)

Personally, I'm not really bothered about what material the drivers are made or coated with, as long as they implement the coating properly and tune it well (of which IT100 fufills this last criteria of "tune it well").

 

[Poganin]

That is a very strange comparison that would never have occurred to me. I have the Pro 82 as well, but I find it shouty, which the IT00 isn't.

 

[RikudouGoku]

....there is channel imbalance in my unit. The right side is louder by quite a lot. Contacted Advancedmp3players and hope I get a replacement.

No one else has this problem right? Hope its just my unit...

 

[Banbeucmas]

....there is channel imbalance in my unit. The right side is louder by quite a lot. Contacted Advancedmp3players and hope I get a replacement.

No one else has this problem right? Hope its just my unit...

I haven't. So I think it might be just you.

 

[Poganin]

....there is channel imbalance in my unit. The right side is louder by quite a lot. Contacted Advancedmp3players and hope I get a replacement.

No one else has this problem right? Hope its just my unit...

Aw, sorry to hear that. I don't think I've seen anybody here complain about that, so you must be the first of the users to have been hit by it

 

[RikudouGoku]

Aw, sorry to hear that. I don't think I've seen anybody here complain about that, so you must be the first of the users to have been hit by it

There is a guy at hifiguides that also has it.
https://forum.hifiguides.com/t/ibasso-it00-single-graphene-dd/14699/59

 

[jasswolf]

That is a very strange comparison that would never have occurred to me. I have the Pro 82 as well, but I find it shouty, which the IT00 isn't.

I should note that it's the Pro 82 v2, so the 3-5kHz peak is gone.

I can totally understand you calling the original version shouty and sharp.

 

[Poganin]

I can totally understand you calling the original version shouty and sharp.

Fair enough. I didn't know there was a new revision to the model since I stopped using them.

 

[Robius]

Just bought IT00 and now I'm looking for a nice looking cable. I was thinking since it's stock cable is copper I should get a silver one. What would you suggest?