Knowledge Zenith (KZ) impressions thread
Apr 12, 2021 at 6:40 PM Post #54,871 of 63,674
Just received my ZAX this afternoon. Only took 11 business days to arrive to me in Canada. I bought these as a gift to myself for my birthday, but my birthday isn't until middle of May. Also bought a XINHS balanced cable to connect this set to. Cable hasn't arrived yet, but should be here within the next week.This is going to be a test of my willpower. Not wanting to even unbox the ZAX till my birthday. The big question is...can I wait until then? Here are a couple of pics: Many thanks to LuckLZ store on Aliexpress for shipping this set out so fast. They were shipped out within 8 hours of me ordering them. Also got a bonus set of foamies included in the deal. Sweet!
 

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Apr 12, 2021 at 6:58 PM Post #54,872 of 63,674
Just received my ZAX this afternoon. Only took 11 business days to arrive to me in Canada. I bought these as a gift to myself for my birthday, but my birthday isn't until middle of May. Also bought a XINHS balanced cable to connect this set to. Cable hasn't arrived yet, but should be here within the next week.This is going to be a test of my willpower. Not wanting to even unbox the ZAX till my birthday. The big question is...can I wait until then? Here are a couple of pics:
Its my birthday everytime new IEM coming in mail for me xD
 
Apr 12, 2021 at 7:08 PM Post #54,873 of 63,674
Its my birthday everytime new IEM coming in mail for me xD
Yup...feels like that for me too! Still, it's nice to unwrap something on your birthday...even if it's something you bought yourself.
 
Apr 12, 2021 at 8:07 PM Post #54,874 of 63,674
Just received my ZAX this afternoon. Only took 11 business days to arrive to me in Canada. I bought these as a gift to myself for my birthday, but my birthday isn't until middle of May. Also bought a XINHS balanced cable to connect this set to. Cable hasn't arrived yet, but should be here within the next week.This is going to be a test of my willpower. Not wanting to even unbox the ZAX till my birthday. The big question is...can I wait until then? Here are a couple of pics: Many thanks to LuckLZ store on Aliexpress for shipping this set out so fast. They were shipped out within 8 hours of me ordering them. Also got a bonus set of foamies included in the deal. Sweet!

i think you should have an early birthday present, even the mailman think so too:grin:
 
Apr 12, 2021 at 11:37 PM Post #54,875 of 63,674
There are lots of choices but KZ is also OEM for many of these brands so all in all KZ still gets the monies even if these brands succeed. Also, many times CCA acts as a prototype for KZ which allows them to test and get real world feedback. Especially in early days, CCA models seem like prototype for ZS and AS series. And then, they simply began rebranding existing KZ models, so this is also a win-win for them considering they're building a brand and sub-brand where both have loyal fan bases. This is a common practice in Chinese electronics market e.g. Xiaomi (Redmi and Poco), BBK (Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus), Huawei (honor) all follow this practice. This allows them to try and experiment and target users with specific needs.

With such an easy model of making reasonable money, they would hardly look for a VC. I may be wrong here but, with the turmoil in the global economy coupled with CCP's strong policies, VC investment doesn't look like a realistic scenario for them.

For better or worse, TWS is the future of budget IEMs and KZ will 100% focus on that. If Qualcomm can't supply chips to them then they will turn to mediatek, realtek, Huawei or Samsung to give chips with BT capabilities. KZ's obsession to compete in Mid-Fi with budget products is somewhat more baffling to me. Ironically, most of their premium offerings are all BA sets. They should rather tune a pristine single DD or a hybrid and take that segment by storm. With their new XUN DD and learnings from other models, it is baffling why are they only launching IEMs with 30095 across all price points.

Fiio's reason of backing away from DAP market is also because of the development in the smartphone market. Today a sub $300 smartphone is very much capable to challenge a budget and mid-fi DAP. And, a consumer would rather spend $50-100 extra to get a powerful device instead of spending $100-150 on a DAP which is an additional accessory. Fiio's rep on one of their threads had commented that it is simply not feasible for them to compete with smartphones with a budget/mid-fi DAP by using older or weaker Snapdragon chips because in terms of quality, the inbuilt DAC of Snapdragon 6xx and above is actually more than enough to give high fidelity audio even without proper tuning. And many smartphones nowadays are partnering with Dolby, DTS et al to provide software solutions to optimally utilize the power of mobile chipset. Even Fiio did that with Viper till recently.
There are lots of choices but KZ is also OEM for many of these brands so all in all KZ still gets the monies even if these brands succeed. Also, many times CCA acts as a prototype for KZ which allows them to test and get real world feedback. Especially in early days, CCA models seem like prototype for ZS and AS series. And then, they simply began rebranding existing KZ models, so this is also a win-win for them considering they're building a brand and sub-brand where both have loyal fan bases. This is a common practice in Chinese electronics market e.g. Xiaomi (Redmi and Poco), BBK (Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus), Huawei (honor) all follow this practice. This allows them to try and experiment and target users with specific needs.

With such an easy model of making reasonable money, they would hardly look for a VC. I may be wrong here but, with the turmoil in the global economy coupled with CCP's strong policies, VC investment doesn't look like a realistic scenario for them.

For better or worse, TWS is the future of budget IEMs and KZ will 100% focus on that. If Qualcomm can't supply chips to them then they will turn to mediatek, realtek, Huawei or Samsung to give chips with BT capabilities. KZ's obsession to compete in Mid-Fi with budget products is somewhat more baffling to me. Ironically, most of their premium offerings are all BA sets. They should rather tune a pristine single DD or a hybrid and take that segment by storm. With their new XUN DD and learnings from other models, it is baffling why are they only launching IEMs with 30095 across all price points.

Fiio's reason of backing away from DAP market is also because of the development in the smartphone market. Today a sub $300 smartphone is very much capable to challenge a budget and mid-fi DAP. And, a consumer would rather spend $50-100 extra to get a powerful device instead of spending $100-150 on a DAP which is an additional accessory. Fiio's rep on one of their threads had commented that it is simply not feasible for them to compete with smartphones with a budget/mid-fi DAP by using older or weaker Snapdragon chips because in terms of quality, the inbuilt DAC of Snapdragon 6xx and above is actually more than enough to give high fidelity audio even without proper tuning. And many smartphones nowadays are partnering with Dolby, DTS et al to provide software solutions to optimally utilize the power of mobile chipset. Even Fiio did that with Viper till recently.
Good to know FiiO’s rep actually commented on the DAP re-segmentation, hope they keep Android DAP series, I’ve been with FiiO since their plastic $8 E3 partable amps, and swapped op-amps of E5 back then.

I also had in same question of why KZ is still pursuing 30095s, with XUN DD of the one with DQ6, hope they come up with new challenges, like DQ6 based TWS.
 
Apr 13, 2021 at 2:53 AM Post #54,876 of 63,674
Just received my ZAX this afternoon. Only took 11 business days to arrive to me in Canada. I bought these as a gift to myself for my birthday, but my birthday isn't until middle of May. Also bought a XINHS balanced cable to connect this set to. Cable hasn't arrived yet, but should be here within the next week.This is going to be a test of my willpower. Not wanting to even unbox the ZAX till my birthday. The big question is...can I wait until then? Here are a couple of pics: Many thanks to LuckLZ store on Aliexpress for shipping this set out so fast. They were shipped out within 8 hours of me ordering them. Also got a bonus set of foamies included in the deal. Sweet!
Happy birthday in advance! :beerchug:
...Hope you like them very much!
Tuxedo Cat.jpg
-Clear
 
Apr 13, 2021 at 3:43 AM Post #54,877 of 63,674
There are lots of choices but KZ is also OEM for many of these brands so all in all KZ still gets the monies even if these brands succeed. Also, many times CCA acts as a prototype for KZ which allows them to test and get real world feedback. Especially in early days, CCA models seem like prototype for ZS and AS series. And then, they simply began rebranding existing KZ models, so this is also a win-win for them considering they're building a brand and sub-brand where both have loyal fan bases. This is a common practice in Chinese electronics market e.g. Xiaomi (Redmi and Poco), BBK (Oppo, Vivo, OnePlus), Huawei (honor) all follow this practice. This allows them to try and experiment and target users with specific needs.

With such an easy model of making reasonable money, they would hardly look for a VC. I may be wrong here but, with the turmoil in the global economy coupled with CCP's strong policies, VC investment doesn't look like a realistic scenario for them.

For better or worse, TWS is the future of budget IEMs and KZ will 100% focus on that. If Qualcomm can't supply chips to them then they will turn to mediatek, realtek, Huawei or Samsung to give chips with BT capabilities. KZ's obsession to compete in Mid-Fi with budget products is somewhat more baffling to me. Ironically, most of their premium offerings are all BA sets. They should rather tune a pristine single DD or a hybrid and take that segment by storm. With their new XUN DD and learnings from other models, it is baffling why are they only launching IEMs with 30095 across all price points.

Fiio's reason of backing away from DAP market is also because of the development in the smartphone market. Today a sub $300 smartphone is very much capable to challenge a budget and mid-fi DAP. And, a consumer would rather spend $50-100 extra to get a powerful device instead of spending $100-150 on a DAP which is an additional accessory. Fiio's rep on one of their threads had commented that it is simply not feasible for them to compete with smartphones with a budget/mid-fi DAP by using older or weaker Snapdragon chips because in terms of quality, the inbuilt DAC of Snapdragon 6xx and above is actually more than enough to give high fidelity audio even without proper tuning. And many smartphones nowadays are partnering with Dolby, DTS et al to provide software solutions to optimally utilize the power of mobile chipset. Even Fiio did that with Viper till recently.
Totally agree with the phone part, my gf redmi4 for 2016 is more than capable to sound really good. Anyways, the quantity of new usb-dongles-dac make any phone in a really nice tool, and u can upgrade them with aunir, viper and jamesDSP...

Coule u share some info about that u said of FiiO and viper?
 
Apr 13, 2021 at 4:54 AM Post #54,878 of 63,674
Just received my ZAX this afternoon. Only took 11 business days to arrive to me in Canada. I bought these as a gift to myself for my birthday, but my birthday isn't until middle of May. Also bought a XINHS balanced cable to connect this set to. Cable hasn't arrived yet, but should be here within the next week.This is going to be a test of my willpower. Not wanting to even unbox the ZAX till my birthday. The big question is...can I wait until then? Here are a couple of pics: Many thanks to LuckLZ store on Aliexpress for shipping this set out so fast. They were shipped out within 8 hours of me ordering them. Also got a bonus set of foamies included in the deal. Sweet!
Happy Birthday...hope you enjoy them.
I like them and I use them at bedtime and took my ZS10 Pro for work. I am pretty new to this newer world of Chi-Fi Iems...I dabbled years ago, now days $25 stretches way further.

I totally agree with what some have said here about buying too many of the budget models as it seems this would just be side grading.
The way these get pumped out, it is a chore to keep up. I have never plugged any of these cheap iems into my big amplifiers as I really see no need and I mainly just use mine for bedtime or on the go. I really like the sound of the two KZ's that I have and I already have more Iem's that I need...that being said I would like to try a single DD, if I could find a nice small size...smaller than all that I own...I am just too lazy to keep trying them to find the right one, lol.
I applaud KZ for making some Iem's without the names and letters and such on the shells...that is my preferred look.

Enough rambling....happy Birthday and enjoy the music. :)
 
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Apr 13, 2021 at 5:27 AM Post #54,879 of 63,674
Totally agree with the phone part, my gf redmi4 for 2016 is more than capable to sound really good. Anyways, the quantity of new usb-dongles-dac make any phone in a really nice tool, and u can upgrade them with aunir, viper and jamesDSP...

Coule u share some info about that u said of FiiO and viper?
Old Redmi series like my ol Redmi Note 3 pro has Amp in it.
It greatly help to push out the sound out of my IEMs.

The newer one like Redmi Note 5 ai didn't have one, it take serious step back in sound quality.
I ended buying DragonflyBlack just to compensate the sucky sound quality from Note 5 ai 3.5mm jack.
 
Apr 13, 2021 at 11:57 AM Post #54,880 of 63,674
Good to know FiiO’s rep actually commented on the DAP re-segmentation, hope they keep Android DAP series, I’ve been with FiiO since their plastic $8 E3 partable amps, and swapped op-amps of E5 back then.

I also had in same question of why KZ is still pursuing 30095s, with XUN DD of the one with DQ6, hope they come up with new challenges, like DQ6 based TWS.
Absolutely. I feel KZ has to experiment with new drivers and models especially in the mid-fi segment. I think they have maxed out that 30095 BA as folks haven't heard any difference of late from their IEMs. It's their DDs which are actual difference makers with EDX and DQ6.

Totally agree with the phone part, my gf redmi4 for 2016 is more than capable to sound really good. Anyways, the quantity of new usb-dongles-dac make any phone in a really nice tool, and u can upgrade them with aunir, viper and jamesDSP...

Coule u share some info about that u said of FiiO and viper?

The reason why Viper project was halted in 2017 was because Fiio had bought the tech to bundle it with Fiio X5 as an EQ effect. But since, the project was so popular that de Witt brothers decided to revive it with some success. You can read more here - https://m.facebook.com/vipersaudio/posts/1442237559181250

Till date, the driver tech which powers V4A is unknown to everyone bar Fiio and Viper500 as it is closed source.

Also, modding and rooting in Android will soon be dead as Google has started screwing around with the Safety Net. Ainur doesn't support A11 and JDSP too went closed source with their new drivers. This is the beginning of the end of rooting and modding in Android. Although I still run my Redmi Note 4 with Ainur+V4A on A10 and it serves me as a good spare DAP.

Edit - Corrected model name of Fiio DAP.
 
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Apr 13, 2021 at 6:59 PM Post #54,881 of 63,674
Its my birthday (jk)
 

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