Right now i'm in weird state of CRA is pretty damn good for me, but it didn't still click with me.
ZexPro have its issues that i bitch a lot but it impresses me more than CRA now.
That being said, i'm still using default equip of CRA.
Even Aria require me to mod it a bit and get the full gear to make it great for me.
So, what are your cables and eartips that you use for your CRA?
Cables do not matter, in my limited experience. I use 2.5 balanced with a good resistance and comfort. I was rotating few purely for aesthetics. Moreover, I would be more concerned with the subjectivity of those hearing cables without any factual evidence, personally.
Tips - wide bore, similar to Spiral dots, I tried Spiral dots.
ZEX pro are also not perfect for me, but I would prefer them to CRA if I had only two those IEMs.
I would not agree easily, I really like KZ V-shape in general, and AS16, that are not generally popular with its treble boost, are one of my favourite IEMs.
CRA sound brittle to me, some mids feel thin and coupled with the 5K boost that does not work for me (I do use wide-bore tips and do have a seal etc to refute the "dismissal of antihype"
P. S. Are CRA great for $12 - absolutely!
Do they beat everything under $50 or even $25 - definitely, no to me.
Hmm personally, i don't find CRA brittle or anything at all, 5k peak do hits but it gentle enough to not intrude anything in the song. But CRA is a little picky about the song you played
Right now i'm in weird state of CRA is pretty damn good for me, but it didn't still click with me.
ZexPro have its issues that i bitch a lot but it impresses me more than CRA now.
That being said, i'm still using default equip of CRA.
Even Aria require me to mod it a bit and get the full gear to make it great for me.
So, what are your cables and eartips that you use for your CRA?
Right now i'm in weird state of CRA is pretty damn good for me, but it didn't still click with me.
ZexPro have its issues that i bitch a lot but it impresses me more than CRA now.
That being said, i'm still using default equip of CRA.
Even Aria require me to mod it a bit and get the full gear to make it great for me.
So, what are your cables and eartips that you use for your CRA?
without EQ i'll probably take the ZEX Pro too, over CRA and DQ6S. Overall pretty much just the slightly more 3k energy and less 8k peak for my ears. Though i have to mention too that my first ZEX Pro and the CRN branded one I got later sounding slightly different with the first one being more balanced with a tiny bit less bass, and noticeably less 8k peak. With the higher 8k on CRA, it hits me even harder for my ears, so i find it a bit hard to handle. Though with EQ, the CRA is probably my pick though. The treble region sound more natural and less "off" compared to ZEX Pro to me, and I feel like technical performance is still a bit better than the other 2 overall while being much cheaper.
I'm running this EQ settings in poweramp for CRA. not going to swear by it or what since it was just some pretty quick tweaks I did on the go to make them more enjoyable for my own taste, and could probably still use more refinement.
I recently purchased several iems, like Dunu zen / Falcon pro, fiio fh7, Timeless for classical orchestral music, which are expensive than Kz Ast that I carried along my journey.
Yesterday I happened to listen to Chopin pinano concerto 2 through Fiio Btr5 with KZ AST that supprized me of the musicality and sound quality of strings embedded in piano sound. That emotion through AST was so impressive that I returned home and tried with all other iems above with full desk top chains like topping d90se / topping a90.
However I didn't get that musicality through any of other iems but KZ AST with humble Fiio btr5.
This forces me rethinking for iems for music listening, so that the sound quality might not be proportion to the price I paid for.
The balance of orchestral instrument was so balanced to my liking at least, and the sound of strings were well balanced so that the piano playing was so much expressive in cohesive way.
Those feeling with AST was exprerienced with my fellow head-fiers here?
For my liking I can only stand listening to the KZ AST after a lot of EQ applied to it. The most important factors are high end eq software, clean output of the source gear and low impedance of the headphone jack the AST is connected to.
For my liking I can only stand listening to the KZ AST after a lot of EQ applied to it. The most important factors are high end eq software, clean output of the source gear and low impedance of the headphone jack the AST is connected to.
Human ear canal structure is different each other so that the different EQ makes sense in general.
This might explain that you must believe in what you are hearing.
Why are we bound to be tied with what we paid for and what we are influenced by other's opinions aka brand?
Those are not directly related to the sound quality with respect to individual hearing structure, which is instrinsically different each other.
This is reason why there are so many threads in this forum, and so many devices are discussed for.
I recently purchased several iems, like Dunu zen / Falcon pro, fiio fh7, Timeless for classical orchestral music, which are expensive than Kz Ast that I carried along my journey.
Yesterday I happened to listen to Chopin pinano concerto 2 through Fiio Btr5 with KZ AST that supprized me of the musicality and sound quality of strings embedded in piano sound. That emotion through AST was so impressive that I returned home and tried with all other iems above with full desk top chains like topping d90se / topping a90.
However I didn't get that musicality through any of other iems but KZ AST with humble Fiio btr5.
This forces me rethinking for iems for music listening, so that the sound quality might not be proportion to the price I paid for.
The balance of orchestral instrument was so balanced to my liking at least, and the sound of strings were well balanced so that the piano playing was so much expressive in cohesive way.
Those feeling with AST was exprerienced with my fellow head-fiers here?
AST IMHO requires source matching. It sounds bad with the Fiio M11 Pro, ok with my ZX507, and excellent with Shanling M8. KZ's BAs are more comparable with more expensive BAs made by Knowles and Sonion but their DDs are still not there yet.
It has great imaging and soundstage for binaural tracks, movies and gaming. Otherwise for non-binural tracks it sounds meh.
For $20 it is a good tool for movies IMHO. Plus it comes with Final E tips, which retail around $15 USD, so imagine it as buying the IEM themselves for $5.
I recently purchased several iems, like Dunu zen / Falcon pro, fiio fh7, Timeless for classical orchestral music, which are expensive than Kz Ast that I carried along my journey.
Yesterday I happened to listen to Chopin pinano concerto 2 through Fiio Btr5 with KZ AST that supprized me of the musicality and sound quality of strings embedded in piano sound. That emotion through AST was so impressive that I returned home and tried with all other iems above with full desk top chains like topping d90se / topping a90.
However I didn't get that musicality through any of other iems but KZ AST with humble Fiio btr5.
This forces me rethinking for iems for music listening, so that the sound quality might not be proportion to the price I paid for.
The balance of orchestral instrument was so balanced to my liking at least, and the sound of strings were well balanced so that the piano playing was so much expressive in cohesive way.
Those feeling with AST was exprerienced with my fellow head-fiers here?
AST are amazing IEM for classics if you prefer strings to sound soft, yet resolving.
Source matching with AST is quite important in my experience. Brighter ESS-based sources worked the best for me, BTR5 would be in the list, not the brightest but also not AK- like rendering.
P. S. I am not sure how after CRA and ZEX pro the statements that KZ does not have decent DDs can sound...
My personal choice for this is the CCZ Emerald. Comfortable fit, having pretty large soundstage with good imaging, separation and layering. Combine that with a mild V shaped and solid sub-bass performance it makes me feel like being at the movies when I use them. It's definitely a smooth IEM, great for laid back listening not so much for analytical listening.
But I will say that this is with Dolby Atmos turned on on my devices, without it's still pretty good but it's needed to get the most out of them for this purpose. DTS:X 3D will do just fine as well. Just remember to turn those off when listening to music.
At around €25~30 it's pretty cheap and performs well.
Yeah, DDs are great but still sound compressed with multiple sounds happening. So BAs keep the crown when you want to listen fully everything around.
KZs new black BAs are natural sounding indeed. If KZ tackle for good mainstream tuning for those IEMs it'll be very hard to beat their price-to-perfomance offer.
While that doesn't happen, EQ is our friend. Talking about AST... If you listen to mainstream genres which this IEM midbass is too bloated and subbass lacking, I did a good preset to fix it
These presets for a neutral or warm source (my laptop and phone). For a bright DAC i would do less 8k and 11/12k peak. With EQ its very hard to beat our little BA monstrosity anything I own to compare is meh and less comfortable
Sad that, after HBB, I don't see anybody influential enough to do help KZ with a full-BA set, and sometimes I think KZ should just drop BA sets altogether.
Possibly Crinacle would be open to do a Full-BA collab with KZ? Heard that he was not much pleased with KZ drivers when developing the CRN, and he likely will do a v2 of CRN still in 2022. Perhaps could a $100 KZ full BA set in between make a bank for both sides?
PS: Anyway, I think crinacle said that he will take a break with collabs. So, only the CRN v2 could happen.
I am silently waiting for the collaboration nonsense to end, but at the same time I'm wondering what's wrong with their engineering group to have such lousy control over the FR and inconsistent results. I'm just not sure if it's a marketing tactic, ineptitude, or both.
Having said that, eliminating all-BA sets just because there isn't a YouTube personality attached to each one is crazy talk. BA10 is still my best pair of KZ's and also the oldest design.
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