[PhonoPhi]

Reviewers are under no obligation to cover every audio company, but if there's a company that has a reported history of shady practices, misleading marketing (inflated driver numbers that don't contribute anything to the sound, glue covering driver output, out of phase drivers, etc, scummy or outright-illegal behavior) and they choose to cover it, then they would be doing their viewers a disservice in my opinion.

They have lost so much trust from reviewers over the years that they are now allegedly doing something that is objectively immoral and illegal, in many countries, to get coverage for their products.

Even if you disagree with my opinion on the quality of their products, though I understand that over the years the sound quality of their products has improved, what they are doing is indefensible unless you don't care for the integrity of product reviews.

I do not understand your main message, again, and disagree with most points. Just one - no "fake drivers" from KZ - there was a "fake report" of reviewers with mentality similar to yours. I will stop here.

 

[Griffith]

I do not understand your main message, again, and disagree with most points. Just one - no "fake drivers" from KZ - there was a "fake report" of reviewers with mentality similar to yours. I will stop here.

Let me make a simple analogy that perhaps you'll understand.

If you are selling a bag of 6 bananas, you are advertising it as a "6 banana bag" and two of those bananas are covered in hard-glue and are completely inedible, you are not selling a bag of 6 bananas.

This is what KZ has done with some of their products that they claim have X amount of drivers when a number of them simply aren't contributing anything to the sound. It's misleading marketing. I'm not saying you can't enjoy their product if one of the drivers isn't doing anything, that is subjective and of course you can, but what you were advertised on was misleading. There is nothing subjective about that, it is false advertising.

If you want to defend false advertising, that's your prerogative. I have no tolerance for it but you can spend your money however you like.

You dismiss objective data (the measurements that show out-of-phase frequencies in KZ products) and observable data like pictures that clearly show either the drivers, the pathways or the direct FR measurements from the drivers as being non-contributing to the overall performance of the product and then claim to disagree and not understand. What you seem to have a problem with is not objective data, or subjective opinions. What you clearly have a problem with is any information that is inconvenient to your belief that KZ makes good products which is why arguing with you is something I'm choosing not to pursue any further.

 

[Taila]

Full disclaimer: I've made it no secret that I do not like KZ as a company. I have not liked them for a long time because when I first got into the hobby KZ seemed, to me, like an exciting opportunity to purchase increasingly better sounding audio products at very low prices. After purchasing a few models, I came to the conclusion that they were mostly identical sounding or suffered from some very harsh or unrefined tuning. As reports started emerging of how misleading some of the claims about their products were: drivers that were present but completely inaudible, unrealistic performance claims, increasingly higher prices without any noticeable improvements in audio quality, I moved away from the brand and never looked back.

Despite my opinions on the company, I hope that some of you here can acknowledge that no company, regardless of how much you like it should ever pay reviewers to review their products. It creates a glaring conflict of interest, it's against the Terms of Service and the Laws of many countries. It should be something that most of us can agree is a very crappy thing to do. Regardless of how much you like KZ products, I think we should stand united against this practice.

Ok I must agree with you that this recent revelation by DMS is quite bad for KZ and makes them pretty hard to trust.

You might just start losing people when you point to some scandals as there’s lots of inconsistencies, things like inaudible drivers that was also found to be the case with other companies, if I’m not mistaken, Dunu also had inaudible BAs that are used for tuning or some staff like that.

The glue covering some drivers was not consistent on all copies of that specific products, this makes it not too be an intentional application but rather piss poor quality control, therefore not a false claim.

When it comes to transducer numbers in an IEM it doesn’t necessarily equate to a better sound or what you might expect, i.e the Moondrop Blessing 3 that came a few months back has 2x 10 mm DDs facing each other handling bass duties, Aful Performer 5 has 1x 8mm DD handling bass duties and it sounds much bigger than the Blessing’s 2 larger DDs.

If you follow Akros and HiFri on YouTube you’ll notice other inconsistencies and untruths from other companies about advertised transducer types that are supposed to be unique to some expensive units and then turn out to be from some budget sets. It’s a mess out there.

On rising prices while sound is not getting better, well that can be pointed out in the whole industry, after all costs are a function of a lot of elements that make out a product, such as R&D, materials, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc. And across the board at the lower prices market where KZ is competing, the sound from them and their competition has been improving while the global economy and political instabilities have contributed to rising cost of living.

Lying about better sound? Well this is just marketing, this is why we watch and read reviews (choosing which reviewers to believe), because we know that all companies talk about how their new thing is made from a nectar from heaven and blood of virgins. Some of the marketing can make the cheapest unit sounds far better than products several times it’s price from the same company . Have you ever heard when Apple presents a new iPhone? Things like “it’s the fastest iPhone we’ve ever made”, as if it would make any sense for it to be slower while they’ve already broken the speed level previously.

I didn’t mean to make along post, just felt like pitching in and highlighting how things are not as black and white as they might seem at first.

 

[Griffith]

Ok I must agree with you that this recent revelation by DMS is quite bad for KZ and makes them pretty hard to trust.

You might just start losing people when you point to some scandals as there’s lots of inconsistencies, things like inaudible drivers that was also found to be the case with other companies, if I’m not mistaken, Dunu also had inaudible BAs that are used for tuning or some staff like that.

The glue covering some drivers was not consistent on all copies of that specific products, this makes it not too be an intentional application but rather piss poor quality control, therefore not a false claim.

When it comes to transducer numbers in an IEM it doesn’t necessarily equate to a better sound or what you might expect, i.e the Moondrop Blessing 3 that came a few months back has 2x 10 mm DDs facing each other handling bass duties, Aful Performer 5 has 1x 8mm DD handling bass duties and it sounds much bigger than the Blessing’s 2 larger DDs.

If you follow Akros and HiFri on YouTube you’ll notice other inconsistencies and untruths from other companies about advertised transducer types that are supposed to be unique to some expensive units and then turn out to be from some budget sets. It’s a mess out there.

On rising prices while sound is not getting better, well that can be pointed out in the whole industry, after all costs are a function of a lot of elements that make out a product, such as R&D, materials, manufacturing, distribution, marketing, etc. And across the board at the lower prices market where KZ is competing, the sound from them and their competition has been improving while the global economy and political instabilities have contributed to rising cost of living.

Lying about better sound? Well this is just marketing, this is why we watch and read reviews (choosing which reviewers to believe), because we know that all companies talk about how their new thing is made from a nectar from heaven and blood of virgins. Some of the marketing can make the cheapest unit sounds far better than products several times it’s price from the same company . Have you ever heard when Apple presents a new iPhone? Things like “it’s the fastest iPhone we’ve ever made”, as if it would make any sense for it to be slower while they’ve already broken the speed level previously.

I didn’t mean to make along post, just felt like pitching in and highlighting how things are not as black and white as they might seem at first.

Let me just nip this one in the bud: The issue with drivers not working is more than just poor QC. Their products are often simply poorly engineered. For example, in the CRN-KZ IEM, the only sound reaching the users ears was the dynamic driver because of using too strong of a resistor for the other drivers. You can read about it here: https://crinacle.com/2022/03/07/the-crn-kz-situation/

This is not the first time this has happened. It's only one of the most recent situations but I'm not going to dig up every single case because even if I did, it would be an exercise in frustration because you'd find some other way to dismiss it.

Just as you dismissed that KZ's competitors are offering products with much better sound quality, for similar or better prices and I made no claims that they lied about sound, I claimed and I once again state that, as a matter of fact, KZ often advertises products as having much better technical characteristics and sound quality than they actually do. Let's look no further than the Krila which they say is better than any IEM below $1000 which is simply false.

You can spend your money however you want, enjoy whichever products you prefer. If you have KZ earphones and enjoy them I'm not trying to break your enjoyment of audio. All I'm stating is that KZ has a history of misleading customers and dubious behavior such as trying to pay reviewers to review their products without disclosure of the payment.

For those reasons, I prefer not to support the company. You can feel free to continue supporting them but that doesn't give you the right to spew lies or make disingenuous statements.

 

[Taila]

Let me just snip this one in the bud: The issue with drivers not working is more than just poor QC. Their products are often simply poorly engineered. For example, in the CRN-KZ IEM, the only sound reaching the users ears was the dynamic driver because of using too strong of a resistor for the other drivers. You can read about it here: https://crinacle.com/2022/03/07/the-crn-kz-situation/

This is not the first time this has happened. It's only one of the most recent situations but I'm not going to dig up every single case because even if I did, it would be an exercise in frustration because you'd find some other way to dismiss it.

Just as you dismissed that KZ's competitors are offering products with much better sound quality, for similar or better prices and I made no claims that they lied about sound, I claimed and I once again state that, as a matter of fact, KZ often advertises products as having much better technical characteristics and sound quality than they actually do. Let's look no further than the Krila which they say is better than any IEM below $1000 which is simply false.

You can spend your money however you want, enjoy whichever products you prefer. If you have KZ earphones and enjoy them I'm not trying to break your enjoyment of audio. All I'm stating is that KZ has a history of misleading customers and dubious behavior such as trying to pay reviewers to review their products without disclosure of the payment.

For those reasons, I prefer not to support the company. You can feel free to continue supporting them but that doesn't give you the right to spew lies or make disingenuous statements.

I’m no KZ shill, I have IEMs from a number of OEMs, and yes I spend my money they way I like.

You came in with clear hate for the company and I just had to remind you that it’s not clean on others either.

As PhonoPhi kept asking, I ask also, what exactly is your message?

 

[evasb]

To be very honest, I see that KZ tipped in Crinacle's toes and, on top of their blatant mistakes (PR2), implied that CCA DUO is a better IEM than Zero: RED. They're paying $1000 for a review of Krila doesn't make any sense.

Now they will feel the rage of the these people, and they kinda deserve it because Tyvan is a disaster and destroyed KZ reputation of good QC.

 

[citral23]

It doesn't matter that you want to defend them, KZ's behavior will be their downfall, period.

 

[evasb]

KZ is burning for nothing. Most of their clientele doesn't even listen to Audio Reviewer's drama, not even are in Head-fi like us. KZ should return to be a faceless company that don't tip with anybody's toes that spurts cheap crap and people will keep buying.

Their downfall with the community, yes, it will be.

 

[greymousetaxi]

kz do something dumb again? IDC!? i buy cheap iem, decent tuning, im happy. all this drama for nothing.

 

[PhonoPhi]

Let me just snip this one in the bud: The issue with drivers not working is more than just poor QC. Their products are often simply poorly engineered. For example, in the CRN-KZ IEM, the only sound reaching the users ears was the dynamic driver because of using too strong of a resistor for the other drivers. You can read about it here: https://crinacle.com/2022/03/07/the-crn-kz-situation/

This is not the first time this has happened. It's only one of the most recent situations but I'm not going to dig up every single case because even if I did, it would be an exercise in frustration because you'd find some other way to dismiss it.

Just as you dismissed that KZ's competitors are offering products with much better sound quality, for similar or better prices and I made no claims that they lied about sound, I claimed and I once again state that, as a matter of fact, KZ often advertises products as having much better technical characteristics and sound quality than they actually do. Let's look no further than the Krila which they say is better than any IEM below $1000 which is simply false.

You can spend your money however you want, enjoy whichever products you prefer. If you have KZ earphones and enjoy them I'm not trying to break your enjoyment of audio. All I'm stating is that KZ has a history of misleading customers and dubious behavior such as trying to pay reviewers to review their products without disclosure of the payment.

For those reasons, I prefer not to support the company. You can feel free to continue supporting them but that doesn't give you the right to spew lies or make disingenuous statements.

Do you have CRN-KZ/ZEX pro?
Did you test this IEM yourself?

I did and I can assure you and everyone else that all drivers are there and functional.
I dissected NRA before - was curious of "EST" claims (that is definitely not EST but some MST of a simpler type).

Then CCZ Emerald, at least my copy had dead BAs, while many praised smooth treble and good BA integration - no CCZ drama
I can point out few more IEM, where BAs were largely decorational, but not KZ (I did not touch with the pole BG** collaborations).

Now for ZEX pro, I was concerned (and was loud at it) that the tuning would be dominated just by DD and be gentle- it was not that at all.
I highly applaud Crin for his good effort with such a wild array of really budget drivers!

Why he surrended to hype without even checking - not clear to me, and his last message about KZ put me off his products for now (I felt those blue/red tinkering was already so petty, and how much one can further squeeze more out of the tuning by the curve -seemed to hit the limits.... - my limited opinion, certanly, and I do value Dioko highly as a specific reference IEM that taught me a lot).

My overall point being, with all my experience with KZ/CCA (50+), the very least they are better than your average ChiFi, including more "premium brands", like TRI and Fiio.
All other ChFi companies do exaggerate, send free reviewer samples (KZ actually did less before, and aggravating exoecting/entitled reviewers even further).

I have not watched recent "allegations", I stopped watching reviewers and read most of reviews in all shape and forms. Those "tube" reviewers seems to really desperately seeking attention to compete in the piranha tank, and not worth my time.

So I can only see attacks on KZ, as being a cutthroating competitor and bringing some havoc to reviewers "sorting out IEM by values", and not getting their anticipated samples, or getting them the "wrong" way - totally their problems to me.

P. S. KZ products are so much more real than drama of those reviewers to me, as well put in other comments here.

I am not defending KZ, I am more for aligning with some simple common sense here, since KZ is still a better part of ChiFi to me, just simpler in all its achievements and stupid blunders.

Compared to $1k+ IEM cables that need to be "believed in" and must be "experienced" to criticise them - everything else is just some silly peanutsmeo me...

What is your mission here is once again not clear to me, especially with the tone of your message, where you kind of try to "preach" something, without even having a well-defined message.

You are definitely not changing my opinion on KZ and my enjoyment of their IEMs

 

[Nimweth]

kz do something dumb again? IDC!? i buy cheap iem, decent tuning, im happy. all this drama for nothing.

Yes. That's my experience with the Krila.

 

[Griffith]

To be very honest, I see that KZ tipped in Crinacle's toes and, on top of their blatant mistakes (PR2), implied that CCA DUO is a better IEM than Zero: RED. They're paying $1000 for a review of Krila doesn't make any sense.

Now they will feel the rage of the these people, and they kinda deserve it because Tyvan is a disaster and destroyed KZ reputation of good QC.

I wasn't expecting to snort coffee at my computer monitor this evening but here we are.

 

[Griffith]

Compared to $1k+ IEM cables that need to be "believed in" and must be "experienced" to criticise them - everything else is just some silly peanuts ti me...

Is this you?

Do you have CRN-KZ/ZEX pro?
Did you test this IEM yourself?

On one hand you dismiss cables as being definitive upgrades that you need to "believe in" and try to understand how good they are, and I actually agree with you on this, I think that the impact of cables on sound quality is greatly exaggerated, but that's not relevant for this discussion.

You understand that sometimes you do not need to try a product to have an informed opinion on them, but you try to discredit simple facts I pointed out because I did not try one of KZ's products. You are going against your very own words.

How does KZ advertise the ZEX Pro?

"Electrostatic & Dynamic & Balanced Armature", straight from their product page: https://kz-audio.com/kz-zex-pro.html

The Electrostatic and BA drivers are inaudible. Would they magically start working if I bought one?

Again, I never spoke ill of how that product sounds. That's not the point.

The point, which you keep ignoring, is that their claims about how the product works and what it features are misleading, just like I pointed out in my banana analogy. They are advertising a bag with 3 bananas, and only one of the bananas is edible and this example, is just the latest of the many times they've done similar things in the past not to mention and I hate to see this brushed over due to absurd responses from fanatics:

THEY WANT TO PAY REVIEWERS $1000 FOR THEM TO REVIEW THEIR PRODUCT.

That is immoral, a huge conflict of interest and, fun fact, it is illegal in many countries to create sponsored content without properly disclosing it. Youtube also usually takes action against people that do such things because if they don't, they usually end up having to pay massive fines in the EU and the United States.

You can enjoy KZ's products and criticize their false marketing claims and shoddy behavior.

Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

 

[evasb]

Heh, it will be a long week in this thread.

 

[rayliam80]

Full disclaimer: I've made it no secret that I do not like KZ as a company. I have not liked them for a long time because when I first got into the hobby KZ seemed, to me, like an exciting opportunity to purchase increasingly better sounding audio products at very low prices. After purchasing a few models, I came to the conclusion that they were mostly identical sounding or suffered from some very harsh or unrefined tuning. As reports started emerging of how misleading some of the claims about their products were: drivers that were present but completely inaudible, unrealistic performance claims, increasingly higher prices without any noticeable improvements in audio quality, I moved away from the brand and never looked back.

Despite my opinions on the company, I hope that some of you here can acknowledge that no company, regardless of how much you like it should ever pay reviewers to review their products. It creates a glaring conflict of interest, it's against the Terms of Service and the Laws of many countries. It should be something that most of us can agree is a very crappy thing to do. Regardless of how much you like KZ products, I think we should stand united against this practice.

YAWN.

Another manufactured drama because KZ started to tune their IEMs better this year and are undercutting the market again.