Hey folks,
I'd like to chime in the audio community. I'd like to think of myself having a bit of audio experience, having owned over a dozen iems, including the ones in the title, earbuds, headphones (ANC, open-back, closed-back), and desktop speakers.
I found the time to give a little comparison of the Moondrop S8 (S8) and the pre-2020 Campfire Andromeda (CFA).
The CFA is a bit more expensive than the S8. However, if you are a follower of Crinacle, you can see his review on the S8, as well as it's ranking - the S8 ranks higher than the CFA.
I am not going to go much on Crinacle's assessment, but want to give my own, which is opposite to what you might expect. Long story short, the CFA is a much more solid IEM than the S8.
The number one reason is that CFA is not grainy. One can argue that the S8 has more detail, but along with that detail comes grain. If you don't know what grain is, it's basically how clean an IEM sounds. Each note in the S8 produces "spikes" during the note decay. It's hard to describe, but a visual analogy is a TV left in the static screen. It's a sort of hiss, and with a moderately trained ear, one can hear this.
Each note in the CFA decay wraps up much more naturally than the S8, though one can argue that the CFA decay is a bit slower as well. The result of this is that it produces a very organic midrange. With that said, and I cannot explain this, but the CFA has a little bit of a nasally tone in the male-vocals area, whereas the S8 does not. Still, the CFA sounds natural, despite this drawback.
Another aspect that the CFA has over the S8 is soundstage height. I truly think that this is the acoustic chamber doing the work, instead of tubes directly feeding the sound. One merit the S8's soundstage has is that it images well, and not as forward as the CFA. It has a natural stage feel, like truly you are sitting in front of a stage. CFA is more holographic, wide, and due to less grain, you can "feel" each instrument in isolation more so that S8, which tends to blend instruments together due to the grain, even if those instruments are imaged well.
Additionally, S8 has glaring weaknesses, like an overly shouty upper midrange. Many people have pointed this out in the Harman tuned iems, and I completely agree. It's very noticeable, and that's all I can say. Does it completely destroy the sound? No. I tried to eq down this area as well, but there are remnants of it even though the eq.
In the end, what I can say is that the CFA is still a strong IEM. It will likely be my endgame before I find more money and buy more high-end IEMs.
And as much as wouldn't like to say this, don't get the S8. Upon first listen, the S8 is a very good iem - you get detail, imaging, soundstage. But in the end, its drivers don't produce as clean notes as iems like the CFA, and all in all you will be bothered by the grain and bright upper-midrange.
If you need a bit warmer mids etc, do it with tips, cable or deep insertion. Complys are awesome here if you like accurate.
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