radi9red
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Aug 12, 2013
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last month,my brother who knows I had a quirk for unique earphones bought me a unique xmas gift. it was a pair of stainless steel earphones -from a company - Apollo audio lab. I have never heard of this brand before, nor seen it in audio stores in hongkong or japan. My brother said this is a " heavy bass" model, comparing to other models they had. It use dual diapghram driver speaker. I was anticipating audio technical CK or sony heavy bass series type of audio output. but it was not. I will explain it more.
Her's how it looks straight out from the box
It has a black heavy duty carrying box , 6 sets of tips, a metallic/steel warranty card, product & user instructional guide, and of course the earphone itself.
My 1st impression : The earphones weighs when holding it, and putting it onto myears, I can feel it's presence. Switching to other earphones that are mostly plastic, yeah the stainless definitely has authority. however its pretty comfortable after a while and i didnt get bothered by the weight after listening to 30 mins or so. The entire earphones were made from stainless steel.
her's how it looks like. entirely steel earphones !! never seen one like this before. the tips are coloured grey blue and grey red. according to the user guide, red is right and blue is left. The cables are braided. i look closelu and there is 4 wires to be precise near to the jack.
Audio output - Hook it up to my ibasso dx50 and also Samsung phone direct. Played a few albums of different genres- mostly rock and pop. I tried using o2 portable amp, it didn't sound much different. anyway the earphone is 40+ ohms, and ibasso or handphone seems to do the job. However, on Samsung handphone , I need to swith to 75% volume .. other earphones IEMs is around 65%.
Bass & low frequency: wooo ! it is very impressive. bass is very tight and I can feel every woomph of every pop beat on my ears. it's like a mini sub-woofer on my ears. its not the typical sony or audio technical ck series where the bass is very fat , muffled and goes on forever. This stormbolt bass is more like sub bass, shorter and tight. I quite like this as it is suitable for pop and slow rock music. and I really hated bass that are overly long, fat and exaggerate
vocals & middle frequency: The clarity is good, not muffled, not fat or excessive cold or warm. Its accurate with excellent details and full bodied.Sound stage is above average. The clarity & precision is almost close 70% to my balanced arm IEM ( westone um3x and shure). Mid frequency really reminds me of my other seinheisser IE 80. I was quite surprise because most dynamic driver earphone I expect it the clarity to suffer but maybe the dual diahpgram technology helps here. not sure too, i'm not an expert.
high frequencies : quite good also, I can hear cymbals and high guitar/violin notes pretty well.it is quite natural. There are some iems that is annoying because the high is way too obvious. this earphone is quite balanced. there is no harshness or sibilance in tracks that I usually had issues with BA iems.
cable noise : no. the material is quite soft. however the cable tangle up rather easily. I think braided cable like the blue colour cable of ue900 also has same problem getting tangle.
Overall , I quite like this. audio wise it seems to do a excellent job on bass and mids. good job on high freiqnecy. . It has tight and good bass, and clear mids and highs. It has the pros of a good dynamic earphone and also 70% clarity of BA iems. recently I wore it to work and because its stainless steel and it really shines ! in bright daylight outdoor, my colleague were quite curious about this when they saw it. The disadvantage is i'm always worried that it will get scratched and spoilt the shiny stainless steel surface when I stuff this in my pocket, the black carrying box is too big for the earphone alone. maybe I got to get a leather pouch or something.
I will keep this for rock/pop/vocal/dance songs where I think it has very good performance oveall and it's also quite rare to find others using it.
The website where it has the specifications - http://apolloaudiolab.com
Her's how it looks straight out from the box
It has a black heavy duty carrying box , 6 sets of tips, a metallic/steel warranty card, product & user instructional guide, and of course the earphone itself.
My 1st impression : The earphones weighs when holding it, and putting it onto myears, I can feel it's presence. Switching to other earphones that are mostly plastic, yeah the stainless definitely has authority. however its pretty comfortable after a while and i didnt get bothered by the weight after listening to 30 mins or so. The entire earphones were made from stainless steel.
her's how it looks like. entirely steel earphones !! never seen one like this before. the tips are coloured grey blue and grey red. according to the user guide, red is right and blue is left. The cables are braided. i look closelu and there is 4 wires to be precise near to the jack.
Audio output - Hook it up to my ibasso dx50 and also Samsung phone direct. Played a few albums of different genres- mostly rock and pop. I tried using o2 portable amp, it didn't sound much different. anyway the earphone is 40+ ohms, and ibasso or handphone seems to do the job. However, on Samsung handphone , I need to swith to 75% volume .. other earphones IEMs is around 65%.
Bass & low frequency: wooo ! it is very impressive. bass is very tight and I can feel every woomph of every pop beat on my ears. it's like a mini sub-woofer on my ears. its not the typical sony or audio technical ck series where the bass is very fat , muffled and goes on forever. This stormbolt bass is more like sub bass, shorter and tight. I quite like this as it is suitable for pop and slow rock music. and I really hated bass that are overly long, fat and exaggerate
vocals & middle frequency: The clarity is good, not muffled, not fat or excessive cold or warm. Its accurate with excellent details and full bodied.Sound stage is above average. The clarity & precision is almost close 70% to my balanced arm IEM ( westone um3x and shure). Mid frequency really reminds me of my other seinheisser IE 80. I was quite surprise because most dynamic driver earphone I expect it the clarity to suffer but maybe the dual diahpgram technology helps here. not sure too, i'm not an expert.
high frequencies : quite good also, I can hear cymbals and high guitar/violin notes pretty well.it is quite natural. There are some iems that is annoying because the high is way too obvious. this earphone is quite balanced. there is no harshness or sibilance in tracks that I usually had issues with BA iems.
cable noise : no. the material is quite soft. however the cable tangle up rather easily. I think braided cable like the blue colour cable of ue900 also has same problem getting tangle.
Overall , I quite like this. audio wise it seems to do a excellent job on bass and mids. good job on high freiqnecy. . It has tight and good bass, and clear mids and highs. It has the pros of a good dynamic earphone and also 70% clarity of BA iems. recently I wore it to work and because its stainless steel and it really shines ! in bright daylight outdoor, my colleague were quite curious about this when they saw it. The disadvantage is i'm always worried that it will get scratched and spoilt the shiny stainless steel surface when I stuff this in my pocket, the black carrying box is too big for the earphone alone. maybe I got to get a leather pouch or something.
I will keep this for rock/pop/vocal/dance songs where I think it has very good performance oveall and it's also quite rare to find others using it.
The website where it has the specifications - http://apolloaudiolab.com
