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All righty, I uploaded my impressions video. Thank you to Brannan and Noble Audio for allowing me to be a part of this, and thank you to barra for making this even possible! : D
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eno37fd_hhk[/video]
To be honest, I don't think the Noble Audio house sound suits my personal sound preferences, but of the bunch, the Noble 4 was probably my favourite one overall due to its balanced sound, fairly spacious soundstage, and clarity. At $450, I'm not familiar enough with other universal in-ear earphones in the price range to say if it's worth the price or not, but it's one of the better earphones I've heard above $100.
For the two custom in-ear monitors, I liked the 8C for its more forward upper-midrange, treble clarity, and large soundstage, but I also liked the Kaiser 10 for its warmer midrange, non-aggressive treble, and great instrument separation and imaging abilities. If I had to choose one of the CIEMs to get, my pick would be the K10 just because it sounded more musical to me and it was an earphone I could probably use to just relax and listen to the music. However, I found that they both compliment each other in some way; what one has, the other doesn't. I think it goes without question though that both CIEMs have a spectacular design. : p
^ 8C
^ Kaiser 10
All three of the above earphones had their strong points, so it was interesting being able to compare them with the Hugo at the same time (I used a 6.3 mm to 3.5 mm adaptor to utilise the Hugo's 3 headphone out ports). As good as the Hugo sounds, I don't think it's an optimal pairing with sensitive earphones because I was able to pick up the Hugo's noise floor/background hiss pretty easily with the whole product line, and I had a similar experience with the Light Harmonic Geek Out 450. I used the JDS Labs C5D as an alternative DAC/amp instead since it is pretty much silent on low gain, except for the 8C (which means the 8C is an extremely sensitive earphone).
^ My main setup was my MacBook with the Audirvana Plus media player -> Hugo with the provided Silver Dragon USB cable, but I also tried the Hugo with the iPhone and the Apple Camera Connection Kit, and compared the Geek Out with the Hugo. In terms of sound, the Hugo and the Geek Out units sound similar to each other as a whole (giving a slight edge to the Hugo for instrument separation and a less grainy treble), so my impressions of the Noble products can be more or less applied to the Geek Out as well.
As for test tracks and music I listened to, I pretty much went through my standard music library (CD-rips, HD masters, DSD masters, V0 LAME MP3s on my iPod/iPhone). I used Dr. Chesky's Ultimate Headphone Demonstration Disc for soundstage testing since the binaural test tracks make it easy to identify localised sounds in three-dimensional space.
Anywho, I want to thank Brannan and Noble Audio again for the opportunity to listen to the whole product line for an extended time. It was quite an experience for me and hopefully Noble will be able to attend future local meets so we can meet some of the folks behind the company!
: )
[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eno37fd_hhk[/video]
To be honest, I don't think the Noble Audio house sound suits my personal sound preferences, but of the bunch, the Noble 4 was probably my favourite one overall due to its balanced sound, fairly spacious soundstage, and clarity. At $450, I'm not familiar enough with other universal in-ear earphones in the price range to say if it's worth the price or not, but it's one of the better earphones I've heard above $100.
For the two custom in-ear monitors, I liked the 8C for its more forward upper-midrange, treble clarity, and large soundstage, but I also liked the Kaiser 10 for its warmer midrange, non-aggressive treble, and great instrument separation and imaging abilities. If I had to choose one of the CIEMs to get, my pick would be the K10 just because it sounded more musical to me and it was an earphone I could probably use to just relax and listen to the music. However, I found that they both compliment each other in some way; what one has, the other doesn't. I think it goes without question though that both CIEMs have a spectacular design. : p
^ 8C
^ Kaiser 10
All three of the above earphones had their strong points, so it was interesting being able to compare them with the Hugo at the same time (I used a 6.3 mm to 3.5 mm adaptor to utilise the Hugo's 3 headphone out ports). As good as the Hugo sounds, I don't think it's an optimal pairing with sensitive earphones because I was able to pick up the Hugo's noise floor/background hiss pretty easily with the whole product line, and I had a similar experience with the Light Harmonic Geek Out 450. I used the JDS Labs C5D as an alternative DAC/amp instead since it is pretty much silent on low gain, except for the 8C (which means the 8C is an extremely sensitive earphone).
^ My main setup was my MacBook with the Audirvana Plus media player -> Hugo with the provided Silver Dragon USB cable, but I also tried the Hugo with the iPhone and the Apple Camera Connection Kit, and compared the Geek Out with the Hugo. In terms of sound, the Hugo and the Geek Out units sound similar to each other as a whole (giving a slight edge to the Hugo for instrument separation and a less grainy treble), so my impressions of the Noble products can be more or less applied to the Geek Out as well.
As for test tracks and music I listened to, I pretty much went through my standard music library (CD-rips, HD masters, DSD masters, V0 LAME MP3s on my iPod/iPhone). I used Dr. Chesky's Ultimate Headphone Demonstration Disc for soundstage testing since the binaural test tracks make it easy to identify localised sounds in three-dimensional space.
Anywho, I want to thank Brannan and Noble Audio again for the opportunity to listen to the whole product line for an extended time. It was quite an experience for me and hopefully Noble will be able to attend future local meets so we can meet some of the folks behind the company!
: )