I, uhm... "totally lost my mind" is, I think, an apt term... I totally lost my mind and ordered the Red Halo FS, the one with the cactus wood and the red First Times cable. You know, the unreasonably expensive one. Love my Mason FS and really intrigued what that would sound like with a more bone conduction leaning driver setup and wider soundstage. It just looks beautiful too, and got some kind of crown collector instinct going in me. I'm turning into an... IEM collector now. Constantly shifting between Mason FS and Trailli is so much fun, they fit different albums.
So in a week or two I'll have the Red Halo and can share opinions too. This thread seems to be the only place online where people seriously discuss it, the RH thread is a graveyard of ten pages of people complaining about the pricing (I get it, it's heinous, it's for bourgeois people -- but how does it sound like?) Not a lot of reviews, especially the Final Times cable version, the confusingly shorter titled Red Halo FS. What I heard here got me very curious though. Trailli is great, and with Orpheus, it's just perfect. It's very hard to improve on it. (With the original cable I don't much like it. Attila is another cable that makes it much better for me, but Orpheus and Trailli are just... they're just so logical. You hear that sound for the first time, you go: ah, okay, so that's what the best sounds like. Sure. Yeah. Kinda thought it would be like that too.
But... it doesn't have that bone conduction realism and subtle 3D effect.
Really interested to see how RH works with its FT cable and with Orpheus too. What got me buying is -- in reverse order of importance:
1) They look gorgeous, like Mason FS. That cactus wood filled with plastic is spellbinding design. There's a jewellery angle to this hobby and the UM cactus wood IEMs are the most beautiful I've ever seen (or held, they feel amazing to hold too). Gotta have the red one too, c'mon. Gotta have it. Can life without the red one really be called a life?
2) Super interested to see what the 3D effect of bone conduction does to a show-off wide-tuned soundstage (Mason FS is famously, stubbornly circular). Trailli-like vastness and bone conduction 3D and weight... That sounds amazing.
3) Once you get very used to Mason FS's bone conduction -- once you let your brain get used to it that is, at first it's very meh -- other IEM's start sounding artificial. Like, even with Trailli, it's not really the sound of those instruments, is it? It's the e-stat treble doing its wispy magic and the mids too etc -- but I don't feel like I'm hearing "natural" sounds. I feel like I'm hearing a magical, comic book WOW impressive representation of the sounds, produced by a huge bunch of unspeakably well tuned drivers. Built to wow the hell out of me. And it works, so so well. But it's not what it was "like in the studio". I've been in the studio. I've also heard sounds, they don't sound like the trailli e-stat (for good or ill). Mason Fs sounds like: yeah, that's Thom Yorke from Radiohead singing. In a booth, in the studio. That's an electric guitar playing. I completely believe it, travels through my skull too. You know, like all sounds do a bit (except IEMs). This kind of "believability" in a different soundstge -- please, yes.
Gonna take a long time for them to come, just so excited I had to already write a post, just to kill time. LOTS of comparisons incoming.
Looking forward to your impressions!
