[tkddans]

GS Audio's GD3A and GD3B arrived. Out of box impressions are C- and D+, for my personal enjoyment factor - thus far. Just out of box impressions, but these strong impressions typically don't disappear or change dramatically :/

Here's what I had written down for my rankings list for now:

GD3A
​

I'm not hearing a very enjoyable sound yet, unfortunately - at least in these and the cheaper GD3B counterpart.

These sounded a bit better, or "clearer" I shoud say - over the GD3B. However, I still felt like I was hearing a bit of male vocals being treated in the distance somehow. I couldn't feel as close to the vocals as I would have liked, and some lack of resolution and clarity still existed here, albiet not nearly as much or as cloudily veiled sounding as the GD3B.

There's a bit of thump in the low mids/bass which is nice. Maybe a bit too elevated in the bass in some places in my tracks. This bass bump may be part of why the vocals sound as if they are further back from where I want? I'm happy for people who find joy in these. Sadly, they didn't pan out for my tastes.

GD3B
​

Immediately hit with a sense of distanced vocals and a haze over most of the music. I could not find much to enjoy these apart from maybe some forwardness in some places.

If someone enjoys these, they would have to really enjoy a warmth at a level I'm not personally a fan of. To each their own!

 

[Barndoor]

So the reference plate is on the shells out of the box. It is the first plate I listened to on the shells. These things are surprising in a few ways. So the reference tuning is similar in balancing to their more recent NA2+ but definitely more refined sounding has less upper mids. And these guys got the bass end to sound like a dynamic. Surprising. Down to the Sub bass. The shells are bigger than their dynamic series. They seem to be maxing out what each driver does as the sound is definitely more refined than their dynamic series.

You can see the size difference here between their NM2+ and the NE4

Treble seems to be tuned nicely as well. What is very surprising is the bass end. Bass sounds so much like one of their dynamic drivers. I have a feeling the reference plate here is the best one as they come with them on the shells.

I just tried out the Pop face plate. Pretty cool how you change out the plates. It uses a tiny allen wrench. I can see folks with sausage fingers having some issue with the while changing faceplate thing here. If you can tighten the screws on a pair of glasses you will be able to change out the face plate.

The Actual size of the NE4 is surprising. It is officially on the large. Bulky housing but is shaped well so no problems fitment.

Another surprise comes with when you change out to the POP plate. OK now I am understanding what these plates are doing. They retune the lower half of the sound frequency. I can now understand why they went with a BA here. Each plate realigns the crossovers and internally retunes the bass driver to give varying degrees of emphasis. This is completely different than what we usually see with nozzle filters and such where changes are made only for the treble and upper mids. These actually change the entire sound due to an actual physical change to the bass end.

Any chance of a photo of the 3 different face plates next to each? What do the look like on the underside?
Are the five pins sticking up pushed down in different combinations depending on the face plate?

Edit: nvm, looked on the web. the pins are not mechanical. different components in each face plates

 

[Strifeff7]

An interesting solution. Just ... why? You usually prefer some specific sound signature. You will change the panels just out of curiosity, maybe once, and you will constantly wear a double-sized earpiece. IMHO, interesting, but useless.
Although for a collection, as something curious and unusual, it probably makes sense ...

Agreed,
and also another point of failure, the screw holding the faceplate will fail,
same case as the tuning switch on some iems,

I guess the upside is like having 3 iems for one price.
With an addition of tip rolling, you could find the exact one to match your preference,

 

[Mr.HiAudio]

GS Audio's GD3A and GD3B arrived. Out of box impressions are C- and D+, for my personal enjoyment factor - thus far. Just out of box impressions, but these strong impressions typically don't disappear or change dramatically :/

Here's what I had written down for my rankings list for now:

GD3A
​

I'm not hearing a very enjoyable sound yet, unfortunately - at least in these and the cheaper GD3B counterpart.

These sounded a bit better, or "clearer" I shoud say - over the GD3B. However, I still felt like I was hearing a bit of male vocals being treated in the distance somehow. I couldn't feel as close to the vocals as I would have liked, and some lack of resolution and clarity still existed here, albiet not nearly as much or as cloudily veiled sounding as the GD3B.

There's a bit of thump in the low mids/bass which is nice. Maybe a bit too elevated in the bass in some places in my tracks. This bass bump may be part of why the vocals sound as if they are further back from where I want? I'm happy for people who find joy in these. Sadly, they didn't pan out for my tastes.

GD3B
​

Immediately hit with a sense of distanced vocals and a haze over most of the music. I could not find much to enjoy these apart from maybe some forwardness in some places.

If someone enjoys these, they would have to really enjoy a warmth at a level I'm not personally a fan of. To each their own!

too have a GD3B - really good iems

 

[Dsnuts]

The $750 price tag is a huge hurtle I am not gonna lie. As good as this whole face plate gimmick is. The sound tunings are all pro thus far. The pop plate is quite fun to listen to actually. And their reference does remind me a lot of their NA2+ in tuning. Haven't tried the analytical transparent plate yet. The way the plates fit on the back of the shells makes it very secure actually. No way your gonna have an accident using them plates. It has a protrusion on the back end of the plate that fits in a slot first and you have to press the plates down onto the screw hole and then screw in the small bolt that fits on there. The shells are solid aluminum alloy I believe but the screws are so tiny you do have to watch how your screwing the plates in and taking them out every time.

In reading the description on Penon site it says each faceplate gives a different BA configuration. The Transparent plate uses a single full range BA and two BAs for treble that is it. The other two uses all four BAs. So the plates have a bit of a programing of sorts to trigger off which BAs to use at what frequency each BA is covering. It is quite brilliant way to have actual sound variety using one housing.

However $750 gets you so much great audio stuff now a days. You can get yourself something like a Shanling M3X and get a set of Aladdins and you got a new source and stupid high end sound going on for less money. Value is clearly questionable on this one.

 

[Vladimir 198]

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=132140035774763&id=100656645589769
GS Audio appeared on Facebook.
They put up graphs of the frequency characteristics of their headphones, which I have never seen on Aliexpress. But there is still no description of the drivers used. It always stopped me from buying. I don't like buying a pig in a poke.

 

[mndless]

I agree with you to a certain extent that it is unfair to completely write off a brand just due to tuning. However, for those audiophiles who can't audition before buying and have a limited budget, they should go for a more safe blind purchase. If not, one is just wasting money on mediocre sounding IEMs. For example, you are better off with an IEM from NF than TRN.

I will give them credit where it is due: they posted graphs with some of their listings that got the full photo collection. While it remains to be seen exactly how accurate their graphs are for the X7, this is true of just about every manufacturer, but they did at least go that far to ensure that it wasn't a completely blind purchase in that regard. You have at least that much forewarning that the set is tuned a certain way.

For that, they do get some credit.

Their pricing on this particular set subtracts quite a bit of that credit, but this is just the norm for Chi-fi sets at launch.

 

[audio123]

I will give them credit where it is due: they posted graphs with some of their listings that got the full photo collection. While it remains to be seen exactly how accurate their graphs are for the X7, this is true of just about every manufacturer, but they did at least go that far to ensure that it wasn't a completely blind purchase in that regard. You have at least that much forewarning that the set is tuned a certain way.

For that, they do get some credit.

Their pricing on this particular set subtracts quite a bit of that credit, but this is just the norm for Chi-fi sets at launch.

Yea fair enough on that point but I am not convinced by their sound.

 

[mndless]

https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=132140035774763&id=100656645589769
GS Audio appeared on Facebook.
They put up graphs of the frequency characteristics of their headphones, which I have never seen on Aliexpress. But there is still no description of the drivers used. It always stopped me from buying. I don't like buying a pig in a poke.

Nice catch! Their detailed graphs have been posted in the GS Audio Impressions thread here, but it's great to see them all collected together like that. It's also great to see them branching out into more social media. Even if you aren't that interested in their products, they are a very friendly and helpful company.

 

[mndless]

The $750 price tag is a huge hurtle I am not gonna lie. As good as this whole face plate gimmick is. The sound tunings are all pro thus far. The pop plate is quite fun to listen to actually. And their reference does remind me a lot of their NA2+ in tuning. Haven't tried the analytical transparent plate yet. The way the plates fit on the back of the shells makes it very secure actually. No way your gonna have an accident using them plates. It has a protrusion on the back end of the plate that fits in a slot first and you have to press the plates down onto the screw hole and then screw in the small bolt that fits on there. The shells are solid aluminum alloy I believe but the screws are so tiny you do have to watch how your screwing the plates in and taking them out every time.

In reading the description on Penon site it says each faceplate gives a different BA configuration. The Transparent plate uses a single full range BA and two BAs for treble that is it. The other two uses all four BAs. So the plates have a bit of a programing of sorts to trigger off which BAs to use at what frequency each BA is covering. It is quite brilliant way to have actual sound variety using one housing.

However $750 gets you so much great audio stuff now a days. You can get yourself something like a Shanling M3X and get a set of Aladdins and you got a new source and stupid high end sound going on for less money. Value is clearly questionable on this one.

From what I can tell, the entire crossover network is housed within the plate and it's down to how the drivers are connected within that crossover which determines which are used and how their gain and crossover points are adjusted with each tuning plate. Definitely an interesting approach to have a plate that completely bypasses one of the driver sets to use a full-range for a more restrained bass response.

 

[mndless]

Yea fair enough on that point but I am not convinced by their sound.

That's entirely fair. I've only heard a couple of their sets and the only one which I thought was tuned reasonably was the original V90, where they brought in someone else to do the tuning on it. Still a teeny bit bright for me, but if it had been the right shape of shell for my ears, I would have definitely kept them. They sounded quite nice. A little dark up until the treble crossover, but pleasant.

 

[Vladimir 198]

Yea fair enough on that point but I am not convinced by their sound.

I'm careful too. The only hybrid TRN headphones that I conditionally liked are the tws TRN T300. For tws it is quite tolerable. Plus, they're not expensive. TRN V90s, TRN VX - to put it mildly, not the most successful models and are very far from natural. And the reason, IMHO, is just what kind of BA they use. And here there are already seven of them. Will it be okay? We will see. I definitely won't be the first.

 

[FreeWheelinAudioLuv2]

$750? NOOOOOPE.

After $45 for the GK10? Not a chance.

 

[Barusu Lamperouge]

I'm careful too. The only hybrid TRN headphones that I conditionally liked are the tws TRN T300. For tws it is quite tolerable. Plus, they're not expensive. TRN V90s, TRN VX - to put it mildly, not the most successful models and are very far from natural. And the reason, IMHO, is just what kind of BA they use. And here there are already seven of them. Will it be okay? We will see. I definitely won't be the first.

Problem is not their BA but how they tune their BA. Almost all Chi-fi offerings in sub $100 bracket use 30095 BA but brands like BQEYZ and KZ tune it better/listenable whereas TRN tune it weirdly. TRN's tuning and QC are two of the biggest stumbling blocks for purchasing them or recommending them to anyone.

 

[nymz]

Tripowin x HawaiiBadBoy 'Mele' to drop on 20th August @ Linsoul. Price will be $49,90.

They just anounced it on their twitter:
https://twitter.com/Linsoul_Audio/status/1425754686972329987?s=20