Oh hello there fellow potterhead!
Love it! Pre-orders took 3-4 days extra to deliver in our country those days. If one didn't have the patience to wait, they had to line up in front of the bookstore at 3AM to get the book on the launch day. Luckily I never had to stand in line because I always had that one friend who'd do that, skip school, finish the book in a day and then give it to me. I still always had my pre-order for my personal collection, which I then read several times after.
I decided to pick up one of those really cheap ie900 clones off of AliExpress, because I wanted an IEM that might be comfortable enough to sleep in.
https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256804476886021.html?gatewayAdapt=glo2usa&_randl_shipto=US
Long story short: their graph is a lie and these IEMs are the most sensitive to tip rolling of anything I have ever heard. Probably because they have no tuning foam or mesh or filters underneath the wax guard.
Long story longer: they're not terrible, but they have way more treble gain than I am comfortable with and it sounds kinda like they might have been aiming for a diffuse field with bass gain tuning. The overall fit and finish is quite good, being machined out of a good quality aluminum casting. The Fidelity+ connector can be bypassed easily enough by simply snipping off the plastic collar at the top of the connector to make everything flush, and the MMCX connectors are strong enough if you aren't super rough on them. I've been sleeping with them and wearing them around for about a week now and I honestly haven't noticed any signs of connector problems even with me hacking off part of the plastic collar. Obviously, YMMV particularly if you connect and disconnect them from your cables frequently, as that wears them out substantially faster. As for tuning issues, well, because of their treble gain and basically zero restriction within the sound tube, the treble gets both hot and kinda compressed in a hurry when you start cranking the volume to typical rock out levels. I wouldn't recommend buying these things if you want to just use them as-is, because the tuning is a bit too wonky for that. However, if you've ever fancied yourself an IEM tuner and you want to see if you can take a diamond in the rough and transform it into your ideal set, then buy a set of these and some tuning filters, foams, and wax guards and it's a really fun bit of kit to tinker with because everything has such a noticeable impact on the sound. I used a dense tuning foam combined with a fine metal mesh wax guard with a #450 tuning mesh stuck to the back of it (because I don't currently have large enough tuning papers or meshes to just stick it to the mouth of the sound tube) and it has been transformed into something a bit closer to how it was supposed to be graphing. The driver itself is honestly pretty decent once you give it a bit of restriction so it doesn't just run away when you give it some power. Sound is about on-par with some $150 sets, but the IEM is ludicrously compact and the bass dive is very competent. Even adding in a bunch of restriction to the drivers in the form of foam and filter meshes, the sound is still more akin to over-ear headphones than IEMs in that it sounds like it is coming from outside of your head rather than inside of your ears. Very interesting. They also don't have the highest isolation if you're using silicone ear tips, so that can be useful if you like to wear earphones while jogging or biking.
Rating out of 10:
Bass: 7/10Bass is nicely textured with impressive slam but lacks a certain "thickness" to the sound, leaving you wanting more. I suspect this is related to driver agility, as these are relatively small and agile drivers despite how deep they dive. After mods, I'd bump this to 8/10. Better control and more richness to the bass is always a good thing and that's what restricting the driver a little helps to accomplish.Mids: 5/10Before mods, these have a bit of mids recession and they aren't the most balanced, though the detail is still there so they aren't entirely bad. After mods, I'd say 6/10. Still some weirdness, but they seem more balanced.Treble: 3/10Before mods the treble has a tendency to get both too hot and demonstrates compression. Not great, but not the worst I've heard. After mods, I'd probably be willing to bump them to a 5/10. Pretty average, good extension, some air, some sparkle, can still get hot in tracks with excessive gain mixed in.So, are they worth it? Only if you enjoy tinkering with your IEMs and want a challenge. You're basically getting a poorly tuned IEM in a really nice shell for a relatively low price. There's potential, but the raw unit is basically un-listenable. Don't be fooled into thinking that these cheap clones are going to give you Sennheiser performance on a budget, because they aren't tuned with that much care.
) There are a lot of foams in the nozzles already. When I asked the store, they said that their customer base likes that “female poison” tuning so they retuned the units.Mine had no foams, which is problematic. There are certainly sellers out there selling just the empty shells that haven't yet been glued together, which is what you'd need rather than trying to open a finished model and extract the driver to use your own. Definitely a great shell to start from, though. The ie300 shell is a bit better rounded off and made of plastic if you prefer that feel instead of the chill of metal in your ears.I wrote about these on Reddit in the past but never discussed here because knock-off is frowned upon on Head-Fi. Did they change the tuning again? My unit sounds Harman-ish with a lot of extra midbass. The subbass on my unit hits like crazy. When I watched an episode of star trek, I heard a lot of the hyperdrive hum and it made my head hurt (so too much sub bass is also not good
I‘m actually thinking about getting one of their black shells and make a DIY with my own choice of micro drivers. I saw a couple interesting 7mm drivers at NCS audio store.
Very eager for a graph.
Imagine if it had a 10mm DD.Dunu let Zeo retunes their precious SA6? This is interesting
Its my personal favorite tuning. 4,5k monstrosity and 6k abyss lol (some say it mimics Grado midcentricness...).
I would definitely get these, but sadly the recent devaluation of the GBP has put them out of reach of my budget.
Its my personal favorite tuning. 4,5k monstrosity and 6k abyss lol (some say it mimics Grado midcentricness...).
OH10 and Hidizs MS2 (lighter bass) - old releases of such tuning in same hybrid configuration - are very praised in the community. Maybe that Tripowin will have the same fate?
I still dont risk a BA in such tuning - yet. Its a high risk for metallic timbre and incoherence. I think your review was on point about those concerns. I'm tempted to try with a very warm source, maybe.
Single DD though is more bearable and easier to like without relying much in source (and tips etc). I'm still amazed that Nicehck DB1 exists for less than $20. There is also all NF Audio's DD line and TFZ No 3 (all varying in bass, treble or even more mids quantity). I think they are very spicy priced and owning a NF one, its not 5 times better than DB1 at all.
Anyway, great. A new IEM that is not part of the Harman spam. Just thought to bring more insight about that not so mainstream tuning
