Xmas gift arrived. Will Update on this post later.
▶︎As usual, this is my private purchase. No biases except my personal pov.
初 on Zero’s subtitle means “the beginning / the first” in Chinese
—Graph observations
I can see from the FR on the backside of the package that Zero is Crin’s tuning. It has his 2.9kHz pinna gain adjustment when compared to 3khz of HEXA’s. Yes Crin is 2.9kHz peak.
What triggered my interest is the sub-bass lift for ZERO is diverting from Crin’s favorite “lift sub-bass from bottom to 150hz straight up” style, it has a dip on very low-end. Will find out later.
—The outlook
To be honest, one thing that had me hold on pressing “go” for Zero was the pictures I see on the internet. My personal view was “ah…it looks cheap and plastic-y, maybe another tripowin Mele”
But when the actual Zero showed up, the impression is now updated.
It has solid build. And actually Zero has UV shift color change from blue to purple, as you can see from Moondrop’s Starfield/Stellaris. Haha, HeyGear
Blue state:
Purple shift state:
I love those gimmicks. It’s great gift option candidates for ladies now. They love thos cosmetics over actual performance.
ZERO and HEXA.
—Accessories
Truthear, knows well about acoustics. Proper bore with ear tips, bass boost / high tame bore, and for formies lover, they’d added a pair. Basically same set you can find from HEXA, same cables/ear tips/ pouch. As someone working with automotive sector, I do see truthear is very “cost-strict” manufacturer. Yes, VW, Toyota, all those world #1,2 groups are applying same concept. So we can obtain a maximum output from minimum investment.
…but as usual why “golden”
, If I’m user experience manager, I’d throw following question to product team
“
Hey. Your design concept is crystal clear. Black and White. Transparency and adolescence. What’s intention of you adding “gold” here? It doesn’t match with your concept. If users find one tiniest “out of nowhere implications” it will degrade the open box experiences. What, that’s the cheapest pouch procurement team brought up? Call them to my office. I will have Chief Project Manager and CEO hop on the meeting to source a better little pouch. Proposal rejected”
—Out of box impression
Out of box impression
HEXA is a combination of one large DD + tweeter small DD. Nothing groundbreaking as this combination existed with KZ’s ZS5 (2017) not only that KZ added 2BA super-tweeter right near fhe nozzle of ZS5.
What’s making Zero a collaboration-worthy with Crin is that, the driver is LCP backed. Of which I now have no other choice other than LCP to look for any dynamic drivers for a proper modern IEM (& not ridiculously expensive). LCP DD generally takes 30 hours of initial burn-in, from my various past LCP ride experiences, so this impression is could be 80% of what ZERO has to offer.
To summarize, ZERO is surely a very nicely crafted piece of high-performance machine. Clean, lean, a little brighter shifted vocal focused neutral with sub bass boost. Note weight is slightly on leaner side but still very natural. No sign of sibilance but nicely defined details.
ZERO vs Cadenza
I watched a video that HBB set ZERO as one of best $sub 50 aside from his Cadenza push, and having both Cadenza and Zero, I have to say HBB’s evaluation is 90% or above based on tonality alone, not actual performance. There is an undeniable gap between Cadenza and Zero in terms of technical expressions. Great to know that.
Unfortunately Zero’s pinna peak 2.9khz is 2khz off from 3.07k khz peak, and I do feel Zero is not my cup of tea, at least with stock ear tips.
If any IEM’s pinna peak is off more than 500hz, it will start sounds off tuned. For me HEXA is still within the tolerance interval, not Zero. But I’m not disappointed because you can change the IEM’s gain peak by ear tips. See
@DynamicEars post about his
great achievements in measuring different types of ear tips and it’s effect on this post.
I will try with SpinFit CP360 to shift pinna peak a bit closer to mine.
—Zero with CP360
Night and day….!
This is how you feel when certain IEM’s vibe collides with your personal HRTF.
Wow, ZERO sounds good. I need to have A-B test with modified Aria now. No need to compare with Lea, there is a easy to tell gap in technicalities between Zero and Lea, at least to someone with pinna gain spot around 3.07k +/- 500hz.
—Subbass handling
After few test runs, I start to comprehend the reasons why Zero has slightly less emphasized 20hz region. Crin, if he really dedicated in tuning, is a pretty trustworthy tuner, that I’d admit.
Due to the fact that Zero is having 2 of dynamic drivers singing in unison, the sound pressure from 2DD is already high enough, a little too much feeling, if he added additional sub-bass boost, it can cross a line of fatigue causing. That balance, from an audiophile’s virtue is well executed.
Great sub-bass arrangement. When you play EDM with Zero, the bass drum’s impact is pleasantly knock you head, not hard slamming, but a soft slam, which feels nice.
—Treble
When coupled with CP360 to match close to my HRTF, Zero has pretty nice diffusion field array toward front, I bet that’s contributed by that independent tweeter DD, the upper air/presence region rendered by independent LCP tonality is very pleasant, unlike CNT/DLC’s solid core high pitch, it’s less fatiguing.
—Mid and Upper Mid
Unlike Crin’s Dusk, there is less emphasized on “female vocal’s
“.
Random visual examples on the internet for dusk’s vocal presentation;
▶︎female vocalist’s lip on focus
For ZERO It is more natural focus on the vocal range, from musicians standpoint or upper-mid sensitive, this approach is wrong or bothersome because you want concentrate on your own instrument not staring at vocalist.
Random samples on Internet to visualize ZERO’s approach;
▶︎vocalist on spotlight approach
But for vast majority of listeners, this “vocal” focused approach is optimal approach. I personally refer this tuning as vocal-neutral, and to that extent, ZERO has near perfect tuning executed.
—ZERO vs HEXA
Both has same philosophy of clean tonality with several coloration spots, HEXA is less colored and near perfect in photo-realistic for vocal-backed music genre. It may be felt bright to some with flat preference curve, but it could be perceived as perfect neutral with slight sub-bass lift and spotlight on vocal. Meanwhile ZERO is more energetic U-shape tuned fun set with neutrality and natural timbre, note weight in mind.
For micro-detail dynamism, such as imaging and resolution, I may say HEXA is an upper hand, for macro-dynamism such as sound wave’s passage throughout head room, energy of the transients, are on ZERO’s hand. ZERO and HEXA although being fairly close tuning, can co-exist.
I’m pretty sure, after listening on both HEXA and ZERO you will be oblivious which one you are listening to. They both have excellent performances in different areas.
In fact, after few tracks of test runs, I was thinking “hmmm
ZERO is REALLY great” then when I open my eyes, I saw Zero was off-plugged and I was actually listening HEXA
. Very high chance that Zero will score 80+/100 IEM category. The LCP of HEXA does sound like the one of ZERO’s.
For this Karajan’s Berliner Philharmoniker, Mussorgsky, With HEXA you can have a better sense of spaces between the conductor, concert-master, better strings nuance expression, drastic change from pianissimo to fortessimo, whereas ZERO will render richer deeper resonating notes from Contrabass, Horn, Oboe —an emotional expression.
For Piano tracks, one of my all time favorites, Hiromi’s debut album Spiral
Of which I prefer ZERO’s expression over rather transparent HEXA’s. Her playing style on this tracks is very dynamic, reminds me of Keith Jarrett, and ZERO’s macro-dynamism oriented focus matches to Spiral very well.
At the very intro, you will hear very faint drums snare, high tom nuances expressions, of which ZERO with CP360 renders it to the degree that can convince me as a drummer, that small tap on floor tom, on ZERO’s LCP is what I’m expecting from a dynamics driver’s performance. Not CNT, not DLC, not UTL of Kato’s. It’s just that transient response of the floor tom’s little vibrations, is very nicely recasted.
Midrange technicalities:
I’d pick the father of ambient music, Brain Eno’s little brother , Roger Eno’s collaboration with his big brother Brian Eno. They are no amateur in harmonics, all those decades they’ve dedicated for it. I’m pretty sure Brian Eno and Roger Eno have studied
hemi-sync as I can cite some of hemi-sync skills taking place in their artworks.
When a certain driver’s midrange technicality falls off from average the harmonics will start to smear, for that I confirmed ZERO is capable of rendering at least 4 layers of full midrange harmonics. Great. Par with HEXA in midrange.
As you can see from the package
Shiroi-chan, she grew up from adolescent ZERO to matured HEXA, that’s what’s happening in tonality and technicalities as well. Matured HEXA or Young ZERO is up to your taste.
Maybe next Model from Truthear, we may see fully grown Shiroi-chan like this on next release.
-Azurelane IJN Shinano
—Overall out of box
After certain burn-in, I will conduct my modded Aria vs ZERO, but as far as from my out of box experience, this Zero is worth your hard earned money to be spent on.
Very immersive feeling when listening to vocal genres, especially female vocal is beautifully done.
As far as I’ve went through this ZERO is best $sub50 experience so far.
Not limited to sub$50, I’d feel Zero is what I could call “great” region of IEMs where you see HEXA, Dusk, Tea, N5005, P5, Modded Aria would be regarded.
ZERO belongs to spot-hitter , spot-seeker type of IEM, where Moondrop, Softears, and many Harman, Ety IEMs are after for. If the gain peak hit with your preference spot , it will sound very spot-on, if not off-tuned.
Regardless of tuning preferences, ZERO has great hardware spec.
Only thing to consider is if you like vocal-focused presentations or not, and if you have gain spots situated 2.8khz-3.1khz (within this range, you can physically adjust gain spot to fit with your personal resonance spot.)
It's interesting to see that these TWS packs way more technology and innovation (according to Final) yet they are way way cheaper than A8000. I guess no one dare to price products higher than AirPods Pro 2.
using same cable & ear tips:
Well-done Aria…have a rest now
