The discovery thread!

[Asakurai]

What exactly is “this one”?

based on picture, should be simgot EA500

 

[baskingshark]

It’s true potential can only be unlocked with Cayin N8ii, however.

Wow bro, but that DAP costs like 100x of the Cadenza!

 

[Carpet]

Two packages arrived today. My last order for 2 FiiO uBTR. I'm really impressed for those at $15 (good Xmas present for people who got an IEM last year).

Second package was Audiosense DT200.

 

[helloh3adfi]

Better suited for the cable threads, but some here might have interest. Been buying many cables from ISN, Penon, NiceHCK, Tripowin, XINHS and probably some more I don't remember now.

The hype some says about XINHS is real, before I have mostly bought the cheaper ones from XINHS and NICEHCK. And sticked to Penon and ISN for cables at $50 and upwards.

The 4 Core Single Crystal Copper Silver Plated wire is at the same amount of quality and sound as the Penon OS849.

It's thick, but soft to the feel, the weight is just right so it's not to heavy or light. And as always XINHS is very helpful if you have custom inquiry. My last order were 30cm longer for my desktop for no extra cost.

https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrjwTtu

Yeah this cable is a great bang for the buck. I also got those. Penon OS849 is still thicker, but Xinhs wins in budget.

 

[Jmop]

Wow bro, but that DAP costs like 100x of the Cadenza!

Just throwing shade at OP with that one

 

[Redcarmoose]

You got the Orchestra Lite in? How you like it?

Well, I have green in the mail. But my understanding is it may be the biggest deal to happen in the under $250 price segment for the first part of 2023? Truly I have high hopes, but it’s partially because I really like all BA IEMs. But I just have a feeling, call it a premonition, that the Orchestra Lite is going to be legendary! Notice.......I haven’t said this about any (other) new release yet this year!

 

[archdawg]

With qdc connectors, I read that the pins are reversed? Does it affect anything at all?

Aslong both sides has the same polarity nothing should change. But I'm no electrical person, so probably someone else know something here. I really like the angled connector's.

This has been discussed to death since the first days of HiFi.

Simple example: a drum sound (not the prettiest example but here goes) ...

Running through a correctly set up audio chain a rising signal would move any driver membrane towards your ear drum and vice versa. Looking specifically at the first 90 degrees of the first cycle what would you think ... does it play a role if the membrane moves outwards or inwards in that first moment? (If in doubt just think of the couple inches axial movement of a badass 15" subwoofer membrane.)
In short: you either hear and/or care about reversed polarities (phases) or you don't ... I do and take great care that my audio chains are set up correctly, especially relevant with 3rd party cables.
Now instead of reversing cables back and forth for the sake of this little experiment just use any track or a set of sharply rising free (kick) drum samples, like in above image - use one set of tracks/samples with their original polarity and the other set inverted/reversed - easy to do in any DAW or the free Audacity. Compare for yourself and have fun!
If in doubt you can use the ABX feature in foobar (google) to run a little blind test.

PS: I check any new set of IEMs for correct polarities and I'm still amazed that some manufacturers don't get it right here and there. No need to mention that it gets even worse with incorrectly soldered drivers in multi-driver IEMs. I had a couple of those over the years, including pricier models and really don't want to know how many lemons are out there.

 

[F700]

The P-EAR-S' Black Line MC-8 (1DD) has officially been released. The UIEM retails for CHF 590.- and the CIEM for CHF 690.-. I am trying to arrange a demo unit and will be pleased to post impressions here.

https://www.p-ear-s.ch/collection/black-line-serie/

 

[Ferdinando1968]

Well, I have green in the mail. But my understanding is it may be the biggest deal to happen in the under $250 price segment for the first part of 2023? Truly I have high hopes, but it’s partially because I really like all BA IEMs. But I just have a feeling, call it a premonition, that the Orchestra Lite is going to be legendary! Notice.......I haven’t said this about any (other) new release yet this year!

Agree.

 

[helloh3adfi]

Well, I have green in the mail. But my understanding is it may be the biggest deal to happen in the under $250 price segment for the first part of 2023? Truly I have high hopes, but it’s partially because I really like all BA IEMs. But I just have a feeling, call it a premonition, that the Orchestra Lite is going to be legendary! Notice.......I haven’t said this about any (other) new release yet this year!

No idea how this will perform, but I trust Truthear more to create a great flagship for good price.

 

[Redcarmoose]

No idea how this will perform, but I trust Truthear more to create a great flagship for good price.

Performance on these is already coming in from various sources.

Much of this is subjective and the sound you are looking for in the end, thus becomes a relative value.

 

[AmericanSpirit]

With qdc connectors, I read that the pins are reversed? Does it affect anything at all?

Aslong both sides has the same polarity nothing should change. But I'm no electrical person, so probably someone else know something here. I really like the angled connector's.

As far as I’m not delusional, It was my first uneasy moment and reaons that called my attention for polarity that qdc IEM only took reversed polarity qdc cables.

You can physically flip the +/- to fix imaging focus. But most of cables have preset directions.

I’ve purchased at least 10 cables for qdc finish, and I’m 100% sure most of them claimed “qdc” but came with “kz-c” polarity. Why I know? It only takes few seconds that I can tell if it’s KZ-c or qdc, image center and image focus will shift back or inside you head. I know how bass drum would sound right or wrong by just few seconds, if off-phases, the bass drum kick will sound improperly tuned. Especially there is an intention to test polarity, or otherwise it would only be one of suspicions that the off tone is either badly made IEM‘s origin or negative phasing, or simply driver isn’t burned in.

Per @baskingshark advice for those KZ-c, you can fix imaging phase by connecting left pin to right earphone, and vice versa.

The authentic qdc polarity cables I have is $50 class XINHS.

The polarity illustrations
above are actually from XINHS sales rep, when I ordered some qdc-finish $50+ cables from them, before shipping the product, they reached me and double checked if qdc finish is my interest. SONY quality of customer care service.

qdc IEM do take .78 2pin, but it has to be +/- flipped. Sadly only KZ-C styled IEM takes qdc finish cables (of which you get high chance of getting correct ones as qdc definition looks like used only referring to the socket shape). Understandable since there probably only 0.1% of IEMs that actually drives the qdc polarity needs and 99.9% is demanding KZ-C.

 

[chickenmoon]

The FW1800 has arrived, these are good, my, my...

Used IE600 and used Chord Hugo purchased today, lol, the drain on the wallet never stops.

 

[AmericanSpirit]

No idea how this will perform, but I trust Truthear more to create a great flagship for good price.

My trusted reviwer somehow did not put
️️️️️ on this product thumbnail for Orchestra Lite with “good! but…” styled commentary when compared with AFUL P5, and brought up TRN BA15 as a rival, that is a questionable moment for me. There was also good evidence that he mentioned Orchestra Lite sounds like “Warmer T800“ which T800 supposed to be using Knowles x8 and is costing less than Orchestra Lite at this moment $173. So even if Kiwi claims

Orchestra Lite $250
2 Knowles Woofer
4 Kiwi Custom BA Mid
2 Custom BA high

Orchestra $500
2 Sonion Woofer
4 Kiwi Custom BA Mid
2 Knowles BA high

Those custom BAs could be Knowles or Sonion. You know that’s fairly imaginable because XENNS uses 1DD+quad Sonion + 2 Knowles High as Tea OG set up that goes for $190-270.

But what’s the point of demoting from “Knowles High” to “Custom High”? If High uses Knowles that’s good marketing material, no need to hide? Even if it’s down graded from high-end model to Mass produced model RAD(I actually like RAD on Bravery), a Knowles is still a Knowles, no need to hide Knowles name from Orchestra OG to Lite.

My concern is
▶︎The price range of $200 is already saturated by “full knowles or even quad sonion + knowles”, why hide the competitive advantage in marketing material? The rationale doesn’t roll well.

Negative point that I’m concerned is
BA15’s consensus is “it’s the thing that finished bellsing multi driver arms race between KZ and TRN“ and conclusions from BA15 was “hmmm not bad! Actually quite amusing as a 15BA, it sounds natural and dynamic driver like timbre, not something you’d expect a detail retrieval, it’s more musical “

the guy mentioned out of similar priced IEM in his collection, AFUL P5, Bravery, T800, MS4, BA15, BA15 is closest to Orchestra Lite.
So that way of presentation is kinda tricky.

Out of price range $250 or close, there could be AFUL P5 (proper A), Bravery (Proper A+ for me), BA15 from my impression isn’t what we can call A grade but rather C+ or B- class. And what he picked as closest rival is not P5, but BA15.

I’d personally rate similar high/low mixed GS Audio GT12 $250ish as C+, so that assessment actually makes sense.

Here is the link for GT12, a probable rival or upgrade of Orchestr Lite.
US $243.00 | GS AUDIO GT12 12BA Hybrid Driver HiFi In-Ear Earphones
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mrhSBMA

Again, if you like full Sonion backbone, GT12 or retuned GT12x maybe a good choice. Sonion38 AcuPass is widely used for TOTL IEMs like Vision Ears, Here is spec obtained from GS Audio lab.

ST10:
Sub-woofer: Sonion 38 AcuPass (2BA)
Bass-Mid: Sonion 37 (2BA)
Mid-Treble: Sonion 2389D (2BA)
Super Tweeter: Knowles SWFK (4BA)

GT12:
Sub-woofer: Sonion 38 AcuPass | 2BA
Lower Mid: Sonion 33 | 2BA
Upper Mid: 2 x GS Custom TWFK | 4BA
Super Tweeters: 2 x GS custom TWFK | 4BA

I don’t recommend GT12 and would only see it as C+ IEM despite roll-royce class high end low range Sonions are used. I received rather harsh sounding Bravery at the same day with GT12, and my impression was Bravery sounded a lot better in stock tuning (not to mention dry expert tuned one I‘m enjoying daily). GT12 is core timbre is 8xbellsing and 4x sonion.

Still I’m interested in Orchestra Lite, the tuning definitely looks nice. Same to GT12. So I’m interested in how they can compete each other.

 

[baskingshark]

Campfire Audio has released 2023 variants of their popular Andromeda and Solaris:



1) Campfire Andromeda 2023 Emerald Sea

Supposedly has new shells, new drivers, and get this, an even lower impedance than the original fussy Andromeda.

Now the impedance of this 2023 variant is 6.375 Ω @1K!!! Most users had issues matching sources with the infamous original Andromeda's 12ish ohm impedance. Now it is half of that, and based on the audiophile rules of eights, you need a source with output impedance < 0.8 ohms, otherwise the FR might be skewed. Gonna be even harder to match sources to it seems.

$1,450.00 USD, as per the usual Campfire premium.

https://bloomaudio.com/products/campfire-audio-andromeda-2023-emerald-sea




2) Campfire Solaris 2023 Stellar Horizon

Tuning and acoustics are different from the original apparently.

Campfire claims that they are using "custom BAs" here. And the "custom BAs" used in the previous Solaris were none other than Bellsings LOL: (https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/cxqlje/knowles_files_claim_with_us_trade_commission_to/). Haha wonder if the Bellsings are still gonna make their appearance here in this kilobuck IEM.

This 2023 Solaris variant's impedance is 4.40 Ω @1K!!! Gonna need a source with output impedance < 0.55 ohms, thank you.

$2,670.00 USD

https://bloomaudio.com/products/campfire-audio-solaris-2023-stellar-horizon