[o0genesis0o]

Was the Phoenixcall one of the first to use microplanars? I think it sounds fantastic, especially once you pull it off it’s matching but sadly bright-inclining cable.

Phoenixcall’s planar driver received a lot of flacks when it was released. If I remember correctly, those drivers were first used in a collab with Zeos. HBB opens up the driver and call them fake. I can’t recall whether the treble of phoenixcall was special, but it’s a shame that kinera tunes something called “phoenix” so disco boom boom.

Edit: so no, Kinera’s driver is different from these “square planar” and also different from the 6mm drive used in the new Simgot (and likely CFA dual planar IEM)

---

Spoiler: My non audio discovery

Pretty nice used ThinkPad X1 Yoga with quad core intel, 16GB of ram, and 256GB (upgradable) SSD for less than a midfi IEM.

I use Arch, btw

Don’t buy new laptop unless it’s a MacBook Air M3 13 inch, folks. I checked all the models on display in retail store here in Australia, and there is nothing but low quality poorly made malware infected stuffs on the low price market (less than $1000). If you want a brand new laptop for yourself to actually use on the road and do serious work, get a MacBook Air M3 with 16GB of ram for right around $1000 (or less with student discount). If you can’t, go used and get a thinkpad. The ones from 2019-2020 are going to last for a long time.

 

[Syan25]

I am in an even smaller room, and I have Bowers & Wilkins 706 S2---> and I am not even British!

Cheers!

Nice speakers.

 

[fidgeraldo]

Nice speakers.

Not bad...and British, too!
Musical Fidelity and Audiolab...am I a Brit audio supporter???

Cheers!

 

[Syan25]

I'm still quite surprised you love the Explorer. Thought it would be too chill, too smooth, for you. Glad you dig! It's a special set.

I think the LEC codes only were for sale through Nov. 5. I went to linsoul.com yesterday to investigate buying one or both, and they were not for sale.

I sell gear or use my gig money. My 11.11 purchase of the $200-ish P5+2 may be the only purchase from the "general fund" I make this year as a small treat to me.

Sure as hell does. It all adds up.

Then why keep the other 30? Sell them to buy better IEMs that are worth the dough with other people's money! That's one of my favorite ways to buy -- "other people's money."

My vow is more of a correction. I like to think I'm one of the most FOMO-proof mofos here. I vowed three years ago to keep only three over-ear cans at once, a vow that remains unbroken to this day. In fact, I only have two now!

Vacations here consist of visiting our daughter and son-in-law in Seattle and son in Durango, Colorado, at least annually. We also have a small house on a lake in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, so we can "vacation" there on weekends in the summer.

This graphic gave me a hearty belly laugh. So effing true and shows what gullible sheep consumers can be. Funny!

You bet. I run all my IEMs off desktop gear about 97 percent of the time. The Piccolo is about the only one I run from a phone dongle, and it sounds better on desktop.

Call the EMTs -- holy f*ck, I had a stroke reading that. I probably don't spend $1,000 on any discretionary stuff in a year. Whisky and weed are not discretionary -- they are essential for life. But I don't even spend that much on those, either.


Yes, yes, yes. I have maxed my 401K since I was a newspaper reporter in the late 80s making $17K per year. I take advantage of every tax shelter I can find. We buy only used cars, pay them off early. Paid off mortgages early. Never carry a credit card balance ever. Sounds spartan, but I'm on track to enter semi-retirement at age 61.5 with a nice nest egg buttressed by zero family money. The furthest thing from a member of the Lucky Sperm Club here. I come from a stable, upper-middle class family, but both of my parents were raised during the Great Depression in America in working class families, so they drilled the importance of savings to me and my three siblings and made it VERY clear there would be no handouts to us as adults.

I love race cars and race motorcycles. But my eye also is drawn by attractive performance street cars, too. Mainly sports cars.

I just do a load of OT to save up. Or I focus funds on studio equipment. Or photography.

 

[Syan25]

Not bad...and British, too!
Musical Fidelity and Audiolab...am I a Brit audio supporter???

Cheers!

Excellent! Can't go wrong with those brands. My amps are Cambridge Audio! British.

But I cheated. I bought the Adam Audio A7V monitors. German.

Can I be forgiven?

 

[Surf Monkey]

Excellent! Can't go wrong with those brands. My amps are Cambridge Audio! British.

But I cheated. I bought the Adam Audio A7V monitors. German.

Can I be forgiven?

Cambridge makes great gear. My phono amp is Cambridge.

 

[Syan25]

Cambridge makes great gear. My phono amp is Cambridge.

Mine too.

 

[fidgeraldo]

Can I be forgiven?

Cheers!

 

[Thieme]

Jeez IvipQ is really branching out and showing that Xinhs and Zisin are indeed part of them. They started selling ear tips on AliExpress now. L is only 13mm and they are pretty pricey so I won't try them but I really wonder if they work well and what they are even thinking. There are so many ear tips already and so many established names too. Seems difficult to get in between.

 

[pk4425]

My amps are Cambridge Audio! British.

I really liked the original Melomania TWS earbuds from Cambridge Audio back in 2020. Nice sound considering it's Bluetooth and only around $100.

 

[jotaerre]

Those of you who have the R3II have you updated it to v1.3?

 

[PhonoPhi]

Phoenixcall’s planar driver received a lot of flacks when it was released. If I remember correctly, those drivers were first used in a collab with Zeos. HBB opens up the driver and call them fake. I can’t recall whether the treble of phoenixcall was special, but it’s a shame that kinera tunes something called “phoenix” so disco boom boom.

Edit: so no, Kinera’s driver is different from these “square planar” and also different from the 6mm drive used in the new Simgot (and likely CFA dual planar IEM)

---

Spoiler: My non audio discovery

Pretty nice used ThinkPad X1 Yoga with quad core intel, 16GB of ram, and 256GB (upgradable) SSD for less than a midfi IEM.


I use Arch, btw

Don’t buy new laptop unless it’s a MacBook Air M3 13 inch, folks. I checked all the models on display in retail store here in Australia, and there is nothing but low quality poorly made malware infected stuffs on the low price market (less than $1000). If you want a brand new laptop for yourself to actually use on the road and do serious work, get a MacBook Air M3 with 16GB of ram for right around $1000 (or less with student discount). If you can’t, go used and get a thinkpad. The ones from 2019-2020 are going to last for a long time.

Kinera/Celest was one of the first to use microplanars in Gumiho - a pleasant simple BA-microplanar hybrid.

Phoenixcall has quite an unconventional tuning but with a great potential in my experience. One needs to spend at least 20 minutes to adapt to it to fully appreciate quite low pinna gain with the resolution and overall tuning feeling harmonious and enjoyable.

Another totally "unconventional" tuning with BA-like microplanars is 1 More Penta (4 microplanars + DLC DD).
It is amazing how having different 'reviewer exposure" makes a difference!
Virtually none of "HIFi reviewers", and "consumer-oriented reviewers" are quite ... ridiculous in their evaluation and sentiments....

To my ears 1 More Penta features one of the best treble (as in smooth and resolving) due to its microplanars. Yet a DLC DD prominence by tunung is quite a bit overwhelming for my preferences. I will try to work out EQ with my R4.

Plutus Beast is another microplanar hybrid that I enjoy as my bass-head IEM

P. S. Moondrop May is another microplanar hybrid with perhaps a bit rough tuning but with a great potential. IMO.. Moondrop needs to advertise/promote the cultural heritage better - @baskingshark helped me to really appreciate it.

I hope KZ will start to use mixroplanars one day

 

[Hypops]

Excellent! Can't go wrong with those brands. My amps are Cambridge Audio! British.

But I cheated. I bought the Adam Audio A7V monitors. German.

Can I be forgiven?

Not sure how "British" Cambridge Audio is at this point. I think most of their gear is manufactured in China, but similar to Apple, they use the label "designed in" the UK. But to be fair, most audio gear is never made in just one place. As another example, Schiit Audio can't legally say they are "made in the USA," so they use "assembled in" instead. I own a Peachtree amp, and those are "designed in" the US, but manufactured and assembled in Canada. And so on. The only things that seem to be actually "made in" one place (other than China) are either very expensive or are from small boutique manufacturers, but even they have to source parts (and sometimes assembly) from other places too.

 

[baskingshark]

It’s also a reason why I’ve found myself in the IEM game. I can get a heckuva lot more bang for my buck with IEMs than with headphones, and waaaay more than with speakers. I had to say “good enough” to my speaker rig a handful of years ago. And while I still have my eye out for deals on good headphones, it’s nice to be in a corner of the audio hobby where I can still justify spending money on new, quality gear like IEMs. Great sound quality for way less money.

Speakers are a different ball game in terms of money outlay and commitment!

One needs to treat the room acoustically, such as flooring/walls/reflectors, even placement of speakers relative to room acoustics matters tremendously. Not to mention pricier cables and interconnects etc.

No, no you asked for the difference and the thing is they actually have to be side-by-side. Reason being that memory only works 1/2 the time. Plus I will photograph the two and it will also make it into the 7Hz G1 review as an add-on at the end. This stuff always helps me, don’t worry! Cheers!

The reason memory only works half the time is only the former IEM existed before. Now a new reality of a new and different IEM is in the test, so........

100% agreed.

Aural memory can be dodgy, but the best way to do comparisons is back to back A/B comparisons on the same setup with the same volume ideally.


An IEM can sound very decent by itself, but only shows flaws when pitted back to back against a benchmark gear on actual listening.

Exactly. It just colors the sound and distracts from the rest of the track. By chance have you heard the Kiwi Ears Canta? 1-DD/2 "micro" planar. Looks like that one is maybe a little too unrefined from basking's review of it. It's also pretty inexpensive, around 80 bucks.

Yeah personally wasn't a fan of the Canta.

Unnatural timbre, shouty upper mids with lower mids scoop out and hot in the treble.

It had good resolution though, but for me the cons outweigh the pros, and maybe it is kind of a test case in implementing a 1 DD and 2 microplanar setup.

Oh I didnt know that there were that much drama around piezos haha. Yeah piezo has always been infusing excess brightness to the tuning which can be a huge no no for those who are sensitive to such tuning. I wonder if those failure has led to overdampening the EST drivers in many early 1st gen tribrids, making them even darker than DD or BA driven treble. Good to see that there is no such apparent failure or drama around micro plannars.

Microplanars or pseudoplanars or square planar drivers had actually a big hoohah a few years back.

Some reviewers/consumers were opening IEM shells to show that what manufacturers marketed as "planar" were actually pseudoplanars or square planars, and there was a a bit of a witch hunt with some manufacturers bashing others about fake marketing.

In the same vein that most so-called Electrostatic (EST) drivers are actually magnetostats or electrets, or some "bone conduction" types in IEMs function more akin to a piezo or bone shaker.

Was the Phoenixcall one of the first to use microplanars? I think it sounds fantastic, especially once you pull it off it’s matching but sadly bright-inclining cable.

IIRC, I think the TRI I3 (original) that was released in 2019 probably had a midrange microplanar.

Not sure how "British" Cambridge Audio is at this point. I think most of their gear is manufactured in China, but similar to Apple, they use the label "designed in" the UK. But to be fair, most audio gear is never made in just one place. As another example, Schiit Audio can't legally say they are "made in the USA," so they use "assembled in" instead. I own a Peachtree amp, and those are "designed in" the US, but manufactured and assembled in Canada. And so on. The only things that seem to be actually "made in" one place (other than China) are either very expensive or are from small boutique manufacturers, but even they have to source parts (and sometimes assembly) from other places too.

Agreed, I think most western and boutique brands have some supply chain from China, even TOTL ones, in terms of parts or assembly/labour, even if they are not outright saying it is made in China.

I remember 10 years ago when I was a greenhorn, I paid like 500 bucks for a Westone multidriver set. I was so happy like a kid opening a present on Christmas, only to find the huge words on the packaging: "Proudly designed in the USA". With a smaller sentence below "Made in China" LOL.

Kind of to be expected, compared to the western factories, they have economies of scale, cheaper labour/parts, perhaps less stringent licensing/patent rights, less marketing/overheads, so stuff is cheaper to procure, assemble and produce in China.

 

[Cecala]

So, I can provide my quick thing but the ZE51B is really, really fun. It was a request by Anatolyi that I hold off on my review as there was a improvements that he's finalizing. This includes shell and tuning.

With the current tuning, it's a freaking fun set. Very well tuned with the branded drivers. The shell literally vibrates in hand (like a Dualshock) during some bassier tracks. At super high volumes (unlistenable), they are capable of bouncing on the desk for sure.

Not to push my luck, although is it due somewhat soon?
I'm hoping it's not a one trick pony, sound-stage would be great with such an IEM.