AmericanSpirit
Member of the Trade: Night Oblivion
Follow up on Sea-Elf.Hakugei Sea-elf arrived!
OTTB impression;
-Shell faceplate is extremely cheap texture paste…it reminds me of counterfeit streetside cigarette lighters with nude blondie models on it. Hakugei has a lot to do with that faceplate quality for sure,
—Stock ear tips are very basic, I probably will do a ear tip roll sooner or later. At least it comes with another ear tip storage box. Stock ear tip boost Bass too much, and cuts out treble too much, not a good match. Currently pairing with Latex H570.
-Cable is pretty nice feeling, soft compared to the more premium ones that comes with See Audio Bravery. But I can see a cost down took place for this cable.
The L/R indicator has to face inward to have proper polarity, if you plugged L/R indicators facing outward (as you can see both face plate & L/R indicator on the cable, that’s wrong connection. My first guess was that and the moment I hear the sound, I noticed the polarity was reversed. L/R had to face inward for Sea-elf)
—Pretty bass heavy! Driver transient speed is fast enough that I can tell it is LCP.
— 2pin socket and IEM seemed detached, which actually worries me…
—qdc tuning Sea-elf it is. Very exactly what I was looking for. Less engaging upper-mid qdc tuning with dual-LCP. I can tell qdc tuning is not for everyone , as this is the very anti-thesis of popular harman (upper-mid focused). People looking for vivid vocals may feel this tuning may lacking focus on vocals and instruments.
—however I don’t see the upper registers performance at this moment yet. Will try to play with Sea elf and see how it turns out.
—OOTB impression is quite positive for me, as a initial voice from sloppy LCP, it does enough first impression. I’m going to expect more defined bass imaging, tighter control as more hours are waged on Sea-elf.
The only concern is the lack of air and resolution, I will see if this a permanent thing or IEM-native. Not sure why but there are no 10khz+Lack of air is what I’m going to expect from TRN X7, I’d expect more air from the FR of Sea Elf. Will report back for this later.
This didn’t happened to 6mm LCP + 10mm LCP Truthear Zero, so I’m not sure why, Sea elf isn’t singing on upper registers
[30min of initial run]
—treble extension starts to kick inH570 ear tip tones down somewhat excessive mid-bass yet retain the bass rumble. Still Sea-elf is not the level of Truthear ZERO yet, but bass and mid is performing better. I probably would let Sea-elf get to get her legs stretched for a while for the new home then
Hakugei surely need to deal with build quality with sea-elf
Lenovo LP5 $11 TWS;
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mPVdb82
Wow, better than I expected from my experience with their $12 bluetooth headphone. Mid-bass thru mid-centric softer sounding but it has OK level for back up kid for TV-use. I may not for music, but it works fine for conference call. I got is as a back up kit for TV‘s wireless solution. Ok resolution for $10 IEM, but the somewhat muddy mid-bass makes it not a good kid for music. Amazingly it stops playing when you pull off from your ear, wow very functional! (I have no idea why battery status indicator LED is always on for the case)
Lenovo $10 TWS XT88
https://a.aliexpress.com/_mOxhrAq
Better tonal balance than LP5, still a bit nasal, random mid-bass boosted mainstream V-shape. Better set than LP5, and works fine as a back up set for TV’s wireless solution. No fatal flaws except rather bloated bass but that is hard to complain for almost sub$10 TWS. I will be sad if I have been issued this as a gear to enjoy music, but fine with watching TV and conference calls.
Faceplate
▶︎Does it look like you copy and pasted random 3DCG texture? Yes it is. Not a good quality faceplate.
▶︎shell built is somewhat low grade, it looks like whoever made Sea-Elf isn’t experienced in making IEMs, good news and bad news for this.
Good news; Sea-Elf isn’t your ordinary IEM coming out of same ODM with different faceplates and same drivers, it is out of nowhere type brand new IEM.
Bad news: This brand new IEM still has lots of challenges to overcom, especially the build quality, this reminds me of GeekWold GK10. We probably can expect some quality issues
▶︎After 4 hours of runing, the driver starts to shine. Bass is very impactful and enjoyable with H570 ear tips. Mid is a little recessed just like Bravery’s tuning. Enjoyable U-shape with qdc in mind for upper mid presentation
▶︎10khz finally starts to show some presence yet not reaching the level of Truthear ZERO’s performance. Will report back.
Driver’s distortion starts to settle. Sound Image’s focus starts to get better.
It seems this dual driver isn’t too good at handling sub 30hz though.
Tonality isn’t like what Bravery does “Fragile / Transparent and resolving” Sea-elf is more of “Warm and fun-tuned” with main weight on bass.
The main part of Sea-Elf is the fun sounding bass, it has two vent holes that let two of its dual LCP driver to breathe. Sound guide tube is very wide.
They need to do something with faceplate, but the shell’s main part looks very nicely 3D printed. It’s just the socket of 2pin connectors are somewhat loose that worries me a bit in a long run.
What I started to find from Sea-elf is that it has layering capabilities, when played a full orchestra, it rendered a good layers of symphony, of course not a BA/EST like detailed textures, but LCP driver’s inoffensive soft touched layers are some unique features on Sea-elf.
Sea-Elf vs Truthear ZERO.
Both IEM are dual LCP drivers, but ZERO is 10mm woofer + 6mm tweeter set up, as opposed to dual 10mm?
Surely ZERO has more natural tonal balance, as basically the tuning is a copy from Moondrop’s Variations.
ZERO’s has forward imaging projection vs Sea-Elf’s side projection. ZERO has higher imaging focus, Sea Elf has more layers than ZERO.
I guess I will fully burn-in Sea Elf to see how it would compete with Truthear ZERO, at this moment Sea-Elf is still 1.5 class below Truthear ZERO.
midtange overtone test; hmm not very technical at this moment(6th hour). Harmonic distortion could be easily detected.
If Sea-Elf ever catches up with Truthear ZERO’s technicalities in the future, I guess this will be a one of alternative option to audiences not liking “vocal-forward” styled tuning mainly harman variants. Like @Leonarfd pointed, I also would love to drop mid-bass @200hz ish of Sea elf few decibels down. Bravery has the same level of floor structure but that’s a BA’s woofer, the sound pressure impact of BA woofer vs dual 10mm LCP is night and day.
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I need a very long time to define what I hear.
