The discovery thread!

[Barndoor]

Haha lol Aether is cooling off quickly, huh. Phoenixia might be much the same, but DD+BA hybrid tech should be well honed by now. Remains to be seen.

Typical me, late to the party!

 

[4ceratops]

Me too. H20 sounds too "slow & muddy" after Phoenixia. ((

Obviously, we perceive them very similarly. Slow and muddy are adjectives that I would assign to them as well. And yet I tried so hard to like them

 

[perrew]

Has anyone here tried the SR1 and/or compared it to the H20?

 

[nikbr]

Typical me, late to the party!

As long as the party's still ongoing!

---

I still have two reviews to churn out before Phoenixia arrives. But this is a weirdly calm time of year, I suspect it might all go haywire in a few weeks' time. Till then, it's time to appreciate what I've got and listen with nothing else but joy as the end objective.

 

[Redcarmoose]

In other news.............................

 

[alexandros a]

looks like this one is going to be the most expensive from all Kiwi Ears releases so far ????
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
as soon as Canon Pro arrives here in Athens, Greece i ll be posting my impressions here as well as and a proper review will follow right after....This is indeed a Combination of 1DD and 6BA drivers per side obtaining two swicthes in terms of enhancing / adjusting the overall signature according to any individual's taste and most certainly an upgrade over the Yanyin Canon II
if anyone is interested this is the FR graph of the Pros :

something inside me tells me that this one will be a gem.......who knows ???

 

[Erkil]

Nik,

I know you are not my biggest fan but a request for consideration if I may.

I and I assume many others would be keen to understand what the first Ruviest Audio offering is like and the more reviews and comparisons the better.

I think the assessment you speak of would be more useful if it included IEM that others are more likely to relate to (especially in the AuR and Abel Hsu space) rather than the Aure that very few people have. I have never even heard of the last one let alone have any frame of reference with it.

Any chance you could swap out another IEM that might offer a wider frame of reference even if the driver configuration is different, I am not sure that matters to most people, certainly not as much as how well those drivers are tuned.

Pretty please ??

Thanks Nik,

I don’t read most of the recommendations and reviews here or anywhere else because I’m not in the market for a new set until I see what Abel is offering via Ruviest.

I tend to skim through Discovery and read any nuggets that stand out like your post about Prelude

I am not into buying a pile of sets just to try them. I prioritise my audio budget for few and hopefully really good and therefore wait for something that resonates with me for some reason such as the AüR offerings. They have not let me down thus far even if the Aurora is a set that I need to acclimatise back into to a certain extent.

I look forward to reading what you and Leonard have to say about Prelude but will happily listen with Hermit in the meantime. The other AüR get a listen also but the Hermit dominates my listening time at the moment.

Thanks again and I will do my best not to fall further out of favour but “alright” is a start

I will also be ordering Prelude as soon as Abel lets me. What AüR’s did you have in addition to Hermit? My memory is bad, maybe you sold

 

[cqtek]

looks like this one is going to be the most expensive from all Kiwi Ears releases so far ????
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
as soon as Canon Pro arrives here in Athens, Greece i ll be posting my impressions here as well as and a proper review will follow right after....This is indeed a Combination of 1DD and 6BA drivers per side obtaining two swicthes in terms of enhancing / adjusting the overall signature according to any individual's taste and most certainly an upgrade over the Yanyin Canon II
if anyone is interested this is the FR graph of the Pros :

something inside me tells me that this one will be a gem.......who knows ???

I find it very good, homogeneous and balanced, slightly warm, with an adequate bass weight.

 

[alexandros a]

I find it very good, homogeneous and balanced, slightly warm, with an adequate bass weight.

@cqtek i suppose yellow is in popular mode ,blue is balanced mode and green is in High mode ......very comprehensive graph man.......do you suppose in popular mode adds 2 to 3 dbs from the High mode setting or not ? i had the smoothest experience ever with Yanyin sets having Yanyin Aladdin for a long time...In that one it was a real pleasure turning the volume all the way up.......talking about zero distortion whatsoever...........

 

[jbfps116]

Hello friends, hope you're having a good time, and as I promised, when my thoughts are fully formed, I'll share with you more detailed impressions of the sound of the Penon Quattro quad driver dynamic headphones I've been testing all these days, and here I am to do it!
Low Frequencies:
From the first seconds it's clear - these basses are no joke. Massive, very deep, with a dense body and natural weight, they create a real sound wave that you can not just hear, but literally feel. Even at low volume there is a clear sense of slight physical pressure, as if the sound is touching you lightly, penetrating under your skin and enveloping you. It's not a hollow thump, but a textured, resilient bass that manages to be both a pillow and a hammer when needed.
And the overall warmth of the delivery adds to the analog musicality in this range everything sounds rounded, comfortable, and yet doesn't lose drive. Especially impressive is the way the sub-bass goes deep, not washing out the rest of the range, but on the contrary, supporting it with a base and foundation. This is one of those rare cases where the bass is not just “there”, but it is exactly as it should be, powerful and substantial.

Mid frequencies:
This is where the real magic of this set begins. Penon Quattro midrange is a very lush, warm and smooth flow of sound that doesn't just deliver vocals and instruments, but literally drenches the entire space with them. It sounds like it's filled with air and velvet softness, but remains crisp, vibrant and rich.
Vocals sound emotional, natural and voluminous, as if the vocalists are standing in front of you, with perfectly captured nuances of breathing, intonation and microdynamics. But there is no dryness, no detachment. This middle is not monitory or analytical, it is musical and very involving.
And despite some softness, it has character and energy, guitars sound with a pleasant density, piano sounds with real body, and strings with a very expressive liveliness. Everything sounds as if you are inside the music itself, not just listening to it from the outside. And yet there is no harshness here, everything is very neat, delicate, with an impeccable balance between drive and comfort.

High frequencies:
Everything here is done with some remarkable precision. The treble doesn't bulge, scream, or fatigue, but there's just enough of it to make the music breathe, shine, and open up in detail. This is exactly the right balance when you get transparency, air and resolution, but with absolutely no hint of sibilants, dryness or excessive brightness.
To me, they are definitely not dark but not light either, but natural, transparent, as if they were tuned very precisely under a microscope and adjusted literally to the millimeter. Cymbals sound with a beautiful residual aftertouch, and various rustles, reverberations and microdetails in the high register are transmitted very clearly, voluminously, but softly, without tiring your ears. It's exactly the kind of thing that makes you want to listen to music for a very long time, because nothing annoys you and your ears literally rest, even when the track is technically very intense.

Soundstage:
Wow, the Penon Quattro stage is voluminous, deep and truly layered. The space isn't just built wide, but literally in three dimensions: excellent separation of the foreground, background and everything in between. The width of the stage does not seem artificially inflated, but naturally wide, the vocals are clearly in front of the construction in the soundstage, and the instruments around it, and the background reverberations very smoothly dissolve into space, and various atmospheric effects are accurately localized in different points of the scene.But what is especially catching is the separation of layers and plans. Even in complex arrangements, you can easily distinguish where the instruments are and how they interact with each other. All this gives the music liveliness, breath and realism, as if you are not just listening to the track, but are present at its performance.

To summarize: Penon Quattro is like expensive vinyl in the world of headphones. Warmth, depth, energy and sophistication in one bottle. It's the kind of thing that makes you want to re-listen to everything from your favorite old records that these headphones can handle perfectly, to new and modern genres, just to see how cool they sound in these headphones. I think the Quattro isn’t about a five-minute wow effect, but rather about long-lasting musical enjoyment where you're not analyzing the sound, you're just immersed in music and don't want to come back.

Sounds amazing, although I'd worry it would be too warm for me, like the 7Hz Five.

Me too. H20 sounds too "slow & muddy" after Phoenixia. ((

I can't wait to get them [Phoenixia] in my ears!
Working on rating the H20 and Aether today...
on "My Name" by Aurora, the H20 obviously has POWERFUL bass, which many IEMs struggle with on this song. The Aether obviously has much less powerful bass, but the vocals and treble are just so much better than the H20... better layering, detail, and musicality. The Aether so far is living up to its "reference tuning" description and is very good at that, and I can forgive its more polite bass for that reason. [BUT... the bass CAN really SLAM when the song calls for it, like in "Irisoft Livemixx" by Eprom. On the Aurora song mentioned, the bass IS a bit more subdued, so the Aether plays it subdued. But on the Eprom electonic jam, the bass is MEANT to be powerful, and yes, my jaw dropped when the bass dropped! Stunning.

When I switched over to the H20 on that Eprom song, the treble felt like a blanket was thrown on it to put out the fire! A disturbingly warm presentation for electronic music. There's a reason I didn't like the 7Hz Five, and the H20 is going right up that same road. Of course the bass drop seemed WAY blown out of proportion as well. [bassheads, take NOTE haha.]

 

[SushiiFi]

I find it very good, homogeneous and balanced, slightly warm, with an adequate bass weight.

Graphs very similar to pilgrim.

 

[cagix]

Well my first moments with toobs on xduoo ta 66. What can say i see the points for it i know these abylities.
To be pretty honest another product where i feel headamp gsx mini is special to me. Yes xduoo ta 66 is little bit warmer, deeper in stage i think little bit fuller and smoother than gsx mini. Yes but gsx mini is more precise balanced neutral king with very transparent sound. From gsx mini, violectric 222 and xduoo ta 66 is gsx mini still best. With violectric i dont want to say much because it is like less technical, less transparent gsx mini.
What i think it is like this.

1Head amp gsx mini alone
2Violectric v 222 tied with xduoo ta 66.

Yes they are to me tied. A touch neutral presentation with violectric to more analogue tube warmess deeper stage ta 66. What i think and what holding ta 66 to can posible fight with gsx mini or can be posible better is less transparent sound. I dont say detail because i feel detail maybe can be there but is masked. These sound with unmasked unveiled presentation will be posible to say maybe beat even gsx mini but cant not at the moment.

 

[Redcarmoose]

looks like this one is going to be the most expensive from all Kiwi Ears releases so far ????
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
as soon as Canon Pro arrives here in Athens, Greece i ll be posting my impressions here as well as and a proper review will follow right after....This is indeed a Combination of 1DD and 6BA drivers per side obtaining two swicthes in terms of enhancing / adjusting the overall signature according to any individual's taste and most certainly an upgrade over the Yanyin Canon II
if anyone is interested this is the FR graph of the Pros :

something inside me tells me that this one will be a gem.......who knows ???

Price was posted in this post.
Apr 12, 2025 at 9:03 PMPost #149,215 of 149,518

 

[cqtek]

@cqtek i suppose yellow is in popular mode ,blue is balanced mode and green is in High mode ......very comprehensive graph man.......do you suppose in popular mode adds 2 to 3 dbs from the High mode setting or not ? i had the smoothest experience ever with Yanyin sets having Yanyin Aladdin for a long time...In that one it was a real pleasure turning the volume all the way up.......talking about zero distortion whatsoever...........

00, 01, 10, 11 Refers to the position of the switches. Come on, I thought it was something more logical, maybe me being an electronics guy it seems obvious to me and it is not to others.

00 - switches OFF.
10- switch 1 ON, switch 2 OFF
01- switch 1 OFF, switch 2 ON
11- switches ON

The frequency response at positions 10 and 01 are equal.

I also have the Yanyin Aladdin and with them I could really appreciate the Yanyin brand. The Canon Pro's are the second set from a brand that I would have liked to review a lot more.

 

[Tanalasta]

In a world of dongle options, a simple 4.4mm female to 3.5mm male adapter means I can use my IEM's and headphones directly out of the MacBook Pro (M4 Pro, 16 inch). The iMac also has an inbuilt DAC and amplifier circuit so the headphone out that will drive 300ohm headphones provided they are reasonably sensitive.

Whilst the staging and micro-detail level isn't up to the resolution of a top of the line DAP/DAC ... it's surprisingly not that bad.