New Tia Fourte in the house...
Too early for any reliable impressions.
At about 60 hours burn in and they are sounding very nice.
The bass is so satisfying on these things. With some tracks it seriously sounds like a sub woofer is in there. Coming from the Zeus XRA the visceral bass is appreciated. Too early to compare Fourte to Zeus, but so far Fourte has better bass, Zeus better imaging. I think they can live together quite happily.
So far my preferred tips are Spinfits, same with Zeus.
Whilst I have no doubt that it needs more power than the AK380 alone can offer I do quite like it with the 380. Adding the amp improves on technical elements like seperation and stage size however to me the amp takes away a certain magic that the 380 alone has (particularly in the vocals), the sound becomes technically better, but boring (this is also the case with my Zeus). I will try it with a bunch of DAP's once I get to about 150 hours burn in on it. Might move to 1z or SP1000 depending on the outcomes of testing with both the Fourte and Zeus.
So far I pefer the stock cable over the PW no5 and my 1960's 2 wire. Will try them again later after the Fourte has more burn in. Unless things change I think I will either stay with the stock cable (it is quite a nice cable) or I might try the Dita Truth awesome cable, as I like the Truth cable on my set of Truth's.
When I saw the U18 in person I thought it looked way better than the pictures of it. It looks great. I think the Fourte is kinda ugly in the pics, and kinda ugly in person too. lol. However it also looks interesting, something different, so I am not mad at how it looks.
So far I think Adel is less fatiguing than Apex.
Anyway, it's early days so none of this info is reliable but thought I would share anyway. Zero regrets on picking these up.