Year in Gear: 2022
Well, it’s the end of year and I’ve been reflecting a bit on all the gear I acquired for 2022. I pretty much got everything that I wanted, and I think next year will be a much quieter one. Here’s my acquisitions below in chronological order and what I think of them now.
January: Vision Ears PHöNIX
I enjoyed nearly everything about his IEM minus the bass, especially the sub bass quantity not being enough, and also lacking in enough texture. I loved vocals on this and the midrange + treble was outstanding. The treble had a combination of weight, air, and sparkle that was basically perfect and the way it reproduces cymbals is probably my favorite in any BA IEM so far. Very black background for notes to pop out from too. I ended up selling this about 4 months later due to the bass issues I mentioned but otherwise I would have kept it. I didn’t consider Phonix an all arounder when I had it but my favorite type of music with it was female vocal singer-songwriter stuff and so it was more of a specialist IEM for me. I placed an order for the Phonix LE recently and should have it in February next year.
March: FiR Audio Xenon 6 CIEM
My favorite very warm IEM as it marries that with very good technicalities, a well extended treble, and sounds more open than the average TOTL IEM. I consider it a king of dynamic contrast as well and is nice for lower volume listening. Having A/B’d the universal vs the CIEM, CIEM offers a clearer sound and a bit better extension and presence from the sub bass, plus a bit more impactful punch/slam as well from the mid bass.
April: Sony IER-Z1R
This was the 2nd second time I bought the Z1R, the first time being back in early 2020. This second time around, while I enjoyed the sound for sure, I was getting worried that I wouldn’t use it much with XE6 around and already knew at this time that I was going to end up getting another IEM and so I got rid of it. I might get another Z1R again though since I’ve been missing it.
May: Aroma Audio Jewel
Jewel is my most used IEM since it’s the best all-rounder for me so far. This is an IEM where I can load up a playlist of a variety of different genres or one of those “discovery” style playlists on music streaming services and not have much to complain about with how it reproduces the music.
October: Campfire Audio Supermoon CIEM
My interest in Supermoon ended up fading very quickly after getting it in CIEM form (like 3 weeks tops). I’ve never really lost interest in a CIEM that quick after getting it, and so a personal record has been set. Basically, the lack of enough macro-dynamic contrast, odd timbre, and uninspiring midrange were the biggest flaws of Supermoon for me. With these flaws, Supermoon is a hit or miss depending on the music and it’s a lot of misses if I go into music discovery mode on streaming services for example. I think if I had another week the Supermoon demo unit, I probably would have decided not to get it, and even if it did seem pretty good with
some forms of electronic music, ultimately it was too much of a specialist for me. Since I’m lukewarm with this IEM, I may be putting it up for sale eventually for someone to re-shell.
November: 64 Audio Fourté Blanc
A fan of the original Fourte but I never got to try the Noir variant, and so with the announcement of Blanc which is basically the same as Noir but with minor DD driver improvements, I decided to pick one up and it was pretty much an instant hit with me. It’s not something that I view as tonally accurate (although preferable to Supermoon still) but it’s an engaging listen in terms of its soundstage quality (imaging, layering, separation), macrodynamic contrast, and treble air and sparkle. My favorite genres with this IEM are various sub genres in electronic (techno/trance/house/DnB/ambient/experimental stuff) and pop.
November: Meze Elite
I’ve actually been going on a bit of a headphone demoing spree for the past 6 months to see what’s out there in the market as someone who’s predominately been an IEM listener for nearly 9 years now (although I actually started with headphones when I first got into headfi) and so lots to catch up on. So anyhow, I ended up preferring the Meze Elite to many headphones out there and was one of my top 3 that I liked the most. The Elite sounds very natural, like one of the better examples of it to me. Vocals and stringed instruments are especially really nice, and there’s this slight warmth and liquid feeling to the sound. The treble has a really nice amount of air to it without getting too exaggerated like the Hifiman Arya or HE1000SE that I tried. I consider the Elite an all-rounder for what I listen to (electronic, indie/alternative rock, singer-songwriter, pop) and all my music basically sounds upgraded with it. The Elite has easily replaced all my IEMs for listening to music at my desk these days.
December: T+A Solitaire P
This is another headphone that I ended up liking this year when I first heard it back at CanJam, although I wasn’t actually planning on buying one so soon but I ended up getting a really good deal on a used unit and so I jumped on it anyways. Resolution is sky high on this thing and it’s a technical beast. I’m actually hearing things that I haven’t heard on some of my songs, which is a rare thing for me these days. It presents nuances in the recording in an effortless manner rather than being showy about it. Relative to the Meze Elite, the Solitaire P has darker tonality with a bit less air in the treble, but it’s still very detailed up top. The bass is sub-bass focused, and it digs very deep and there’s good punch/slam from the mid-bass. The mids are a bit recessed compared to the Elite while leaning drier but not dry in an absolute sense. The quality of the soundstage is very good: imaging, layering, and separation are all top notch with the busiest of sections in tracks and depth and height are very nice even by open back headphone standards. I use the Solitaire P for all my usual genres, but I’d say electronic is especially great on it thanks to the sub bass, spatial presentation, and very high resolution.
December: Campfire Audio Trifecta
There’s been lots of positive talk about Trifecta this month, and although my impressions of it at SoCal CanJam a few months were really bad, I decided to give it a second shot and listen to for several days at my home. My listening impressions with it now are a bit different from my time with it at CanJam, but the differences are
not necessarily for the better.
I’ll just start with the out of the box impressions when I received Trifecta back on the 23rd. Fresh out of the box, I heard a sound that is
very warm (warmer than XE6) and incredibly bloated bass with everything sounded like it was playing behind a thin blanket with different instrument sounds melding together in the soundstage. So, that’s basically the same as I heard it the first time at CanJam, but a difference that I noticed this time was that the treble was not super peaky and fatiguing, and that’s with using the same setup (N8ii with W1 tips, although I’ve tried other tips as well) as I did at CanJam. So essentially, my out of the box impressions were that my music sounds
downgraded, and not in a subtle way. Since receiving them on the 23rd, I’ve had them on a 24/7 burn-in and listening to them for a few hours each day and have now reached 110 hours of total burn-in as of this writing.
Now, after 110 hours of continuous burn-in, I’ll describe what I’m hearing at this stage and compared to some of the things I’ve read about Trifecta by other owners. First off, these have been touted as being “bombastic”, and while it’s certainly a bass heavy sound, along with that I’m hearing Trifecta as having slow-ish transients and just about average dynamic contrast, which is pretty much par the course for the Campfire Audio IEMs that I’ve either owned or tried in the past (Andromeda, Vega, Atlas, Solaris). So, it’s bass heavy but not really an energetic delivery of bass, and this lack of an energetic delivery can be said for the remaining parts of the frequency spectrum as well. In addition to the bass being slow, it’s also not controlled, and in comparison, I’m hearing my IE 900 as having a quicker and more controlled bass. I’m also hearing the combination of Trifecta’s big, slow, and not well controlled bass as being especially problematic for fast music that has lots of stuff going on in the track.
Moving to the midrange, I’m hearing this area as lacking in clarity and with less resolution when compared to my IE 900. The midrange also sounds muffled (going back to my earlier point of a thin blanket sound), and given that it’s recessed, the combination of all these descriptions for how I’m hearing the midrange make it sound unremarkable. Overall, I’d put the IE 900 as having a superior midrange by a good margin.
Next up is the treble and this area is the least resolving of all 3 areas of the frequency spectrum, and it also has the least presence. Treble is another area where I find the IE 900 to pull ahead very easily: more texture, more sparkle, more air, realism and just generally of a higher quality and I find that more impressive as the IE 900 is doing that while having only a
single DD and pumping out a high-quality bass a well at the other end of the spectrum, whereas Trifecta has 3 DDs and is falling flat when it comes to treble quality while having muddy bass. Listening to
"Enough to Believe" by Bob Moses, the 3:00 - 3:43 section of this track features a washy ride cymbal that’s playing in the background and gets progressively less noticeable as the section gets towards the endpoint. Playing this section of the track on Trifecta has the washy ride cymbal basically disappear as the section get closer to the end…yikes, not good, and this section of the track is better reproduced on the IE 900 again with the cymbal having more presence and with better resolution. Moving on to
"Rhinoceros" by Smashing Pumpkins, the distorted electric guitar crunch in the 3:05 – 3:33 section sounds blunted and dull.
I’ve been reading about the soundstage being “big” and even so-called “holographic” on Trifecta, but in my experience the soundstage size neither big nor small, and instead I’d say it’s just about average and certainly not wrapping around the outside of head. More importantly than soundstage size is the quality of the stage, and basically what I’m hearing is poor separation, leading to different sounds melding together and essentially coming off as wall of sound. For soundstage quality, the IE 900 is again surpassing Trifecta with more noticeable separation and layering.
To start wrapping these impressions up, I’d like to re-emphasize the point that I’ve been trying to make the throughout my impressions, which is that Trifecta isn’t even as technically proficient or resolving as the IE 900, which is just a
single DD IEM that costs $1,499. To me that kept raising the question thought my listening: What’s the point of 3 DDs in Trifecta when it can’t even compete sonically against a single DD IEM? Of course, even more baffling is the price of Trifecta for the sound that it puts out. So, while I do hear an improvement in Trifecta’s sound after 110 hours of burn in versus out of the box, the improvements ultimately weren’t enough, and my music still sounds
downgraded but to a lesser extent when compared to day one
. I’m sure there will be questions about source pairings I used, and of my 2 DAPs (N8ii, WM1ZM2), the WM1ZM2 was worse since it made Trifecta sound even more slow and gooier.
So, with all that said and done, I found Trifecta to be the worst IEM that I’ve heard this year at the multi-kilobuck price level. I found it overhyped and overpriced given its sound quality and since it can’t even compete against my IE 900, the asking price of $3,375 makes Trifecta even more egregious. I’ll be returning Trifecta to Campfire Audio for a full refund.
Oh how I love DHL Express… 
