[deep2285]

That's how you destroy a brand reputation... if you try too much and too hard... a great business lesson here...

It would probably be forgivable if this ranking was about a hand cremes or ice cream...


Lol Teaching Americans about marketing & communications... won't get that far


Yep, I had even acknowledged that in my post, encouraging to use FTS (the shielding version) as a very noticeable upgrade. But if you meant FTS, ok.


I had PP8 and sold them (as a neutralhead). Long time ago. They are a very good standard, maybe a "B-class" gatekeeper, but still... Don't remember exactly why but they didn't stack up to the rest of my collection. Maybe that's about 8BA technicalities versus some other things I have like KSE1500 closed in a custom silicone shell and EQ'd to neutral, so just not much competition. But if you're not into kilobuck summit-fi, they are definitely worth a try.


Like what exactly? Any examples?

UE IEMs is a good place to start.

 

[deep2285]

They do have a following for sure, but I figured they fit into @deep2285's criteria of not really gaining any traction for their Storm-level-priced IEMs. I was referring to IEMs of theirs like the Supreme, as well as the ones with a magnetostatic driver, etc. I'm not saying their in-ears aren't worth the price, because I haven't heard them. I'm just saying, again, they could be considered a brand with Storm-level-pricing that never really caught on. They have made a few budget IEMs that I loved, like the Orla. I've also tried a previous version of their Infinity (with only 22 BAs, also at e-earphone), and that one had a very big, powerful sound. It was the IEM equivalent of a rock concert with tons of textures and, despite being a specialist, I actually liked it a lot. The successor to that IEM was, weirdly enough, a 3-BA IEM with a huge copper coil going around them. I believe it was called the Infinity II, and it was much-less-positively received. I'm glad to Sammy has given the Infinity line some consistency now by going back to the lots-of-BAs config for the Infinity Ultra, as well as a tuning that seems to be better than the Infinity II.

I know first hand that this brand is also a bit notorious about its pricing strategy. Lot of deep discounts are available on their products.

I like brands that do not offer any discount whatsoever. Tour units are fine but even the idea of giving review based discounts doesn't sit well with me. This is why I get most of the information on expensive IEMs over here.

 

[SweetCans928]

My top three below $1500

Symphonium Crimson
UM MEST MK1
Night Oblivion Butastur

 

[Natesdailies]

My Top 3 under 1.5K:

Elysian Diva 2021
Night Oblivion Butastur
Nightjar Singularity

 

[wolfstar76]

Me neither.

That's why this story started by talking about brands whose IEMs cost less than half of a trip to London and a ticket to the CJ.

Even in North America, or even within US, traveling is not cheap. Most people don't realize that US is even larger than southeast Asia, or west Europe. For example, in the past CanJam SoCal, we have people traveling from east coast, @Rockwell75 traveling all the way up north, the flight and hotels are also not cheap.

If I were you, I would connect with other headfiers in Europe to start an IEM tour program by sharing your own IEMs first, once the group has enough size, you may get sample from IEM manufacturers.

 

[Auricon]

Getting back to the question...
"Do the Rn6 and Xe6 have fully-tubeless designs?"





I have asked Bogdan about this:


Thus spoke Zaratustra:

"Hi, there is a reactor that sits behind the low driver that has the mid connected to it. That reactor is piped into the larger opening where the highs sit. We call it a tubeless system but it’s a more complex network than just using a tube to guide the sound out"

So once again let me reiterate what I see in my fully transparent CIEM.

I can see this little black part that is probably the "reactor". It's a little 3d printed black box. That's how it looks:



It is small enough to be mistaken as a connector of tubes, or some black glue used to put together the tubes inside. Another take:



This is the size of tubes to me. Mids fire into this and then go through tubes, as well as the DD driver.

What happens next? It all goes through a tube, into the canal fully flooded with acryl:



On this picture you almost cannot see the two drivers that sit one atop another in the canal. This is the truly tubeless part.

Then you see two tubes, one is connected to a BA driver, another is connected to "the reactor", through a long tube.

The reactor has another tube, you may have noticed. That one is connected to the atom module cavity.

What is truly tubeless?
For example, this is.



I actually have Tralucent Plus 5.2, that's what I brought from Singapore the same year when IER-Z1R launched, I think, and also when FiR launched. I have met Bogdan there also. Nevertheless what's important is when you flash a light through these black shells, you can rather clearly see the drivers just sitting there... completely tubeless.

Next, that's their DD implementation:



I have their upper-end model, Ref Gen3, and the story is similar: there's a cavity insite and the drivers just sit in it. No tubes.

To sum this up:

1. Sorry if that hurt anyone's feelings, but I definitely wouldn't call FiR IEMs fully tubeless. I would call them partially tubeless though, as two drivers definitely are.
2. Since I had received the non-transparent RN6 I have also heard that it didn't sound tubeless to my ears. Coming from Tralucent I know how tubeless sounds and this just wasn't it. So no surprises here.
3. I also don't want to diminish anything that Bogdan did with FiR, as these clearly are very appreciated IEMs and I was afraid to try XE6 myself only to find myself becoming a fan. I honestly like how it sounds and feel it has some heart and soul poured into it.

Post Scriptum:

1. Typically what I associate tubeless with is a unique feeling of cavernous imaging and headroom.
2. I think Fourte is associated with this also, but I have only heard it once in my life for like 30 seconds, so can't comment on these.
3. Thus tubeless remains something very unique and special within multi-BA IEMs, as I can't come up with many examples of this kind of configuration.
4. However it is not that rare in single DDs, as probably most of these setups will be fully tubeless, because why shouldn't they be.
5. And here comes our Xelento feeling of huge headroom, among some others. As well as my comments about Sony wf-1000xm5 imaging.
6. So I imagine most of you know how tubeless sounds at least from your single DD endevours and may easily compare your FiR IEMs to check if you get the same type of cavernous feeling.

Again let me say once again that most of my favorite IEMs are NOT tubeless and I am very surprised to love how XE6 sounds.

Continuing your discussion.

I can understand categorizing CIEM FiR Frontiers not fully/partially tubeless given an individual's ear anatomy and your CIEM. But looking at the internals of a UNIEM FiR Neon 4, would you consider the UNIs fully / mostly tubeless since the drivers are directly connected to the Sound Reactor – see image below and FiR illustrations.

 

[wolfstar76]

My panties are certainly sitting correctly on my waist. I just find it hilarious this guy is clearly asking for exposure from his customers on this thread but turned down tour units for the Watercooler when asked in person.

I guess the reason is obvious since his IEMs cannot stand the the real demoing test.

 

[lycos]

What an interesting drama with aur but hardly surprising.

I was in their tour list but decided to drop it off because of that guy antics or what I perceived as rude behaviours.

Anyway, my current under $1.5k top 3:
-Monarch mk3
-Elysian Diva
-Singularity

 

[Garney]

Honestly, it makes me feel like dropping my vote for NP, great IEM that it is and didn't need "Aurists" to be pushed as it was already doing pretty well.

I agree with @aaf evo on this, even tho I own a pair, that it is gross for an iem brand to disrespectfully dismiss @HiFiHawaii808 and others in this group offering to organize a tour, and then tell its followers to come here and vote for them. You do care, you don't care, which is it?

Anyway, like @Rockwell75 said, it's sad for that talented guy (Abel Hsu) who knows how to handcraft and tune excellent iems at super competitive prices. That's a recipe for success drowned in a boil of oil and water.

Agree wholeheartedly. My vote for the NP was genuine, as I do feel it's a well tuned IEM with good build quality within its respective price bracket. I had to part with it due to fit issues but would have kept it otherwise. But this leaves a bad taste in my mouth. I kept my nose out of the previous "drama" surrounding tours, review units, "giant killers", etc. but this is hard to ignore.

 

[wolfstar76]

I’m not a native English speaker, so everything will at least already be known to both Turii Ti and Singularity owners; to my ears, both models are apples and oranges - both in terms of wearing ergonomics and in initial impressions

Firstly, the body material is completely different, which leaves an imprint on the signature: the aluminum chamber in Singularity gives a very clear articulation of bass, which immediately extends to the entire FR and from which you surprisingly don’t get tired - it’s almost the same light sound (without touching the low frequencies ) which I happened to hear in the beryllium Dunu Luna! I can’t say that the treble sounded excessive on my source - although I’ve read about this from owners, especially in synergy with A&K - but it’s definitely on the dark side, as if a “do not disturb” sign was hung on the doorknob and you don’t hear the annoying knocking; I seem to have seen Sngl from @MatW together with Eros 1AE, but due to the fact that my experience pushed me against this cable in the previous pairing - Eclipse+ErosS - I decided to follow the ET path and took Raphael, because it smoothes out the upper and brings the mids to the forefront: in short, my instincts did not let me down))) I clearly heard the difference with the stock cable, and the subtle changes that Raph made made me feel the strengthened mids and smooth structure of the Sngl signature; I agree with the discovery that these IEMs have a certain graininess to them, as if the sound is Kodak light-sensitive film that is nice to see on the big screen - Sngl as a quite tight IEM (it's made me crazy when I couldn't understand what gain is more preferable with my P6P - L or H) with too short nozzle for my deep insertion eartips fit has the picturesque image but lacks the resolution (and maybe depth?) seen in titanium Turii

---

Secondly, illustration of my thought about note weight of titanium (copied from the previous post): I’ve had Eclipse for a little less than six months: it all comes down to assembling the setup; If @Scuba Devils doesn’t let me lie, then the MA has a slow passive speaker that gives sparse bass and generally reacts in a peculiar way to lowering the tone - what I mean is that I certainly liked them! I listened to mine with an EA Eros S cable, which gave a good spatial shift across the stage and a rise in the upper-mids; NJ has a completely different sound, due to the material of both the body and the camera itself - aluminum - with fast transient attacks and tactile lows, which works ideally on electronic beats, industrial samples and hip-hop loops, in other cases the bass evokes a non-Newtonian fluid (variable viscosity dependent on stress) - it all depends on the tempo, but one thing I can say for sure is that Singularity plays more lightly and piercingly in an effective manner than MA

---

Thirdly, Turii Ti was initially positioned as the most widescreen western epic movie (pardon my 2nd cinematic metaphor), in which crystal timbres stand apart, and the silver cable oversaturates the treble to such an extent that IMHO it is impossible to listen for more than an hour, but nevertheless, Ti has some of the best upper-mids that I have heard in the last couple of years - I won’t even mention Sngl here, they are masterful at other things! I also noticed that in Sngl the rough edges in the recording appear more clearly, they take you through the melody like on a roller coaster and now you are again standing in line for a ticket , on Ti everything is more linear, like on a cable car-cabriolet with a silver Colt in a holster - that is, the first for shenanigans, and the second for a real bank robbery in addition, I can say that I first saw Ti with a copper PW cable at @Kiats - it surprised me, I decided to repeat: indeed, the bass has become more powerful, like a Winchester, the energy has increased - later I connected FTS... I became interested in the shielding effect, because until you try it yourself, you won’t know) I didn’t recognize them at all! Ti turned into full-size headphones with bass more prominent than PPT (Dita), and the height of the sound wall extending beyond the perception of DD as such - I will immediately make a reservation that the synergy only worked with Ti

---

The conclusion to all of the above is the following: despite the superficial similarity of the graphs, Ti and Sngl meet different musical tasks, and their narrowly focused use can reveal both disadvantages and advantages: each has its own source, its own discography, its own eartips, but I find Ti more universal, than Sngl in relation to my sound material, and accordingly I prefer them a little more than the latter, that's it

Wow, thank you. Did not expect such a detailed impression. It certainly makes my choice even more difficult .

 

[Scubadevils]

The under $1,500 vote has me increasingly curious about Diva…

 

[haci]

So I wanted to check back in with some results/ruminations about by mini source-odyssey.

I was quite smitten with the RS8 for many months, as you may know. And then I got the itch.

The culprit was the Cayin RU7. It opened my eyes as to what a dongle could achieve - to such an extent that I began to wonder if I needed a full-sized DAP at all, especially given my more mobile-oriented listening time. Anyway, I fell completely in love with the RU7-Dunu Falcon Ultra combo for travel situations, played out of my iPhone. I can get a tight seal and it has excellent bass with the gold nozzles, which works quite well in the car or bus or train or plane. As mentioned before, the bass lift helps mitigate the ambient noise of those transportation modes. The depth and layering of the combo is outstanding.

But, as much as the RU7 itself, I realized I had fallen in love with the Cayin house-sound, or at least the 1-bit version of it, so I bought an N7 and put it through its paces both as a stand-alone streamer and as a tethered USB/Dac.

I was quite under-impressed with it vis-a-vis the RU7. Which is more praise for the dongle than a diss of the DAP.

The N7 seemed to bring much the same level of warmth and detail to the picture, maybe a bit more dynamism, a slightly blacker background, but its staging and depth actually seemed less. So whereas I had originally thought that if the N7 was "good enough," I would sell the RS8 and pocket the difference for some new IEMs, I was now wondering if the RU7 might be enough for both mobile and desk listening and I could pocket a much larger difference and put all that toward a TOTL iem.

All this comparative listening was done with the Noble Ronin, by the way, perhaps not the best match for the 1-bit sound, but it's what I have on me and it's my favorite IEM of all. I went back and forth between the N7 and RU7 until I decided that there was not enough of a difference to justify keeping the N7.

Then I thought about the L&P W4 and some of the praise it's been getting, along with my new-found respect for dongles, so I ordered one and went through the same comps with N7 and RU7. But again, I decided that the RU7 was my favorite, espeically at its price. The W4 just didn't have that fuller, richer timbre, centered on the mid-bass, that I had come to love on the RU7. It was a tad cleaner. But I am not a clean guy.

Then I happened to read something about the Hiby Music Pro app in the N30LE thread and that it allowed for Qobuz streaming, not just Tidal, and that the sound through the app was better than using the Qobuz app alone. This led me to investigate. I realized I had an older version of Hiby Music Pro on my N7 and promptly upgraded. Then, with some difficulty, I found how to stream Qobuz through the app. It's a tiny bit buggy, but it did sound better. Yet the biggest advantage of this by far was that I could now use the Hiby app-embedded verions of their plug-ins and MSEB, which I had come to love on the RS8. More specifically, the Sound Field and Spatialize plug-ins.

Whoa!

Playing around with these two plug-ins utterly transformed what I heard from the N7. The imaging and depth were suddenly outstanding and I felt greater dynamics, a clearer, fuller midrange (though still quite warm) and just enough treble sparkle added to balance out the overall darkness of the 1-bit sound. This worked on local files through the app as well.

So I changed my mind yet again and decided the N7 was a keeper for this reason alone. Qobuz is what I listen to most of the time. I could never get the N7 to sound great using HQPlayer and Roon but now I didn't have to. It could be a stand-alone, and it wasn't anywhere near as heavy as the RS8, so I might actually haul it around.

So now the plan was, I would sell the W4 and the RS8 and use that cash for a very good set of IEMs.

I was getting excited about this direction, actively reading up on more technical, reference, V-shaped IEMs to complement my Ronins, when I thought about the Hiby plug-ins and MSEB and remembered how good they had sounded on the RS8. All this time, the RS8 had reamined boxed up and for sale.

So I pulled a Scuby.

I decided to fire up the RS8 one more time, as a sort of farewell verification that I had made the right choice.

Wrong move.

I got Qobuz set up through the Hiby Music app (which I had never done before on the RS8) and I was able to go beyond the app-specific versions of the plug-ins and MSEB and use the global versions that come with the DAP.

And my socks were knocked off.

The only way I can make any sense of it is that I had not listened to Qubuz through HMP on the RS8 before, I had not properly played around with Soundfield and Mastermind and Dynamics plug-ins, and my ears had grown used to the 1-bit sound on the Cayin devices, forgetting the R2R sound of the RS8.

But that forgetting, it seems, was important.

What greeted my ears was a massively more powerful and dynamic low-end, wider and deeper, yet more textured and coming out of a dark chasm of silence. Then a clear, forward midrange with great note weight yet sharper transients; a wider soundfield with more precise imaging (which you can really crank up with the Dynamics plug-in) and width/depth/layering that gave me goosebumps, as if I were inside a perfectly treated listening room with full-sized speakers activating all the air around me. And I could continue to tweak the sound as I saw fit.

It was night and day compared to the N7. In addition, the RS8 works extremely well as a DAC/amp, where I can use HQPlayer to upsample to the highest PCM rate before the RS8 does its magic. The result is so far beyond anything I have heard throughout this odyssey that I cannot fathom anything sounding better.

So my N7 is for sale along with my W4 and my lovely RU7 is my travel companion, nothing more.

The RS8 just secured its spot as my go-to source.

Anyway, i just wanted to share this journey with the 'Cooler. I thought many of you could identify with it, especially with the back-and-forth and rediscovery aspects of it. Also wanted to praise Hiby for what they have done with the RS8 - its incredible combination of that smooth, analogue R2R tonality with the near-infinate maleability of the signal through the plug-ins and MSEB. Hard to imagine it not giving me many more years of joy to come.

I ventured into the hobby with a blind purchase of the RS8, lured by promising reviews and the allure of possible easy battery swapping. My journey continued with the acquisition of the EVO, a stand-in, awaiting the Raven's release. Upon arrival, I pitted Raven against several IEMs, and it emerged victorious.

Now, my world is distilled into one DAP and one IEM. The quest for sonic perfection usually branches externally, inviting exploration of what lies beyond. Yet, I find the inward path equally, if not more, enthralling—beckoning endless experimentation. It's a laboratory for forging harmony in dissonance and transcending the luminous within the ordinary.

In this auditory odyssey, the plug-ins of the RS8, with its MSEB and Darwin controllers, have been nothing short of revelatory. To me they are not just tools but keys to uncharted echelons of acoustics.

Particularly striking is the transformative effect of the dynamics plug-in on EE BCDs. It’s a borderline synesthetic journey, where sound transcends mere listening, tantalizing other senses, teasing the realms of the extraordinary.

 

[emdeevee]

The under $1,500 vote has me increasingly curious about Diva…

Should be made clear that under 1500 is Diva 2021, the new version is just a little more at 1600. But yes, worth trying.

 

[fejnomit]

The under $1,500 vote has me increasingly curious about Diva…

I literally was just looking to see if I could find a 2021 version. Hilarious. Or am I wrong that the 2023 is not the desired one?

I ventured into the hobby with a blind purchase of the RS8, lured by promising reviews and the allure of possible easy battery swapping. My journey continued with the acquisition of the EVO, a stand-in, awaiting the Raven's release. Upon arrival, I pitted Raven against several IEMs, and it emerged victorious.

Now, my world is distilled into one DAP and one IEM. The quest for sonic perfection usually branches externally, inviting exploration of what lies beyond. Yet, I find the inward path equally, if not more, enthralling—beckoning endless experimentation. It's a laboratory for forging harmony in dissonance and transcending the luminous within the ordinary.

In this auditory odyssey, the plug-ins of the RS8, with its MSEB and Darwin controllers, have been nothing short of revelatory. To me they are not just tools but keys to uncharted echelons of acoustics.

Particularly striking is the transformative effect of the dynamics plug-in on EE BCDs. It’s a borderline synesthetic journey, where sound transcends mere listening, tantalizing other senses, teasing the realms of the extraordinary.

YES this! Very well said, sir

 

[Scubadevils]

I literally was just looking to see if I could find a 2021 version. Hilarious. Or am I wrong that the 2023 is not the desired one?

Ah so the one voted for is from 2021?