Piezos are not as good. You don't see UM or EE using them. That would be something. But they are the cheap mans EST drivers. Essentially does what ESTs do. Generally upper trebles with Piezos sounds a bit thinner but it can be precise and airy sounding as well. GK10 surprisingly implements them well.
I found out a dual Sinion EST cost $160 for a set. No way your gonna put ESTs in a $45 earphone. Lol.
Thanks that's great info!
In other news on FB someone asked about Traillii and I made the following comment:
I have zero experience with full size headphones so can’t speak to the Susvara. My IEM experience is pretty vast however and I have owned/extensively demoed much of the high end market of the last couple years, including the Elysium, Andromeda, VE8, u12t, Legend X, Anole VX, Solaris, IER Z1R, MEST, Nio and so on). I was fortunate to demo the Traillii for a couple hours a few weeks ago and my opinion is that unless you’re looking for a more v-shaped IEM (IE., dynamic thumping bass), or an IEM like the u12t that is more a microscope for your music tha a means of enjoying it, the Traillii is probably the singularly most satisfying IEM experience on the market at the moment. To me this boils down to two factors—its state of the art gen 2 e-stat drivers and, more importantly, the masterful tuning of Oriolus’ head engineer Rao You Liang (a.k.a. the “Old Man”). I have heard Traillii’s e-stat drivers in another IEM, the Tansio Spark, and this IEM shared some of the salient characteristics of Traillii’s peerlessly vivid and rendered 3-d stage. What the Spark doesn’t have is the second—and most important factor—the masterful tuning.
On Rao’s tuning in my Isabellae Review I said:
“Encountering Oriolus and their products has opened my eyes to the depth of the craft involved in producing & tuning IEMs and further they have imho set the bar in terms of the degree of artistic expression & mastery it is possible to express through tuning. This experience has had a catalyzing effect in various elements of my approach to and understanding of this hobby. In particular it has solidified in my mind the notion of tuning as a mode of artistic expression vs. merely as utilitarian process aimed at shaping a target curve according to some algorithm. Thus far there have been many IEMs whose tuning I’ve loved and appreciated but Rao’s peerless affinity for extracting nuance, emotion and subtle textures out of vocals; of bringing the whole upper mid-range forward without overshadowing the lower mids, sacrificing weight and body in the mid-bass, sweetness in the highs or veering into anything too shouty; of coaxing out the most subtle, dense and satisfying textures from all levels of a bass response—and all the while conjuring a signature in which one is able to fixate on any individual element of it while never losing sense an overarching gestalt and unity…has, in my mind, elevated his best work to a level approaching transcendent perfection. The quality of the tuning in Oriolus' IEMs shines through whether we’re talking about the modest $600 Isabellae or the $6K titan Traillii which presently stands unchallenged as the preeminent example of IEM sound engineering craft available anywhere on the market.”
What Traillii is ultimately able to do, and what is really the source of its appeal imho, and what is the reason it is selling in massive numbers despite it’s crazy price—is that it is able to take the superb 3-d rendering capacity of the e-stat drivers, utilize their technical capacity to perfection and then inject a good degree—no, an unparalleled amount-- of humanity and emotion into the signature through the tuning. When I first started listening to the Traillii I was amazed how quickly it pulled me completely into its world. At the time I mused that it was an experience kind of like how I always imagined walking into a holodeck from Star Trek would feel like. The staging and space Traillii creates is so vivid & real it almost defines imagination, and couple that with the humanity and emotion of the tuning and it’s sign me up and take my $6K.