Phone + IE100 when out and about 
The Watercooler -- Impressions, philosophical discussion and general banter. Index on first page. All welcome.
- Thread starter Rockwell75
- Start date
efftee
1000+ Head-Fier
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- Oct 17, 2014
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I think some tire kicking is to be expected, price/deal checking, using one to leverage another seller, all kinds of activities -- bright and shady, sweet and savoury!
Though I must admit that the few instances I've tried to sell something on the classifieds had also been less than pleasant. In the end, I just let someone else do it for me and let them make some money for taking the piss from the work.That's funny. Idiot.I had someone call me an idiot for saying their $1700 offer on my Legend Evo was offensive and that they are wasting my time .
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2013
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Speaking of tips, I bought a pair of the new SpinFit W1’s yesterday from Amazon and they’re due to arrive tomorrow.
Curious whether these are a similar material to Xelastecs or Crystals. Hopefully they work for me
Relative to Azla Crystal, W1 silicone is a bit softer and thinner, less "sticky" which is typical of SpinFit and CP series. I'm testing it now with Jewel and in comparison to Crystal, W1 is more comfortable in my ears. Due to being taller (W1 vs Crystal), Jewel is a bit more out of my ears which not only improves the comfort but also the soundstage, making it wider (that is relative to my ear anatomy). With Jewel, both have similar bass/mids, but treble has a bit more sparkle/air with W1 and a bit smoother with Azla.
BUT, when you compare W1 to other CP100+/CP145, W1 gives you more bass (I hear more sub-bass) and a bit smoother treble. Will depend on which IEM you pairing it with, but with Jewel I switched to W1 and keeping it!!! Another observation, W1 sizes run a bit bigger, so W1 L is closer to CP100+ XL, and W1 M is closer to CP100+ L.
Btw, I saw W1 is already available on Amazon and SpinFit has official product listing for W1 on their site.
Doug2507
Headphoneus Supremus
N8ii & Jewel. Dishes, hanging up washing, hoovering, you name it. Love it for doing some chores when the wife's out!
wolfstar76
Headphoneus Supremus
If you segment your IEM/DAP usage like that, it justifies a vast collection.
Stu Paddasso
1000+ Head-Fier
Thank you. I just hate buying 3 different sizes when I'll only use 1 and 2 will sit around going to waste!!!! What a marketing rip-off that is!!!!!!!Relative to Azla Crystal, W1 silicone is a bit softer and thinner, less "sticky" which is typical of SpinFit and CP series. I'm testing it now with Jewel and in comparison to Crystal, W1 is more comfortable in my ears. Due to being taller (W1 vs Crystal), Jewel is a bit more out of my ears which not only improves the comfort but also the soundstage, making it wider (that is relative to my ear anatomy). With Jewel, both have similar bass/mids, but treble has a bit more sparkle/air with W1 and a bit smoother with Azla.
BUT, when you compare W1 to other CP100+/CP145, W1 gives you more bass (I hear more sub-bass) and a bit smoother treble. Will depend on which IEM you pairing it with, but with Jewel I switched to W1 and keeping it!!! Another observation, W1 sizes run a bit bigger, so W1 L is closer to CP100+ XL, and W1 M is closer to CP100+ L.
Btw, I saw W1 is already available on Amazon and SpinFit has official product listing for W1 on their site.
First of all you need to figure out your sizeThank you. I just hate buying 3 different sizes when I'll only use 1 and 2 will sit around going to waste!!!! What a marketing rip-off that is!!!!!!!
And the rest give those to friends ...
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2009
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Chores or gym I use my Beoplay EX.
At my laptop working I use the good stuff. I’m ultra squeamish about using good wares on the go however, for fear of loss , breaking, etc.
Should have been $1550!!!!!I had someone call me an idiot for saying their $1700 offer on my Legend Evo was offensive and that they are wasting my time .
Thanks, man! Well, judging from what I’ve heard from a number of brands, the Head-Fi impressions and imagery may stick around for a bit longer.
It’s just the full reviews that I’m closing the book on for good.Awesome! I’m also curious to hear how it scales with cable swaps. It’s something I might address in the full review, but I wanna see how much of its dynamic issues are ‘cus of the stock cable.
Ahh.. ‘can’t beat a Nasi Tumpeng for a special occasion.Thanks for the review! Enjoyed it!
Meanwhile am in your country catching up with relatives. Was welcomed to this when we arrived at my Tanta’s home.
Kemang is about an hour-of-so’s drive from where I live. Enjoy the meal, and I hope you enjoy your time here as well, mate!Thanks, man!
monduvo
100+ Head-Fier
Hello everyone,
Things have been pretty busy lately, with some things that had to be taken care of from family and business side of things.
Started off my usual coffee run on Sunday morning (7/17), and stopped by Destroyer cafe (emphasis on Scandinavian casual fare and coffee & tea) in Culver City (in California) for some iced coffee and pastry.
While I was waiting for my take-out order, I went for a walk around the block to see what was around, and I came across a building with a unique architectural design. Turns out to be a restaurant, called Vespertine, which is run by the same chef (Jordan Kahn) from Destroyer cafe.
Vespertine restaurant (Culver City, California, Sunday, 7/17).
Iced coffee (Kyoto-style brewed), cinnamon bun and coconut bundt cake (take-out, from Destroyer cafe, Culver City, California, 7/17).
Aside from work and happenings with family and life, I picked up my Supermoon ciem on Monday evening, July 11 (from usps, which was scheduled to be delivered earlier on Saturday, yet I was at work that time and wasn’t able to head back home in the later morning hour to receive it that day).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit in-ear monitors (my first set of ciems, in audiophile fit - short nozzle with relaxed fit).
Taking a closer look of the nozzle of Supermoon ciem, one interesting thing I've noticed is there is no filter of any sort, and when held up close to bright light, you can see translucent shades of black along the inside of the nozzle and towards the inner back side of the shell.
Trying on Supermoon ciems (on the first try) was much easier than I thought it would be, as I found its contoured shells and nozzles to naturally make its way in, by light touch and feel of contact along/in my ears.
Once comfortably seated snug in the ears, fit and wear felt easy and relaxed in and on the ears, which made for a comfortable listening experience, with no buildup in pressure nor any signs of hot spots (with few hours of listening at a time).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (audiophile-fit, in right and left ears, without cable).
From Monday evening (7/11) and Tuesday evening (7/12), I had just over one hour each night to listen to Supermoon, and I rotated pairing it with iBasso DX300 w/ amp12 and with iBasso DX220 w/ amp8.
With iBasso DX300 w/ amp12, Supermoon didn’t present the kind of sound I was hoping to hear. It came off as coarse textured near the ends of the surface of details with noticeably sharp and crisp sheen along the edges.
Switching over to iBasso DX220 w/ amp8, Supermoon sounded subtly more defined with slightly more resolution, yet it still had some noticeable sheen with some glare, and lacked some feeling of dimension in body and presence.
On the third night (7/13) of listening to Supermoon, with just over 2 hours of listening in the evening, I got a better feel for its sound and presentation, along with some brief back and forth comparisons with Vision Ears VE8 and Sony IER-Z1R, paired with Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (with a SABRE ES9038 Pro dac chip), set to low gain/balanced mode. With this setup, Supermoon noticeably scaled up in soundstage, along with a bigger and more up-close detailed presence of subjects, objects and instruments, mostly from orchestral classical tracks and some vocal jazz songs. However, by the time I listened to this setup, I didn’t have much time to do more critical listening with other instrumental tracks and other genres of songs, as I was going through the process of adjusting and getting a better understanding of its unique presentation and tonality of sound.
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (in audiophile-fit) with Plus Sound 4-wire spc cable to 4.4 balanced w/ Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (in low gain/balanced).
By Thursday night (7/14), I got more acclimated to the sound of Supermoon with Topping DX7 Pro, to the point where I didn’t want to hear anything else. From action-packed & sci-fi movies and nature documentaries to classical music and trance electronic dance music, Supermoon opened up with a spacious uplifting energy of sound giving an immediate sense of fullness, separation and speed. As I was getting a better sense of what I was hearing in little nuances of its sound, it all started to come together in seeing the bigger picture of the kind of sound Campfire Audio was going for in Supermoon.
From Friday night (7/15) and Saturday night (7/16), during few hours a night of listening with different genres of music, I was able to see more of its strong and weak points in the way it presented sounds of instruments, vocals and also soundscapes from nature documentaries, as well as panning & imaging, separation and layering.
With about 15 hours of listening done so far (up to Sunday, 7/17) on Supermoon (ciem), here are some of my thoughts and impressions on its presentation and performance of sound.
Bass in Supermoon is agile and engaging with enough feel of impact, punch and rumble, dynamics and speed that will keep most listeners satisfied for hours on end.
Mid-bass presents swift punch-like impact with decent physicality, yet does not match the more dynamic & physical hard-hitting slam and amount of air that’s being pushed/moved from a dynamic driver. Instead, the planar driver creates the impactful effect of bass and sub-bass with agile and swift force, along a wider/flat surface, which gives the perception of an energetic and swift pounding feel of low end sound and impact. In most movie scenes that have heavy hitting or explosive impactful sounds, I don’t get the same sense in physicality of that heavier weighted and hard-hitting force of impact, slam and air on Supermoon, as opposed to iems (such as Sony IER-Z1R) with a dynamic driver that handles low part of frequency in a more physical way, or when compared to closed-back dynamic driver headphones, such as Sony MDR-Z7M2 which noticeably has more physical slam, punch, rumble and air.
Sub-bass resonates with dense body and with fairly faster than normal decay, but can feel a bit strident at times and unnatural in slight firmness in body.
I’d say the closest I’ve felt and heard in hard force of impact from a fighting scene of a movie, with Supermoon & Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac, is described somewhere along the lines of feeling a brief shock from a quick strike force of impact resonating through my head and the upper part of my neck, while leaving a sharp tingling sensation, almost as if someone like Bruce Lee did a swift flying kick to the head, in a way.
Wax figure of Bruce Lee (at Madame Tussauds' Hollywood Wax Museum, Hollywood, California, sometime in September 2015).
Midrange is noticeably pushed back a bit (this is noticeable in rock, vocals and grand opera tracks), while retaining and presenting decent amount of surface detail of sounds from instruments, subjects and objects in most genres of music and movies & documentaries.
Where I feel it falls short is rendering fine detailed sounds with bright vibrato timbre from string instruments, such as the violin. In most classical tracks with violins that often go into the higher notes/part of the frequency, the sound tends to come off as partially softened midway through the surface of detail, and not sustaining the fullness of its vibrato timbre and steady heft in body, especially when played in moderate or fast tempo, which gives the impression of a slight haze effect, while holding and balancing together the overall information of detail in sound with this effect and presenting it forward with linear sharpness in detail from the edges (and outer edges) of each individual sound before it starts to noticeably fade a little towards the surface with less definition, weight and timbre.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio (Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin - Tidal).
Another instrument that sounded unnatural on most classical tracks with Supermoon was the harpsichord, where it tended to feel and sound more forward and intense in energy with harsh peaks in the mid-high to high part of the frequency.
For nearly all other instruments, such as percussion (drums), rich-mellow tones from stringed percussion instrument (piano), woodwind instruments (mostly flute, clarinet and oboe), and other string instruments (guitar and cello), Supermoon does a decent job in retaining and presenting musically engaging dynamic sound, albeit comes off as a bit dry and firm with subtly soft definition towards its surface of detail, with enough detail and space to discern subtle nuances and different parts of sounds, and making it an overall enjoyable & pleasing listening experience.
As for vocals, tracks with vocals (mostly opera, and other music genres with main emphasis on vocals) sound acceptably fine and pleasant in tone, but depending on the track, vocals can come off as sounding a bit unnatural and inconsistent in form of body and breathy timbre, with slightly softened notes from highs and lows, and singing that sounds a bit flat and recessed with less raised (and not etched more upward nor positioned upfront) presence of vocals.
Serse, HWV 40: Act I, Scene 1. "Rec. Acc. Frondi tenere, e belle" Aria. "Ombra mai fu" (Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Arianna Vendittelli - Tidal).
Lastly, for treble, upper range of sound starts off with steady emphasis on lower treble, and noticeably softens its tone and form a little in mid-treble. Then, it narrows out in body and detail when it reaches upper-mid treble, and it tapers further and rolls off in upper treble.
*Other tracks used for listening & testing on Supermoon ciem:
Audien ft. Xira - One Last Dance (Sound Quelle Remix)
Crubbixz - Break Through (Ava)
Paul Oakenfold - Awakening (Radio Edit)
hologram - Wreck It
Darude - Sandstorm
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 (New York Philharmonic, Philippe Entremont, Piano)
In terms of presentation and soundstage, Supermoon gives a large scaled presentation with a more upsized and wider presence of sound that occupies across the whole front of the stage with good lateral reach from side to side, and also travels slightly upward and downward from its sides, which creates a slight spherical effect of its soundstage.
From the first two hours of listening on Supermoon (w/ Topping DX7 Pro amp/dac, in low gain & 4.4 balanced), it made me feel as if a wide cohesive body of sound was on whole display in front and around towards my sides (just over 180 degrees) with larger feel of presence, rather than having parts of its sound being divided up as much into separate channels and layers of sound coming from the distant corners and sides, across the front and down below.
Another thing I noticed was the heightened body of sound presenting itself along a wide and fairly high vertical surface, joined by a wide and spacious horizontal plane at the front, as a structured whole. It felt almost as if there was a big wave of sound giving an uplifted presence and energy to objects, subjects and instruments, with sounds moving in with great heft and speed along a large front stage, and expanding outward side to side from one endpoint to the next.
Imaging in Supermoon delivers a well-defined sense of structured positioning and placement, adequate rendering of sounds as moving instruments and subjects on a noticeably larger scale with enough precision and control, and with enough space and air in between and around instruments, subjects and objects, along with more weighted heft, body and speed.
Although Supermoon doesn’t have the fluid intimate presence and emotion-like qualities of VE8, the refinement and immersive dynamics of IER-Z1R, or the deft and exacting intricacy of U12t, its effortless combination of euphoric energy and grand stage presence brings together a cohesive wholeness of lively dynamics, energetic grit, and well-focused musical performance, which makes for a unique experience of casual fun & adrenaline rush of excitement in enjoying music (and movies) for nearly any occasion, unlike anything else (so far) in current offerings of the iem market.
Vision Ears VE8 (w/ Plus Sound 8-wire gold plated hybrid in 4.4), Sony IER-Z1R, and Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit (in audiophile-fit, w/ Plus Sound 4-wire spc in 4.4).
Moving on forward to some personal thoughts of this journey. Going the custom-fit route has been a gratifying & mind-opening experience of enjoying music in the most immersive way (in a portable form factor), where it puts you in the center of the music with sound coming in like a full rush of adrenaline and immersing you in the heart of the song and rhythm. It’s like being in a mass of sound that’s moving in and with you, feeling the beat of its rhythm and raw intensity in impact, the way it moves with your senses and through your presence, and how it paints colors of sounds into life-like images in the rhythm of the song or in a scene of a movie/documentary. This has been one of the best decisions I’ve made to help understand myself in seeing and feeling how sound in music and cinema moves the senses and emotions to better understand much of the way music and film touch and move the hearts (and minds and lives) of others.
Further, this has taken the experience up a notch, opening up a new perspective in connecting more meaningfully with music and cinema. I’m more than happy to keep this set (and VE8 for its comforting, warm & rich sound), as I feel they cover a wide variety of music I listen to and certain movies and documentaries I stream and watch from time to time.
As I think back again on the choice of path I’ve made in this journey, I don’t feel any regret going the custom-fit route, and I look forward to years of enjoyment with Supermoon, and see what’s next in new offerings from Campfire Audio, Vision Ears and other major iem brands. =)
Things have been pretty busy lately, with some things that had to be taken care of from family and business side of things.
Started off my usual coffee run on Sunday morning (7/17), and stopped by Destroyer cafe (emphasis on Scandinavian casual fare and coffee & tea) in Culver City (in California) for some iced coffee and pastry.
While I was waiting for my take-out order, I went for a walk around the block to see what was around, and I came across a building with a unique architectural design. Turns out to be a restaurant, called Vespertine, which is run by the same chef (Jordan Kahn) from Destroyer cafe.
Vespertine restaurant (Culver City, California, Sunday, 7/17).
Iced coffee (Kyoto-style brewed), cinnamon bun and coconut bundt cake (take-out, from Destroyer cafe, Culver City, California, 7/17).
Aside from work and happenings with family and life, I picked up my Supermoon ciem on Monday evening, July 11 (from usps, which was scheduled to be delivered earlier on Saturday, yet I was at work that time and wasn’t able to head back home in the later morning hour to receive it that day).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit in-ear monitors (my first set of ciems, in audiophile fit - short nozzle with relaxed fit).
Taking a closer look of the nozzle of Supermoon ciem, one interesting thing I've noticed is there is no filter of any sort, and when held up close to bright light, you can see translucent shades of black along the inside of the nozzle and towards the inner back side of the shell.
Trying on Supermoon ciems (on the first try) was much easier than I thought it would be, as I found its contoured shells and nozzles to naturally make its way in, by light touch and feel of contact along/in my ears.
Once comfortably seated snug in the ears, fit and wear felt easy and relaxed in and on the ears, which made for a comfortable listening experience, with no buildup in pressure nor any signs of hot spots (with few hours of listening at a time).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (audiophile-fit, in right and left ears, without cable).
From Monday evening (7/11) and Tuesday evening (7/12), I had just over one hour each night to listen to Supermoon, and I rotated pairing it with iBasso DX300 w/ amp12 and with iBasso DX220 w/ amp8.
With iBasso DX300 w/ amp12, Supermoon didn’t present the kind of sound I was hoping to hear. It came off as coarse textured near the ends of the surface of details with noticeably sharp and crisp sheen along the edges.
Switching over to iBasso DX220 w/ amp8, Supermoon sounded subtly more defined with slightly more resolution, yet it still had some noticeable sheen with some glare, and lacked some feeling of dimension in body and presence.
On the third night (7/13) of listening to Supermoon, with just over 2 hours of listening in the evening, I got a better feel for its sound and presentation, along with some brief back and forth comparisons with Vision Ears VE8 and Sony IER-Z1R, paired with Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (with a SABRE ES9038 Pro dac chip), set to low gain/balanced mode. With this setup, Supermoon noticeably scaled up in soundstage, along with a bigger and more up-close detailed presence of subjects, objects and instruments, mostly from orchestral classical tracks and some vocal jazz songs. However, by the time I listened to this setup, I didn’t have much time to do more critical listening with other instrumental tracks and other genres of songs, as I was going through the process of adjusting and getting a better understanding of its unique presentation and tonality of sound.
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (in audiophile-fit) with Plus Sound 4-wire spc cable to 4.4 balanced w/ Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (in low gain/balanced).
By Thursday night (7/14), I got more acclimated to the sound of Supermoon with Topping DX7 Pro, to the point where I didn’t want to hear anything else. From action-packed & sci-fi movies and nature documentaries to classical music and trance electronic dance music, Supermoon opened up with a spacious uplifting energy of sound giving an immediate sense of fullness, separation and speed. As I was getting a better sense of what I was hearing in little nuances of its sound, it all started to come together in seeing the bigger picture of the kind of sound Campfire Audio was going for in Supermoon.
From Friday night (7/15) and Saturday night (7/16), during few hours a night of listening with different genres of music, I was able to see more of its strong and weak points in the way it presented sounds of instruments, vocals and also soundscapes from nature documentaries, as well as panning & imaging, separation and layering.
With about 15 hours of listening done so far (up to Sunday, 7/17) on Supermoon (ciem), here are some of my thoughts and impressions on its presentation and performance of sound.
Bass in Supermoon is agile and engaging with enough feel of impact, punch and rumble, dynamics and speed that will keep most listeners satisfied for hours on end.
Mid-bass presents swift punch-like impact with decent physicality, yet does not match the more dynamic & physical hard-hitting slam and amount of air that’s being pushed/moved from a dynamic driver. Instead, the planar driver creates the impactful effect of bass and sub-bass with agile and swift force, along a wider/flat surface, which gives the perception of an energetic and swift pounding feel of low end sound and impact. In most movie scenes that have heavy hitting or explosive impactful sounds, I don’t get the same sense in physicality of that heavier weighted and hard-hitting force of impact, slam and air on Supermoon, as opposed to iems (such as Sony IER-Z1R) with a dynamic driver that handles low part of frequency in a more physical way, or when compared to closed-back dynamic driver headphones, such as Sony MDR-Z7M2 which noticeably has more physical slam, punch, rumble and air.
Sub-bass resonates with dense body and with fairly faster than normal decay, but can feel a bit strident at times and unnatural in slight firmness in body.
I’d say the closest I’ve felt and heard in hard force of impact from a fighting scene of a movie, with Supermoon & Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac, is described somewhere along the lines of feeling a brief shock from a quick strike force of impact resonating through my head and the upper part of my neck, while leaving a sharp tingling sensation, almost as if someone like Bruce Lee did a swift flying kick to the head, in a way.
Wax figure of Bruce Lee (at Madame Tussauds' Hollywood Wax Museum, Hollywood, California, sometime in September 2015).
Midrange is noticeably pushed back a bit (this is noticeable in rock, vocals and grand opera tracks), while retaining and presenting decent amount of surface detail of sounds from instruments, subjects and objects in most genres of music and movies & documentaries.
Where I feel it falls short is rendering fine detailed sounds with bright vibrato timbre from string instruments, such as the violin. In most classical tracks with violins that often go into the higher notes/part of the frequency, the sound tends to come off as partially softened midway through the surface of detail, and not sustaining the fullness of its vibrato timbre and steady heft in body, especially when played in moderate or fast tempo, which gives the impression of a slight haze effect, while holding and balancing together the overall information of detail in sound with this effect and presenting it forward with linear sharpness in detail from the edges (and outer edges) of each individual sound before it starts to noticeably fade a little towards the surface with less definition, weight and timbre.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio (Chamber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin - Tidal).
Another instrument that sounded unnatural on most classical tracks with Supermoon was the harpsichord, where it tended to feel and sound more forward and intense in energy with harsh peaks in the mid-high to high part of the frequency.
For nearly all other instruments, such as percussion (drums), rich-mellow tones from stringed percussion instrument (piano), woodwind instruments (mostly flute, clarinet and oboe), and other string instruments (guitar and cello), Supermoon does a decent job in retaining and presenting musically engaging dynamic sound, albeit comes off as a bit dry and firm with subtly soft definition towards its surface of detail, with enough detail and space to discern subtle nuances and different parts of sounds, and making it an overall enjoyable & pleasing listening experience.
As for vocals, tracks with vocals (mostly opera, and other music genres with main emphasis on vocals) sound acceptably fine and pleasant in tone, but depending on the track, vocals can come off as sounding a bit unnatural and inconsistent in form of body and breathy timbre, with slightly softened notes from highs and lows, and singing that sounds a bit flat and recessed with less raised (and not etched more upward nor positioned upfront) presence of vocals.
Serse, HWV 40: Act I, Scene 1. "Rec. Acc. Frondi tenere, e belle" Aria. "Ombra mai fu" (Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Arianna Vendittelli - Tidal).
Lastly, for treble, upper range of sound starts off with steady emphasis on lower treble, and noticeably softens its tone and form a little in mid-treble. Then, it narrows out in body and detail when it reaches upper-mid treble, and it tapers further and rolls off in upper treble.
*Other tracks used for listening & testing on Supermoon ciem:
Audien ft. Xira - One Last Dance (Sound Quelle Remix)
Crubbixz - Break Through (Ava)
Paul Oakenfold - Awakening (Radio Edit)
hologram - Wreck It
Darude - Sandstorm
Sergei Rachmaninoff - Piano Concerto No. 2 (New York Philharmonic, Philippe Entremont, Piano)
In terms of presentation and soundstage, Supermoon gives a large scaled presentation with a more upsized and wider presence of sound that occupies across the whole front of the stage with good lateral reach from side to side, and also travels slightly upward and downward from its sides, which creates a slight spherical effect of its soundstage.
From the first two hours of listening on Supermoon (w/ Topping DX7 Pro amp/dac, in low gain & 4.4 balanced), it made me feel as if a wide cohesive body of sound was on whole display in front and around towards my sides (just over 180 degrees) with larger feel of presence, rather than having parts of its sound being divided up as much into separate channels and layers of sound coming from the distant corners and sides, across the front and down below.
Another thing I noticed was the heightened body of sound presenting itself along a wide and fairly high vertical surface, joined by a wide and spacious horizontal plane at the front, as a structured whole. It felt almost as if there was a big wave of sound giving an uplifted presence and energy to objects, subjects and instruments, with sounds moving in with great heft and speed along a large front stage, and expanding outward side to side from one endpoint to the next.
Imaging in Supermoon delivers a well-defined sense of structured positioning and placement, adequate rendering of sounds as moving instruments and subjects on a noticeably larger scale with enough precision and control, and with enough space and air in between and around instruments, subjects and objects, along with more weighted heft, body and speed.
Although Supermoon doesn’t have the fluid intimate presence and emotion-like qualities of VE8, the refinement and immersive dynamics of IER-Z1R, or the deft and exacting intricacy of U12t, its effortless combination of euphoric energy and grand stage presence brings together a cohesive wholeness of lively dynamics, energetic grit, and well-focused musical performance, which makes for a unique experience of casual fun & adrenaline rush of excitement in enjoying music (and movies) for nearly any occasion, unlike anything else (so far) in current offerings of the iem market.
Vision Ears VE8 (w/ Plus Sound 8-wire gold plated hybrid in 4.4), Sony IER-Z1R, and Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit (in audiophile-fit, w/ Plus Sound 4-wire spc in 4.4).
Moving on forward to some personal thoughts of this journey. Going the custom-fit route has been a gratifying & mind-opening experience of enjoying music in the most immersive way (in a portable form factor), where it puts you in the center of the music with sound coming in like a full rush of adrenaline and immersing you in the heart of the song and rhythm. It’s like being in a mass of sound that’s moving in and with you, feeling the beat of its rhythm and raw intensity in impact, the way it moves with your senses and through your presence, and how it paints colors of sounds into life-like images in the rhythm of the song or in a scene of a movie/documentary. This has been one of the best decisions I’ve made to help understand myself in seeing and feeling how sound in music and cinema moves the senses and emotions to better understand much of the way music and film touch and move the hearts (and minds and lives) of others.
Further, this has taken the experience up a notch, opening up a new perspective in connecting more meaningfully with music and cinema. I’m more than happy to keep this set (and VE8 for its comforting, warm & rich sound), as I feel they cover a wide variety of music I listen to and certain movies and documentaries I stream and watch from time to time.
As I think back again on the choice of path I’ve made in this journey, I don’t feel any regret going the custom-fit route, and I look forward to years of enjoyment with Supermoon, and see what’s next in new offerings from Campfire Audio, Vision Ears and other major iem brands. =)
Last edited:
efftee
1000+ Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2014
- Posts
- 1,382
- Likes
- 3,000
Your post is like a magazine unto itself, always replete with food and/or other lifestyle elements woven into gear and music. Very nice.Hello everyone,
Things have been pretty busy lately, with some things that had to be prioritized & taken care of from family and business side of things.
Started off my usual coffee run on Sunday morning (7/17), and stopped by Destroyer cafe (emphasis on Scandinavian casual fare and coffee & tea) in Culver City (in California) for some iced coffee and pastry.
While I was waiting for my take-out order, I went for a walk around the block to see what was around, and I came across a building with a unique architectural design. Turns out to be a restaurant, called Vespertine, which is run by the same chef (Jordan Kahn) from ‘Destroyer’ cafe.
Vespertine restaurant (Culver City, California, Sunday, 7/17).
Iced coffee (Kyoto-style brewed), cinnamon bun and coconut bundt cake (take-out, from Destroyer cafe, Culver City, California, 7/17).
Aside from work and happenings with family and life, I picked up my Supermoon ciem on Monday evening, July 11 (from usps, which was scheduled to be delivered on Saturday, yet I was at work that time and wasn’t able to head back home in the later morning hour to receive it that day).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit in-ear monitors (my first set of ciems, in audiophile fit - short nozzle with relaxed fit).
Taking a closer look of the nozzle of Supermoon ciem, one interesting thing I've noticed is there is no filter of any sort, and when held up close to bright light, you can see translucent shades of black along the inside of the nozzle and towards the inner back side of the shell.
Trying on Supermoon ciems (on the first try) was much easier than I thought it would be, as I found its contoured shells and nozzles to naturally make its way in, by light touch and feel of contact along/in my ears.
Once comfortably seated snug in the ears, fit and wear felt easy and relaxed in and on the ears, which made for a comfortable listening experience, with no buildup in pressure nor any signs of hot spots (with few hours of listening at a time).
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (audiophile-fit, in right and left ears, without cable).
From Monday evening (7/11) and Tuesday evening (7/12), I had just over one hour each night to listen to Supermoon, and I rotated pairing it with iBasso DX300 w/ amp12 and with iBasso DX220 w/ amp8.
With iBasso DX300 w/ amp12, Supermoon didn’t present the kind of sound I was hoping to hear. It came off as coarse textured near the ends of the surface of details with noticeably sharp and crisp sheen along the edges.
Switching over to iBasso DX220 w/ amp8, Supermoon sounded subtly more defined with slightly more resolution, yet it still had some noticeable sheen with some glare, and lacked some feeling of dimension in body and presence.
On the third night (7/13) of listening to Supermoon, with just over 2 hours of listening, I got a better feel for its sound and presentation, along with some brief back and forth comparisons with Vision Ears VE8 and Sony IER-Z1R, paired with Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (with a SABRE ES9038 Pro dac chip), set to low gain/balanced mode. With this setup, Supermoon noticeably scaled up in soundstage, along with a bigger and more up-close detailed presence of subjects, objects and instruments, mostly from orchestral classical tracks and some vocal jazz songs. However, by the time I listened to this setup, I didn’t have much time to do more critical listening with other instrumental tracks and other genres of songs, as I was going through the process of adjusting and getting a better understanding of its unique presentation and tonality of sound.
Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit iems (in audiophile-fit) with Plus Sound 4-wire spc cable to 4.4 balanced w/ Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac (in low gain/balanced).
By Thursday night (7/14), I got more acclimated to the sound of Supermoon with Topping DX7 Pro, to the point where I didn’t want to hear anything else. From action-packed & sci-fi movies and nature documentaries to classical music and trance electronic dance music, Supermoon opened up with a spacious uplifting energy of sound giving an immediate sense of fullness, separation and speed. As I was getting a better sense of what I was hearing in little nuances of its sound, it all started to come together in seeing the bigger picture of the kind of sound Campfire Audio was going for in Supermoon.
From Friday night (7/15) and Saturday night (7/16), during few hours a night of listening with different genres of music, I was able to see more of its strong and weak points in the way it presented sounds of instruments, vocals and also soundscapes from nature, as well as panning & imaging, separation and layering.
With about 15 hours of listening done so far (up to Sunday, 7/17) on Supermoon (ciem), here are some of my thoughts and impressions on its presentation and performance of sound.
Bass in Supermoon is agile and engaging with enough feel of impact, punch and rumble, dynamics and speed that will keep most listeners satisfied for hours on end.
Mid-bass presents swift punch-like impact with decent physicality, yet does not match the more dynamic & physical hard-hitting slam and amount of air that’s being pushed/moved from a dynamic driver. Instead, the planar driver creates the impactful effect of bass and sub-bass with agile and swift force, along a wider/flat surface, which gives the perception of an energetic and swift pounding feel of low end sound and impact. In most movie scenes that have heavy hitting or explosive impactful sounds, I don’t get the same sense in physicality of that heavier weighted and hard-hitting force of impact, slam and air on Supermoon, as opposed to iems (such as Sony IER-Z1R) with a dynamic driver that handles low part of frequency in a more physical way, or when compared to closed-back dynamic driver headphones, such as Sony MDR-Z7M2 which noticeably has more physical slam, punch, rumble and air.
Sub-bass resonates with dense body and with fairly faster than normal decay, but can feel a bit strident at times and unnatural in slight firmness in body.
I’d say the closest I’ve felt and heard in hard force of impact from a fighting scene of a movie, with Supermoon & Topping DX7 Pro desktop amp/dac, is described somewhere along the lines of feeling a brief shock from a quick strike force of impact resonating through my head and the upper part of my neck, while leaving a sharp tingling sensation, almost as if someone like Bruce Lee did a swift flying kick to the head, in a way.
Wax figure of Bruce Lee (at Madame Tussauds' Hollywood Wax Museum, Hollywood, California, sometime in September 2015).
Midrange is noticeably pushed back a bit (this is noticeable in rock, vocals and grand opera tracks), while retaining and presenting decent amount of surface detail of sounds from instruments, subjects and objects in most genres of music and movies & documentaries.
Where I feel it falls short is rendering fine detailed sounds with bright vibrato timbre from string instruments, such as the violin. In most classical tracks with violins that often go into the higher notes/part of the frequency, the sound tends to come off as partially softened midway through the surface of detail, and not sustaining the fullness of its vibrato timbre and steady heft in body, especially when played in moderate or fast tempo, which gives the impression of a slight haze effect, while holding and balancing together the overall information of detail in sound with this effect and presenting it forward with linear sharpness in detail from the edges (and outer edges) of each individual sound before it starts to noticeably fade a little towards the surface with less definition, weight and timbre.
Beethoven: Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, Op. 67 - I. Allegro con brio (Camber Orchestra of Europe, Yannick Nézet-Séguin - Tidal).
Another instrument that sounded unnatural on most classical tracks with Supermoon was the harpsichord, where it tended to feel and sound more forward and intense in energy with harsh peaks in the mid-high to high part of the frequency.
For nearly all other instruments, such as percussion (drums), rich-mellow tones from stringed percussion instrument (piano), woodwind instruments (mostly flute, clarinet and oboe), and other string instruments (guitar and cello), Supermoon does a decent job in retaining and presenting musically engaging dynamic sound, albeit comes off as a bit dry and firm with subtly soft definition towards its surface of detail, with enough detail and space to discern subtle nuances and different parts of sounds and making it an overall enjoyable & pleasing listening experience.
As for vocals, tracks with vocals (mostly opera, and other music genres with main emphasis on vocals) sound acceptably fine and pleasant in tone, but depending on the track, vocals can come off as sounding a bit unnatural and inconsistent in form of body and breathy timbre, with slightly softened notes from highs and lows and singing that sounds a bit flat and recessed with less raised (and not etched more upward nor positioned upfront) presence of vocals.
Serse, HWV 40: Act I, Scene 1. "Rec. Acc. Frondi tenere, e belle" Aria. "Ombra mai fu" (Accademia Bizantina, Ottavio Dantone, Arianna Vendittelli - Tidal).
Lastly, for treble, upper range of sound starts off with steady emphasis on lower treble, and noticeably softens its tone and form a little in mid-treble. Then, it narrows out in body and detail when it reaches upper-mid treble, and it tapers further and rolls off in upper treble.
In terms of presentation and soundstage, Supermoon gives a large scaled presentation with a more upsized and wider presence of sound that occupies across the whole front of the stage with good lateral reach from side to side, and also travels slightly upward and downward from its sides, which creates a slight spherical effect of its soundstage.
From the first two hours of listening on Supermoon (w/ Topping DX7 Pro amp/dac, in low gain & 4.4 balanced), it made me feel as if a wide cohesive body of sound was on whole display in front and around towards my sides (just over 180 degrees) with larger feel of presence, rather than having parts of its sound being divided up as much into separate channels and layers of sound coming from the distant corners and sides, across the front and down below.
Another thing I noticed was the heightened body of sound presenting itself along a wide and fairly high vertical surface, joined by a wide and spacious horizontal plane at the front, as a structured whole. It felt almost as if there was a big wave of sound giving an uplifted presence and energy to objects, subjects and instruments, with sounds moving in with great heft and speed along a large front stage, and expanding outward side to side from one endpoint to the next.
Imaging in Supermoon delivers a well-defined sense of structured positioning and placement, adequate rendering of sounds as moving instruments and subjects on a noticeably larger scale with enough precision and control, and with enough space and air in between and around instruments, subjects and objects, along with more weighted heft, body and speed.
Although Supermoon doesn’t have the fluid intimate presence and emotion-like qualities of VE8, the refinement and immersive dynamics of IER-Z1R, or the deft and exacting intricacy of U12t, its effortless combination of euphoric energy and grand stage presence brings together a cohesive wholeness of lively dynamics, energetic grit, and well-focused musical performance, which makes for a unique experience of casual fun & adrenaline rush of excitement in enjoying music (and movies) for nearly any occasion, unlike anything else (so far) in current offerings of the iem market.
Vision Ears VE8 (w/ Plus Sound 8-wire gold plated hybrid in 4.4), Sony IER-Z1R, and Campfire Audio Supermoon custom-fit (in audiophile-fit, w/ Plus Sound 4-wire spc in 4.4).
Moving on forward to some personal thoughts of this journey. Going the custom-fit route has been a gratifying & mind-opening experience of enjoying music in the most immersive way (in a portable form factor), where it puts you in the center of the music with sound coming in like a full rush of adrenaline and immersing you in the heart of the song and rhythm. It’s like being in a mass of sound that’s moving in and with you, feeling the beat of its rhythm and raw intensity in impact, the way it moves with your senses and through your presence, and how it paints colors of sounds into life-like images in the rhythm of the song or in a scene of a movie/documentary. This has been one of the best decisions I’ve made to help understand myself in seeing and feeling how sound in music and cinema moves the senses and emotions to better understand much of the way music and film touch and move the hearts (and minds and lives) of others.
Further, this has undoubtedly taken the experience further up a notch, opening up a new perspective in connecting more meaningfully with music and cinema. I’m more than happy to keep this set (and VE8 for its comforting, warm & rich sound), as I feel they cover a wide variety of music I listen to and certain movies and documentaries I stream and watch from time to time.
As I think back again on the choice of path I’ve made in this journey, I don’t feel any regret going the custom-fit route, and I look forward to years of enjoyment with Supermoon, and see what’s next in new offerings from Campfire Audio, Vision Ears and other major iem brands. =)
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