Had some spare time this afternoon to visit Addicted to Audio Melbourne, and I finally got a chance to demo the Campfire Trifecta
I’ll cut right to the chase, this isn’t an IEM I’d be willing to pay anywhere near its current MSRP for, at least for my tastes and priorities. However, I can understand the appeal for those that value a rich, analogue presentation with DD timbre, because Trifecta offers that up in spades.
My two main dealbreakers were the technicalities and treble response. I found its technical performance to be quite underwhelming for its high price tag, particularly its speed, separation and detail retrieval. The lower treble sounded rather splashy, almost peaky, and the upper treble extension felt rather poor.
The bass, whilst being pretty well textured and extended, really struggled on faster paced bass lines from my electronic test tracks. I heard quite a lot of mid bass, and the slow speed of the drivers made bass hits sound wooly, like as if they’re firing behind a wall. The mids seem decent, a bit recessed behind the huge bass and forward lower treble but they have a nice organic tone to them that I expected from a warmly tuned DD IEM.
When I listened to one of my acoustic test tracks (Angus & Julia Stone - Yellow Brick Road) it seemed to perform at its best and where I felt CFA’s tuning choice for Trifecta made a bit more sense. It certainly felt like a unique sound, and if my library consisted more of that type of music, I’d probably be more inclined to consider picking one of these up. But again, at $3400 it simply too much of a specialist of a specialty I don’t prioritise enough.
It’s a shame, I was really hoping for it to impress me because I do have a soft spot for CFA and their older mainstays, the Andromeda & Solaris.
Thankfully, it wasn’t all lost for Campfire today because I got to try the A&K x CFA Pathfinder once again, and this time impressed me so much that I had to pick one up! It pairs amazingly well with SP3K. Last time I heard it I didn’t own this DAP and I thought it was okay but nothing too special. But this time, it was like a completely different experience. Looking forward to more listening of this little hidden gem over the weekend