Outside Addicted To Audio in Melbourne
Greetings Head-Fi Watercooler!
Today I had a wonderful time visiting
Addicted To Audio in Richmond (inner city Melbourne), and was fortunate enough to meet up with
@jaydoc1 which was a great pleasure as always. Many thanks to Jason and the staff for their cordial hospitality - definitely not the last time we'll be paying you guys a visit this year!
I'll now offer you some brief impressions of the IEMs I was fortunate enough to hear.
One of two drawers at A2A filled with IEMs and cables available to demo.
As you can see from the above photo there was no shortage of delights to be savoured, but I wanted to hit the road before the temperature rose too much (38c today) so I resisted the not-insignificant temptation to listen to EVERYTHING!
Actually, I'd like to start with something a little different.....
Hang on, aren't we only interested in flagships here at the Watercooler?
Technically these
are flagship TWS, and since purchasing my Airpod Pro 2's my interest in TWS IEMs has understandably been rekindled. I'm not about to pretend any of these will challenge even mid-fi wired IEMs for pure sound quality, but it's amazing & scary how fast the technology is improving. Wired-only IEM manufacturers beware!
Final ZE8000
The fit looks awkward, and they do feel a little odd but not at all uncomfortable. They have the widest soundstage of any TWS I've tried, possibly any, and are skewed in typical Final fashion towards the upper midrange & lower treble. They felt a little bass light compared with the other two along with my APP2, but may be the most refined-sounding TWS available. Unfortunately they use proprietary tips so you're unable to swap them with third-party offerings. The carry case is light but a bit large.
Campfire Orbit
These had the lightest case and smallest shells, but frankly they did not impress me because there was a pronounced hollowness to their midrange which did not sound convincing to my ears. Sounded like a tuning issue, and I would definitely not use these over the other two or my APP2.
Noble Fokus Pro
No question these are the best TWS I've tried, better than APP2 but not by enough that I'd switch since I'm an Apple user and losing convenience wouldn't be worth the gain in sound quality nor do I think these have noise cancellation - though apparently Noble is about to release a new (almost identical) model which will. The shells feel more like "real" IEMs than anything else I've tried and they take normal IEM tips so you can use Spinfits, Spiral Dots or other tips from your collection to tune them. Fokus Pro had a huge amount of sub bass impact that was very satisfying, I didn't have a lot of time with them but came away feeling they were definitely the most impressive in terms of pure sound quality, though for me APP2 still take the cake in comfort stakes since they're a bit smaller, but it's a close race. Fokus Pro also feel overpriced.
Two new Campfire Audio offerings, two very different impressions
IMPORTANT: Please note
I was only able to bring my iPhone 14 Pro today, with a 3.5mm single-ended Apple dongle, streaming Apple Music. So ALL the following IEM impressions were gathered via this
very humble setup - these impressions might change significantly if heard through the 4.4mm jack of an A&K SP3000 for instance!
Campfire Pathfinder
I heard these late last year and they were a big positive surprise. The shells feel smaller than those of many TOTL hybrids (looking at you Noble) and they're seriously comfortable, though the stems are long so they stick out quite a bit. I think they're very nicely tuned, with lots of bass thump and plenty of treble sparkle, good technicalities but quite a bit of upper midrange. Overall though I've been really impressed and think they're quite good value compared with TOTL offerings. I'd prefer 2pin sockets to MMCX but CA like to do things there way, cosmetically I love the A&K styling on the faceplates.
Campfire Trifecta
Oh dear. Why? Look I've always been one to admire innovation and individuals with the courage to shout their vision to the world consequences be damned, but I can't quite fathom why CA felt the universe needed a triple-DD TOTL IEM. These aren't as big or as uncomfortable as photos make them out to be, in fact I didn't have comfort issues at all, but other than a fairly visceral tonality and an overabundance of bass, I really don't see precisely what these offer that other IEMs at even half the cost (or less) do better. To me they sounded warm, fuzzy, congested, and lacking in the sort of technical chops I'd expect at this pricepoint. The drivers also sounded slow, as if they were struggling to keep up with complex passages. Now I do like to keep an open mind about things so perhaps with certain genres (R&B? Hip Hop?) these might actually work well, but had CA swapped Pathfinder & Trifecta's prices these would've made slightly more sense to me. Perhaps they need more power to shine and scale well with amplification, but straight out of an iPhone they were very underwhelming.
Blanc, Ragnar & Kublai Khan to illustrate size & shape differences.
Noble Audio Ragnar
I was underwhelmed when I heard these last year but made the mistake of demoing them immediately after hearing the Multiverse Mentors, which are wonderful for embarrassing almost everything you hear afterwards. Not this time, and I did enjoy the Ragnars a little more. They are very bright with a huge amount of upper midrange / lower treble and I can see how they'd be fatiguing with the wrong material - they share a lot in common with the A8000s in that respect. That said, even through a humble Apple dongle you can tell resolution is off the charts, their airy soundstage is large and very three-dimensional and bass isn't lacking to my ears, though Blanc certainly had more bass quantity by some margin. They are of course very physically large and generally skew pretty hard towards the upper registers of the frequency spectrum. If that's what you want in an IEM I suspect these are either the best money can buy right now or very close to it, and perhaps by swapping out the cable with something copper from PWAudio you might be able to shift their tuning into something a little less strident.
Noble Kublai Khan
These are probably my favourite Noble IEMs so far. They won't match the Ragnars for technicalities and I did notice their soundstage felt flatter and less three dimensional, but bass felt deeper and more emphasised and overall the tuning felt like one likely to appeal to a wider audience. That said I did find their midrange a little shouty and the dynamic driver felt slower than that of the Ragnars too.
64 Audio Blanc
I was surprised to enjoy the Blanc more than any other IEM demoed today, though how much of that was due to listening via an Apple dongle rather than a high-end DAP may be speculated upon. They're certainly far smaller and a bit more comfortable than both the Nobles, and perhaps smaller than even the Pathfinders too. Of course they look drop dead gorgeous which never hurts. I found them to be somewhat midrange centric but with large amounts of very impressive bass, the drivers (or at least the DD) seemed faster than Kublai Khan but Blanc did present less resolution than Ragnar, though the difference wasn't night & day by any means. Unfortunately my notes are rather brief but I certainly made the point of jotting down that these were the IEM I'd pick of those demoed, which is surprising because I wasn't expecting them to be very different from the Noir which didn't seem to float my boat upon hearing them in the middle of last year.
I also listened to some of the older 64 audio models and made some brief notes.
64 Audio U18T
These felt quite well tuned, being very balanced though a tad bright with a fairly large soundstage, but their BA bass was immediately noticeable and I did not find it satisfying. They gave the impression of delivering plenty of detail but the lower midrange seemed a tad scooped out, but nitpicks aside I was actually fairly impressed, but definitely not for bass-heavy music.
64 Audio Trio
Unfortunately these feature the small hump just before the stems which makes their fit a little awkward for me, though still reasonably comfortable. They struck me as quite smooth and flat sounding, perhaps lacking dynamics & bass despite the DD did not go quite as deep as I'd hoped. Probably my least favourite 64 Audio IEM today.
64 Audio U12T
These surprised me since when I heard them last year they sounded rather flat & boring. They still sounded flat & boring, perhaps this is the good kind of flat & boring everyone's been telling me about? Seriously though I was quite impressed with how physically small they are for the sound they deliver (in a world of gigantic hybrids), with a midrange that sounded quite seductive and BA bass that despite not successfully fooling me into thinking a DD was in there, felt reasonably sufficient. I do remember enjoying Traillii even more, but am not sure the extra price premium would be worth it - not out of an Apple dongle at any rate.
A2A's tremendous collection of headphones which I have never once been tempted to sample
Well there you have it folks.
Thanks again to the good folk at
Addicted To Audio who's presence has been an absolute boon to Australian portable aficionados. I'm not sure if they're able to sell directly to international customers, but suspect many overseas Head-Fiers have made purchases through locals over the years.
It would be fun to go back another day and listen to everything through an SP3000 (they have one there to demo) to test how much these impressions change, but that's really a separate discussion of just how much sources matter -I attest they absolutely do- and I mostly wanted to present you with some thoughts on how these IEMs stack up through the same hardware, regardless of how modest it might be.
Every time I do a big comparison I'm reminded of just how minute the differences are between many of these IEMs. We talk them up out of course for the sake of making them easier to explain, a necessary evil given how terribly difficult sound is to describe in anything but the vaguest terms, but stepping back and looking at the big picture I honesty think most of us would be fairly satisfied with
any of the IEMs mentioned in this post, but of course as audiophiles "fairly satisfied" is something most of us struggle to live with for long - good thing we avoid applying those standards to our relationships, and of course they're exaggerating when they say we're hard to live with.
until after CANJAM 
