[Auricon]

Your purchase screen saved me $10 since the Omni is 20€ in European Amazon for whatever reason. I will wait for a more reasonable price. I owe you a beer!

Also noticed they packaged as 1 pair which is a head scratcher

At least they’re less than MTMT for 1

 

[phiemon]

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?

Unfortunately I don't have Jewel anymore, and I don't have FTS either, otherwise I would have loved to try it.

 

[Beh0lder]

Also noticed they packaged as 1 pair which is a head scratcher

At least they’re less than MTMT for 1

I'm fine with 1 pair since sizing is all over the place for me and I usually need a pair from 2-3 different sizes. I was actually fine with the way W1 was packed as I got everything I needed in one box

 

[Deezel177]

Like what exactly? Any examples?

The Rhapsodio and oBravo TOTLs come to mind, not to mention some of the random brands with $5K debut IEMs that get posted about once, then fully ignored.

 

[vaporsynthwave]

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.

thanks for the reply, you're probably right. I get too excited when I see older iems at a heavily discounted price. My current lineup is led by the Traillii and followed by a bunch of 1-2k stuff like Z1R, Final A8000, Penon Legend, Technics TZ700. Better off putting that money towards something really pricey I'm waiting to demo in person like Trifecta, Perpetua, VE X, STORM, Rn6. Canjam NYC can't come fast enough

 

[Piotr Michalak]

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

It's tubeless. https://www.firaudio.com/technologies/openacoustics

Cool! I love it when brands take unique acoustic approaches

Do the Rn6 and Xe6 have fully-tubeless designs like their previous M line-up? It doesn’t look like your clear customs have the foam that those M CIEMs do. Maybe, everything’s tubeless, but locked inside precisely-designed chambers?

Nope, can't say it's fully tubeless. I think?
Like I wrote, I hardly understand what's going on, but inside:
1. There's an EST and BA in the ear canal, counting as tubeless.
2. There are two tubes going into the ear canal, which is filled with acryl, apart from the two drivers in point 1.
3. One of these tubes is connected to another BA, fully enveloped and stabilized by acryl.
4. Second tube is connected to a separate package of 2 BAs and... cross-connected then to the ATOM module.
5. Then there's the DD firing into the ear... not connected to anything (!). But we can see even on the measurements that it somehow fires through the ear canal. Maybe there's an opening in the abovementioned tubes somewhere, that allow the bass to come through? And how does this design accomodate for the different ear volume between users, as this driver sits inside this shell?
To sum this up, we can count between 2 and 3 of these drivers in XE6 as tubeless. Again, I think...

I have asked Bogdan about this:

"(...) But I see tubes inside, and the DD driver not connected to these. And the ear canal only connected to the other drivers with tubes (?).
I would like to post something closing this topic up definitely. Could you please comment on that and explain what is exactly going on inside? Or maybe CIEM version has tubes because of a different build to the UIEM version, I suppose?"

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.

 

[Piotr Michalak]

The Rhapsodio and oBravo TOTLs

Rhapsodio seems to have a small community of fans here. I was even referred to their subtopic by one of their fans somewhere here on watercooler... Then I have posted about the measurement of their flagship which seems extremely strange (not UE Premier levels of strange XD but still). But then again, XE6 seems even stranger and sounds great, although not reference.

I got their pricelist from my distributor and consider getting this:
Infinity Ultra 3599 USD 2Ba low+ 2Ba sub low+4ba Full range+2Ba mid High+4Ba High+4Ba Super High+4EST Tweeter
If I'm counting correctly that's a whopping 22 drivers per side total. If it comes in custom, I'd love to get it, but I won't risk unless I see a measurement somewhere.

oBravo is another story proven to probably be fraud and deception. I have also heard their HAMT headphones once and never again. However Crin also destroyed some of my old-time favorites (namely Final Sonorous X and Lab2 among others) so I wouldn't close the case just yet, but I also wouldn't risk money on this.

 

[bigbeans]

Infinity Ultra 3599 USD 2Ba low+ 2Ba sub low+4ba Full range+2Ba mid High+4Ba High+4Ba Super High+4EST Tweeter
If I'm counting correctly that's a whopping 22 drivers per side total. If it comes in custom, I'd love to get it, but I won't risk unless I see a measurement somewhere.

I tried this at e earphone earlier this year, they received the set just a few days before I tried it. It's the best take on 'clarity, transparent' sound I've heard in the hobby. Jewel has a touch of musicality in comparison to ULTRA. This IEM would serve as an excellent palate cleanser in an IEM collection and imho Rhapsodio did a much better job than MAD24 for a 'detailed, transparent' sound. This is an IEM microscope. The biggest takeaway I had was how distinct each element in a song is, regardless of how layered the composition was. It has an effect of making other iems sound a tad muddy. I'm surprised this IEM isn't talked about more often.

 

[chickenmcnug]

I tried this at e earphone earlier this year, they received the set just a few days before I tried it. It's the best take on 'clarity, transparent' sound I've heard in the hobby. Jewel has a touch of musicality in comparison to ULTRA. This IEM would serve as an excellent palate cleanser in an IEM collection and imho Rhapsodio did a much better job than MAD24 for a 'detailed, transparent' sound. This is an IEM microscope. The biggest takeaway I had was how distinct each element in a song is, regardless of how layered the composition was. It has an effect of making other iems sound a tad muddy. I'm surprised this IEM isn't talked about more often.

Wow those are chonky.

 

[aaf evo]

Wow those are chonky.

My thoughts too. They look huge and that nozzle is absolutely terrifying. the tip looks like it’s hanging on for dear life.

 

[emdeevee]

It will be fine I think-- this is a pretty isolated incident about a brand people have been sketchy about for a while...and we nipped it in the bud right away. I don't think our polls will ever be "perfect" but one of the reasons I've chosen to keep the "vote by posting in thread" method for the majority of polls (as opposed to using Google forms like I do for some of our more involved polls) is that it maintains transparency-- anyone sufficiently interested can scroll back through the pages of a particular poll and see exactly who is voting for what. Another thing is that I think the real value in the polls is the collected data over time. Certain IEMs may get a couple extra votes depending on who is around or what is happening during one particular poll, but over time and multiple polls the results tend towards greater accuracy-- at least in so much as they can be taken to be an accurate measure of community sentiment.

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.

 

[fejnomit]

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.

 

[jwilliamhurst]

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.

I’m feeling the same about my vote!

@Rockwell75 can we change our neon pro vote?

 

[mattv]

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.

I can confirm that Fourte is in fact fully tubeless, as well as Trio. Both each have a tube to direct air pressure from the back vent of the DD out of the shell, but between the front of each driver and the canal spout there are no tubes involved.

 

[Deezel177]

Rhapsodio seems to have a small community of fans here. I was even referred to their subtopic by one of their fans somewhere here on watercooler... Then I have posted about the measurement of their flagship which seems extremely strange (not UE Premier levels of strange XD but still). But then again, XE6 seems even stranger and sounds great, although not reference.

I got their pricelist from my distributor and consider getting this:
Infinity Ultra 3599 USD 2Ba low+ 2Ba sub low+4ba Full range+2Ba mid High+4Ba High+4Ba Super High+4EST Tweeter
If I'm counting correctly that's a whopping 22 drivers per side total. If it comes in custom, I'd love to get it, but I won't risk unless I see a measurement somewhere.

oBravo is another story proven to probably be fraud and deception. I have also heard their HAMT headphones once and never again. However Crin also destroyed some of my old-time favorites (namely Final Sonorous X and Lab2 among others) so I wouldn't close the case just yet, but I also wouldn't risk money on this.

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.