Doing some Mason FS listening today. My sp2000 died on me (hopefully within warranty) so I'm driving my c9 with my L&P P6 pro. I don't like that DAC for the Trailli as much as I like the sp2000's immense soundstage and laid back presentation which really make the bird fly for me. When IEM's are about soundstage width I prefer to push that width as far as I can, and the bird is definitely about that. The Mason FS is not. It's about physicality, texture, weight and its sphere of a soundscape. The P6 pro is very good at providing those, especially once it gets warmed up. (I got a hint from a fellow head-fier that the p6 needs to be turned on 20 minutes for the r2r dac to relax, and its true. The sound improves)
I started with mason fs with its original Attila cable, and while its nice, I prefer the Orpheus. Sure, there's a little mid softness and perhaps even bloat that the Attila doesn't have. The attila with the mason fs is razor sharp. But Orpheus makes that soundscape sphere about 40% larger to my ears adds its unique magic smoothness. I still have a drop of that Attile dryness and subbass taming in there, since I have an Attila interconnect between P6 and C9. This keeps the sound more within original UM parameters. (Interconnect rolling is the best part about the c9, you can basically do hybrid cables!)
And, well long story lonh, it's an amazing combination. Huge soft sphere of a soundscape. The orpheus adds some kind of seductive, soft, magical quality to the Mason FS. Yet the IEM still retains its ultra high def physical imaging where you can imagine the microscopic surfaces of sounds and view them in trippy 3d detail. The vocals are incredible, very sweet. The Orpheus does take a little from that Attila+MasonFS "air coming from the singer's mouth" realism, but it's not a downgrade. The Mason is still a very mids first / best ever mids IEM with the Orpheus, there's just a little smoothness and sweetness added to that too, and you lose a bit of texture to that. Detail perception is similar as Attila, but real detail is better I would say. The P6 also plays well to the Mason FS's strengths. Better than Sp2000 definitely. I would say SP2000 is great for Trailli and P6 is better for Mason FS. The combination of that r2r musical magic and physicality with the Mason's bone conduction is very special. But just a little too tight for me. But them, mediated by the sultry Orpheus's dewy, misty perfection... wow man. It's quite something.
For some reason I've always thought of the Mason FS as a very digital sounding IEM. Just because of its ultradetail, and the way it zooms in on texture beyond what is, to me, natural. Like one of those Spiderman end credits where you see into DNA and cell walls or something. (Lame analogy but you get it). The bone conduction physicality is probably what makes that magic trick happen, with the weight and realism it adds to those elements. I like that hi rez digital feel, but it has two problems for me.
Well, three actually. The third is that you have to listen to the Mason FS for about 40 minutes until the brain switches over from whatever IEM you were listening to before, and starts appreciating, one might even say accepting, that very unique presentation. Before my brain makes that switch, the Mason often sounds quite boring and mediocre. Coming from Trailli, it's got a small undramatic soundstage. Coming from u18t it doesn't feel as open and doesn't have that TIA treble's shattering glass magic. Listen to a whole album though and things start to change. The brain somehow "accepts" those weighty sound-objects, with their huge gravity, onto whatever miracle-canvas our nerves use to paint soundscapes on. That's when the Mason really shines. There's this cool trippy effect where the bone conduction weight and texture-centric detail retrieval add up to trippy little details on the surfaces of sounds, like inspecting planets in orbit. Somehow other IEMs with vastly superior soundstages, or more striking treble for example, or more rumbling bass, never have that tactile effect. The surfaces of sound-objects are blurry, there's no tactile sense of there being something "there". Because they don't have that bone conduction weight that our brains associate with sounds originating from beyond the ear. And thus with being "real" and "weighty". One way to explain it is: when you listen to your own voice, that has huuuuuuge bone conduction. Most of what you hear is coming from your throat and through your skull -- not from your mouth and into your ear. That's why our own voices seem rich, detailed, credible, internal, and weighty to us. Listen to a recording of your own voice. Everyone is always surprised at how different (read: worse) it is sounds from their own perception of it. You sound thin without that bone conduction effect. Weightless and lacking surface. The Mason FS adds a touch (not a lot, mind you, just a tiny bit, like 10%) of that effect to everything within a recording's soundstage. And then it's also got immense technicality, so you can see a ton of info on those now bone-weighted instruments.
But because it only adds a bit of it -- the effect isn't in your face -- it takes time to adjust to it and appreciate it.
The other two problems are harder to solve though. First is soundstage size perception. Not size itself, that's quite large, but perception. The Mason FS is ultra-focused on this one very special effect -- the one I just described -- the rest of the engineering tries to support it. So they also need this rather large soundstage to be packed tight full of instruments, because those instruments need to be BIG. The Mason does not use the popular tuning tricks that create air between instruments, because all of those tricks detract from the perceived size of the instruments by making them smaller. That doesn't mean that the mason doesn't have separation between instruments, it's just not of the modern IEM airy kind (Trailli, u18t etc). I believe here the Orpheus helps. It keeps the soundstage circular but the circle just becomes larger and there's a tad bit of warm, analogue but still black air between instruments.
The other is that with the wrong source/cable combo the Mason FS can become sterile and unmusical. It doesn't like the SP2000s laid back super detailed wideness at all. Add C9 to it and it's quite nice, but the P6 Pro really brings it to life. P6 and Orpheus and things become bouncy and fun, those super detailed weighty elements attack and decay out of the soundstage in a more lively and involving manner. I love the Trailli with super analytical sources because it's so impressive and emotional already. This one needs more life.
I have a feeling I will be hooked up to this P6 - C9 - Orpheus - Mason FS combo for some weeks mow, learning its mysteries.