[snapandslide]

Bicep "Glue" is one of my go-to tracks for testing audio!

Great track - the album is one of my great favourite electronic albums....new album out in full in 2 days! So that validates electronic!

 

[Scubadevils]

As I noted when I got the ZEN, I could see no point in keeping two IEMs that were still in the Amazon return window so they've gone back. Holding on however to my XBA-N3, in spite of challenging fit, I still love them.

Satisfied for now with my kit and don't intend another IEM purchase till maybe the summer - at which point I'll do another higher end or maybe a decent closed back headphone. Need to save and build justification to my wife...

 

[snapandslide]

As I noted when I got the ZEN, I could see no point in keeping two IEMs that were still in the Amazon return window so they've gone back. Holding on however to my XBA-N3, in spite of challenging fit, I still love them.

Satisfied for now with my kit and don't intend another IEM purchase till maybe the summer - at which point I'll do another higher end or maybe a decent closed back headphone. Need to save and build justification to my wife...

Makes sense! Btw your Bandcamp digging is absolutely bangin' - just going through and some great stuff also with Name Your Price.

 

[Scubadevils]

Makes sense! Btw your Bandcamp digging is absolutely bangin' - just going through and some great stuff also with Name Your Price.

I listen to everything from ambient, IDM to techno, electro (think Drexciya or ERP here) and trance (only really early 90s in this case) - new and old but I began early 90s so a lot of love and nostalgia for those hazy days. You will love electronic on ZEN, no question about it.

But of course other genres too - I love lots of indie, rock, folk etc too - again, sound fantastic, not in the same sonic way that electronic can shine, if that makes sense - I don't have the technical lingo to properly articulate my sound impressions!

 

[davidmolliere]

Common David you know you need some of these.

Yeah I do have some, but I find it just good for testing comfort is horrible really...

 

[Dsnuts]

The same here. I only use adapters to test out cables if I dont have a particular cable in the type of connector I need. Works in a pinch though just to test out.

My poor IT07 hasnt gotten proper ear time since I got them at the end of last year. Every time I start to pick them up I end up getting another earphone I have to pay attention to. But in this case the Zens been such a blast to listen to.

Looking forward to see what you think after some seasoning time. I would imagine they would pair better with your DX300 vs the Shanling M8.

One aspect I appreciate about the Zen is that they are so transparent of the source it is connected to. It has become my tester earphone for sources.

 

[Nabillion_786]

So very first impressions (out of DX300), let me say I am impressed even out of the box... this is one of the very best bass I have heard at any price point, the sub bass extension is really impressive and the Zen has deceptive power for this kind of smooth, immersive signature and with impeccable control. At the same time, most impressive is how textured the bass is... it feels like velvet for lack of a better description, it's a tactile bass if there ever was one. Think quiet power and elegance, true to its Zen label.

The mids follow suit... those are smooth, full bodied, mids with again rich textures and sweet female and powerful male vocals. Timbre is a bit north of neutral out of DX300, instruments sound lifelike and so engaging. Zen is really an immersive IEM with boatloads of nuances with a very natural decay and smooth attack. It's draws you into the music and it's one of my favorite mids.

Now treble, well Zen provides excellent energy in the lower region my usual piano tracks test also confirm there is very nice weight to treble notes that add to the engaging nature of Zen. Everything is smooth at all times and no sibilance whatsoever. The upper treble is the final touch, with excellent presence and a very natural presentation, it's the extra touch in the tuning that makes the Zen quite more resolving than I would have expected given the signature and it's also beneficial to very good separation. It's not Luna, obviously, but still in its own signature family a very impressive IEM. I look forward to run it with Shanling M8 as well

Instruments and vocals are so lifelike...Zen is a very coherent IEM for sure and so engaging... I see hours of listening bliss ahead... Can't wait to see how things further evolve with additional burn in but I suspect things will open up a bit more and things will be even better down the line.

I am hooked !

Edit : Having a blast with Zen listening to this album of one of my favorite blues man, Doug MacLeod, I feel like I am the concert right now...

I hear the fd5 have similar details and technicallities to them?

 

[morndewey]

Magnetism between ear pieces is surprising. Any chance iem internals would be damaged when stuck together? Better yet, reckon magnetism could corrupt sd card or internal dap memory?

 

[FlowLikeWater]

Magnetism between ear pieces is surprising. Any chance iem internals would be damaged when stuck together? Better yet, reckon magnetism could corrupt sd card or internal dap memory?

magnets from the iems in this case won't damage ssd or iems, will harm floppy disk and other old tech tho

 

[morndewey]

Some non-audiophiliac first impressions of Zen.
Like two rare, lustrous brown-black pearls in the hand. Much smaller than expected. Slide into the ear hollow with the same ease as 3001pro. Sound lovely ootb.
Easiest way for me to describe sonics is to sketch against Volt.
Zen compliments Volt, almost uncannily. Zen is brighter and more fleet. Volt, warmer, meatier, more intimate yet Volt directionality or separation is more pronounced.
Amazed at how coherent Zen sounds ootb. High dynamics, just a beautiful nimble energetic signature. Sound mature off the bat. Zen is like Derek Jeter; Volt, Don Mattingly (not Ozzie Smith and Keith Hernandez, for instance).
(Zen w/N3pro, 4.4, Azla; Volt w/N3pro, 3.5, tubes, Azla light).

 

[milkdudd]

The biggest challenge I've had with the ZEN is almost constant curiosity to try different albums and genres, to the point where I get distracted when something pops into my head and I switch mid album! Hard to pinpoint a genre where they shine the most but well produced electronic music really does sound stunning.

Almost spooky, I could have written this literally word for word. In roughly an hour and a half I bounced between Bowie aladdin sane, Bowie diamond dogs, Billy squier, Frank Sinatra alone and with Nancy, to Sweet, Chet Atkins with Mark Knopfler and I'm probably forgetting a couple of others. Have had them running in for about 4 hours and ready to go back to them now. The voice in my head is whispering "Genesis selling England by the pound"

Edit: can't forget Otis Redding and Delbert McClinton, that would just be so wrong

 

[tgx78]

OK I just received the Zen and I would like to jot down my first impression here:
I feel Zen might be an IEM that excels in almost everything: go deep enough and fortissimo enough, with enough lucidity and musical homogeneity to actually convince.
I am a visual person, given that I am a deaf, so I have to mention this too. The Zen is so well constructed, so gorgeously sculpted and so impeccably finished that the day I get bored of dancing around the room with such a beauty in my ears will be the day I hang up my listening hat for good.

 

[ChrisOc]

The final stage of the Head-Fi Members' Poll for IEMs is now open for voting. This is your opportunity to vote for your favourite IEMs. The vote after stage 1 was tight, so several IEMs still in play including Dunu IEMs, let your vote count:

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the...r-monitors-2020-please-read-the-rules.950854/

 

[XERO1]

Let's actually explain what we mean. We've had 13.5 mm drivers in a bunch of our past/current products: DK-3001, DK-4001, DK-3001 PRO, DK-2001, 17th Anniversary model. LUNA was an exception at 10 mm because it was a truly bespoke driver designed from the ground up, whereas the aforementioned models were all somewhat similar. ZEN's driver size was chosen because it was originally supposed to use the 17th Anniversary model's driver. Once LUNA came into the picture, we knew we had to redesign the driver and develop our ECLIPSƎ platform so that more of our models could enjoy the superior macrodynamics and speed of our patented composite driver design. The shells of the ZEN had already been designed, and so we wanted to preserve the 13.5 mm diameter and retrofit the new platform into the existing shell shape.

The following is a pictorial description of the benefits of ECLIPSƎ driver construction techniques for driver control and dynamic sound excursion. By using a fully composite driver design, we can choose highly disparate materials for the dome and surround, in this case Mg-Al alloy (coated with ta-C) for the dome, and a very soft thermoplastic polymer for the surround. The softness of the surround allows for better driver excursion without needing to resort to dedicating a large proportion of the surface area to the surround. We can push the dome portion (most important for directional sound) out as wide as we can, also allowing for wider attachment points for the voice coil. The wider diameter the voice coil, the better control it can exert over the diaphragm, as it exerts a greater angular moment over each point of the dome. For a conventionally thermoformed, one-piece driver to possess similar properties, it'd have to be substantially larger in diameter. Of course, when it comes to gluing and damping, we also put in a few more tricks into the ECLIPSƎ platform that help with linearity of excursion, but these techniques are fully proprietary and we won't discuss them here.

Lastly, with this design, we can also play with the dimensions of the voice coil and air gap more freely. With the introduction of our external 1.8T ring-type magnet, we can more confidently control the driver. With such large pole pieces, we had to make the housings of the ZEN more thick, but thus far we haven't heard of any issues with comfort.

For a fuller (but still on a layman's level) explanation of why a very stiff dome and a soft surround are desired in speaker design, please refer to Oratory1990's explanation here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/bacd37/duck_duck_goose/ekaxsri/

I don't mean to be too picky here, but perhaps going forward DUNU should start printing the L and R markings on the ZEN cable's MMCX connectors so that they face towards the inside. I think it would look a lot cleaner that way.

And while they're at it, maybe also invert the L and R markings so that they are right-side-up when the cable is connected to the IEM.

 

[corgifall]

I don't mean to be too picky here, but perhaps going forward DUNU should start printing the L and R markings on the ZEN cable's MMCX connectors so that they face towards the inside. I think it would look a lot cleaner that way.

And while they're at it, maybe also invert the L and R markings so that they are right-side-up when the cable is connected to the IEM.

I didn't even notice this till you pointed it out haha