FiiO’s new flagship IEMs, the FH7, featuring 4 balanced-armature drivers and one dynamic driver, have arrived in for review. Alongside that, I received their pure silver 4.4mm cable. I haven’t recommended cable upgrades for FiiO’s other IEMs, as the stock cables were already great, so it will be interesting to see if this one makes any difference. Continuing the development of the M-Series, FiiO’s M11 portable player is their first Android-based player with an integrated 4.4mm socket and edge-to-edge screen. Unboxing videos below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVpMeMJsiWQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-tJm4vosX8
INTRODUCTION A lot of the time it is easy as a reviewer to spend a lot of time in the mid to high end IEM market, and forget that there is a very vibrant and highly competitive sub-$100 market. Typically in my experience, most earphones in this price range have what I would consider to be a more “consumer tuned” rather than audiophile tuned sound signature. Usually this means a coloured sound signature, and a tendency toward an elevated lower end. Alex from Pai Audio approached me recently, and asked if I’d like to check out some of their new […]
Campfire Audio has announced the new IO and updated Polaris IEMs at the Tokyo 2019 Spring Fujiya Avic Headphone Festival. The IO is a dual-balanced armature driver IEM (one high frequency, one low frequency) which includes a silver-plated copper litz wire cable and beryllium copper MMCX connectors. The design uses Campfire Audio’s Tuned Acoustic Expansion Chamber (T.A.E.C.) to improve sound quality. It retails at US$299. The updated Polaris switches to an all-metal design, the spout now made with black PVD stainless steel. Like the original, it uses a combined balanced-armature driver plus a dynamic driver, in this case 9.2mm. Like […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRpElKxalfk If someone had told me a few years ago that an unknown man from Romania would come out with one of the world’s best high-end headphones, I wouldn’t have believed it. But as I’m sitting here listening with the Empyrean and I think that Antony Meze may have just achieved what many others have aimed for, but didn’t quite reach, at least not without some kind of compromise. The Empyrean arrived in what would most easily be described as a suitcase inside a cardboard box. Inside, along with the headphones there is a fairly standard cable, which I’d describe […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duo5wwTIM18 This month I had a number of good questions from supporters and people who dropped in to watch. Some of the questions I addressed were: “Can you generally compare the sound of a dynamic headphone with a planar and a electrostatic. About the characteristic of the bass, mid and treble, soundstage and imaging.” “What do you think about the new Sony’s house sound? (Boosted mid bas and a strange boost at 6 to 8k without boosting the treble). And how is Sony in Japan? Do people in Japan like Sony or not?” “If you had 1000 -1500 to spend […]
[Editor’s note: With this review I’d like to introduce Davidé Jabbour to the site. A fellow Australian, he has been writing private reviews of local speakers. As Australia has something of a cottage industry of very capable hi-fi manufacturers, including the legendary Duntech speakers, I’m happy to see reviews of products from back home.] Introduction Hulgich Audio is a new speaker company based in Adelaide Australia, headed by Nick Hulgich (pronounced Eu-Lich), in partnership with Göran Niréus of Audio Excite. The two teamed up five years ago to pursue their shared passion for music and philosophy of high-fidelity sound reproduction. […]
During this month’s live stream I had some great questions from patrons, as well as from people who joined in on the chat while watching. Patron questions are listed below. William Ng Hi Amos, for your own money on a DAC, will you spend on A-GD R7/8, ifi pro idsd, Schiit Yggy, Chord Hugo 2/Qutest…. thanks mate Yethal A friend of mine once owned a DAP that sounded wonderful (used a multibit ladder dac iirc) but the usb drivers worked only on WIndows XP so he had to keep a spare machine to be able to upload music to it. […]
From MIT News: The human ear, like those of other mammals, is so extraordinarily sensitive that it can detect sound-wave-induced vibrations of the eardrum that move by less than the width of an atom. Now, researchers at MIT have discovered important new details of how the ear achieves this amazing ability to pick up faint sounds. […] Both the ear’s sensitivity and its selectivity — its ability to distinguish different frequencies of sound — depend crucially on the behavior of a minuscule gelatinous structure in the inner ear called the tectorial membrane, which Freeman and his students have been studying […]
Introduction It has been almost 10 years since I first discovered Audio-gd. Back then, when I bought my first pair of good headphones, I was told that for them to sound good, I had to buy a good headphone amp. Then, after that, I had to buy a good DAC. The result of all this was that I suggested to Kingwa of Audio-GD that he make a combined DAC and amp in one box for a reasonable price. At the time we were using a cheap Chinese DAC/amp, upgraded with discrete opamps from Audio-gd. The total cost of the amp […]
https://youtu.be/6LzMQvgam3s Brainwavz is most well-known for me for their variety of headphone hangers, of which I think at least one of each model grace my shelves. In a recent discussion with them, they asked if I was interested in reviewing their inexpensive IEM or headphone offerings. I was admittedly reluctant to cover products that had been reviewed by so many other people, and that I was more interested in products higher up in price range. The surprise reply was that they were releasing a pair of $499 planar headphones, the Alara, so would I be interested in those? NOW we’re […]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8BPyh_45gw What do you do when your flagship product is an outstanding hit, and it is already the very best you can do? How do you do even better? This was the dillema Ken Ball of Campfire Audio (and ALO Audio) had when coming up with his new flagship, the Solaris. After a bit of hit-and-miss with their first round of IEMs, with the Jupiter at the helm, the subsequent flagship, the Andromedas, were a huge hit. Despite the rather edgy shell, the 5-balanced-armature IEMs became an IEM standard. The slightly warm tuning that gave JHAudio Roxanne-like performance at a […]
INTRODUCTION The mid-range IEM market ($250-500) has been somewhat dominated by hybrid designs recently, where in the past it was mainly the home of the more established multi-BA based earphones. FiiO has steadily progressed their own line of hybrid and all-BA IEMs (FH1, F9, F9 Pro, FH5) over the last 2 years, and the natural progression for the next iteration (after the release of the FH5 quad hybrid), was always going to be a quad BA. So far (IMO of course), FiiO’s hybrids have followed a set pattern, tending to be warmer and smoother aided by the dynamic driver for […]