Super Best Audio Friends

In a nutshell: Focal has adopted the Audeze sound for the Clear Mg. Think of it as an Audeze, but with a traditional dynamic driver. The upper mids and lower treble are muted. The highs return from the mid-treble onward. There is the tiniest bump at 1kHz. Yup, it's an Audeze (well, the muted upper mids and lower treble isn't as extreme). The Audeze sound is very popular, so this makes total sense.

Let's get straight to the measurements. Subjectively, it's still an HD800. The tweaks are tweaks. However, I am hearing better bass quality, a throwback to the OG HD800 bass, which is a good thing IMO. Would be curious to run distortion analysis to confirm. The HD8XX does have the resonator like the HD800S.

HD8XX (BLU/RED) Compared to HD800S (GRY)


More body (lower mids), but less thick (cleaner less thick lows compared to HD800S) - more like the HD800 lows. Lower treble hardness and glare is tamed like HD800S with the resonator. Slightly more mid treble and top octave. The upper mid dip (or differential between this area and highs) is slightly more pronounced. This all subjectively speaking. It's still identifiable as an HD800. The changes are not significant.

The Sony IER-M9 (the “M9”) was on my mind for months. From my research on the M9, it was discussed as being a warm neutralish IEM that doesn’t fatigue you out from listening to it for hours. Some stated that it is a more musical tuning without going in the deep-end. Others love the bass boost that isn’t overwhelming. Few stated they love the gradual downward sloping in the treble region. Since I been researching the M9 just a little too much for my own good, I picked up a pair. This is a five BA driver setup, which I believe one driver handles the lows, two handles the mids, and two handles the highs. I guess “high-five” to Sony on this one?

Picked up an LSA HP2 from Underwood Hifi that I had been reading about. A biocellulose driver with graphene coating that is horn loaded. Made by Kennerton, it is mostly closed with a pinhole in the center of the flat wood cup. Spring steel headband with a leather strap and soft leather earpads. Kennerton's model is the Gjallahorn, is more expensive, may be better? I don't know.

Using a Jot2 and HP1 from Neurochrome. Easy to drive at 33 ohm 105dB/mW efficiency. Very comfortable for long term wear. They go on and don't move around.

The midrange is exceptional. Great separation and timbre. No bass or mid bass bleed. Details and plankton galore. Seriously hearing detail I haven't heard before, easy to distinguish different simultaneous decays, guitar cavities. There may be treble roll off, I can't say cause my ears are already rolled off. All I can say for sure is everything I can hear, I can hear better and there is quite a bit that I wasn't hearing before.

The Starfield is what I would call a warm and smooth take on a neutral signature. While it’s more neutral than most stuff out there, it’s not exactly a reference type tuning. Bass is pleasantly boosted over neutral without sounding bassy. It’s got really satisfying punch and rumble. Mids are natural, with slight heft to my ears, and sit well in the pocket drawing your attention in. Treble is just a little under neutral for an ever so slightly laid back and forgiving presentation. Tonality is great; it’s very natural sounding. Staging and resolution on the other hand are just average, yet somehow this is a plus- the Starfield just lets the music wash over me without constantly analyzing everything. Instead I’m thinking, man that song was great, I wonder what’s next on the random rotation.

The Blessing 2 is a neutral sounding in-ear; it is a reference type signature. It has a very slight bass boost over diffuse field flat that is centered in deep bass. The result is a natural, yet neutral sounding bass with very good extension. It has impact and rumble when called for but is never over accentuated to my ears. While very nimble and quick sounding, it’s lacking a bit in texture compared to the best dynamic drivers, resulting in a slightly over damped sound.

What have I done to myself. I’m trying to write brief impressions of them all but I don’t even know their names or how many penises they have ...

1. Soranik is offering all of SBAF 20% off all their iem’s. (I will figure out how to best order them and post here)
2. These will all go on loaner very soon in pairs of two. You will be welcome and encouraged to choose to borrow all 6 at once if you like with extra time to listen.

Because I feel like it and also because there are plenty of FR graphs of the DUNU Studio SA6 floating around, I will start with measurements other than FR. All measurements were taken with the bass boost switch turned to off. The bass boost is only a few db - quite tastefully done.



At $550, the DUNU Studio SA6 are a decent value. Note I have not heard the Moondrop stuff yet, which are supposed to be giant killers, or at least very high value. The Studio SA6 are decent in terms of technicalities. If we turn back the clock only a few years, the SA6 would be right up there with $1k IEMs. Tonally, the SA6 has a bit of that "Asian" tuning, but much much milder than that of the DUNU ZEN.

The Quicksilver Headphone Amp is a transformer coupled single ended class A triode using (2) 12AX7 and (2) 6BQ5 tubes. It has one single ended input and one single ended output. It retails for $998. I ordered it directly from Mike and received it within one week of ordering it. The amp and tubes were packaged nicely. Aesthetically it looks much better in person than it does in photos. It seems like it is build very well.

I found the bass emphasis not overdone and a nice balance to the emphasized upper mids. What really drew me in was the timbre and articulation, particularly the decay of the drivers. The timbre and transient response was at least intriguing, something different, if not simply darn good.



The thing about frequency response errors or screwiness is that they are correctable. Non-linear distortion cannot. Hence why my measurements will begin with non-linear distortion and how the ZEN performs well, or at least well in an interesting way very different from BA type drivers.

Just for a whim, started to mess with another kind of measurements which I haven't done yet. Totally unsure about how reliable this device is.. but Motu gave a good impression to sbaf seniors through higher ultralite products, which drove me to one of their budget options, M4. After finishing asio setup (super easy) and basic calibration, I rushed to take a quick loopback measurement (bal out to bal in). And below is what I got in the first try.



WTF. Cannot help laughing. Indeed a big head scratcher. This shouldn't be true. Too good to believe, really. Something probably went wrong. Should look into more later. Any advice regarding typical noob traps will be all appreciated. Will update this thread as I collect more data points. Ultimately I want to measure other non acoustical output products (dac, preamp, head amp, etc) via M4 like I did with EARS. EDIT: The graph above doesn't make any sense (wrong option chosen). Please refer to the following post (#2)

Holy Cow! I can't believe we are now in our sixth year of GS awards. Wait a minute. I just realized something. Why did Schiit name the closeout OG Yggdrasil with the firmware updates Yggdrasil GS? Did the GS refer to Golden Schlong? LOL



We call these awards Golden Schlongs because we don't take ourselves seriously. I think it's hilarious that some people would actually think that people on SBAF were serious about themselves after reading a post or two... Anyway, the GS is a very serious award: while we do not take ourselves seriously, we do take audio seriously. However, anyone in this hobby who doesn't think there's at least a little bit of comparing schlongs is lying to themselves. (HINT: it only gets worse the more we spend).

There have been no changes to the format this year other than the addition of the infantile Brown Starfish award. Golden Schlongs and Silver Dongs are granted on per category basis (headphones, amps, sources, portable, and other). Each category will not necessarily have a GS winner; but each category will have at least a SD. It is also possible for a category to have multiple GS winners.

All in all, I am impressed with this larger speaker design from Troels and would definitely recommend it to others that are curious. With the way speaker pricing can be in the HiFi ORFAS industry, I think this could be one of the more affordable ways to get this level of sound reproduction. Even more affordable if you can build it yourself and don’t need to hire someone like I did.

*Before that, I’d had Adam Audio A7X’s before moving into the passive speaker world. I had Philharmonic BMRs powered by a Van Alstine amp, but I’d rather not talk about that.