AZLA SednaEarfit XELASTEC mini-review

It's weird, these tips do seem to be idiosyncratic. They were fine for me with the Andromeda 2020 - and made for a nice, more neutral sound signature with the Sony ZX2 - but I just gave the same tips a try with the Solaris 2020 loaner and had exactly the same soundstage/imagining issues you described in the fifth post above. Stranger still, the tips seemed to produce a good seal, to judge from the bass response. But the overall sound all was kinds of wrong, and not just the oddball soundstage. Electric guitars sounded especially wonky, and the mids seemed recessed.

Maybe this has to do with the angle of insertion and the width of the spout/nozzle of IEMs?

 

Very interesting! Thanks for posting this now I don’t feel like I just fucked up in my impressions. There must be something about the unique material that makes fit extremely important even though they hypothetically should be the opposite since they conform to the ear canal better than any other tip. It remains a mystery.

I had the same impressions of them with the og Solaris. Not a good match, the Xelastic tips are too bright and bass lite. Too bad because the holding power would be awesome for the Solaris.

so maybe for now we can say:

• It’s a good idea to use the largest size that will fit in your ears.
• Best used with warmer iem’s.

 

Here’s what my Xelastic tips look like after a week of use. They still fit snug so that must be the shape of my ear canal. I’ll probably hot water them soon just to avoid permanent damage. Having to hot water them once a week is kind of annoying but worth it for the snug fit.

 

So I ran the Xelastic tips under hot water and left them floating in a mug of hot water which I replaced with fresh hot water 3 times. I also tried holding them under the hot water and pinching them in the opposite way they’re currently folded and rolling them back and forth in my fingers like this a bit. They definitely softened up in the hot water. But it didn’t get them round again. It did help but only a bit.




before and after pictures.

Before:


After:



Then I noticed that if I flip them inside out it forces them into a round shape. So next I’ll try a hot water soak with them turned inside out. Hopefully that works otherwise these tips aren’t sustainable.



see how round it forces them to be.

 

I did a hot water soak with them turned inside out and left them in for a couple hours, refilling with new hot water 4 times or so. It worked! Look how round they came out. Strangely it discolored them though. They’re not clear anymore they’re sort of foggy. Maybe I left them in hot water too long. So maybe try 15-30 minutes if you do it.

 

Turns out the foggy color was just “water marks”. ie stuff in the water sticking to the tips and then the water evaporating leaving the trace stuff. It comes off with alcohol or just buy wearing them.

The inside out hot water bath works good short term but they retain some memory of the previous shape and immediately go back to it.

this is how mine wound up looking and I gave up on them. Folded back on themselves a day after a hot water soak.





I’ve switched back to my favorite cheap generic Penon tips.

somehow others wear these and they stay round. I’m guessing you have to use a smaller size? I don’t know. Maybe some people have round ear canals. I clearly don’t.

 

I have the same problem and tried a smaller size. It made no difference, the tip still folded over on itself (and the size was too small to get a seal, anyway)

 

Well for anyone who likes how these sound but they fold over on themselves, here’s the Penon tips I like that are super cheap and sound similar in sound signature but better technicalities all around IMO. They’re also made just as well as expensive tips despite the price and available in tons of colors including black.

Penon Generic Tips

 

Well, we are a year on. Has this changed? I am trying to get comfortable with my timeless IEMs, and things are not perfect. The large blue tips that come with the timeless are ok for me. I really need more knowledge here.

 

I use them with the Timeless. They stay in place and they reduce the bass bloat. I put Xelastecs on all my iems. I'm curious about the new AZLA crystal tips.

 

I think most personal audio equipment reviews over-emphasize small differences. EXCEPT for every comparison I've read of the Azla SednaEarfit XELASTIC vs. the Azla SednaEarfit Crystal tips. Most reviewers make it seem like the Crystal tips are like 5% less grippy than the XELASTIC model. That has decidedly not been my experience. Maybe it's my skin type or pH or ear canal shape or whatever, but I find the Crystal tips lose their grip very quickly and become no better than Spiral Dots in terms of grippyness.

I'm sure the Crystal tips have other positive attributes, but in terms of grippyness, I'll take the XELASTICS any day of the week over the Crystals (and happily deal with the well-known other downsides of the XELASTICS).

 

I was intrigued when I recently learned about these, as I prefer the convenience and longevity of silicone but love the mold and isolation of foam. All impressions with Moondrop Variations.

-I hear the slight bass muting thing, but subbass and slam is still present so its fine by me. The overall reduction of bass is on the level of Comply or Campfire foam tips, or even the Final E silicone, so the reduction isn't anything unheard of.

-Not getting the strident treble some have described, if anything its smoother for me than other silicones, similar to how foam tips behave

-M fits me perfectly (as do most M tips) but I'm finding myself going too big to ML as they just form a seal so well and still remain comfortable for a couple hours.

If anyone in the US wants to try pair of untouched MS size I'll never use, hit me up and I'll just throw them in a letter envelope

 

Just to second this, I ordered the Crystal Airpod Pro tips thinking they would grip almost as well as the Xelastecs on my Variations and Andromeda SS. They absolutely do not. I wear my airpods during heavy bag work (so much more activity than just chewing gum) and the Crystals absolutely suck for that purpose. I would order the Xelastecs but I hear a new AAP is coming out....

I used to love the Shure Olives, but since developing some skin allergies inside my ear canal (yeah, it sucks), silicon hypoallergenic materials is all I use.

 

For workouts (and also general purpose), I'd actually suggest looking at the Beats Fit Pro. It has the same H1 chip, so you get the same Apple ecosystem benefits there. The biggest downside is the case is a bit clunky & cheap feeling. Sound quality is good enough for me; though, I generally watch TV, not listen to music with them. They don't sound overly bassy like your classic Beats.

 

Interesting tips. Some observations which others have mentioned or hinted at: Just because they stay put doesn't mean you have a good seal. M and ML seemed fine to me but as others mentioned have a very bass light sound. The L size is great for me though, bass is similar to foam tips be it comply t-200 or the ones that came with the Kato's. While not sounding as dead.

Pricey but nice, i like...

Edit: aaand back on the comply, just sounds more natural if a bit damped.. oh well.

Edit 2: cut a few mm of the comply tips and it’s perfect now!

Edit 3: Using these with the Softears RSV and i really rate them, if anything timbre is the only weakness i can think of and it's very slight.

 

With one pair of Spiral Dot++ having ripped where the two materials joined and the one remaining pair I have having turned soft as marshmallows over time, I figured I may as well give the Azla Xelastecs a shot. They're significantly cheaper than the Spiral Dot++es on my end of the world (Php400 for a single Xelastec pair vs Php1200~2000 for a single pair of the ++es depending on retailer), and given how much trouble I've had keeping IEMs secure in my one earhole I figured that moving to something advertised as having secure fit was going to be a smart move.

All impressions with the Campfire Andromeda 2020 with the stock Smoky Litz cable and that other, gaudier, Tripowin Perles cable (ORANGE trace) which boosts bass by a fair lot. Source is the FiiO BTR7 (1.8R out of SE) as an LDAC receiver or wired dongle, so I should be getting a bit less bass than on here (measurements were out of a Schiit/Nitch Piety which has sub-1R out):

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Long story short, these are great and do a great job staying in place even during moderately strenuous motion. External noise attenuation is actually distractingly good, i.e. I likely won't be using these while crossing a street.

Fresh out of the box, the tips were extremely bassy, suffocatingly muddy. I like bass, but while paired with the Perles cable it was too much of a good thing, enough so that I was nearly driven to using EQ. This made me dig my stock Smoky Litz cable out of its grave to lean things out a bit. Fortunately, this pairing was an improvement in every way outside of ergonomics (I got smacked in the face by the Smoky Litz cable taking it out of the pouch I had it in, it was very much a slinky now).

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I had been following this thread, hadn't read any of the impressions here in ages and had effectively forgotten how the tips were supposed to sound-- I thought they'd be permanently bassier than the ++es, for good and for ill. After a couple days of use though (i.e. two nights using the Andros as earplugs, one day walking around with them), I found that the low end was leaning out somewhat-- too much so for my preferences even. I re-inter the Smoky Litz cable into my Bottomless Bag of Holding (a.k.a. my desk) and swap the Tripowin cable back in-- oh okay, that's not bad; my current configuration with the Tripowin Perles cable and a broken-in pair of Azla Xelastecs, the Andro 2020s are actually pretty damned good. It's maybe a bit muddier than I'd strictly like, but it's a cosy sound and works for commutes or combating outside noise.

Compared to the Smoky Litz w/ Spiral Dot++ combo, the current configuration has a more intimate stage with better localisation and contrasts of depth, not to mention more visceral bass that still fails to extend all the way down (stuff in the bottom octave still comes off as somewhat weak and fuzzy, nothing to be done about that I suppose) but is nonetheless more satisfying than before. These might still have a bit more bass than the Spiral Dot++es, but it's much tempered from before and comes off as a tasteful boost that doesn't bleed into the mids too much.

I was reading up on others' impressions of the Xelastecs today and the consensus appears to be that these offer a more v-shaped sound profile. I could just be alarmingly close to overdosing on caffeine but if anything while I agree that the bass on the Andro 2020s is somewhat more prominent now (albeit more controlled), I feel like mids are actually somewhat more prominent vis-a-vis the JVCs-- at the very least, there's more contrast between things front-and-center and things further off. I am one notch higher on volume gain on the BTR7 on average I notice (16/60 on low gain out of SE out instead of 15/60 on the same), so that could be me compensating for actually recessed mids and leaning well into my basshead tendencies.

Treble smoothness is better on the Spiral Dot++. The JVC tips are brighter overall which is more of a miss for me, but while the Xelastecs do shelve the treble down to more palatable levels with respect to my preferences, there's a thin spotlit peak that doesn't always activate yet is slightly grating whenever it does. Forgot what songs I noticed it on but it was somewhere in the anime OST shimmer area. Not a deal-breaker by any stretch of the imagination, but worth pointing out. Stage on the Spiral Dot++ could be argued to be larger overall, but I think it's just more that everything on the headstage gets shoved further away. Definitely a matter of preferences here, but while I'm persnickety about headstage myself I've actually been fooled by stuff going off in the distance of recordings, or cats meowing off-camera in a random YouTube video.

Stage isn't particularly wide or deep, but it remains eerily good for a pair of IEMs. There's enough depth that I don't feel like I'm invading someone's privacy (or skull), and enough width to balance things out. Okay, I do sometimes miss the massive stage of the JVCs but this is well likeable on top of having a cosier voicing.

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It's been about a week since I swapped to these and they're already taking on a more interesting shape. This is starting to resemble how the triple flange silicone tips on my ER2XRs would look shortly before they start getting stuck in my ears whenever I try taking them out. Hopefully the Xelastecs last at least a year in this climate before turning to mush cuz I hate spending money when I can avoid it. That's one argument to be made in favour of custom-moulded IEM shells I suppose, less frequent fit maintenance.