Audiophilepure

Clear, dynamic, musical, with excellent deep tight bass and enough flavor combinations to satisfy even the most picky of connoisseurs, the FiiO FH9 In-Ear Monitors are well deserving of the title of flagship and easily competitive with any IEM in its price range. They easily handle any form of music and scale up well to higher resolution electronics. The combination of silicone tips and their semi-open back design makes them extremely comfortable for long-term listening, while bass heads will love them with the foam tips whether into Hip Hop or Death Metal, the FH9 deliver all music without prejudice. They even worked well with the $149 K5 Pro ESS desktop amp (review pending). So once again, FiiO delivers excellent value for the money with class beating musicality and performance.

This is the most impressive side of the FoKus Pro. I don’t know if it’s the configuration or wizard’s magic, the unit has a really solid technical foundation and it should be a reference for future TWS earphones. The soundstage feels wide and relatively deep. The positioning of the instruments feels accurate and the separation is impressive. The PRaT is solid, the unit has good attack and decay, handles congestion with ease, and does not feel claustrophobic with any genre. The tonal balance is quite good too if you don’t mind EQ’ing the bass response a couple of decibels. The FoKus Pro is the most capable TWS that I’ve listened to, period. In fact, I was starting to lose hope in the development of wireless earphones. Thanks to Noble, I now am reminded that much better products can be launched into this industry and I am once again looking forward to the future.

The same recording allows the IE 900 to showcase their talents where a smooth, even and utterly convincing description of the frequency range is concerned. Not many groups manage to make modern instrumentation sound as antiquated, whiskery and woody as The Band, and the Sennheisers are almost gratuitously detailed from the top of the frequency range to the bottom. Bass is full-figured but fleet of foot, with plenty of substance but next-to-nothing by way of overhang – control is absolute. At the opposite end, there’s absolutely as much bit and shine to treble sounds as is acceptable – but though they periodically threaten to spill over i

As you can see in the pictures of the 18+PRO and LIVE models, a lot can be done to customize and personalize your monitors. The one thing to note here is that UE for this version doesn’t offer any shell customisation. The only personalisation you can do here are the face plates.

I absolutely love the design of my LIVE and 18+PRO and for the UE 11 PRO I wanted something more normal. As I got to try out the Switch system, I chose the following 3 options for the face plates: car camouflage, jeans and solid green with the UE logo. Simple but nice.

The Noble FoKus Pro True Wireless IEMs stand as not only the best sounding True Wireless IEMs I have listened to, but the best Bluetooth headphones I have heard. Paring is a snap, and their extremely compact size makes them light and comfortable and not likely to fall out due to excessive weight. On top of that, the packaging is conveniently sized making them easy to slip into a pocket for travel.

My only complaints are minor ones, the tips are a bit of a challenge to swap, and due to the magnetic anchoring and their slippery body removing them from the charge case can take a little practice.

Many travel cases that come with in-ears are virtually useless, except for providing a place to put your earphones when they’re not in your ears. The NXEars case is much better, being a hardshell, so it provides some protection. Inside the case is a foam block into which you can place each earpiece, so it doesn’t roll around inside the case. This is important because the primary reason that balanced armatures eventually fail is trauma that knocks the internal elements out of alignment. This foam block is a design detail that should heighten Opera’s longevity and that all BA in-ear cases should employ, though few do.

The Opera has a sensitivity rating of 100dB with 18-ohm average impedance, which places it among the easy-to-drive but not most-sensitive category of in-ears. In comparison, the most-sensitive CIEMs in my collection, the Empire Ears Zeus, have a 115dB sensitivity. While custom in-ears, such as the Zeus, offer multiple colors and finishes, currently the Opera comes in only one color, an attractive “Stardust” blue, which is translucent enough to let you see inside, but dark enough so that the Opera doesn’t resemble a 3-D schematic. The dark blue is punctuated by metallic sparkles, so it brings to mind Vincent Van Gogh’s “Starry Night.”

https://www.whathifi.com/us/reviews/shure-aonic-5

‘Bright’ does exactly what it says on the tin – but for us, it overcooks things. The emphasis on the top end is quite marked with highs sounding more cutting and less pleasant, in our opinion. The strings and electric guitar in Mac Miller’s Cinderella sound quite brash and the track makes for uncomfortable listening.

While it’s a stark jump from ‘balanced’ to ‘bright’, the extra impact and fullness switching to ‘warm’ are a little easier to live with. The situation doesn’t feel quite as unbalanced and you can hear an increase in weight and substance although it is quite subtle. Bass notes don’t become overbearing, but after to-ing and fro-ing between the trio of tips, we’d still suggest sticking with the balanced nozzles, for the best, er, balance of weight, agility, detail and refinement.

https://www.whathifi.com/us/reviews/technics-eah-az40

Up at the top end, the Technics are this close to hardness – the confidence they demonstrate further down the frequency range is very nearly overplayed here. Certainly there is a degree of bite to treble sounds that makes turning the volume right up something only the very brave indeed should involve themselves with.Advertisementhttps://f8fccae954b6130965d78ff7f9a8e318.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

This kind of attack makes for a fairly dynamic listen, mind you. From the solo Piano of Satie’s Gymnopédie No. 1 to the wedding-cake pile-up of Wilco’s I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, the EAH-AZ40 have no problem making both broad and minor dynamic variations obvious. But it also seems to impact the Technics’ ability to properly express rhythms, and not in a good way. They don’t flow so much as trudge, and the closer your music edges towards the dancefloor the more uncomfortable the Technics sound.  

The FH9 IEM feels fabulous in hand, and I think based on the titanium design, it should be a reliable item for extensive usage. The chassis is tooled with a 5-axis CNC machine. So everything is beautiful and complete, and the shells are simply fantastic.

FH9 comes with a high-purity silver cable with 9 branches of 28 wires each, for a total of 224 wires. Each wire is individually isolated. They are braided together in a Litz pattern. The cable feels very high quality with good flexibility and tensile strength.

The FiiO FH9 has an ergonomic shape for most ears out there. It’s quite round, like the previous models, but the difference is that this design provides a fuller fit. The fit is more complete and ergonomic for a Universal IEM.

The supplied tips work very well. I chose the silicone ones, despite me usually liking the foam tips more. That’s because the IEM fits very well and I don’t have to use the foam tips to get a flush & secure fit. The silicone tips do the trick and they’re enough to give you nice isolation. You can opt for foams to get more isolation though. SpinFits are also an option if you like those.