▲ 92 r/inearfidelity
final A10000 - My new GOAT
Ichi-go ichi-e
Thanks to Final and IEM Tour Group Europe for arranging this tour.
It is probably the most luxurious IEM I have had the chance to try, but not in the usual loud sense. I have seen metal IEMs before. I have seen beautiful IEMs before. I have seen expensive products trying very hard to make sure you know they are expensive. The A10000 is different because its luxury does not mainly come from ornament or weight or visual drama. But from the feeling that every part of it was considered from the inside out.
There is very little here that feels borrowed from the familiar components bin. The 4.4 mm termination, the cable, the MMCX connectors, the eartips, the housing structure. Even the serviceability of the product all point in the same direction. This is not assembling a flagship out of ingredients from elsewhere. It feels like Final decided that if they were going to make a new A series flagship the surrounding details had to be part of the same language as the driver itself.
A lot of high-end audio can feel like separate impressive decisions placed next to each other. A dramatic shell, an expensive cable, a driver story, a big accessories list, a graph, a price tag. With the A10000 the parts feel less scattered.
The design is minimal, almost severe by IEM standards, but the closer I looked the more that restraint resonated with me. It is not trying to charm immediately. It leaves room for you to notice things slowly.
The Côte de Genève pattern is the only visual flourish that really breaks the restraint. I like that. It gives the stainless steel housing a small touch of movement and craft without pushing the design too far. It catches light, it gives the surface a signature and then it gets out of the way.I would not call the A10000 understated exactly. But it is disciplined.
The core of the A10000 is Finals newly developed dynamic driver, a true diamond diaphragm.
Finals argument is material based. Diamond has extremely high sound velocity and hardness, and the material table in the official information makes the intention quite clear. Diamond sits above beryllium, aluminium, titanium and magnesium in sound velocity, with 18,200 m/s listed for diamond compared with 12,900 m/s for beryllium. It also has a Young’s modulus listed at 1,050 far above the other materials shown.
The point is stiffness, speed and suppression of unwanted deformation.
Even hard metal diaphragms can deform in different directions during motion, which creates distortion. Diamonds bending stiffness is used to keep diaphragm displacement extremely small and reduce noise generated on the diaphragm surface. The A10000 driver is built around this idea of an ultra low distortion dynamic unit.
I find it interesting reading about how much work final put into everything around the diamond driver. The edge material is a special polyurethane chosen because diamond is heavy compared with some other diaphragm materials.
They needed an edge that could move easily, resist unnecessary resonance, remain elastic and avoid the problems of more conventional materials. The edge is lightweight, stretchable and designed to support the diaphragm without making it sluggish. Then there is the molding process...
Instead of bonding the diaphragm and edge with conventional adhesive they developed a method using pressure air molding and thermoforming. The purpose is to bond the parts without adhesive. I find that more interesting than the usual driver marketing. The amount applied, where it settles, how it cures, and how it affects weight can all change the result. Removing that variable fits the character of this product.
The voice coil follows the same pattern. They redesigned the usual adhesive fixed construction and uses a bobbin equipped coil. The goal is cleaner movement, better conductivity and less unevenness from adhesive weight.
I am not the kind of listener who turns every experience into a measurement exercise but I do enjoy when the engineering story has an internal logic.
They use screw fasteners rather than adhesive for the housing assembly and driver installation partly to allow long term repair, partly to hold the components firmly and suppress unwanted resonance. There is something reassuring about an expensive product that is designed with maintenance in mind.
A flagship should not feel temporary.
Yutori is about space, margin, ease, the feeling that something has room to exist without pressure.
The A10000 looks angular in a way that could easily make it seem uncomfortable in photos. It does not follow the usual organic shell language that many brands use when they want to communicate ergonomics. The reasoning is almost the opposite. Instead of creating a large surface that presses softly against many parts of the ear they limit the contact area. The idea is that comfort is about reducing pressure.
The shell does not disappear because it is feather light or because it melts into the ear like a custom but it does not argue with your anatomy.
They also made the A10000 smaller than the A8000. The A8000 already felt good in that regard but the A10000 feels more even better in use.
The included Fusion-G and Type-E eartips come in five sizes each. Fusion-G uses a triple hybrid structure with ultra density foam, soft silicone and highly elastic silicone. I really like them on the A10000. Small thing. Useful thing.
The dust filter can also be replaced by the user. The package includes replacement filters, maintenance tools, housing protective tape, a silicone sheet, an auxiliary plate, MMCX Assist and a proper carrying case (lowest tolerances puck, very OCD compatible). None of that is glamorous on its own. Together, it communicates that its expectsed the owner to keep this product in use. Luxury is often treated as something fragile. The A10000 feels luxurious but it also feels prepared to be handled, maintained and kept alive.
Kanso Is the beauty in simplicity
Many high end IEMs miss out when they chase too many forms of impressiveness at once.
More bass. More treble. More drivers. More sparkle. More stage. More obvious technical flex. More of whatever makes a quick demo memorable.
The A10000 does not behave like that.
The technical foundation is extreme, but the tuning is not chaotic. The diamond diaphragm could easily have resulted in a product that constantly tries to show you how fast and clean it is. The A8000 which I also had the chance to try already remains an exceptional IEM even years after its release in 2019. It still feels high class in a way that few older flagships manage.
But the A8000 has a treble presence that asks for your attention. I find that entertaining and I understand why it became such a memorable model, but it is not invisible in its brilliance. The A10000 feels like Final has become more comfortable with its own capability.
Nothing is missing in the treble. It can be just as refined and just as beautiful when the music calls for it. The difference is that it does not keep presenting treble as the main event when it does not need to. That is a more mature kind of confidence. It suggests that final did not simply try to outdo the A8000 by making an even more intense version of the same idea. They seem to have spent the time since then learning how to preserve the strengths while removing the need to constantly display them.
It is also why A10000 took me a little while to understand. The first listen did not hit me with one obvious signature. I heard that it was good, very good, but it did not behave like a typical wow IEM. Then I started moving between details and the whole. A bass phrase, then the full mix. A vocal texture, then the space around it. A cymbal trail, then the entire rhythm section. Back and forth. Back and forth.
After a while I realised that I was not searching for what was missing. I was checking whether anything was too much.
The bass is not inflated. The midrange is not pushed for artificial intimacy. The treble is not softened into politeness and it is not sharpened into spectacle. The separation is excellent but it does not dissect music into sterile pieces. Silence between notes feels clean which makes the notes themselves more distinct.
That is probably where the low distortion becomes most audible. It is not simply that details appear. It is that the space around them feels less polluted.
The THD chart from Final makes this visually obvious. Compared with a general earphone curve and even the A8000, the A10000 line sits extremely low across the graph, especially in the low frequencies. Officially Final describes distortion below 100 Hz as less than 1/100 of conventional models. The low end has substance without haze. It does not smear upward. It does not make the music feel slower. It gives the rest of the range a stable floor to the song. Restraint can sometimes sound like absence. This does not.
Umami is the best word I have for the sound of the A10000.
I know it is a slightly obvious and forced metaphor given where final comes from. But in this case I think it fits too well to avoid. Umami and its role is often to deepen and connect the rest. It gives body to a dish without always becoming the first thing you identify.
There are IEMs where the flavour profile is obvious after thirty seconds. Here is the bass IEM. Here is the treble IEM. Here is the vocal IEM. Here is the technical IEM. The A10000 resists that.
It has strength, sweetness, bitterness, salt, and underneath those parts there is something fundamental tying them together.
Bass has weight, but it is not a bass led presentation. Treble has extension, but it is not a treble showcase. The midrange has presence, but it is not tuned as a vocal spotlight. Resolution is high, but the point is not to make every track feel like a microscope slide.
The ingredients are all excellent none of them is allowed to dominate the dish. The result is not bland balance. It is a form of saturation where everything seems properly reduced and integrated. The sound has density without thickness. Clarity without glare. Precision without dryness. Musical information is abundant, but the delivery does not feel like a demonstration. I kept comparing it to cooking in my head.
When something is seasoned badly, you can usually identify the problem immediately. Too salty. Too sweet. Too bitter. Too much acidity. When something is seasoned very well, you sometimes need a moment before you understand why it works. Nothing jumps out because everything has been adjusted around everything else. The pleasure arrives as recognition rather than surprise.
The low end I would not describe it as a basshead tuning, and I would not want it to be. The bass is clean, fast and very well formed. There is enough physicality to give drums and electronic music proper grounding, but the real quality is how little residue it leaves behind. Decay feels natural but never excessive. Notes have shape and then they leave. That makes complex passages easier to follow, especially when the arrangement is busy.
The midrange feels very pure. Not thin. Not overly warm. Not forced into intimacy. Instruments have a believable material quality, which is what I always come back to when judging whether an IEM is convincing. Piano has weight and attack. Strings have texture without becoming wiry. Voices have enough body to feel human, but the edges remain clean. I never got the feeling that Final had chosen euphony over accuracy or accuracy over feeling.
The treble is where the comparison with A8000 becomes most interesting. A8000 can be thrilling in the upper registers. It has a brightness and immediacy that still feels special. A10000 keeps the extension and beauty but it has more judgment. It knows when to appear. Cymbals can shimmer. Air can open around a recording. Small harmonic information can appear clearly at the edge of attention. But it does not keep tapping you on the shoulder to make sure you noticed.
I am not someone who usually places enormous importance on cables as a sound topic. I know they matter to some people and I understand that construction can have practical and electrical relevance but I am not naturally drawn to cable mysticism. With A10000 the cable interests me more because of where it comes from and how it fits into the product. Final developed it with Junkosha, Junkoshas background in high speed signal transmission gives the cable story a technical context that feels coherent and fun.
MMCX can be divisive in this hobby, but after reading up on this the reasoning clearly is long term reliability. They describe 2-pin connectors as relying on the spring nature of the pin itself, which makes them structurally less durable. For the A10000, they redesigned their in house MMCX connector for higher precision and reliability. It is difficult to insert and remove, and final even advises against unnecessary recabling. Some might see that as limiting. I am fine with it as long as the cable doesnt go stiff easily (only time will tell).
It is pleasant to look at, pleasant to handle, interesting to read about, and easy to respect as a piece of engineering. It is one of the few IEMs where I enjoy both the technical explanation and the physical presence equally. It is nice to rest my eyes on. It is nice to know that the extravagant part is almost hidden in the driver rather than thrown across the faceplate. It is nice that the only visible flourish is tasteful enough to lift the design without turning it into a costume. When an IEM costs this much the experience around it matters.
I appreciate the distance between Final’s A series flagships. The A8000 arrived in 2019 and still holds its place remarkably well. Many flagships age quickly because they were built around a moment. A tuning trend, a driver trend, a market trend, a need to appear new. A10000 arriving so many years later gives the release more weight.
Final does not treat this series as something to refresh every season.
There is also pressure, of course because when a brand waits that long. The next release has to mean something. With the A10000 I get the sense that it does mean something. Before even hearing it the long gap created a certain trust. Not blind trust, but an expectation that this was probably not rushed.
I should probably admit plainly that the A10000 has become my favourite IEM.
That is not because it is the flashiest, or because the material story is impressive, or because the measurements look good, or because it is expensive enough to create expectation. Those things are all part of the context, but they are not the reason.
Aesthetically, it is exactly the kind of object I like. Minimal, precise, distinctive, slightly severe, with one tasteful visual gesture. Technically it gives me enough to think about. Sonically it has the balance I like. No missing component, no obvious excess, no treble demanding attention simply because it can, no bass trying to create scale by leaving fingerprints everywhere, no midrange trickery pretending to be emotion.
It is a very expensive IEM and I do not think that should be softened. At this price, admiration should not come easily. The product has to justify itself through more than novelty. For me the A10000 does that through coherence. Every part seems to belong to the same idea.
Thanks for reading 😃
u/Pseudonym031 — 2 months ago
▲ 7 r/inearfidelity
Finals Black Magic Tonalite
Final Audio - Tonalite
Most of what keeps me invested in this hobby still lives on the wired side of it. I like dedicated sources, external amplification, cables, and the more deliberate nature of that whole experience. Because of that, wireless products do not automatically get much goodwill from me.
For something like this to really hold my attention convenience is never enough. There has to be a real idea behind it.
What got me interested was the technology. Final is presenting tonalite as something built around a different set of priorities than what we usually see in this category. The central idea is not just personalization in the broad lifestyle-tech sense, but personalization of timbre.
Their DTAS system uses a scan of the listeners anatomy together with real-time acoustic measurement. It processes that information through Finals auditory model and sends a personalized correction profile back to the earphones. That is a more ambitious concept than the usual stack of features most TWS lean on.
The whole product feels unusually resolved. That applies to the design, the software, the ergonomics, and the way the experience holds together from start to finish. I do not take that for granted in this hobby, because there are plenty of products that arrive with obvious weak points, unfinished app support, clumsy usability, or the general feeling that the first buyers are helping fund the real release later on.
Tonalite does not give me that impression at all. It feels complete.
There is also a kind of restraint to it that I appreciate a lot. The design is clean and elegant without being anonymous.
The ergonomics feel deliberate rather than generic. The packaging, app, fit and hardware choices all point in the same direction. The whole thing feels unmistakably Japanese in a way that is difficult to fake: restrained, organized, thoughtful, and properly finished.
That sense of completeness matters a lot to me. I never got the feeling that I was dealing with a product that needed excuses made for it. There are no obvious shortcuts, no glaring weak spots that you are expected to forgive because the idea is interesting enough, and no marketing language standing in for actual development.
What I get from tonalite is the sense that there has been real work behind it. Real engineering, real curiosity, and a genuine attempt to move the category somewhere more interesting. I have a lot of respect for that.
Especially in a part of the hobby that can sometimes feel trapped in repetitive driver math and very familiar storytelling.
A large part of what makes tonalite worth paying attention to comes back to something very simple: the ear is not passive.
The body and ears act as an acoustic filter. The same sound wave is altered differently depending on who is listening before it ever reaches the eardrum. Earphones are usually designed for some notion of an average listener, but there is no such thing as an average actual ear. That is a pretty basic truth and Final has chosen to make it central.
That line of thinking also explains why Final puts so much emphasis on timbre. A lot of audio products, especially in the wireless space, lean hard into spatial presentation, immersion, and the feeling of sound existing around you.
Final seems more interested in whether the sound itself feels believable before any of that. I think that is the right place to focus. Space can be impressive, but timbre is what convinces you that what you are hearing has any legitimacy in the first place. Once the tonal character is off, the illusion starts to fall apart.
Timbre is what gives an instrument its identity.
Strip away pitch and volume and what remains is the material quality of the sound, the texture, the color, the character that lets you distinguish one thing from another.
When that part is wrong, listening becomes analytical very quickly. Instead of just hearing music, you start noticing the reproduction itself. Tonalite is built around trying to correct that at the root rather than decorating around it.
After the scan and coefficient correction, what you hear does not come across like a minor DSP tweak or a preset with some branding attached to it. The change feels more fundamental. The sound becomes less like something pushing against your anatomy and more like something settling into it properly.
Final describes the result as creating a kind of white canvas by washing away coloration from both the earphone and the listeners anatomy. The phrasing is branded, but the idea behind it is sound. Establish a cleaner tonal foundation first, then let the rest of the reproduction build on top of that.
The process itself is not difficult to understand once you strip away the terminology.
You use the app and your phone to scan and analyze the relevant ear geometry while the earphones help gather real-time acoustic information. That data is then sent to Finals servers, where their auditory model calculates the correction parameters needed for your specific anatomy. Once the simulation is complete the resulting sound profile is transferred back to the specific unit. In practical terms, your anatomy is measured, modeled, and accounted for and the earphones are adjusted around that result.
What interests me most here is where this could lead.
The software already does something unusual, and it clearly points toward a direction that could become genuinely important if it continues to mature.
I would very much like to see this kind of framework applied to even more capable IEM platforms later on because there is too much potential here for it to remain a curiosity. If this is what Final can already do in a wireless format it is hard not to think about what might happen if the same ideas are paired with even stronger transducers and amplification down the line.
The sound itself is also very difficult to dismiss. That is the slightly awkward part for someone like me to admit, because I still enjoy the wired side of the hobby immensely. I like the ritual, the hardware, and the whole chain of choices that comes with it. Tonalite does not replace that for me.
It does however make it much harder to hold on to the assumption that wireless audio is automatically too compromised to be taken seriously.
It measures up far better than I expected against reference IEM experiences I have had.
I would genuinely like people who are skeptical of TWS to give this one a fair chance, even if only for a moment. There is real capability here and I do not just mean in the product as it exists today. I mean in the direction it suggests. Give this sort of software access to even better hardware over time, and the ceiling starts to look very high.
Part of what makes it special is that toanlite is not chasing spatial effect for its own sake. It is trying to preserve positioning while also making the sound itself feel natural, present, and convincing. Space without believable timbre still feels synthetic. Once both are working together the whole presentation becomes much harder to dismiss.
Tonalite also has enough substance outside DTAS that it does not depend on that one concept alone. Final built it around their 10 mm f-CORE for DTAS driver, brought in distortion-reduction techniques from the A10000, implemented triple hybrid ANC using Sony’s CXD3784 together with Infineon MEMS microphones, and included the kind of practical features expected at this level without overcomplicating the product.
You get app-side control over noise modes, a 10-band EQ, volume step optimization, multipoint, gain, touch controls, firmware updates, low-latency mode, one-ear mode, ambient mode, and up to 9 hours of playback from the earbuds themselves.
The software deserves praise in its own right. Companion apps are often where things start to unravel but here the app is one of the stronger parts of the product. More broadly the whole ecosystem feels thought through in a way that still is not especially common in the enthusiast side of audio.
When the same level of thought is present from box design to ergonomics, from algorithm to hardware, and from concept to app implementation, the result usually feels more coherent.
It surprised me in a few different ways. First through the seriousness of the idea. Then through how complete the product feels and finally through the sound itself.
I still would not describe myself as a TWS person by default. Even so, tonalite made me much more interested in what this category can become.
It feels like a finished product. The results after DTAS are genuinely interesting. The software is mature, and the whole thing carries a level of care that is easy to notice.
Thanks for reading <3
u/Pseudonym031 — 3 months ago
▲ 0 r/inearfidelity
KiwiEars Halcyon
Transparency: I got this unit as part of the launch of their Kickstarter campaign that is live right now. I do not get any benefits or kickback and I am free to write whatever I feel like.
For more in-depth technical information please go to Kickstarter campaign link As I look at it from another perspective when I listen.
Lets go!
KiwiEars has made some competent products, but aesthetically this is the first one from them that really has won me over. To me, Halcyon is he best looking KiwiEars IEM to date.
It has a very clean and sleek design language, and I think they made the right decisions almost all the way through.
The all-metal shell gives it a more serious and more refined presence than a lot of products in this range, and the laser-etched patterning is especially well judged.
It is subtle enough not to disturb the elegance of the design, but it adds just enough texture and visual interest to keep it from becoming plain.
A fully metal IEM can easily end up looking cold or generic, but Halcyon avoids that. It looks modern, restrained and properly thought through.
The cable deserves some credit too (that I dont use in the pictures). It is of high quality, it handles well, and it is very ergonomic in use. If I had one small wish, it would be for the connectors to sit flush rather than protrude a bit. But that really is a nitpick more than anything else. It does not get in the way of the overall impression, which is positive. This feels like a well-finished product, not something where all the effort went into the headline feature and the rest was treated as an afterthought.
And of course, the headline feature here is hard to ignore. This is the first IEM I have had the opportunity to try that implements a MEMS driver, and after spending time with Halcyon I came away positively surprised. More than that, I came away feeling that it is a very capable solution for treble. That was the part I was most curious about going in.
New driver technologies tend to arrive with as much expectation as they do uncertainty. Sometimes they immediately show you why they exist. Other times they feel like a concept still looking for a convincing reason to be in the product.
What impressed me is that there is none of that metallic edge in the treble that micro-planar implementations often bring with them, for better or worse. That slight sheen, that sense of artificial texture that can make treble sound exciting at first but ultimately a bit unnatural, is not really present here.
The upper register comes across cleaner and more composed than that. It feels like Kiwi Ears understood that simply using new technology is not enough. You still must integrate it well, and here it sounds integrated rather than showcased for its own sake.
Halcyon is not tuned like an IEM that wants to put a spotlight on treble simply because MEMS is the novelty.
In fact, the overall signature is relatively easygoing, which I think was the right decision. It gives the whole presentation a more broadly appealing character and stops the IEM from turning into a demonstration piece for one specific frequency range. The treble has capability, but it is not screaming for your attention. It contributes to the sound instead of trying to dominate it. That makes Halcyon feel much more mature than it could have been.
I think that is a big reason why it will likely be appreciated by a wide range of listeners. There are no obvious flaws here that jump out and force you to work around them. It feels like a very complete product. Really, the only part that will come down to taste for most people is whether the bass level lands exactly where they want it
I might have chosen marginally less. But I also know that I sit lower on that preference scale in general.
So I do not see that as some major criticism of the tuning. If anything, I suspect the majority of listeners will find the bass level more to their liking than mine.
Because there is a difference between not exactly my ideal and wrong.
It is simply tuned with a broader listener base in mind, and I think that will work in its favor. The bass gives the sound a pleasant and accessible character, and because the treble is handled with more discipline than I perhaps expected, the whole thing comes together in a way that feels coherent and easy to enjoy.
There is also something to be said for the value here. At the current Kickstarter price of 199 dollars, this feels like a very favorable offering. Honestly, you get a lot for the money these days, and Halcyon is a good example of that.
The shell design is excellent, the cable is good, the implementation of the new driver-tech is more convincing than I expected, and the tuning is broad enough in appeal that I can see it doing well with a lot of people. It does not feel like a product trying to sell you a concept. It feels like a product trying to justify itself properly. More than anything, that is why I ended up liking it.
It would have been very easy for Halcyon to become “the MEMS one” and not much more than that. Instead, it feels like a genuinely solid IEM that also happens to be my first experience with MEMS done in a way that leaves me optimistic about the technology.
It quietly shows that it can be part of a very competent and well-balanced whole. And that is usually the better sign.
So where do I land on this?
Kiwi Ears Halcyon is, in my opinion, their best-looking IEM so far, one of their cleanest overall executions, and a very encouraging first encounter with MEMS driver implementation. It is warm, pleasant, capable, free of obvious weaknesses, and offered at a price that makes it all the more attractive. I might personally lean toward a touch less bass (sub-bass) but I also think most listeners will consider that more of a preference note than a real downside.
On the whole, this is a very good product. And at 199 dollars on Kickstarter (Early bird), it feels like a very good deal as well. Since I leave out the tech-specs and if you feel like having a look for yourself on the accessories or the box and more from them regarding philosophy etc here is a link to do so:
Thanks for reading
u/Pseudonym031 — 4 months ago
▲ 2 r/iems
KiwiEars Halcyon
Transparency: Usually I am just writing reviews as part of IEM Tour Group Europe. Im far from a professional. I got this unit as part of the launch of their Kickstarter campaign that is live right now. I do not get any benefits or kickback and I am free to write whatever I feel like.
For more in-depth technical information please go to Kickstarter campaign link. As I look at it from another perspective when I listen.
Lets go!
Kiwi Ears has made some competent products, but aesthetically this is the first one from them that really has won me over. To me, Halcyon is he best looking Kiwi Ears IEM to date.
It has a very clean and sleek design language, and I think they made the right decisions almost all the way through. The all-metal shell gives it a more serious and more refined presence than a lot of products in this range, and the laser-etched patterning is especially well judged.
It is subtle enough not to disturb the elegance of the design, but it adds just enough texture and visual interest to keep it from becoming plain. A fully metal IEM can easily end up looking cold or generic, but Halcyon avoids that. It looks modern, restrained and properly thought through.
The cable deserves some credit too (that I dont use in the pictures). It is of high quality, it handles well, and it is very ergonomic in use. If I had one small wish, it would be for the connectors to sit flush rather than protrude a bit. But that really is a nitpick more than anything else. It does not get in the way of the overall impression, which is positive. This feels like a well-finished product, not something where all the effort went into the headline feature and the rest was treated as an afterthought.
And of course, the headline feature here is hard to ignore. This is the first IEM I have had the opportunity to try that implements a MEMS driver, and after spending time with Halcyon I came away positively surprised. More than that, I came away feeling that it is a very capable solution for treble.
That was the part I was most curious about going in.
Because newdriver technologies tend to arrive with as much expectation as they do uncertainty. Sometimes they immediately show you why they exist. Other times they feel like a concept still looking for a convincing reason to be in the product.
What impressed me is that there is none of that metallic edge in the treble that micro-planar implementations often bring with them, for better or worse. That slight sheen, that sense of artificial texture that can make treble sound exciting at first but ultimately a bit unnatural, is not really present here.
The upper register comes across cleaner and more composed than that. It feels like Kiwi Ears understood that simply using new technology is not enough. You still must integrate it well, and here it sounds integrated rather than showcased for its own sake.
Because Halcyon is not tuned like an IEM that wants to put a spotlight on treble simply because MEMS is the novelty.
In fact, the overall signature is relatively easygoing, which I think was the right decision. It gives the whole presentation a more broadly appealing character and stops the IEM from turning into a demonstration piece for one specific frequency range. The treble has capability, but it is not screaming for your attention. It contributes to the sound instead of trying to dominate it. That makes Halcyon feel much more mature than it could have been.
I think that is a big reason why it will likely be appreciated by a wide range of listeners. There are no obvious flaws here that jump out and force you to work around them. It feels like a very complete product.
Really, the only part that will come down to taste for most people is whether the bass level lands exactly where they want it
I might have chosen marginally less. But I also know that I sit lower on that preference scale in general.
So I do not see that as some major criticism of the tuning. If anything, I suspect the majority of listeners will find the bass level more to their liking than mine.
Because there is a difference between not exactly my ideal and wrong.
It is simply tuned with a broader listener base in mind, and I think that will work in its favor. The bass gives the sound a pleasant and accessible character, and because the treble is handled with more discipline than I perhaps expected, the whole thing comes together in a way that feels coherent and easy to enjoy.
There is also something to be said for the value here. At the current Kickstarter price of 199 dollars, this feels like a very favorable offering. Honestly, you get a lot for the money these days, and Halcyon is a good example of that.
The shell design is excellent, the cable is good, the implementation of the new driver-tech is more convincing than I expected, and the tuning is broad enough in appeal that I can see it doing well with a lot of people. It does not feel like a product trying to sell you a concept. It feels like a product trying to justify itself properly. More than anything, that is why I ended up liking it.
It would have been very easy for Halcyon to become “the MEMS one” and not much more than that. Instead, it feels like a genuinely solid IEM that also happens to be my first experience with MEMS done in a way that leaves me optimistic about the technology.
Not because it shouts about what it can do, but because it quietly shows that it can be part of a very competent and well-balanced whole. And that is usually the better sign.
So where do I land on this?
Kiwi Ears Halcyon is, in my opinion, their best-looking IEM so far, one of their cleanest overall executions, and a very encouraging first encounter with MEMS driver implementation. It is warm, pleasant, capable, free of obvious weaknesses, and offered at a price that makes it all the more attractive. I might personally lean toward a touch less bass (sub-bass) but I also think most listeners will consider that more of a preference note than a real downside.
On the whole, this is a very good product.
And at 199 dollars on Kickstarter, it feels like a very good deal as well. Since I leave out the tech-specs and if you feel like having a look for yourself on the IEM specs, accessories or the box and more from them regarding philosophy etc here is a link to do so:
Thanks for reading😊
u/Pseudonym031 — 4 months ago