This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the 1MORE Penta Driver P50 IEM. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $120.
Sorry about the lousy picture. The silicone cable is nice to use but makes it impossible to position the drivers for a picture. As the name indicates the IEM sports one dynamic driver and no less than four planar drivers. Is more better? We will find out. Company claims that the sound is tuned by Luca Bignardi recording engineer. Here he is talking about his ideas of tonality:
The IEM and accessories feel luxurious compared to what you get in $50 and less category IEMs. They are light, small and nice to handle. Note below however on difficulty of getting the tips to fit my ear and test fixture.
If you are not familiar with my headphone measurements and reviews, I highly suggest you watch my tutorial on headphone testing.
1MORE Penta Driver IEM Measurements
The IEM comes with two kinds of tips. I started testing with the set that has a grill (filter?) in it but the surrounding silicone material was too soft to get it to mount properly to my GRAS 45CA headphone measurement system. So I switched to the set that doesn't have a grill but is somewhat firmer. For both listening and testing I used the largest tips.
This is an odd response I have not seen before. Likely the result of tuning per introduction. I was happy to see the nice bass response, but not the overboosted lower treble. And underboosted upper treble. Relative response shows variations that is hard to mimic manually with parametric EQ:
We see somewhat typical distortion profile:
Unfortunate to see such rise in lower treble.
Group delay is not very eventful but does show the signature of multiple drivers/filtering:
We see the same to some extent in the odd impedance graph:
Sensitivity is low for an IEM:
1MORE Penta Driver Listening Tests and Equalization
Out of box sound was very odd which is readily explained by the frequency response. I was not hopeful that I could EQ it right but was surprised how great it took to my simple EQ:
With this in place, the sound was impressively good.
You may have noticed that I did not mess with the extra energy in upper bass. At first wearing, despite using the largest tips, I was not getting much bass. Toward the end the of the testing, I managed to get them just right in my ear and was then able to hear the impressive and clean bass.
Conclusions
The build of Penta Drive is quite nice and price is rather reasonable and fits what you get. The tuning though is truly odd but nicely has enough bass. It lent itself well to equalization despite my expectation otherwise. With EQ, the sound was very nice, with high resolution, clean and open sound (for an IEM).
I can't recommend the 1MORE Penta Drive IEM. I hope the company adopts proper research for target curve than chasing "stars" in the Pro industry. And yes, I do now wonder how Luca has managed to win all those Grammy awards with preference like this!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Sorry about the lousy picture. The silicone cable is nice to use but makes it impossible to position the drivers for a picture. As the name indicates the IEM sports one dynamic driver and no less than four planar drivers. Is more better? We will find out. Company claims that the sound is tuned by Luca Bignardi recording engineer. Here he is talking about his ideas of tonality:
The IEM and accessories feel luxurious compared to what you get in $50 and less category IEMs. They are light, small and nice to handle. Note below however on difficulty of getting the tips to fit my ear and test fixture.
If you are not familiar with my headphone measurements and reviews, I highly suggest you watch my tutorial on headphone testing.
1MORE Penta Driver IEM Measurements
The IEM comes with two kinds of tips. I started testing with the set that has a grill (filter?) in it but the surrounding silicone material was too soft to get it to mount properly to my GRAS 45CA headphone measurement system. So I switched to the set that doesn't have a grill but is somewhat firmer. For both listening and testing I used the largest tips.
This is an odd response I have not seen before. Likely the result of tuning per introduction. I was happy to see the nice bass response, but not the overboosted lower treble. And underboosted upper treble. Relative response shows variations that is hard to mimic manually with parametric EQ:
We see somewhat typical distortion profile:
Unfortunate to see such rise in lower treble.
Group delay is not very eventful but does show the signature of multiple drivers/filtering:
We see the same to some extent in the odd impedance graph:
Sensitivity is low for an IEM:
1MORE Penta Driver Listening Tests and Equalization
Out of box sound was very odd which is readily explained by the frequency response. I was not hopeful that I could EQ it right but was surprised how great it took to my simple EQ:
With this in place, the sound was impressively good.
You may have noticed that I did not mess with the extra energy in upper bass. At first wearing, despite using the largest tips, I was not getting much bass. Toward the end the of the testing, I managed to get them just right in my ear and was then able to hear the impressive and clean bass.
Conclusions
The build of Penta Drive is quite nice and price is rather reasonable and fits what you get. The tuning though is truly odd but nicely has enough bass. It lent itself well to equalization despite my expectation otherwise. With EQ, the sound was very nice, with high resolution, clean and open sound (for an IEM).
I can't recommend the 1MORE Penta Drive IEM. I hope the company adopts proper research for target curve than chasing "stars" in the Pro industry. And yes, I do now wonder how Luca has managed to win all those Grammy awards with preference like this!
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
