64 Audio tia Trió IEM Review

[MayaTlab]

Like always, you say a lot without really saying much and manage to evade all the arguments given.
If you really doubt that pinna interaction is involved in generating soundstage, just name me an IEM (there exist several thousands by now) that has a comparable soundstage to the Sennheiser HD 800. If you are not able to do this, you don't have a strong case.

Well for a start the main problem, as I said, is that "soundstage" has yet to receive a commonly accepted operational definition, so whatever I'd call "soundstage" might not correspond to whatever you call "soundstage" and isn't testable. Naming such an IEM would therefore simply be my own opinion, not a fact.

But if you want my totally subjective and useless opinion : any IEM that I can reliably EQ to deliver a specific FR at my eardrum ?

You also, probably deliberately, did not comment on my second argument. Take the Sennheiser HD 800 and EQ it to any FR you like. It will still have a huge soundstage, so FR has no significant on that.

I've owned a pair of HD800 (did you ?) and I could easily EQ it in a way that ruins anything that I'd subjectively call "soundstage" from it. But that's just my opinion. And what's bolded also is an opinion.

Your measurements of the IEMs are off.

Well at least two out of the three groups of traces are, for certain - if not all of them. But why ? And how are they off, but in a very repeatable and reproducible way, even without moving the IEM ?

So maybe the cheap device from Aliexpress is trash or you are doing it wrongly, what kind of argument is this? There are many different people out there that manage to generate FR measurements which are very similar one to each other, maybe you have to learn from them? Compare Amirs IEM measurments with crinacles and with, for example, Super*Review ot HBB, they are mostly very similar.

The same IEM in the same mode (well, kinda, but that's complicated), measured by various sources (Crinacle, 0dB, Sean Olive, Aregina, Hypethesonic, Precog), including some alternate takes from the same source. Now I have to come clean, I am a bit cheeky here and some (but not all) of the difference comes from a volume dependent EQ.

But as I said my own measurements were made at the same volume (and also the exact same mode, well kinda, but that's complicated). Also, it includes for two sources (0dB, Hypethesonic) the same sample measured by the same operator on the exact same test rig, producing different results (particularly at 3kHz for example, which is not related to the volume dependent EQ).

The doublets :

On the other hand, one of my Chu measured inside my clone coupler, vs. various sources (somewhat decent agreement in comparison - all three of my samples measure similarly) :

So what happens with the first IEM ? How do you know which measurement is representative of what is happening in your ears ? How do you know which one to pick if you wanted to EQ these IEMs to a target ?

I fully admit that I'm having fun here by throwing into the mix possibly one of the trickiest pair of headphones ever to measure, but hopefully that makes you think twice about taking IEM measurements at face value.

Ok, so lets start slowly. Do you agree that two IEMs, which measure the same (including one being EQed to the other one and than both being measured), will sound the same to a specific individual (with his own ECRTF ( ear canal related transfer function)?

If they're passive, seal well, and even more so if I use the same tip for them, then I can tell you : mostly kinda sorta yep up to about 4kHz, but possibly not above on a systemical basis.

If they're active with a feedback mechanism : nope (and I've already given you an example).

 

[FujiwaraMokou]

Well, if that really were true, maybe it is a drive type that should not be used?

No IEM has significant soundstage and and I seriously doubt this one will have.

That is a total myth. The sound of an IEM is (granted a good seal and low enough distortion) purely determined by FR, as no pinna interaction takes place.

No.

Won't show any significant differences between $50 IEMs and these.

THD is unavoidable unless you opt for electrostatic.
If ignoring the unfounded "everything is FR" statement, even for FR you cannot tune exactly or arbitrarily.
Engineers have to use specific types of drivers and/or multiple drivers to achieve the tuning result they want.
Even with EQ it only gets approximate, not close therefore replicating same response across two transducers is not as easy as you think.
Also factor in 8k resonance if you EQ using Auto EQ or EQ from 711 measurements.

 

[FujiwaraMokou]

Like always, you say a lot without really saying much and manage to evade all the arguments given.

If you really doubt that pinna interaction is involved in generating soundstage, just name me an IEM (there exist several thousand by now) that has a comparable soundstage to the Sennheiser HD 800. If you are not able to do this, you don't have a strong case.

You also, probably deliberately, did not comment on my second argument. Take the Sennheiser HD 800 and EQ it to any FR you like. There is no measurement involved. It will still have a huge soundstage, so FR has no significant effect on that.

Your measurements of the IEMs are off. So maybe the cheap device from Aliexpress is trash or you are doing it wrongly, what kind of argument is this? There are many different people out there that manage to generate FR measurements which are very similar one to each other, maybe you have to learn from them? Compare Amir's IEM measurements with crinacle's and with the ones, for example, of Super*Review or HBB, they are mostly very similar.

HD800 have considerable amount of width but not depth. I think this attribute is shared with very few other transducers and specifically not IEMs. If depth is needed only speakers or maybe some truly high-end IEMs.

 

[MayaTlab]

1) Do you know any measurements of either?

Maybe that could be interesting to you. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1811.03389.pdf

2) What is the justification of this demand?

IEMs' FR varying to a different degree if presented with a different acoustic impedance (ie no single transfer function). This is one of the two reasons for my "mostly kinda sorta yep" answer above as I'd need to measure in situ more IEMs to form a stronger opinion on the subject.

So, this is utterly ridiculous and shows that you cannot be taken seriously.

So trust me, I know what I am talking about

This is not true.

@mmmdc put it nicely I think. "trust me broooo !"

This is not true. But please, show me the FR in question or the PEQ values, I am eager to test it.

Anything that will make the 2-3kHz region preeminent over the rest of the spectrum will do it for me, regardless of the headphones.

Without any objective value.

Oh, definitely. And I am not expecting you to realise by now the irony of your "trust me bro" comments in comparison.

So you forged and made up the whole problem.

Sure, if you like to call Sean Olive's measurements forged. I am not the one who published these measurements on the web. Why are they all different, even from the same operator using the same equipment and the same volume level ?

So no need to deal with it any more.

Yeah but you're kind of forced to anyway. The question remains : if I'm asking you to EQ these IEMs to sound just like, let's say, a Chu, based on 711 measurements, which one of these traces do you pick ?
And even if you pick the right one (if there is one), why that won't work ? *feedback feedback feedback feedback*

So you admit this part, fine. What I said from the start. Why all the resistence?

Your statement is that you can EQ one IEM to sound just like the other based on 711 coupler measurements.

If you're deaf above 4kHz then, kinda ?

And my statement above passive vs. active with a feedback mechanism stands (unlike you I've supported that opinion with an example).

As a consequence it is just FR then that determines the sound of an IEM.

If by FR you mean FR at one's eardrum in particular, you would not have resistance from me on that part as long as non-linear distortion is low enough. But you wouldn't either if you extended it to headphones in general, as long as FR isn't sufficiently exhausted as a variable.

 

[Robbo99999]

@MayaTlab , I'm just curious, what were the 3 headphones that had the spike at 2kHz? (red/green/blue) They're the ones that vary the most from the others.

 

[MayaTlab]

@MayaTlab , I'm just curious, what were the 3 headphones that had the spike at 2kHz? (red/green/blue) They're the ones that vary the most from the others.

Two samples of the Bose 700, and one of the Sennheiser M4 (red trace - which is very interesting because of what happens below 1kHz despite the use of a - flawed ? - feedback mechanism for most of that range, also comparing 5128 with 711 with Rtings measurements is quite interesting for these). For the Bose 700 I was able to check whether these deviations still hold with open ear canal entrance mics, and they seem to do.

 

[Robbo99999]

Two samples of the Bose 700, and one of the Sennheiser M4 (red trace - which is very interesting because of what happens below 1kHz despite the use of a - flawed ? - feedback mechanism for most of that range, also comparing 5128 with 711 with Rtings measurements is quite interesting for these). For the Bose 700 I was able to check whether these deviations still hold with open ear canal entrance mics, and they seem to do.

Looks like those would be two headphones that are worth avoiding then! The Bose 700 looks ok according to Oratory's measurements and looks like an easy EQ, so to see two units of Bose 700 deviating from all of the other Oratory EQ'd headphones like that is definitely a warning flag.

 

[MayaTlab]

The Bose 700 looks ok according to Oratory's measurements and looks like an easy EQ, so to see two units of Bose 700 deviating from all of the other Oratory EQ'd headphones like that is definitely a warning flag.

It likely is a coupling issue for the most part, like quite a few ANC over-ears above the range where the feedback mechanism operates and up to a few kHz. Not quite the type of mics I'd have preferred for this test, but not uninteresting either : https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...250-ohm-bose-qc25-measured.32622/post-1165935
Also (some of the difference comes from the volume dependent EQ - and obviously sample variation, but neither of these can fully explain the variance around 2kHz) :

 

[Robbo99999]

It likely is a coupling issue for the most part, like quite a few ANC over-ears above the range where the feedback mechanism operates and up to a few kHz. Not quite the type of mics I'd have preferred for this test, but not uninteresting either : https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...250-ohm-bose-qc25-measured.32622/post-1165935
Also (some of the difference comes from the volume dependent EQ - and obviously sample variation, but neither of these can fully explain the variance around 2kHz) :

View attachment 270899

ANC's generally have more variance above the range that their feedback mechanism operates, more so than dumb headphones?

 

[MayaTlab]

ANC's generally have more variance above the range that their feedback mechanism operates, more so than dumb headphones?

I'd rather have actual measurements on a cohort of real humans with blocked ear canal entrance mics, compared to other headphones. But quite a few of them are stupidly sensitive to pad compression and / or positional variance indeed (talking about over-ears).

 

[Blorg]

@Uwe @GaryH

Sean Olive on the Harman in-ear target:

"We didn't do any formal experiments, like we did with the over-ears, where they could adjust the bass and treble. So it was, we did experiments where they could adjust the bass and then we did some internal small number of listeners where they could adjust the treble. With the over ear headphone we did 249 people that adjusted the bass and treble, with the in-ear, the number of listeners that adjusted the bass was much smaller, it was an internal panel of trained listeners. It was on the order of maybe 10 or 15 people. And then those same people adjusted the treble. So there was an underlying assumption that the kind of that the over-ear curve would be not too different than the in-ear curve and the big difference we found was the bass, where people wanted to hear more bass."

 

[Robbo99999]

@Uwe @GaryH

Sean Olive on the Harman in-ear target:

"We didn't do any formal experiments, like we did with the over-ears, where they could adjust the bass and treble. So it was, we did experiments where they could adjust the bass and then we did some internal small number of listeners where they could adjust the treble. With the over ear headphone we did 249 people that adjusted the bass and treble, with the in-ear, the number of listeners that adjusted the bass was much smaller, it was an internal panel of trained listeners. It was on the order of maybe 10 or 15 people. And then those same people adjusted the treble. So there was an underlying assumption that the kind of that the over-ear curve would be not too different than the in-ear curve and the big difference we found was the bass, where people wanted to hear more bass."

Are they talking about the 2019 IEM Curve, the one that Amir uses? Or are they talking about the earlier Harman IEM Curve from 2017? I'm thinking they're talking about the 2019 IEM Curve.

 

[Blorg]

Are they talking about the 2019 IEM Curve, the one that Amir uses? Or are they talking about the earlier Harman IEM Curve from 2017? I'm thinking they're talking about the 2019 IEM Curve.

The 10-15 member listening panel produced the 2017 IEM curve. He says later in the video the 2019 curve is a smoothed version of that, but that it was produced internally at Harman. I've seen suggestions, and Crinacle asks in the video, if it was produced by Listen Inc, but Olive says Harman produced it by smoothing the 2017 curve, and "recommended it to Listen". He doesn't mention any further listening testing with regard to the 2019 curve, the initial description of the research is relation to the original 2017 curve, that they started with the OE curve and adapted that testing with a small cohort of 10-15 people.

Olive is quite emphatic in the video that it is a preference curve and that people can and do have different preferences, and he doesn't seem to have anywhere near the conception that the IE curve is "objectively correct" that some posters here seem to. He points out that everyone's ear canal is different and that and the size of the canal [which also varies by insertion depth] will result in different sound and different preferences as to target curve.

He agrees with Crinacle that more testing could be done on this, and says it's something that he'd like to do more research on, but points out that Harman doesn't even make any wired IEMs any more, that their largest market now is TWS.

I think it's pertinent that there has been substantially less research behind the in-ear target compared to the over-ear target. And as it happens, that corresponds directly with the level of acceptance of each target, the over-ear target has far wider acceptance than the in-ear, and that could be down to the OE target having substantially more rigorous research behind it, which was also peer reviewed and published. The IE target, seems much more ad hoc. This isn't to say the IE target is radically wrong, but no-one criticizing it says that, it's just in the relatively small details people disagree. Olive himself doesn't seem to have anywhere near the absolute conviction in it as final objective truth that many people seem to here.

 

[Robbo99999]

The 10-15 member listening panel produced the 2017 IEM curve. He says later in the video the 2019 curve is a smoothed version of that, but that it was produced internally at Harman. I've seen suggestions, and Crinacle asks in the video, if it was produced by Listen Inc, but Olive says Harman produced it by smoothing the 2017 curve, and "recommended it to Listen". He doesn't mention any further listening testing with regard to the 2019 curve, the initial description of the research is relation to the original 2017 curve, that they started with the OE curve and adapted that testing with a small cohort of 10-15 people.

Olive is quite emphatic in the video that it is a preference curve and that people can and do have different preferences, and he doesn't seem to have anywhere near the conception that the IE curve is "objectively correct" that some posters here seem to. He points out that everyone's ear canal is different and that and the size of the canal [which also varies by insertion depth] will result in different sound and different preferences as to target curve.

He agrees with Crinacle that more testing could be done on this, and says it's something that he'd like to do more research on, but points out that Harman doesn't even make any wired IEMs any more, that their largest market now is TWS.

I think it's pertinent that there has been substantially less research behind the in-ear target compared to the over-ear target. And as it happens, that corresponds directly with the level of acceptance of each target, the over-ear target has far wider acceptance than the in-ear, and that could be down to the OE target having substantially more rigorous research behind it, which was also peer reviewed and published. The IE target, seems much more ad hoc. This isn't to say the IE target is radically wrong, but no-one criticizing it says that, it's just in the relatively small details people disagree. Olive himself doesn't seem to have anywhere near the absolute conviction in it as final objective truth that many people seem to here.

Thanks for the clarifications in the first paragraph

 

[MayaTlab]

I think it's pertinent that there has been substantially less research behind the in-ear target compared to the over-ear target.

I'd like to see more data on the subject, but I also think, based on Rtings' comparison between a 5128 and their HMS, Hypethonic's comparison between a 5128 and a GRAS coupler, or their in situ measurement project, or my own, that the 711 coupler that was used misrepresents passive IEMs' FR, in a way that looks a bit like a variation around this :

I'm not quite certain whether that would be because of a deficit in the response below 600-800Hz, or a increase above (and that could vary with the listeners' effective insertion depth as for passive IEMs the SPL rises not exactly but mostly linearly with insertion depth up to a few kHz, and / or ear canal volume), but it would look like a sort of tilted-ish low or high shelf altering the ratio between the response below 600-800Hz and above, with a somewhat sharp change around these frequencies - and possibly could vary a bit depending on the IEM and individual.

And I suspect that the way the 2016 experiment was designed made it problematic to fully correct that misrepresentation with the options available for the shelving filters :

 

[MayaTlab]

Thanks for the link. So the impedances are mostly quite similar (Figure 10), supporting my point.

Nah they aren't. That this has a fairly significant impact on the absolute values has already been quite well documented, whether or not this also has a significant impact on the relative values between IEMs... I'm not certain that we've been able to cut through experimental noise well enough for now to determine the importance of that phenomenon.

 

[Zerviscos]

To summarize, if I'm understanding all this correctly:

- objectively tuned well "superb compliance from bass to mid-range!"

- distortion higher than some others but low enough to be inaudible "Fortunately the amount of energy in music is quite low there so you can rely on 94 dBSPL results which is reasonable."

- extremely easy to drive, easiest of anything thus far tested

- expensive

- only not recommended for subjective reasons because Amir couldn't get a good fit comfortably with the included ear tips, which is subjective and personal.

"While objectively this response was there, as I explained subjectively, it was totally absent for me."

If Amir were a robot with test fixture ears, these would presumably be recommended... at least if he was a high-earning robot.

So here we have something that's actually objectively good, albeit very expensive, and is only not recommended due to Amir's subjective listening and inability to get a good seal and fit with the stock tips.

These fit me fine, seal fine, I get great bass from them, these have among the best bass of any IEM I have. But seal is essential for bass on an IEM, if you don't have a seal forget it. If you don't have a seal with stock tips, you can usually get one by trying different tips. Often people who are into IEMs work out a particular tip brand/model that works for their ears, and will try this. These, I use Moondrop Spring Tips, in a smaller size than I do on some other stuff, for a moderately deep insertion.

I also use this, and seal my ears very well with Final E M and Cp145/100 L tips and they sound completely fine asides from the treble peaks which some EQ fixes, compared to when I used the Z1R with all tips I tried I just couldn't get it to fit. I actually enjoy this than the U12T I bought from Precog himself, primarily because the bass just sounds better for my preference on a lot of tracks, especially EDM tracks. Definitely has the best bass I've heard next to the Z1R(if I push it in for an actual seal) and compared to the U12T, I don't really get fatigued of the treble even at stock.

Tbh, the only real issue with the 64Audio IEMs regardless whether or not you like the stock tuning is the FR variance between units and imbalance channel matching between L & R drivers, which are well documented between various samples. Though the new batch productions which coincides with the new packaging, it was said the quality control has been better. So if you're buying used, I'd say watch out.

These, I use Moondrop Spring Tips, in a smaller size than I do on some other stuff, for a moderately deep insertion.

I'm actually curious on your use of Spring tips, because I used them and stopped because they go past the nozzle. Do you just leave it like that?

 

[markanini]

Is it not really bad advertising that an IEM can't be used with the included accessories, and have a good tuning, for a $2400?

Or just me?

 

[Jimbob54]

Is it not really bad advertising that an IEM can't be used with the included accessories, and have a good tuning, for a $2400?

Or just me?

Which accessories dont work?

 

[Zerviscos]

Is it not really bad advertising that an IEM can't be used with the included accessories, and have a good tuning, for a $2400?

Or just me?

Accessories aside, tuning as we can mostly agree is very preference-based. Even the Harman research we've seen that differing groups still prefer varying degrees of bass and treble levels despite the target curve as the most preferred from most participants. That being said, there's only so much you can play with trying to make your product as "technical" as it can be, and Dr. Sean Olive has stated that tuning correlates to spatial properties, and adjusting the FR is really one of the only sure ways of guaranteeing a part of those technical aspects can be achieved like how a lot of IEMs/headphones would have dipped mids, reducing energy in that range, the M-channel is then affected more than the S-channel is so a slight increase in the perceived width of the stereo image.

So I can understand, atleast to some extent on why 64 Audio would tune it like this, if that is their intention though. We have seen some very questionable tuning from them though like how they did the Fourte, atleast the Trio is more mature in its stock tuning than the Fourte.

For price, I barely buy anything brand new with audio unless it's like below $500. As I know the price depreciates hard in this hobby, I tend to buy used, so I can't really comment on that. I just let the rich fools buy then wait for them to get bored and upgrade to the next big thing and to sell later at basically half the price or even less. In the case of the Trio, it has gone down to $1000 or even less.