FiiO FT3. The most overlooked headphone?

[Soria Moria]

A few days ago I came across the headphone FiiO FT3. I had never heard about it and apparently it released only a few months. I was shocked when I found a measurement of it and saw that it actually measures pretty great. How and why have I not seen more discussion of this headphone here?!
Yes it’s a tiny bit bloated (or maybe you’d call it warmth) and a slight treble boost in the very high frequencies but aside from that this is a very tight Harman hugger with great channel matching and for $299 it seems like a fantastic headphone to own!
Thoughts?

 

[_thelaughingman]

Well they're a good attempt at very first headphones by Fiio but there's just nothing special about them. I saw a review somewhere that said that the frequency response differs between the two types of pads that come with the headphones. They're not bad for $299 but at the mid tier level there's so many better headphones that I'll beat it's FR.

 

[Soria Moria]

They're not bad for $299 but at the mid tier level there's so many better headphones that I'll beat it's FR.

Really? Which ones? I feel like the FiiO one is great regardless of price compared to every FR graph I have ever seen.

 

[_thelaughingman]

I feel like the Sennheiser 560s are their direct competitor in my opinion, aside from any planars from Hifiman.

 

[Skj]

I feel like the Sennheiser 560s are their direct competitor in my opinion, aside from any planars from Hifiman.

560s nowhere near ft3 for bass extension. Ft3 has better build, better price and better overall package. Ft3 is such a lovely sounding headphones that it has everything going well. Very balance, clean, fast, deep extended fr, higher impedance to go with high output sources.

 

[roladyzator]

Oratory's measurements came in:

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Wow, it's nice to have some good looking headphones that don't need EQ for good bass at around the HD 600 price range. This and recently reviewed Aune AR5000 seems like good competition for the ever popular Sundara.

 

[Scott_Williams]

Oratory's measurements came in:

Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Wow, it's nice to have some good looking headphones that don't need EQ for good bass at around the HD 600 price range. This and recently reviewed Aune AR5000 seems like good competition for the ever popular Sundara.

Good bass really? Talk about it in detail?

 

[IAtaman]

It’s not very new actually. Solderdude reviewed it back in May.

FT3

back to FiiO back to measurements home Published: May-26-2023 NO SMOOTHING is applied to the shown plots. Most measurement sites have some smoothing applied which ‘irons flat’ sharp peaks and ‘wigg…

diyaudioheaven.wordpress.com

 

[roladyzator]

Good bass really? Talk about it in detail?

I haven't heard them, but I liked what I have seen in the FR.
I like the fact that the bass is elevated, which doesn't happen too often in the popular open backs, like HD 600 / 650, AKG K702 or the Beyers.
There are "warmer" models like K712 or DT990, but they have more of a mid / upper bass boost, and some other issues.

This is probably at least decent when plugged to any kind of device that doesn't have EQ capabilities, which is a big plus in my book.

 

[FTB]

Just discovered these headphones some days ago, the Fiio FT3 (350 ohms version) are surely interesting headphones with great compliance with the target !

Here measurements with a good set-up : https://www.techpowerup.com/review/fiio-ft3-open-back-dynamic-driver-headphones/4.html

Measurements from Oratory with suede pads and pleather, here : https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index/list_of_presets/

If you are used to Oratory measurements, you surely know there is not a lot of headphones which have good compliance with the harman target. There is the AKG K371 (specially made to match it) and several Dan Clark models but at 2k $ or so.
Some open headphones have good match in mids and treble but lack bass.
The FT3 have great bass response for an open design.

Anyone listening to the FT3 here ?