This is a review, listening tests, EQ and detailed measurements of the Tanchjim One In-ear Monitor. It was sent to me by the company and costs US $27.
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Unlike many of its competitors, the ONE doesn't attempt to look like fake jewelry and instead, conveys a modern and stylistic design. The diminutive structure likely fits better in many people's ears. The supplied box and tips also look much more proper than recent $20 IEMs I have tested. I like it!
Let's put it on our GRAS 45-CA professional measurement fixture and see how it does. If you are new to these tests, please watch my
video to understand headphone measurements.
Tanchjim One IEM Measurements
Let's start with our usual frequency response for the ONE:
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We see very good to excellent compliance with our target. I probably should have adjusted the level at a higher frequency to get even broader (visual) match. Once there, the only issue is some boost in 150 to 350 Hz and some shortfall in 6 to 9 kHz. Both minor as you see in our deviation graph:
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It may take some effort to match standard parametric filter shapes to those variations.
Distortion is very low, just shy of the best we have seen:
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There is that one peak that stands out although its frequency is high enough to be of less concern:
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Group delay is unventful:
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Impedance is very low and flat:
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Combined with slightly lower than average sensitivity it means just about any source can drive it quite loud:
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Listening on my RME ADI-2 Pro, I have the volume around -40 dB for rather loud level.
Tanchjim One IEM Listening Tests and Equalization
Out of box performance was very good although I thought it had a bit too much upper bass. I dialed that down but quickly realized preference could go either way. I then added the sub-bass boost (which was without a doubt an improvement) and a couple of treble ones, optimized by ear:
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The sound now became "hyper hi-fi" giving me goosebumps in the way it extracted enjoyment from my reference tracks. Performing blind and sighted EQ/vs non-EQ told me that we are talking about differences in taste. Explaining the difference, my EQ brought out this delightful sub-bass which I thought was better than stock performance of other IEMs while opening the sound a bit due to reduction of upper bass. The extra highs added beautiful spatial qualities (for an IEM) but some could object to the added (slight) brightness. Net, net, I can't tell you whether you need this EQ or not other than the sub-bass boost.
Conclusions
We have had very good luck in finding highly performant IEMs for so little money. Each provides a slightly different take on tonality, providing something for everyone to choose from. The Tanchjim One follows in the same theme, this time bringing a different form factor. For people like me who don't want colorful chunks in my ears in front of others, I much prefer this look. On the performance front, the out of box tonality is just a hair different than what I like. I would have no problem using it stock in situations where I don't have EQ capability and still enjoy it very much. With just a bit of EQ, performance becomes state of the art, once again beating many speaker and headphone systems.
Let me state once again that neither the measurements or my subjective listening tests are prescriptive enough at this level of detail to predict that you need something other than the stock tuning.
I am happy to recommend the Tanchjim One IEM. Get one and compare it to other choices you have. You may like it better but if not, gift it to someone else and make them happy!
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