Truthear GATE $17 IEM Review

[dweeeeb2]

Fyi, I have found that the apple dongle struggles with these sometimes. for example the song grenade by Bruno Mars, not far in it struggles with the bass and vocals. Sounds fine on desktop amp.
Anyone confirm / deny?

 

[Gitfiddle]

Fyi, I have found that the apple dongle struggles with these sometimes. for example the song grenade by Bruno Mars, not far in it struggles with the bass and vocals. Sounds fine on desktop amp.
Anyone confirm / deny?

I've ben using these with a moondrop dawn pro. Honestly Some recordings; and voices in particular simply seem off to me using these earbuds. I tried to fix it with EQ and a fat boost at the 3khz mark of about 4db did the trick.

Nothing in the measurements seems to indicate this is necessary, but perhaps try that and see if it helps. It could be some form of psychoacoustic phenomenon where I've worn so many open back headphones for the last decade that I'm not used to the sound of IEM's.

Also above all make sure the IEM's have a good seal. The first hour I tried these I thought there was a channel mismatch and I needed to return them. I simply had a bad seal on my right earbud.

Finally, do understand that some songs are just poorly recorded. The more transparent your audio equipment gets the more you will notice poorly recorded audio.

 

[dweeeeb2]

I've ben using these with a moondrop dawn pro. Honestly Some recordings; and voices in particular simply seem off to me using these earbuds. I tried to fix it with EQ and a fat boost at the 3khz mark of about 4db did the trick.

Nothing in the measurements seems to indicate this is necessary, but perhaps try that and see if it helps. It could be some form of psychoacoustic phenomenon where I've worn so many open back headphones for the last decade that I'm not used to the sound of IEM's.

Also above all make sure the IEM's have a good seal. The first hour I tried these I thought there was a channel mismatch and I needed to return them. I simply had a bad seal on my right earbud.

Finally, do understand that some songs are just poorly recorded. The more transparent your audio equipment gets the more you will notice poorly recorded audio.

I’ve compared dongle to desktop amp back to back. In my case its either the dongle or its the iphone / dongle combo. In my desktop configuration I’m streaming through a wiim….dunno. Maybe something is wrong.
EDIT: its not a FR / tone issue its a distortion issue that I initially thought was in the recording. It disappeared with desktop amp

 

[Gitfiddle]

I’ve compared dongle to desktop amp back to back. In my case its either the dongle or its the iphone / dongle combo. In my desktop configuration I’m streaming through a wiim….dunno. Maybe something is wrong.

well that is very strange. I cant really give any insight, but I would love to know what the problem turns out to be.

Sorry I cant be of more help.

 

[markanini]

Fyi, I have found that the apple dongle struggles with these sometimes. for example the song grenade by Bruno Mars, not far in it struggles with the bass and vocals. Sounds fine on desktop amp.
Anyone confirm / deny?

Do you have a link? I can take listen, but I need to match what you are hearing.

 

[dweeeeb2]

Do you have a link?

https://music.amazon.com.au/albums/B0043ZDFEQ?do=play&trackAsin=B0043ZBIOU&ts=1744760326&ref=dm_sh_yNYc4efNDBoltLTGSmpeS8sYG

EDIT: For clarity I notice it more at normal listening levels. It doesn’t seem to deteriorate if I turn it up.

 

[markanini]

https://music.amazon.com.au/albums/B0043ZDFEQ?do=play&trackAsin=B0043ZBIOU&ts=1744760326&ref=dm_sh_yNYc4efNDBoltLTGSmpeS8sYG

EDIT: For clarity I notice it more at normal listening levels. It doesn’t seem to deteriorate if I turn it up.

I could only listen to a preview-not subscribed. I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. But I don't have Apple dongle, just tested with JCally JM12, CX31993 and Samsung dongle.

 

[dweeeeb2]

I could only listen to a preview-not subscribed. I didn't hear anything out of the ordinary. But I don't have Apple dongle, just tested with JCally JM12, CX31993 and Samsung dongle.

thank you

 

[SuicideSquid]

This is definitely not what I hear and the FR graph agrees with me:
View attachment 444504


I guess these 2 dB matter, especially in connection with less bass, compared to other two?

This does not track with Amir's measurements here, which show the Chu II as closely tracking the target and the Zero:2 being somewhat above the target.

And no, the more likely explanation is a seal issue or that it's in your head. +/-2dB has never meant the difference between "perfect" and "unlistenable" no matter where on the spectrum the variance occurs.

 

[Tell]

I'm waiting for mine to arrive still. But now I'm starting to wonder how these compare to the Truthear HEXA, which has a different driver architecture... Anyway, for a dongle with microphone capacity, the FIIO KA15 is a blast with 2x CS43198 + 2x SGM8262 op-amps.

These have low enough distortion so you can probably EQ them to sound just as good

I got this.

Tanchjim Stargate II: DSP CS43131 dongle

Got my Tanchjim Stargate II dongle today. It is a CS43131 based dongle with built in DSP, and has mic support for 38 USD. I have been playing with the PEQ in the Tanchjim app and seems to be working fine. It saves the PEQ to the dongle so it works without the app later. So far so good! This...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Thanks for the tips! I'm leaning towards the Jcally JM20 Pro, It's smaller, a bit cheaper and comes in semi black (and I can black out the silvery cable). A bit worried though that it's not as powerful as my non-pro JM20, but hopefully that won't be a problem!

 

[BossBunos]

These IEM's come with 2 bags of tips. First I thought it was just a backup set. But they are different. There are tips with a wide opening and a small opening to the ear canal. Both sets come in various sizes. @amirm do you remember which set you used for measuring?

 

[Matt_Holland]

I still can’t get over how good these are. A correct tip seal not only ensures the bass response but also the mid/treble response.
The EQ suggested by Amir and others is icing in the cake rather than necessary in my opinion.

 

[Steve H]

Fyi, I have found that the apple dongle struggles with these sometimes. for example the song grenade by Bruno Mars, not far in it struggles with the bass and vocals. Sounds fine on desktop amp.
Anyone confirm / deny?

Got my black ones last night. I had no issues using my lightning dongle.

 

[dweeeeb2]

Got my black ones last night. I had no issues using my lightning dongle.

Hmm, thanks. Not sure whats going on….

 

[daftcombo]

These IEM's come with 2 bags of tips. First I thought it was just a backup set. But they are different. There are tips with a wide opening and a small opening to the ear canal. Both sets come in various sizes. @amirm do you remember which set you used for measuring?

T'is true! Only today I found the 2nd bag with the wide opening tips. Thanks!

 

[amirm]

@amirm do you remember which set you used for measuring?

The silicone ones.

 

[mc.god]

The silicone ones.

Both sets are silicone, they differs in shape and bore size, he was asking if you remember using the narrow bore or wide bore ones.

 

[boom3]

Hi,
I have the TruthEar Crinkle x Zero (Blue) from last year. I bought the Gate ones just today, and I have not done any comparisons between the two , difficult of course.
For my ears the smallest silicone tips give the best seal..
Is anyone using third-party tips, and if so, are there any better than the ones supplied?
thanks

 

[iGmole]

A day of materialistic joy. The Gate arrived.

Well, nothing really surprising here. With some EQ (the 5 PEQ bands of a JA11 dongle are enough) it's perfect. Like any other of these Harmanish-to-begin-with IEMs of late. I bought JA11s for the Gate and the Zero:2 so I can just plug them into anything and they'll sound fine. Whatever slight measurement penalty there is with the humble JA11 the EQ finetuning shifts the scale to much positive.

Also bought a dyno printer to label these headphone specific dongle mcbongles.

My dream is a JM20Max with a PEQ built in. Then mobile audio is absolutely solved (well you can always go out of your way to buy something that requires a gazillion milliwatts at half an ohm but that's just being difficult for the sake of it).

Voted great

 

[Honken]

How many more of these before we can finally admit that IE2019 has too much ear gain?
And not a single listening impression in sight that calls for more ear gain than stock. How strange.

Rinse and repeat for any other review thread of a Harman-compliant IEM.

All circumstantial evidence, sure, but at some point there's just too much of it to reasonably argue against.

(Really sorry for quote-pinging everyone to illustrate my point!)

Old post but, the treble issues I have with the Gate is not around the 2.5kHz area that most associate with the 'shoutiness' of the Harman 2019 target. My gripes sit somewhere way above that area.

Boosting the lower bass a bit and putting in dampening filters in the >5kHz region makes the Gate work for me. These filters together tilt the curve so that the power perceieved at 2.5k - 3.0kHz is lessened of course. But that is more accidental than anything, my main gripe with this set is really sibilance. The too lean bass isn't really a problem, it's only really something that I notice in electronic music.

Something like this EQ makes this set sound a lot more natural to me: