Flares Pro: the best Bluetooth headphones I’ve heard

Pros: Extraordinarily clear in Bluetooth, excellent resolution and speed, accurate timbre, black background, completely non-fatiguing, tiny and comfortable, cool packaging, super ergonomic tips, great Bluetooth range and battery life Cons: rolled off sub-bass, microphonic cable, USB micro, prone to electrical interference in Bluetooth, ugly poor quality cables List Price: £349 ($399) Product Website: https://www.flareaudio.com/products/flares Rating... Continue Reading →

October 1, 2018 0

RHA CL2 in-ear planar magnetic, with wireless and balanced, coming September

RHA is bringing new tech out! Yay! CL2, baby! I get excited when new tech comes out. I geeked out over graphene when I first heard about it on twitter. I geeked out when I heard about the Unique Melody ME.1, and I thought it was pretty cool when RHA released a ceramic shelled, dynamic... Continue Reading →

August 28, 2018 0

CanJam London 2017: Effect Audio, FiiO, RHA, 64 Audio, 1More, iBasso, Final, Advanced, Kennerton (Part Two)

Sorry it's taken a while for me to get this post up. You can see the first set of impressions here. I had a job interview for a job that may enable more paying the bills and more fun purchases. Wish me luck! At the end of the first day of CanJam London 2017, I... Continue Reading →

July 28, 2017 5

Campfire Audio Dorado: Campfire’s search for audio gold, a triple driver hybrid with added sparkle

Pros - Full bodied bass, great extension at both ends of the spectrum, forward vocal ranges, unusual W shaped tuning, great airiness and treble sparkleCons - W shaped sound can push mid-range instruments a little further back in the sound, long nozzle may not be ideal for everyone List Price - $999 (Campfire Audio) Acknowledgement... Continue Reading →

July 17, 2017 3

RHA CL750: excellent value, assuming you have a decent amp on your portable gear

Pros: Stellar build quality, excellent price, comfortable, fantastic quality cable, excellent clarity, good bass control, balanced signature Cons: Hard to drive, average soundstage List Price: £99 ($129) Acknowledgment The RHA CL750 was provided to me in exchange for running the UK leg of the RHA world-wide tour for the release of the DACAMP L1, CL1,... Continue Reading →

July 5, 2017 18

RHA s500i and ma750: A tale of two sisters, the Thin White Duke and the Fat Bottomed Girl, excellent sound in two affordable flavours (A blast from the past review)

Blast from the past reviews Before we started up Audio Primate, many of us reviewed a ton of products on Head-Fi. Some of these reviews were great lyrically but terrible from a technique perspective, others were in touch with a past time, but tough to update. As reviewers, we have grown. Blast from the past... Continue Reading →

July 2, 2017 3

TheBit Opus #3: stellar sound, Android features still under construction

Pros: Excellent tonality, good soundstage width, very detailed, balanced output with good power, solid build quality, leather case (not included by default everywhere) Cons: Horrible app implementation, navigation niggles, DLNA music app sounds substantially worse than standard music app, tiny hardware buttons, wobbly volume knob Price: $899 (€899) (Haven’t found UK shop with it yet)... Continue Reading →

June 19, 2017 6

RHA CL1: the Richard Dawkins of IEMs: insensitive, brilliant, and not everyone’s cup of tea

Pros: Excellent clarity and treble extension, good quality and quantity of bass Cons: intimate sound-stage; recessed mids; some mids details fade, veil or disappear; underdriven by many DACs and DAPs; need forward mids to sound totally right List Price: £349.95 (on RHA’s website)($449.95 from Moon audio in USA) Acknowledgment The RHA CL1 was provided to... Continue Reading →

June 16, 2017 3

Glassmonkey’s Headroom at Metropolis Studios 2017 Impressions

On March 25 I hopped on a coach from Southampton to London with the Effect Audio Arthur IEMs in my ears and the Aune M1S pumping tunes through my cranium for the two hour coach ride. Upon touching down in Hammersmith and marching my way down to the study I immediately asked where I needed to... Continue Reading →