Bad Guy Good Audio Rankings and stuff (under construction) (Part 1)

Looks intense. I wanna hear more about it :slight_smile:

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ISN H50 in the house

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New bass head contender in the Sub $1k landscape?

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It’s a beaut.

And now for the listen… :ear:

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unrelated BGGAR made me realize i probably didn’t need a DAP… talking about how phones already win and a Bluetooth dac is already taking it…

i think the only way that daps can overtake the Bluetooth and dongles is since phones are removing the SD card so hoarders like me just cant put everything on it

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Source: Macbook, Letshouer DT02 Dac/amp, pure copper cable, balanced.
ISN H50 ($295, 1DD 4BA)

Impressions…

Bass (DD) is fine, but not quite at the level I want it to be. I think I can hear some kind of coherency issue, although small but enough to notice. I crave some more “bounce” with greater dynamic range. It is fine though but not the star! It is slightly elevated but impact could be better.

Mids are easily above average in detail and emotive involvement and not very far off what I remember the Kinda Lava($669) was, which had one of the best mids I ever heard (somewhat dimensional though slightly distant in positioning).
The Kinda Lava is in turn a bit behind the Oriolus Reborn ($880) in mids quality (where things rapidly become very 3D dimensional yet very intimate and soulful).
The H50 does have a notable recession around 2k which can be corrected with EQ to great effect. Added presence for some lushness in the 300-1kHz region but it is a gradual slope. It fairs better with male vocals than female vocals.

Treble is pretty good indeed. Sounds like it uses sonion BA’s or something like it, so it is a softer BA treble yet it has respectable extension provided there is power. Detail is pretty good, it has this refinement about it. One of the best BA trebles I have heard yet actually as it has most of the benefits of BA but almost none of the usual drawbacks.

Stage is quite impressive in width and immersion. Because of the softer presentation of the BA’s, the imaging precision suffers somewhat. The origin of notes are not as exact as they could be. I mean, some of this is surely due to the tuning which is decidedly warm and cozy.

It is a musical, lush, immersive and intimate presentation with a wide stage at the same time!
The more I listen, the more I like it. It needs power to shine.

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just wait until they start removing charging ports too

isn’t the EU trying to force USB-C onto everything so it NEEDS that port?

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Custom art Fibae 7 Ultimate arrived☺️





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It’s incredible comfy and disappear in my ears compared to my “fatter girl”




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only reason they are enforcing USB-C is to reduce E-waste from multiple different cable types if they made it wireless only wouldn’t be an issue

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Wireless charging is pretty cool. I have one on my desk ( I work at home ), and another charging pad in the living room. The only time I connect to the USB-C on my phone is to charge on the go or for music. I even have a pair of TWS ear buds that use wireless charging.

If Apple went to wireless only, they would have to support better codecs, because AAC isn’t getting it done.

iTunes scared me away from iphones. That train wreck of an app that updated itself and had hooks in and around the registry on my PC was a total shitshow. Have not used in a long time but just drag and drop is what pushed me to Android which sucks in it’s own ways but iTunes is one of the worst apps i ever used.

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When Bluetooth and wireless get to the level of wired they would rule, The fact they are not choice of audiophiles proves they have not got there.

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Same here. Bought an early Apple portable player years ago and sufferred through same Itunes nightmare. Went to android and never looked back.

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The fact that a group of people didn’t adopt the technology doesn’t mean it is or isn’t there.
That particular group of people do actually own wireless solutions, and use it sometimes. A vocal minority claims that wireless isn’t good enough just based on numbers, not taking actual experimental tests into account. Another minority swear that cables do a difference while another minority will try to convince you that it can’t.

For example, every audiophile will tell you flac is better than MP3. Nevertheless, few would be actually able to tell the difference between 320kbps MP3 and a wave file in “real listening” conditions.

The fact is : I’m not even sure I would be able to tell the difference myself between BT and wire, especially in “BT listening conditions” (noisy environment, in the gym,…)

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I would agree, if I got my best few pairs of IEMs I likely couldn’t tell the difference between Bluetooth using LDAC and a wire. I might be able to pick out the wireless on some of the aptX encoding variants, but only in a quiet room with the right recording.

During most of my work day, I use YouTube Music on high 256kbps AAC, run on Bluetooth to my BTR5, and it sounds good enough that the source is likely the bigger issue. I have FLAC files on my personal laptop, but rarely access them during the work day.

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