While your explanation is quite long, I think I have the same understanding of Timbre. For example - the Timeless is great, one of my favorite IEMs I have, no doubt. But I cannot escape the fact that for vocals, specifically, it adds a nasaly nature to the body of the vocals, after the initial attack and right before the decay or the harmonics of the vocals leading into that decay portion.
It’s very noticeable to me when I listen to, for example, the Beatles. John Lennon notoriously always wanted an additional filter over his voice, especially in the later years of the Fab Fours run and into his solo work. Paul on the other hand, didn’t really add too much to his voice. The body of his voice is quite beautiful - almost a grunt-y nature, especially when he pushes his voice almost past the point of raising it a few db. The timeless does not handle this well, and it’s noticeable. I don’t find it thin, by almost shrill. If I compare the Timeless to Say the Monarch’s, they did some black magic in those things because the BAs that handle the midrange sound as natural as possible. There’s the initial attack, the body, and the ESTs picking up the decay towards the tail end leave this beautiful resonating characteristic that I’ve only ever heard from the Monarch’s.
TLDR; yeah you right, we’re on the same page 
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It’s funnier to talk about food 
Im hungry
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Well, in that case - I just picked up a large pepperoni pizza and buffalo chicken wings for the family
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It’s midnight here and my dinner was trash.
Pepperoni 
I’m sorry, sir 
I’ll send the pizza your way!
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I believe the issues with vocals on Timeless is not only decay from planar but also tuning. The pinna gain rise to fast which gives that slightly nasally sound to a voice. On top of that is a V so the vocals are a bit recessed.
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Staring Into the Abyss: A First Impression of the FAAEAL Iris 2.0
So I got more time with Iris after receiving it yesterday, did some A/Bing, and I have some more first impressions:
What is most impressive about Iris is the technical capabilities. These help me understand the explanation of the difference between buds and IEMs. These have really capable soundstage, that only a couple of my IEMs can even rival, and there are times when I’m actively pulled out of the music because of the detail retrieval and imaging because some little detail is catching my ear! The separation is also very nice. I think where I can see the point about “these beat $200 IEMs” is in some of these categories.
I can see how these beat some $200 IEMs, but I think that’s a product of those IEMs being quite overpriced (ie. KATO is not value as a $180 IEM. It should be priced like it’s current sale price of $130, but I still don’t think it’s GREAT at that price either, from memory. Maybe I’d change that opinion with a fresh listen). Point being, these have crazy technicalities at $8-10, but I’m still not sold on tonality. There are times when the upper-mids hit that “no longer smooth but a little scratchy” level, and don’t have the smoothness of my favorite IEMs. NOTE: I switched from Apple dongle to Q5K, and this got a lot better. Seems like source will matter more with buds in this way. Also fit plays a huge role. After switching them off and back, the clarity and cleanliness of sound is back. Gotta fit these right!!!
I guess where my brain is at is that these are competitive with (actually good) IEMs that cost more. They do trade blows with more expensive sets because they have technicalities it’s hard to find at under $200-300.
I’m still getting used to the fit and tonality differences, but like I said last night at $8-10, if you have any interest in buds at all these should be your first stop. The fact that these exist as a gateway to earbuds that is the price of getting a bubble tea is astounding.
If you can get along with earbuds, I feel like the ideal upgrade path right now is Iris → Rikubuds → TGX buds. We shall see if I can do that.
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Change that to the Vidos.
Even cheaper.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002754845953.html
Should still be on the same level overall. Although Iris is on amazon for you US guys, so Iris is the usual rec for guys in the US.
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I can note that, for the brave and bold that shop on AE. But for ease and convenience, Iris is hard to top lol
@Rikudou_Goku In terms of Rikubuds, what would you say is the upgrade to Iris, if I generally like the sound and especially the stage, but wanted a little bit more treble.
My initial thought was that I’d like something in the Rider line, but what would you go to from Iris?
Berserker and Saber classes for warmth and bass.
Rider (specifically Rider 1 and Grand Rider 2) for warmth/neutral.
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In preparation for the end of the year, and placing Cadenza onto my rankings list, I’ve been doing a full overhaul of my list, which you can find in the top post.
A couple of notes:
- I had been allowing for half point scores, between my main 1-5 scores, but have decided to cut that out. It’s confusing and while there is nuance in the scores, it’s too complicated to try to build that into a grade.
- The one caveat for that is between 4 and 5. 5 scores should rightfully be nearly impossible to get, but I do want to make some kind of distinction for when I hear something that’s the best I have heard (or something with some special sauce in it). A 4.5 score will reflect that.
- When I made these adjustments, my scores got EXTREMELY stingy. For example, in the initial revision sets like Aria and T3 Plus went from a C+ to D. That does not reflect how I actually feel about them, so I made adjustments to the points correlations, removed S- and A- as grades, and added C+ as a grade. Only a few grades actually changed substantially (in particular my SE score for S12 dropped from a B- to a C), but these changes actually reflect my opinion to a strong degree.
- I also adjusted the scale for what I would or would not recommend, and added clarifications about how price does or does not factor in.
Thanks for putting up with this maintenance post. We’ll be back to regularly scheduled programming shortly. Enjoy your days, and take care till next time!
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FAAEAL Iris 2.0 or I Don’t Need This Because I Can Do Bad All By Myself
Music and sound is a funny thing. My journey in the audio hobby started last Prime Day with the Sennheiser HD599SE headphone. I had no idea that a year and a half later I’d be this deep in the rabbit hole, having spent on headphones then IEMs, all in the pursuit of satisfying reproduction of the music I enjoy listening to. The last few months there’s been another rumble I’ve been noticing but doing my best to stay away from. The earbud hype has exploded, mostly thanks to DIY bud jobs by Rikubuds and TGXears specifically. While I’m still head first in searching out IEMs, I am not in the place of going too far down the earbud rabbit hole. But just to be thorough and prepare for the eventuality that I will go down the hole, I bought an earbud during Black Friday. Not wanting to go crazy, I looked up what would be a quality sounding representation of what an earbud can do, for a price I won’t regret if I don’t like it/it doesn’t fit/I end up neglecting it for a while. That bit of research landed me here. And with that, I present to you my gateway drug to the world of earbuds: The FAAEAL Iris 2.0.
Songs to Listen to and Follow Along:
As usual, I’m going to write my thoughts in generalities, but I’ll give you a sample of songs that I listen to, that will relate to the concepts I write about. Feel free to ask for specifics, if you don’t keep up with my thought processes.
Fundamental Elements of Madness - Dax Johnson (For soundstage, piano tonality)
Breaking & Entering - Tonight Alive (For female vocals, rock bass elements, layering and imaging)
Falcon Eye - Off Bloom (For mids, bass performance)
Warm It Up (feat. Young Sinatra) - Logic (Sub and mid-bass, overall clarity)
Savior - Rise Against (For rock bass elements, male vocals, layering and imaging, treble clarity)
Two, Four, Six, Eight, Who Do We Appreciate?
Before we get into the meat and potatoes here, we do have to do some housekeeping about the difference between earbuds and IEMs. When you haven’t done an earbud it’s a weird experience to switch from jamming something into your ear canal to fitting it just in the ear cavity. The cable on these buds is light and doesn’t have pull against it but it still feels like an insecure fit. Being used to headphones or IEMs that are good once they’re in place, it takes time to get used to not fidgeting and checking the fit all the time. That said, there are two things that stick out for me in my experience: I don’t have a problem actually fitting earbuds, and funny enough while my right ear can sometimes be troublesome with IEMs (having to play with tips sizes and feeling like I’ve got a deep seal fit can be issues with my right ear) it took to the earbuds easy enough; I actually found myself less secure with my left ear than the right. The other thing is I don’t feel as though I’d be 100% comfortable walking or moving around with earbuds. IEMs are still the most convenient for my use case of traveling or wearing them on the street. Earbuds fall somewhere between IEMs and headphones for listening in a stationary position.
Other than that caveat, I didn’t find myself having any disposition against earbuds. The Iris are comfortable once in place, and after the first couple of sessions getting used to a new style of something in my ear, they got more comfortable for longer listening sessions. I’ll need to spend more time with them to see if they’ll manage for several hours at a time, but as of this point I have no reason to think I couldn’t go for an earbud higher up in price/quality because of a non-sound issue. Score one for the buds.
The Blossoming of a New Love Starts With One Song
Where do you start in describing your first new experience with something that very well has impressed you? In the case of the Iris, I’ll go past the sound signature and go right to something that left a mark on me: IEMs just don’t have the soundstage of an earbud. This point got driven home on my first listen of Fundamental Elements. If you’ve followed along with me, this song is my reference point for what a set does with soundstage. Most IEMs sit in a flat plane firmly between the ears on this song. Some capable sets will stretch out to the ears or be inside the ears with a little height added on. The very best set I have at soundstage, the TRI Starsea in standard configuration, can stretch out the soundstage in both width and height. The Starsea costs $110-130usd. The Iris basically matched the Starsea in this effect, at $8-10. Just to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind, I grabbed the dinky, free Penon earbud I got with an order (I’m not reviewing that, it’s poo) just to see if all earbuds do this or if I needed to pay attention. I played the song and found that I do, in fact, need to pay attention. And so I did just that.
The bass of the Iris is a tale of two stories. When people say buds can’t do bass, they’re not right but they may not be wrong either. The sub-bass is lacking and these would do no service to dismiss the reputation that buds do bass poorly. When you want the deep rumble during Warm It Up, you will be left wanting because it’s not there. But when I played Falcon Eye, oh man the mid-bass was all there. It was enjoyably surprising to get a present and forward thump where it was supposed to be. You won’t get any subwoofer bump, but the upper bass is quite satisfying.
Then we got into the mids and my, oh my, I started feeling why good buds are a thing. The lower mids on the Iris are clean and fluid. There’s no mud, but there is no thinness either. The timbre is very much where it is supposed to be. Male and female vocals alike sounded solid, if not spectacular.
The dealbreaker on this set showed itself in the upper-mids and the treble. The test these earbuds didn’t quite pass was in listening to Savior. I found myself struggling with things not having the clarity I’d want, once I was A/Bing Iris with my IEMs. I plugged in some EQ into Q5K to try and figure out what the issue was and I found it pretty quickly: There were two problem areas for my ear that took away from the sound for me. The first comes in the 2-4k range, where the harshness in the upper-mids can sit. In steak terms, these aren’t well done, but we’re deeper into medium-well, than medium. Pulling that back a bit for a little smoothness did wonders. Then, as usual, I found my ear craving more of a spike around 7-8k. Putting these two adjustments on the frequency made Iris jump up big time! But for an $8 earbud, it’s pretty high praise to say I just needed to make a couple of tweaks to the frequency to make it a very enjoyable listen.
But Why Aren’t You as Good as the 7Hz Zero?
As a general baseline, this question is either really fun or really frustrating. Lots of times, when I find a set is just bad or it’s priced ridiculously (considering the landscape of 2022), it’s a cute game to point to the Zero and say “this is why you suck”. Then you have a day like today, where the Zero meets its match and it just feels bad! The Zero is a lovely IEM for $20, that hits a benchmark of sound that is just good enough to be the measuring stick for competence against which I can judge another IEM. At $8, I have found the Zero’s equal as it pertains to rating earbuds. The FAAEAL Iris 2.0 has a good bass that’s mid-bass focused, a very good lower mid performance, and passable upper-mids/treble. The dynamics like layering/imaging are at the very least good, though how good I can only tell in time when I have more earbud reference points. But I can already tell it has a fantastic soundstage for which those dynamics get to play in.
Versus TRI x HBB Kai - This is a comparison I’m picking to give a sub-$100 reference to what Iris does well versus an IEM and what it does poorly. I would be remiss if I didn’t start by noting if this was a beauty contest, it would be a first-round knockout. Kai is stunning, Iris is the nerdy girl at the start of She’s All That. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this, but hush! You wait and play along with my analogy. Now, as for the sound, the first obvious point of contention between the two is bass performance. Kai trashes Iris here, but that should not come as a surprise if you’ve been listening here, particularly in sub-bass performance. But what is surprising is that Iris is not THAT far behind Kai in bass thump. The mid-bass does at least compete. The mids are where Iris truly pulls even with Kai; both are fantastic in the lower midrange, with very good clarity and forward, well placed mids. They diverge a bit going into the upper-mids with Kai being smoother and Iris being more energetic. The other point where they wildly diverge is in the soundstage; Here, Iris stomps Kai into the mud. Iris has much more to the stage in all directions, so that even if the actual technicalities are fairly even, Iris having more room to play in makes the technicalities sound even more impressive. It’s pretty scary that an $8 earbud can actually go blow-for-blow with a $70 IEM, but here we are. Because Iris actually is the nerdy, but hot girl at the end of She’s All That!
What Does This All Mean?
What this all means is that, as Thanos would say, Earbuds Are Inevitable. At some point, I’m going to have to dip into this market to see what GOOD earbuds are about, because if $8 can compete with $70+, what can $50, $100, $300 do? Eventually, I’m going to have to see my way down this rabbit hole to find out how deep it goes. For now, I’m going to find time to work this set into my rotation once in a while, because I’m surprised to say the Iris is worth it. But here I am saying just that: As a first voyage for dipping your toes into the sea of earbuds, I’m hard pressed to find a better entry point than the $8 FAAEAL Iris. That’s going to be it for this review. Enjoy your days, and take care till next time!
Rank: B-
Rank With Personal Bias: B+
Rank As a Food: Avocado Roll
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Your rank as food is interesting. In my A/B test of Dioko vs. P1+, I called Dioko Vanilla ice cream (everyone likes it but it’s boring) and called P1+ lavender flavored ice cream (interesting and good but you would want every once in a while and when you are in the mood for it).
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I love your writeups and general idea of this food comparisons, but I don’t agree with that particular one - if I would try avocado hosomaki as my first bite of sushi in life, then it may not encourage me to try anything more. It is a good roll as a short taste-resetter between some more fancy ones in one dining session in my opinion 
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I was deciding between avocado and California roll, and I went with avocado because it is probably the sushi I’d give to someone first, who hasn’t tried it but might like it when they do. Especially if I don’t think they’re ready for “raw fish” without going ewwwwwww (a safe choice for most, who haven’t tried buds and assume they wouldn’t like it). Cali rolls would be more like a mass produced bud that’s good but not having gotten a Rikubuds yet: the basic sushi everyone knows and eats as a baseline. Rikubuds and TGXears buds are the $40 fancy ass speciality rolls you get at a good ass sushi restaurant when you’re already all-in on sushi
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I love ice cream and easily could’ve made it Rank as Ice Cream, but I didn’t want to pigeonhole myself to only one kind of food to make analogies from
Welcome to the rabbit hole.
Here are your next cheapo sets to try:
Particularly the Qian39, that fit/(comfort is god tier. Unfortunately there arent any cheap yuin pk buds out there u can try…
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Great! I have earbuds homework now. Yay…
Thanks for the rec. Just keep the seat warm for when I come your way
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@GooberBM which tips did you settle on for Cadenza. I couldn’t tell from the pic you had posted up on another thread yesterday.
My only annoyance with Cadenza has been finding the right tips for comfort, other that that they are 