Possibly, I don’t follow their marketing that much. I learned about CA at an audio show when I was at the Jerry Harvey Audio booth and was kind of unimpressed by all their IEMs and another guy who owns the JH16v2 told me to go check out CA and the Andromeda. That’s when I fell in love with the sound of the Andromeda and after trying so many headphones and earphones at the audio show, one of the few standouts was still the Andromeda.
Hey, if it sounds great, that’s awesome. The question is, is their asking price worthy of the product? For some, maybe. For others, no way. I was drinking the CA cool aid for a while and was about to jump in the pool. Thank god I saw these pictures. Now I’m like… WTF??? If I’m going to drop down the cash I planning to for the Andromeda, I expect it to be worth the asking price. I am not willing to spend $1,200.00 on what’s inside that shell. My FH7 suits me just fine with a Beryllium DD to boot, at less than half the cost of the Andromeda. I prefer the FH3 to the FH7 and that’s just 130 bucks WITH A Beryllium DD!!!
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just to give some blabla from my side, it have BLON BL-03, TIN P1, Thieaudio Legacy3 and the Starfields. I listen to them on a Chord Mojo directly or feeding that into a Little Bear B4-X. Music comes from Tidal Hifi on my iphone. One can say i’m a very happy boi. (but if anybody has recommendations, don’t hesitate 
)
LZ A6 is very different from what you have.
If that works well for you, that’s totally fine with me. I am not going to pretend that I really know how much goes into making these IEMs and why they are priced a certain way, but this is from what I know and correct me if I am wrong. But there are definitely other costs outside of how cheap or expensive the parts are inside of them like R&D, manufacturing, qc, employees and the country they are made in. In general, yeah products coming out of China will be cheaper than if they were in the US due to more readily available parts, cheaper labor, etc.
In general though with audio, cheaper IEMs can get the majority of the sound quality of a higher end IEM, referring to the law of diminishing return. It all depends on what you value as a consumer and for me personally, I judge the value of an audio product based on their sound/tuning and the sound/tuning in relation to that price. The Andromeda for me was able to produce something special sonically even after listening to many audio products way above and below its price point. It’s one of the few audio products where if I show someone who isn’t an audiophile, they will most likely have a positive wow reaction out of a piece of audio gear. I admittedly haven’t tried the upcoming Chifi IEMs as they were not as big as they are now when I was on this journey. I probably still won’t for a while due to QC still being so up in the air with the exception of FiiO which for my understanding is pretty consistent with their QC and my friend owns the FA7 which I thought sounded good for its price.
Also I think the Andromeda does use Knowles drivers from what I remember, which are generally highly regarding for BA drivers. I am not for or against CA’s business practices since I don’t know them well enough to comment on it. All I know is their high end stuff sounds really good and haven’t found much below its price bracket that satisfies my tastes for audio and I have definitely tried. It wasn’t until recently where I started finding audio products that I find as an improvement/complement of the Andromeda like the Sony IER-Z1R. Went through this journey like a lot of other people for maybe 7 years now. I am not trying to sound like a CA fanboy or anything, I just have tried a lot of audio gear and the Andromeda and Vega stood out sonically among the many I have tried.
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A lot of good points here. But I think you need to give Chi-fi a chance, for a lot of people (me included) chi-fi is the entry for us into this hobby. And without costing us a liver or 2. Chi-fi has progressed a ton, just from the 2 years I have been into this hobby (2 years of buying more than 1 iem lol, have of course used iems for over half my life but was ok with just having 1 functional set.).
I recently was able to hear the Andromeda. It’s been on my most wanted list for a long time (per all the hype surrounding it). In addition, I always thought with that high of a price tag, you’ve gotta be getting something special. A price tag like the Andromeda’s demands it. I came in contact with someone thinking about selling theirs. After demoing it, all the excitement disappeared and I decided not to buy it.
I enjoy many of the IEMs I already own more than what I heard from the Andromeda, and I even brought my sources and Fiio Q5s to listen to them on.
With cash in-hand, I was so looking forward to that wow moment and was disappointed when it just didn’t happen for me.
Let’s keep things in perspective here: All of this stuff is a luxury for a small niche of people. For most people in the world, the most they’d ever be willing to spend on a wired IEM is like $15. AirPods are a premium status symbol, and headphones literally don’t get any better than Beats or the Sony WH1000 series. Only crazy people would spend three figures on a wired set of things you stick in your ear for music. You can’t even talk on the phone with them!
The value of these IEMs or whatever audio equipment isn’t in how much it cost to make, it’s in how much value you get out of the sound they can produce. There’s plenty of room for subjectivity there, because we all like and respond to different things in different ways, but there’s also a brutal competitiveness to these items in this audio enthusiast niche. There are meetups where everything can be demoed and compared openly, so there really isn’t any room for conspiracy here.
While all of the value here is subjective for these IEMs, if enough people subjectively value a set of IEMs at $1,000 and will pay that, and that company can charge that and make a profit, then those IEMs are worth $1,000. It really is that simple.
There certainly has been a lot of value in the Chi-fi explosion and Drop.com making efforts to lower the cost of entry for audio enthusiasts, because there’s a good case to be made that too many audio companies drove prices for these luxuries too high to be attainable for people who wanted to be potential customers.
However, higher-priced items are priced the way they are because they are able to justify their price to their customers. If a product has been sold consistently at a high price for some time, it’s because the product is worth the price.
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So for the stuff I own, if I peeled them open, they’d probably look quite similar to shittily tuned chifi iems. You end up paying for engineering time, tuning time, technology/research, exclusivitiy, looks, etc…
I prioritize tuning over the other stuff tbqh, but it does factor into the price you pay. If you don’t want to pay it, don’t. Having heard low end IEMs that probably look similar internally to the high tier stuff I’ve gotten my hands on, I believe the high end stuff I have is worth the price. That’s just me though. Tuning is worth paying for.
And to answer the question about andromedas…
- They are perfectly competent iems at their price
- They are very well tuned and lack any real flaws
- They are competent all-rounders
However, they don’t have anything really special in their tuning or technology to make them stand out over other similarly priced IEMs to my knowledge. However, I do like them a lot and would never mind listening to them. Would I rather listen to other things? Yea. Would I ever complain about the Andros? No.
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what does a BA driver sound like?
which one lol.
BAs can be tuned well and shittily. Well tuned BA doesnt sound like BA, shittily tuned BA has a particular sound lol.
Tbqh, you’d need more experience listening to different all BA iems (and I still do too) to really understand what the sound is. Me telling you what shittily tuned BA sounds like to me isn’t gonna answer your question.
i dunno ANY BA driver… i just dunno because my next IEM might have them and im trying to figure out what to buy… guides are hard and though people can just default to tin T2 or starfield… 1 is a lot more clinical and detail based and kinda flat lacking punch while the starfield are also lacking in power but focused on a much calmer sound that is warmer and might be too relaxed (like warmth, need slam, not like fire, maybe i just like loud and shouty)
BA stands for Balanced Armature. There are a bunch of driver types and different materials that make up those drivers that change the sound and characteristics of the driver. They all have advantages and disadvantages.
Hybrid IEMs have different types of drivers contained in them usually controlling different frequency spectrums to improve performance and detail.
There are BA, DD, Electrostatic, Piezo and Bone Conducting drivers.
What IEM are you thinking about purchasing?
every implementation is different by design
Find something that fits your signature preferences. Don’t care about driver type right now.
yep, if you can’t make a decision and don’t know your preferences then they tend to be
starfield is meh imo. Great technicalities, subpar everything else. T2 I haven’t heard.
Starfield is not calm and relaxed imo. Harsh and sibilant. Overly clear / resolving.
If I were you, final iems might be my next looksy.
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i heard that they were more like the meze 99… almost rolled off and more of a moderate bass
MAYBE, but attached cable means my cat will chew on them and I will have to buy them again… i have had that happen at least 5 times
No lol. That’s so fucking wrong I can’t even really give you details.
I own the B3s and they are fucking phenomenal imo
i mean i did get that opinion from NTR so take it for what you will…
i just like hearing other opinions
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Hey Pr3ssAltF4! You REALLY should watch this video…
I’m afraid you had one of the “technical” Starfields and not one of the ones that were the total opposite. There were BIG quality control issues and Moondrop sent out Starfields that were drastically different from one another.
This is the reason we really can not suggest the Starfield because no one knows how theirs will sound once they get it. Just know, not all of them sound the same. For instance… Mine is not sibilant at all. It’s technicalities are not great.
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tbh this is exactly what scared me about chifi when i first heard about it in the verge article…
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