After a few days listening to Butastur, I do have some impressions, some positive, some negative, but overall still overwhelmingly positive. Currently, I loaned my unit to a reviewer friend (look out for a video from him soon, he likes it too!).
Brief sound impression:
- Quite an effortless bass presentation, sounding pretty natural with very minor BA bass timbre.
- Forward-sounding mids with excellent details and vocal reproduction.
- Well-extended treble, even more vivid with the treble switch on.
- Overall balanced tuning that is hard to find fault. Reminiscent of Softear RSV in my opinion.
The positives:
- Excellent technicalities beyond the price point, especially in layering and resolution. I have listened to several multi-kilobucks IEMs before and came to a conclusion that after a certain price point, technicalities are generally equally high, only some preferential differences beyond that point. Initially I put the $1k Thieaudio Monarch Mk2 as that “technicalities sweet spot”, but with Butastur, I had to revise my personal benchmark.
- Amazing comfort due to the size and the pressure relief system. I think it’s one of the most comfortable IEM to wear for a long time personally.
- Actually functioning and significant use of the tuning switches. To be perfectly honest, I’m not a fan of complicated tuning switches. A single switch for bass lift like SA6 is something I’d normally tolerate. Butastur’s switches are something that I’d actually use from time to time. I like the 1-0 for gaming and 1-1 config for movies, and for the rest of general use, 0-0.
- Pleasant tuning in all configurations and good coherence. For a 10BA unit, it certainly is very coherent with a smidge of BA timbre if you nitpick.
Some negatives:
- I think to achieve the high level of technicalities, I find that the sound presentation might sound overly forward. In a display analogy, it’s like cranking the saturation and contrast higher to extract as much details as possible. I think given the limitation of the shell size and likely internal construction, it’s a tradeoff I can accept.
- The pressure relief system does make it less isolating, from outside in and inside out. Not really ideal listening in a crowded environment. That said, I might use this more since I usually travel on foot, so it’s safer on the road.
Even with the minor negative points above, I do think that we have a winning formula here with Butastur. I’ve compared it with Thieaudio Monarch Mk2, Softears RSV, Moondrop Variations, 7th Acoustics Supernova, and I even borrowed my friend’s Anole VX… Butastur certainly competes with them. While it hasn’t dethroned the 7A Supernova as my personal favourite (I still prefer the timbre on Supernova, even tho it loses out on technicalities), it came really close.
So, well done @AmericanSpirit_JP ! It’s an excellently executed project and I do hope Butastur will work its way to more people’s collection.
お疲れ様でした！