My journey with Penon
If it’s true, it’s a strange thought - once upon a time my only experience of their products was the Orb and the Fan. The Orb I thought to be just bad tuning, and so far it’s still unredeemed. I cringe to see it recommended as an “analog set” with “beautiful mids”. The mids are not stand-out, the treble is non existence, and the bass is a ridiculously over-bouncy mid-bass focused bass. There is no way it should be recommended in today’s market, most especially at its price.
The Fan was such an unexpected disappointment when I first heard it that I wrote a long post about it on Head-Fi, probably still one of the non-favorable posts in the “Penon official” thread to date. That story did change however… with wide bore tips, and more power, the Fan really is quite a special IEM and I certainly like it. I was only just able to put it up for sale lately, because it was fun to dip into on occasion. But the bass has none of the detail/feel that the Serial’s bass has, and the V-shape is just a tad too steep overall in the tuning. It’s fun at first but I find the bass fatiguing over a while. Excellent stage, timbre, and overall enjoyment. So that was one I actually did a 180° on.
I liked the Globe quite a but, and still do. However I find with that set the bass glide goes a little too far, and like the Fan is not match for the characteristic bass of the Serial. Quite V-shaped again, because the treble is sometimes a bit much if I turn it up to boost the mids. It is a good warm tuning, I had a spectacular listen to “There there” by Radiohead on them quite recently.
I have not tried the Sphere, Volt, or Legend. One is a single BA so is very unlikely to check my boxes for timbre and note weight, and the other two are cost prohibitive. I’m also more and more sure that single or multi DD are the only way for me.
Sorry a more detailed start to that reply than I imagined, but it gives some context to definitely not being a Penon fanboy even if I’ve tried several of their sets.
The Serial is currently my favorite IEM, and if I didn’t mind the slight difference in timbre, and slightly less defined (but still well textured) bass, that spot could easily have gone to the Canon. So in answer to your question, I think the Serial and Canon are fantastic choices, and at the very top of my IEM recommendations.
I’m only slightly interested in the Vortex because I doubt it will cost much less than I paid for my used Serial, but I just can’t see how it could achieve the same or better tuning with 1DD than the Serial is doing with 3. I think the best case would be that it matches the Serial as best they can, with slightly less extension or resolution here or there because it would all have to be squeezed from 1DD. And in that case, I’d just keep my Serial anyhow. If it’s a bright neutral tuning, that’s what many single DDs are tuned to and it’ll have tough competition. If it’s bass-centric, then they are undercutting their own Fan. So I’d imagine it’s a more affordable version of the Serial, going for neutral with bass-boost?
I’m a bit clueless where it will fall in their current line-up.
The Serial has the timbre and coherency I’d want a single DD for, but the extension and overall sound is more than I’d expect from a single DD.
By contrast the Canon had remarkable imaging and a very engaging tuning but lost some of the viscerality and timbre of DD. There have been other sets that had the same “uncanniness” for me - notably the planar Timeless, or full BA T800 - where I love the tuning, but because the sounds are teleported to my brain without the physical air being pushed to do so (slam, etc.) they feel like they lack breath/weight, and I’m constantly distracted from losing myself in the music. Instead I end up impressed with the sounds, or the IEMs themselves… the saying goes “Listening to headphones with music instead of listening to music with headphones”.
This doesn’t mean the Canon’s timbre is bad, far from it, I doubt I can actually word the precise difference, it’s just something I subtly notice in the experience that feels different to the Serial. If all Serials vaporized tomorrow I would go about my life very happily with the Canon, once again this is not a quantum leap in “superiority” between one set or the other. Each has a different feel.
