[REVIEW] Sunrise Xcape Impressive Edition

First, I’ll like to thank Sunrise for the sample. Sunrise has had its up and down this year so far but they are not slowing down. Knowing that the China-market-oriented Xcape v2 missed its mark on the Western front, Sunrise is more than ready to replace it with something more worthy of being called the successor of the well-received original Xcape. After all, this new IEM is called the Xcape "Impressive Edition".

[Impression] FiiO E11

Many thanks to FiiO on the E11 sample. This is the pre-release unit so the final package might be a little different.

[REVIEW] Monster Turbine Pro Copper Edition

Disclaimer: This review is part of the Monster Turbine Challenge Review program on Head-fi.org where selected Turbine models are provided to applicants free of charge in exchange for honest reviews.

I have been keeping my eyes (and ears) on the IEM market for the last 5~6 years now. If we were to go back to 2008 and before, the upper end of the IEM market was mostly dominated by balanced armature (BA) based canalphone (‘IEM’ for short) while the lower end was all dynamic (moving coil) based. That had been the trend going back almost as far as the birth of IEM as a new type of earphone. But since last few years, there has been an influx of higher and higher end dynamic IEM to the market, challenging the long held belief that BA based IEM must be inherently better than dynamic based IEM. This new trend couldn’t have been more apparent in the last one year or so.

When Monster first came to Head-fi.org with its newly designed original Turbine back in late 2008, questions rose regarding the seriousness of the company’s intention to enter the IEM market. There had been many attends from many non-headphone related big brands trying to penetrate the IEM market and in most case, they just failed to follow up with steam after one or two models’ release. However, the original Turbine was (and still is) received fairly well in the community and Monster came back strong a year later with the late 2009 announcement of Turbine Pro (which later known as the Gold ‘audiophile’ edition), and followed a few months later with the CES2010 announcement of the additional Copper ‘Professional’ edition – which is what I will be reviewing here.

[REVIEW] Future Sonics Atrio M5 with MG7 transducer

Almost 3 years ago I picked up my long dreamed pair of Atrio M5 after the reversion 2 reached the Asian shore. It was the tale about the legendary subwoofer-in-the-ear that attracted me the most, and it certainly wasn’t disappointing at the bass performance. But M5 rev2 wasn’t really turn out to be the greatest dynamic transducer based IEM as I once thought it was. In fact, M5 rev2 didn’t sound particularly impressive beside the hard hitting bass. Still, it is quite a smooth (if not darkish) and relaxing IEM to listen to and serves a good reference point of what a basshead IEM should measure to. Naturally I am slightly skeptical when I heard that there will be a new Atrio M5 with a new MG7 driver. Future Sonics, as low profile as they usually are, didn't even do any promotion or had a big press release on some convention. In fact, my inquiry to the customer service about the difference between the old and new Atrio M5 is simply: the headroom is improved so it is a little more detail – doesn’t seem like much, right? Well, that’s the assumption I had till I eventually picked one up myself, and how wrong that assumption is! The new MG7 based Atrio M5 is a totally new beast of its own!