Dita Truth and Answer Edition review

I've had the Dita Answer and Dita Truth Edition for a week on loan and I wanted to share my take on them with you. I listened to both out of my Apex glacier and ipod 5.5gen.


I'll be talking about the two version as one for this brief review, so I'll start with the small differences. The Answer has a light, springy, rubbery cable, while the Truth has a heavier braided cable.

The Truth is a little more sensitive, giving a slightly higher volume for the same notch on the volume pot. That extra volume probably accounts for a lot of the reported differences in sound quality you may read elsewhere. However, when I tried my best to equalize volumes for comparison, the Truth seemed to have just a tiny bit better clarity.

So, feel free to call that nothing, I would probably buy the Truth as I liked the cable better and did most of my listening with it. The Truth also came balanced, which I didn't use (it also had an adapter), but many of you might.

Okay, that's basically the cable discussion. The housings are strongly made and not overly large, so with some tip rolling, you should be good. Make sure you get a really good fit on these. That sounds like obvious advice, but some iems do well with a looser fit. As we'll see, the lower treble boost on these are a big part of the sound, so if that's not balanced by the bass (thanks to an excellent seal), it can sound harsh.

Which brings us to the sound.
Overall, to my ears, these have a variant of a v-shape, with the lower end having a boost at the mid-bass, then a bit less prominence in the lower mids, the vocal range is more present and there's a treble boost.

Thanks to the boosted mid-bass and treble, the Dita sounds reasonably clear for a dynamic driver in the those regions. The soundstage is fine for an iem and, of course, it's a pretty coherent sound, with a minor issue I'll talk about latter. Timbre tends toward very good, at least in the vocal range and bass.

The bass: The balance of the Dita's bass is to the mid-bass and it has a boost that's not overly strong. The Dita's not tuned to be a bass monster but it's not a bass-anemic "flat" sound, either. The bass extension is decent, but I would prefer more sub-bass to midbass, generally. In terms of decay, its tuning works very well with acoustic bass, drums from timpani to tabla, pop beats, too. I think people looking for a very fast, clean bass will be disappointed as this is more a live music type of decay.

The midrange: The lower mids are a mixed bag and one of the Dita's weaknesses. First, they are a bit less prominent, which I usually like. A thick, forward lower mid can sound muddy even in a technically capable earphone. That was a minor issue with the Jupiter, for me, for example.

With the Ditas, however, there is a lack of clarity in this range which leads to issues as I noticed I was turning up the volume to hear this range more clearly and that led to the treble boost causing cymbals to crash more harshly than they did at a more moderate volume. I have to give currawong credit here as he once said the listening volume a reviewer uses definitely changes their perception of a given earphone. The lower mid doesn't match the treble, hence my early comment about coherence.

Once we move higher into the male and female vocal range, things are good, with a natural, realistic timbre for both and good prominence.

The treble: In the treble we have a boost. At moderate volume, this is pretty nice and perks things up a bit to highlight the highs. Things get a harsher at higher volumes, to my ears. Overall, it works well if you're good with this kind of tuning. Poorly mastered metal tends to get cymbal splashy-crashy at higher volumes. The treble extension is excellent, so the common iem problem of a peak followed by a cliff, such as in the shure se846 and hifiman re-1000 is avoided.

Listening to a lot of classical, both orchestral and smaller ensembles, the Dita is truly excellent. It does very well with acoustic music generally. Pop and rap are very good and well mastered rock and metal are good, too. Poorly mastered metal is enjoyable, but this isn't the best iem for rocking out to it.


The takeaway is that the Dita is a higher-end dynamic driver iem that shines with some genres and does well with others. It's well made and if armature iems don't sound right to you, then the Dita should be a strong contender. Muppetface liked hers, that's a point in its favor, too. On the other hand, there will be some to whom Jack Nicholas will say "The Truth? You can't handle the Truth!" The Dita people owe him a pair of these.

 

Thanks for the review! I think my previous negative impression of Dita Truth might be the result of a bad seal.

Any thoughts of Dita vs IE800? It's disappointing to me that every other higher end dynamic IEM I've heard all f**k up in the higher vocal-lower treble region.

 

This one reminded me of the Zero Audio Tenore. Agree on most points. Midbass is plentiful, but extension and delineation was rather poor. Rather poor clarity all around even though moving coils are usually better there. Which isn't to say that you can't tell that this is a moving coil; the dynamic signature is obvious. I didn't have any brightness issues with these myself. But overall not engaging or compelling to listen to. Would almost describe these as dry and unresolving. Jupiter was so far ahead of it on those last two points that it becomes irrelevant to me.

 

Fit is just one of those never-ending things.
Well, I think the ie800 has its treble situated differently with the peak coming slightly higher and sounding thinner, but less fatiguingly, at least for me. The ie800 does have a dip in the upper mids somewhere, which isn't an issue for me, but is audible versus other iems. The bass is more to the sub-bass, which I think is much better and the ie800 has better clarity, competing for me with multi-BA designs, but at the cost of a thin sound.

Yup, with you on that, the dita loses in clarity to the jupiter, ie800, k10, etc. although I found the clarity just fine in vocal and treble ranges. You can really hear the lack of clarity in some places, though, and I think that'll really stand out for some folks.
I believe I read that the Dita people were trying to mimic some sort of speaker set up and this would be duller version of that, I guess. They need a better driver, maybe their new Dream (shouldn't it be called The Lie or something?), which is supposed to have a different driver, will be better.

Looking forward to hearing the Andros after this.
If the t8ie didn't keep getting described as having less clarity than the ie800, it would be on my buy list--well, that and the fact that it always breaks. Always.

 

I wrote the following up, but for most things I agree with what @Kunlun and @OJneg said, too.



Fit & Build

Both are nice and heavy, but not so heavy as to fall out of my ears. The design looks better in real life than online, especially the Truth edition - black is better.

The Answer cable hangs over the ear, but slips off occasionally, similar to the cable on the Flare R2A. It's rubbery, and microphonic, even with an over the ear fit, because it doesn't contact the top of the ear enough. The Truth cable is woven and nicer feeling, not rubbery like the Answer cable, but it still suffers from the same problems as the Answer cable. They both also have a strong memory to them, so they don't hang straight down, they keep their shape from when they were coiled. Overall the cable situation on both is very disappointing, especially considering the fact that the Answer is billed as having a really nice cable. What's the point if it constantly gets in your way?

As far as in-ear fit, they're a little big, and for me, it was a little tricky trying to balance the way it sat inside my ear with how deep it was inserted. I found a relatively shallow fit with a good seal from Comply tips to be the best. I did not get good results with silicone, comfort or sound-wise. The isolation was worse with silicone, too, as one would expect. With foam, they isolate well, about what I'd expect for a standard universal (i.e. not an Ety, and not an IEM with a big port).

Sound

They definitely have a dynamic driver sound, not the hyper-detailed BA sound.

Treble extension is acceptable but not amazing, cymbals sound nice (a lot of IEMs get this wrong).

I didn't enjoy the mids on these. They're not super offensive or anything, but considering the price point and what they're claiming as far as sound quality, it falls short. There's a dip in the lower midrange which leaves me wanting to turn them up for guitars and male vocal-led tracks (a lot of what I listen to), which causes problems, as I'll go into further below. The midrange is also lacking the detail and resolution I'd prefer to see from an IEM at this price point.

The high end has a weird boost before it starts to roll off. Although it rolls off smoothly, this boost wound up seriously irritating me and had me constantly fighting the volume knob for where I wanted to be. I would want to turn it up, and then couldn't, because vocals would get really sibilant, as would electronic instruments. I guess if you only ever listen at like 60-65 dB they're fine, or if you just don't mind the sibilance, it could be fine - I'm a bit treble sensitive, so it bothered me a lot. The sibilance was more pronounced with silicone tips than foam tips, but was still very much an issue with foam tips. I'd estimate the listening level required to start hitting sibilance as 73-75 dB.

The bass is nice for following along with guitar basslines and bass content in songs. It's a little slow, definitely not hyper-fast BA bass, but also not the super deep subbass-heavy bass that I know dynamic driver IEMs are capable of. I'd prefer more subbass and less midbass. Textures come out nice, though. The midbass didn't encroach into the mids, and when I say midbass boost, it isn't anything like, say, the SE215, where it just dominates the sound signature. It's relatively balanced overall, and I think most of the time bass stays in its place, except for a few bass-heavy tracks where the midbass started to get a bit bloomy. Overall, these aren't bass anemic or heavy bass IEMs.

The imaging was pretty nice. The stage is laid back inside the head a bit, from where I'd consider the center to be. It approaches the front more on the sides. It's kind of U shaped, if you had the U turned where the sides were facing away from you. It has a little bit of height, too, but seems to only reach as wide as the inside of my ears.

Overall, I don't find them very enjoyable to listen to. Since I can't comfortably turn them up to the volume I want, and the lower midrange is lacking, it made it tough to get really engaged in any music I played. Things were a little better with female lead vocal tracks than male, but the problem still affected many instruments. For all they claim about being the answer, etc., I don't think they are. They're missing too much in resolution and tonal balance to be able to claim that.

As a last note, while this has been mostly negative things, they aren't really bad IEMs, they just aren't to my tastes. I'm not sure who I'd recommend these for, but I know a lot of people do enjoy them.

 

if i'm looking for a "closed" version of the ex1000, would the ditas be for me? i tried the lyra 2 and find them too laid back, vega too much upper bass. The A&K / beyerdynamic and these appear to be the only choices for universals. Any ideas or suggestions? thanks guys!

 

These aren't the ditas you're looking for.

I'd look at the Rhapsodio galaxy, but wait for the v3, which is not out and is a secret (please, friends and randos, keep it quiet, thanks).

Some takes on the galaxy v2
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/rhapsodio-galaxy-v2-thread-and-review.840076/

 

hk members, dma mong kok is doing a clearance sale for Dita Answer atm, $1499 hkd or $1400 hkd cash n carry. full warranty. local rumor sez it's in preparation for a detachable kable version. for reference, it lists for 5000 hkd and is usually selling for 2500 during promotions...

most of the Truth cabled variants are off the market atm.