Some thoughts on the 64Ears Tia Fourte or Not Bad for the Price...

I'm on the Tia Fourte and u18 tour and I'll send those off to cellist88 in a day, so you'll get a few SBAF members following up on Torq's nice take a while back. I'll post something on head-fi, but I wanted to give a quick and uncensored take here first.

So, what do we have here?
A four way, 1 dynamic driver with 3 armatures earphone. The armatures are a little fancy in that the little metal tongue which makes the sound is exposed rather than being in a little box (not a technical description, but it'll do) and there is a vent system which 64 Ears calls the APEX system.

It's $3,600.

A little background: 64 Ears, which used to be 1964 Ears, is run by a guy named Vitaliy. He's very nice, I've had a good customer service experience from him and corresponded a little with him years ago. He likes to buy everything on the market, take it apart and learn from other folks' work. That is commendable for us as audiophiles, but not so cool for his colleagues, hence the lawsuit by Jerry Harvey you may remember a few years ago. Anyway, here we are with an interesting flagship iem.

About APEX: This comes from ADEL and it seems as though it is similar: A membrane which equalizes pressure in the ear canal. This should be good for sound as the ear drum does not function well in a vacuum and did not evolve to work with the ear canal clogged by something like an iem. Audiologists, that is to say, people with a doctorate in the care of the human auditory system, do not believe that this system will protect your hearing in any way. Head-fi'ers seem to believe that it totally does. In any case, listen to any iem or headphone or speaker at a safe level for a safe amount of time and you'll get to enjoy your music for years to come.

What I'm listening out of and what I'm listening to:
I'm using an ipod 5.5 gen with an Apex (no relation to the 64 Ears vent) Glacier portable amp. The Glacier is tuned to sound like a good tube amp, and it has plenty of power.

For hybrids, and because I like this music, I often listen to string quartets and renaissance polyphony. This is music with a reasonably wide range, bass to soprano or cello to violin, and everything should be very well balanced. So, if there are issues in timbre or in frequency response between the drivers, it will show. Then, I listened to some rock, Pearl Jam's Vitalogy, some Gorillaz and Bloc Party, before jumping off into heavy metal just to see how the iem handles cymbals, and all the rest.

Tips: This is important. You need foam tips for these earphones. There are some little garbage timbre issues in the treble which come out with the stock silicone tips. I'm not going to overemphasize them, but they are there and it's a $3,600 iem, so did I mention there's some issues in the treble? Yeah. Use of foam tips eliminates the problem, so use them.


Overall sound:

To me, these are a little v-shaped. Mid bass and low mids are forward, so a bass guitar and some hip-hop bass will have a little fullness/thickness to the note. Male vocals step back, but female vocals come a little forward, treble is a bit forward. Extension is good below and above. Clarity is very good, a strength for this iem generally. Headstage is okay medium iem size, I'm not overly comfortable with hyper-precise or grand descriptions of iem soundstage as it tends to be all-in-the-head for me. Plus, there are tricks for iems that are used, sometimes at the cost of natural sound. Here, I think the staging goes laterally well, it's not a big vertical feel for me. Maybe silicon tips would change that a little, but then there would be other issues.


Bass: With a fairly well controlled bass, the tia does as well or better than any hybrid I've heard at not sounding like a precise peaky armature iem with a developmentally delayed dynamic driver bass tacked on. The subbass is present but not emphasized and the midbass to lower mids come forward a bit. The right bass quantity is super subjective, with John Moutlon at Noble referencing a study which found slightly elevated bass is perceived as sounding more natural. This has that level of bass lift for me, although I would like it in the subbass. Not a great amount for airplanes but people who listen in libraries will find it north of neutral. Overall, pretty good and the bass driver does an okay job of keeping up with the armatures, hooray. And you get some real-sounding bass, a plus when comparing to other high-end iems.

Midrange and Treble: I'm putting these together since they are armature'd. Also apparently two of the three armatures are the fancy "open-tongue" armatures. What we have here are some little peaks and dips. There's a little dip somewhere (1.5-2khz) bringing male vocals a step back in the mix. There are some peaks at 3 and 6khz. Overall, the mids have a little recession and the treble is a little forward. Cymbals sound fine with foam tips. With silicon tips, I kept hearing something off for violins and other treble instruments in the timbre. A tinkle-y something is present, can't hear it with foamies. With foam tips, timbre is pretty good and these really become very good iems.

These are one of the best iems I've heard, they are fairly well balanced, fairly coherent, quite clear, timbre with foam tips is good. They compete very well against flagship multi-armature iems. Of course, they are $3,600, so I'm holding them to a high standard. But, honestly, if you want a high-end iem, put these on your list of ones to think about.

 

The U18tzar:

This is a more polarizing sound. One which I would not recommend to someone unless they've had a chance to hear it first. In other words, I don't like it. I mean, these are top-tier, but for the price I want a less polarizing sound.

And this no doubt a high-end iem. The clarity is very good. The bass (over)emphasizes the mid-bass versus the subbass, and there are similar 3khz and 6khz small peaks to the tia fourte but moreso. Definitely a V sound. Foam tips highly recommended. With foamies, things are much better, to the point I can see people really giving these a positive review. There is a slight tinniness to things, amarture-y! Even female vocals sound a little tinny sometimes (Fleetwood Mac's The Chain, for example), but not always. Little peaks, little dips lead this sometimes-there, sometimes-not timbre oddness.

I don't know, maybe it's late on a Sunday and I'm cranky, but I feel a little harsher on these than I would if they were half the price. They'd need foam tips regardless, though, I would have issues with the tuning and timbre with silicone no matter what.


Commentary:
This is making me think that there are a number of exciting things in iem-land (canalistan) happening with metal-coated dynamic driver diaphragms, new armatures, membrane/vent ideas, in-ear electrostats and even odd half earphone orthos. But, it seems like it's all basically at 1.0 level right now, on the market, but needing further revisions before it really works and sounds to the best of the technology. Heck, the tia fourte is what I'm going to call one of the hybrid 2.0 iems, a hybrid that doesn't sound stupidly disjoint. Sony really made some of the first of these with their own armatures and moving coils, just that the tuning is so warm it didn't really register for a lot of audiophiles.

Anyway, let's see what 64Ears does in a few years, or what the ie900 or Vega2, etc. etc. are like. Should be good.

 

thanks for the reviews, curious about the difference between tia and CFA's TAEC as they are both tubeless and damperless. i am not claiming that one "inspired" the other, just they they would appear more alike than different based solely on press releases.

 

Most earphones, most of the time, people just see what Chinese factories are offering and choose what they want.

This sort of thing could be what's on the menu in the last year or so.

 

I think that CFA uses traditional armatures with a spout that outputs sound but then is shaped by a chamber. Ultimate ears and 64 audio use top plate-less drivers, so the armature box doesn't have a ceiling on it or a spout, this should reduce acoustic reflections i believe.

 

If you look at 64Ears info, they are using a mix of armature types. It's likely the same with UE.

Basically, there are always trade-offs. Rather than one armature typing being a straight advance, it's really one set of strengths and weaknesses versus another.

Listening to the Tia fourte and tzar, while they are nice, they don't really have big sonic advantages over other high-end iems. Armatures are armatures, some more skillfully used than others. I'm more impressed by that skillful use than in the armature itself.

 

Sorry I meant that the "True tone" drivers from UE and the TIA drivers from 64 audio are top plate-less designs. I agree, It's all about implementation, so many more factors at play here to craft the final sound, varying bore diameters, diameter of tube, tube length, horn nozzle.

 

Oh Lordy no. Midbass humped V sound, but clear. Like a $2,000 version of a $20 iem.



@La Cenric That sounds about right. The Tia fourte makes sense to me as top-tier iem in a way that the u18's tuning does not.