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Okay. Okay. I'm going to listen to them. I'll listen to them and I'm very excited

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to do so. The Crar Daybreak, if you don't count that weird limited edition

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one, is Chronicles first full production

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IM under his own brand. And if any of

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the marketing that he's done around this is accurate, it's an extremely exciting

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product. He basically says, "Look, it's not the best IM on the market, but at

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this price point, you ain't going to beat it. And if our lab's testing is

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anything to go by, he's right. If I can

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just get the box open. I like the look.

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Stealthy. Right out of the gate, these are already

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making me happy. So, instead of the gigantic nozzles that have been featured

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on some of Critical's previous collab products, these measure just under 6 mm,

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which means that they should comfortably fit inside human ears, which from my

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understanding is the intended target of these, right? They are compared to, you

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know, your AirPods or whatever, still going to be a little bit on the larger

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side, but that's to accommodate the five drivers inside each in-ear monitor.

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Another nice touch, interchangeable cables, though that's not really unique

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at this price point. The two pin standard gives you the benefit of, from

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my experience, a more secure connection, but you lose the benefit of it being

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swivelable. So, make of that what you will. Nice little carrying case. Got

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your bougie silverplated copper. Not that I've ever been convinced that that

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makes any difference whatsoever to performance. It looks cool, though. I

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like the modular connector instead of using an adapter.

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Well, okay. No, no, don't tell me. I'm going

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to figure it out. There we go. We just

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unscrew this piece at the bottom. They've got a little guide pin, and you

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can switch over to a 4.4 mm balance

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connector. Hey, I had the thing happen. >> Yeah. Um the little cosmetic cover piece

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um came off, but Critical says that they're going to get that fixed. And if

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you have this little piece come off, then uh they'll send you a new one. I

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swear half of H High-5 products is just

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making them look and feel cool so that you look and feel cool for owning them.

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But hey, mission accomplished. Let's see

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what we got for accessories here, shall we? This is hilarious. Distinguish the

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left and right for both the IM and cable. Did he actually put a label on

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the IM? Oh my god, he only labels the right.

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Okay, I get minimalistic product design, but

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label your I don't want to guess. Wow.

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Even with the 6 mm nozzle, those mediums are uh I don't know if they're that

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medium. I bet I could jam that in there really

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good if I wanted to. Anyone want to go to emerge?

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Emergency >> like if I had a thing jammed in my ear

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cuz I didn't attach it to an IM to remove it. I think I'm going to go small

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for these. He includes small, medium, and large silicone ear tips as well as

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medium foam ear tips.

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I I prefer silicone, not because they sound better or seal better, but because

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they are just more durable, and I don't feel like buying new memory foam ear

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tips every like 3 weeks. This is a giant

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carrying case. I can't fault the, you know, feel of,

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you know, quality and stuff, but like, does it really need to be that big? I

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can fit so much more stuff in there. You know, Steve Jobs famously took a

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prototype of something and hucked it in an aquarium and then when bubbles came

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out of it, he said, "Make it denser." I actually don't know if that's true, but

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this could be smaller. So, here's my carrying case.

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To be clear, I'm not faulting it for the feel of quality. And if you have larger

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hands and you have, you know, difficulty getting your fingers into places to

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extract things, then sure you're fine. But I I personally would rather that it

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was a little bit more compact. That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm saying. But enough yak yak about the carrying

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case, how they look, how they feel. It's not what you came here for. You came

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here for how they sound. What's that?

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port, which means you can deliver ultra fast charging to multiple laptops,

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phones, or other devices that you might want to keep powered on. Plus, you can

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keep an eye on each port's charging rate, the battery status of the power

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bank, and even some wild stuff like power curves and charging histories.

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Learn more about the Chargeek 300 using our link in the video description. Okay,

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I lied a bit before. It didn't say anything about our sponsor, and we're

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not going to listen to it just yet because I want to talk about the specs.

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Starting with the housing, Daybreak uses what Critical describes as a pseudo

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custom shell, which we had a little bit

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of debate off camera what exactly that means. And I think what we've settled on

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is that it means it is like a custom

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mold for your ear, but it's a generic one. So, it's designed to kind of feel

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and fit like that across a wide range of ears, but you don't actually like send

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in molds of your ear so that they're custom fitted to your exact head. To its

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credit, it fits pretty okay for me. I

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don't know that I would perfectly comfortably like sleep in them, for

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instance. Like, I can feel a couple of pressure points if I really push against

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them. But if I don't do that, considering their weight, they're about

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as comfortable as I can imagine anything not custom fitted to be. Then on the

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inside, things get really interesting. Starting with the five drivers inside

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each inear monitor. It's got a dynamic subwoofer driver, custom spec for deep

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controlled bass, a couple of custom balanced armatururs for the mid-range.

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Then for the tweeters, he's using what he's describing as next generation micro

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planers for exceptional treble extension

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and clarity. And all of that is just sort of gobbledegook because you could

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have an IM that is full of like really really amazing drivers, but if you don't

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put in the work on the tuning, then it's going to sound like crap. But this is

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critical we're talking about. So, he did put in the work on the tuning,

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specifically targeting the IEF preference 2025 curve, which aims to

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balance natural speaker-like tonality with dynamic and engaging low-end

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response. Again, which may not mean that

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much to you, but in a nutshell, the IM that he's comparing these against are

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considered an amazing value at about three times the price. And from what DMS

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has said, he's actually gotten really close.

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They're not the same as those ones that cost three times more, which he had me

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try just for a little bit before I sat down today. It was like sitting at the

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optician's, you know, office and they they flip around all the different

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lenses and then finally they do the last one where they like start with not quite

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right and then they click it into just right and you're like,

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is everyone that hairy? Like they're like they're that clear. These I haven't

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listened to yet, but if they're anything like that, very excited. Oh, right,

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right, right. Well, okay. Well, I guess that's one thing that I could kind of say about them. Isolation, not the best,

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but you're never going to get that with silicone ear tips, so make of that what

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you will. Oh, we haven't talked about the length of the cable, which DMS

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painstakingly measured at 1.1 m. You're welcome. That wasn't in the spec sheet.

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I don't really like looking at the frequency response curve before I actually listen to them, but like, damn,

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he's like right in the range. As long as that bass is actually tight and

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controlled, these are going to sound really fun. Let's start with something

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with no vocals. Always a good sign when

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there's a like a low soft bass note of some sort and you can kind of like feel

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it in your back a little bit cuz that's really hard to achieve with in ears. It

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feels more like a conditioned response, right? Like if you've heard it from a

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nice big speaker setup and subwoofer, then like something that elicits that

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response in your body is getting damn close. But there are no vibrations to

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feel. He advertised controlled bass. >> He delivered controlled bass.

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>> I'd probably EQ the mids up a little bit personally, but not much. The thing to

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remember in all of this is like these are costing less than a pair of AirPods

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Pros, right? which obviously are they're wireless and they have a battery in them

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and there's all the convenience that comes with that. But like it's a

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completely different listening experience. With the AirPods Pros, you

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can listen to your song, right? You can

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put on your favorite artist. With these,

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you can listen to each individual

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instrument in the track if you wanted to. You don't have to.

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That I mean, to a lot of people that might sound like a bad thing, but it's

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not. It's a It's a very good thing. It

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really is remarkable how it elicits that

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sort of like I'm listening to speakers response anytime anything happens on the

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low end. Not fatiguing either, which is

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really nice. Man, if this was your first

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like chi M, you'd be like,

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I paid how much for these? I feel like some phone manufacturer,

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you know, like a mainstream one, your your Samsung, Apple will never do it.

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They're too busy selling wireless earphones, but some phone manufacturer

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is going to figure this out. They're going to put a headphone jack back on their phone. And like Wired's coming

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back, man, you just can't you can't do

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this with wireless. At least not yet. Not at this price.

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You're not still asleep. These really can be had for $169. And from our

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benchmarks, they fall pretty well for the most part within our target range.

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And if what you're looking for is something that combines, I mean, just

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like Critical said, uh, a fairly analytical sound signature, but with fun

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musicality at an incredible price point.

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I don't know. I don't know what to say other than I think you nailed it. Obviously, you're not going to get quite

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the resolution that you might get out of something like the Mega 5 EST, but like

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the price, man. Those are $500 plus dollar IM. Like, even if you can afford

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them, I know a lot of people that just wouldn't spend that kind of money on IM

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because they can get lost. Whereas like these, I still wouldn't want to lose

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them, but if I did, I could lose them twice before I'd spent that much money.

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Subscribe to ShortCircuit. All right, let's thumb it up.

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>> Man, I gotta I got to stop using

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wireless.