today is truly a great day because when I woke up I didn't have this anime girl
and now I do of course that's just part
of the fun inside this beautifully decorated box is the dusk IMS a
collaboration between moondrop and chicle of chronical Fame chronicle.com
is the brainchild of Corin AO and it's a website that features a database with
hundreds of frequency response graphs for both headphones and IMS and in
recent years he has started working with audio equipment manufacturers to produce
either devices that are tuned by him or in this case based on a deeper
collaboration this one's from moondrop and it uses the same technology as their
blessing 3 IMS but with some pretty
significant changes let's take a closer
look at what's included warranty
paper postcard paper oh my God yep I
just I I I put this away I can't get
away from her got a carrying case it seems like it might even be made of real
leather and then opening this up
ooh ah the controversial DSP cable we'll
talk a little bit more about this later but in a nutshell it plugs into your phone or other device via USBC uses a
standard two pin interface for the IMs themselves and has a built-in mic with
volume control also included in the case a standard cable with no microphone and
no DSP functionality really and an airline
adapter nice also included is a pack of
three sets of silicone ear tip I've seen this criticized as a pretty basic
package but it should be good enough for me I think I'm going to try the small ones to start and see how we go from
there now that we're done with accessories let's take a look at these
bad boys whichever way you like oh my
God they are flipping huge
I guess it makes sense though given each of these has a total of six drivers in
it uh let's start with the Dual Dynamic drivers right here so these are the
technology from the blessing three that give these things outstanding
performance in the base and subbase range though my hope is that they're not
going to be tuned for too much base cuz personally I prefer a more balanced
frequency response we've got a pair of balanced armatur drivers for the mids
and then we've got another pair and this is the big innovation compared to the
blessing 3es of tiny planer magnetic
drivers to handle the high-end and you can see they're using the same 3D
printed Construction in order to achieve an incredibly complex shape separating
the outputs of these drivers you can see there's three separate holes that make
their way into your ear holes let's start with the basic 3 and2 mm analog
cable this has not received rave reviews and headphones.com Who provided the
testing for this video you guys can check them out at the link down below
also wasn't super impressed by the frequency response but I want to hear
them worst case scenario before I hear them best case scenario oh before I plug
it in though I do kind of like this material apparently this is a high
temperature high pressure carbon fiber of some sort very durable so like if
someone were to throw something directly at your eardrum maybe it could act as a
shield I I think it's more about the look oh yeah this cable's not very long
honestly I don't mind that though I'm not the kind of person who typically
puts my music player kind of beside me on the desk and needs to have it far
away I tend to want it within reach so I would just put it down the shirt and
then into my pocket and it's kind of the perfect length for that but maybe if
you're taller it would be a problem for
you wow those are big I feel like a
man pretty solid sound isolation I'll say that much now apparently I'm going
to be using a Walkman for my testing today but isn't this thing like $1,000
or something yeah hey I think it's working I can hear our sponsor moo if
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podcast starter kit at the link down below wow Taylor Swift is an entire
category of music now these are supposed to have incredible base and subbase
performance God that's tight okay so look I don't design in
your headphones for a living but if they're telling me that dual 10 mm
drivers is how they're getting bass response like that
cool outside of that though they don't really blow me away I can't fault the
accuracy of the mids Andis but as someone who grew up with the Sennheiser
Veil I find them a little bit fatiguing and I'm also getting a fair bit of that
that IEM effect right where I'm kind of listening inside my head the good news
though is my understanding from looking at headphones.com evaluation is that the
DSP cable at least in certain configurations is supposed to fix every
problem that I have with them so why don't we switch over to that now I'm
honestly not up on all of the audio file lingo but I'll just say that for
something that has such rich just
gorgeous bass response the rest is a little disappointing while I get this
set up and oh deal with this popup on my
screen here it seems like as good a time as any to talk about what the DSP cable
does as advertised it has a digital sound processor on board and it allows
you to select one of up to I believe it's five different essentially EQ
profiles now I can't find anyone who
really likes any of the profiles other than the default one so I want to start
there but my team has already pre-loaded the somewhat sketchy app onto my Walkman
so I do want to give that a try as well why sketchy you might ask well let me
put it this way it's not in the Google Play Store it requires access to all the
files on your phone which is like what
so you're downloading this random APK giving it these sweeping permissions and
then all for what so your headphones sound a little
different I don't know guys before I press play though one more thing let's
take a look at the kind of before frequency response curve from
headphones.com with the 3 half mm cable you can see that strong emphasis in the
Basse and subbase though I can't stress enough this is not like your late 2000th
Beats by Dre where it's really muddy and ugly it sounds really good and then in
the mid-range you can see some of that inconsistency where sometimes it's
overas ized compared to our LMG Target curve sometimes underemphasized then
beyond that we've got a big bump here at around 15,000 Herz that looks like a
catastrophe but realistically is at about the edge of human hearing and
shouldn't bother you under most circumstances that is unless you're
younger or you have a particularly Discerning ear in which case it may add
a bit of shrillness to the audio now before I look at the DSP cable
version let's continue I don't stare at these all day
so I would be really curious to look at the difference in frequency response
because whatever it is about the 3 and 1/2 mm cable is definitely more
fatiguing for me than the DSP cable it's a little early to say if I think there's
a huge Improvement in the inside your
head effect let's get off of fantasies and into
hypnosis man it's amazing what we've given up switching to
airpods collectively the audio files might be on to something hey
so what I just have to run this cable even lower notes on the piano feel like
they're like reverberating in my neck
like if you are all about bass guitar
solos man these things flipping Rock and
I'd say everything else is good enough yeah $360 is a lot of money but
when you compare this to what we used to
have to pay for this kind of performance good good lord it's no wonder people are
so excited about chaii like man it's not like I don't own products that will
perform on par or above this but like you would have had to pay so much more
for this in the past I still don't think these would be my choice let's have a
look at the differences here and there it is yeah when we compare this to a
population average Anatomy Target it's like pretty much bang on except for that
extra emphasis on the low end and other than me being incredibly boring and
preferring a really flat frequency response things are kind of awesome I
mean yeah it's a lot of money to spend on an audio product but now that apple
is kind of normalized spending 2300 bucks I mean when I was in high school
nobody had headphones that were more than like you know
$30 even correcting for inflation that's like spending 50 bucks today but now
that it's normal I'd say this is a pretty damn good normal of course I
haven't tried any of the different DSP settings yet apparently they're just
awful which maybe doesn't matter to you because you don't have to use them at
all in fact you don't even have to install the app if you just want to use
the default settings for the DSP cable can't say the Comfort super great for me
by the way even with the small tips they're a little on the big side so your
mileage may vary there obviously but I don't find them as heavy as I expected
them to be which is good all right let's
try the Harmon Harmon
tuning interesting it's like everything that's kind of okay about these
headphones with none of the really great about these headphones looking at the
frequency response it's a funny thing how much of a difference just a decel or
two here and there can make I think what I'm missing is just that couple DCB in
the 100 to 200 Hertz like it's just kind
of boring and flat sounding now which I guess emphasizes the importance of
tuning I mean that's realistically where chicles collaboration comes into play
for Moon drop right they do the physical engineering he comes in and is like yeah
but this sounds good yeah I just don't think I would install the app funnily
enough that seems to be the general Consensus These Things Are outstanding
great for the price just don't use this cable and don't
install the app 360 bucks yeah it's a lot of money but if you care about sound
quality I can't say that it's a bad value it's a complicated thing someone
whose entire business is testing getting into the production of headphones but in
this case I would say the expertise has resulted in a better product than we
otherwise would have ended up with subscribe to ShortCircuit