Happy Holidays

Yet another good year for IEM user is coming close to its end. This year, we have seen more higher end models being released for both universal and custom IEM market, and in general, less low end rubbish models as well. Of course, not so great for keeping a budget :). We also see some really good sounding IEM coming from small, previously unknown Chinese IEM maker as well. I suspect this trend will continue and we will see / hear better IEM from China in the upcoming year as well. All and all, I'll call it a fruitful year. Hopefully you have enjoyed it as much as I do. Cheer.

December Update

I was pleasantly surprised by Zero Audio's DX200 'Carbo Tenore' when I finally got one and now the company has a new dual driver for us. The new ZH-DWX10, or simply known as 'Duoza', kind of has an odd design with an elongated housing. With current exchange rate, it should be around US$100 or so.

A new company called Zorloo released what they called a 'digital earphone' for Android smartphone. The 'Z:ero' is an IEM with a tiny USB DAC (*a Wolfson no less) and headphone amp built into the remote control, and as you would expect, connect to (and powered by) the smartphone via USB instead of 3.5mm headphone jack. The concept is definitely interesting (and somewhat similar to Apple's idea of headphone with Lightning connector), but might be flawed - as it will probably drain your smartphone battery as long as it is connected and you will have to throw the DAC / amp away when you run into cable problem (which is likely to happen to any IEM sometime down the line). Though given the projected price at only US$30, these issue might not be that big of a deal.

Last but not least, JH Audio introduces two new model to the Siren series: Layla and Angie. I'll let Jude do the talking: