Korean isn't just big in the music world these days, but also seems to make way in the headphone world as well. Wavelet Design, an Korean company that is originally in the audio testing equipment business, has released a new IEM called 'Opus1', utilizing a new type of balanced armature (BA) transducer design called 'dynamic BA'. A typical BA has a sandwich design with the magmatic field being parallel to the voice coil, but the dynamic BA has a magmatic field that is perpendicular to the voice coil, which is closer in design to a dynamic transducer (*hence the name). Being in the audio testing business, Wavelet Design has confident enough that they have released a full set of measurement to showcase their new IEM's performance. Release date is set at the end of this month and the estimated price is around US$140 or so in Korea, but the Japanese price seems to have jumped almost double of that.
ALO Audio, the U.S. company best known for its portable amp, DAC and cable, is coming out an IEM brand of its own, called the 'Campfire Audio'. Three initial models will be launched under the new brand and they are: single 8.5mm dynamic 'Lyra', single BA 'Orion', and quad BA 'Jupiter' (as shown on picture above, from left). Price has not being announced yet, but expected them to be released sometime in June.