I gave a follow-up on my review below the original post with a happy ending.
I had issues with the Automatic ADEL modules that came stock with my A12s (as you'll read below), but I'm going to keep the original post in case new customers get their IEMs in the mail and have the same issue my ears did. You will be able to read my frustration, possibly relate if your ears are like mine and are hearing all kinds of noises in various settings and don't know what to make of it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is my first audio specific review, so bare with me. Earlier this week, I received my pair of A12 Custom IEMs from 64 Audio. I demoed pretty much every flagship IEM at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in October and these were what I ended up with.
After many of you might be able to relate, the waiting for custom IEMs can seem much longer than a matter of several weeks. I actually had them brought to me at work by a family member once they arrived at the house, I couldn't wait to inspect and listen to them.
The case they come in is nothing to write home about in the looks department. Hard black plastic with an etched logo and your name at the bottom, gloss black in matte black. It does feel like you could very confidently drop it down a flight of stairs without worry and thats what actually matters. Inside each IEM gets its own little compartment and posts to wrap the cable around, along with a shirt clip. Not really fancy but very functional and well thought out.
The craftsmanship is fantastic, much better than my JH Audio Roxannes (I had to send them back for repair once one of the faceplates partially separated from the body, they reglued it and polished the pair...and I promptly put them on the used market). As you can see in the picture, I got my A12s in clear on clear so I can see all the guts. There's a partial finger print on one of the drivers and a very small bubble in the acrylic on the body, that's an absolute minor detail but keeps them from perfect construction.
The sound: This is a tough one. My first night with them was amazing then totally frustrating. I'm not going to get super in depth about the sound signature, mostly because I know others can put it much better with fancy descriptions, I'm not the best at that. I will say that they are utterly fantastic. I have them paired with my AK120ii, I've used a wide range of quality files. From DSD to your standard not-so-good mp3s and as you'd expect, they're really revealing. Even then though, they're pretty forgiving. The poor quality stuff still sounds very nice, not amazing but still very enjoyable. When you play better recorded files, they really REALLY come to life. So its really a matter of solidly good, even at the worst, then only gets better from there.
The sound is very full bodied and balanced. That's really the best and simplest way I can put it. It's a very airy sound that I've never heard from an IEM before, most of that is due to ADEL (which I'll get to in a minute). The tone is very rich and lifelike. The sound stage they offer is massive, I've never heard IEMs that produce a sound stage similar to top tier over-ear headphones before, it was a very large part of why I picked A12s instead of the very sweet Noble K10s. IEMs tend to focus the music in what I would say purely in your head, almost like your head is empty and that's just where it's all going on. However ADEL helps the A12s really bring that out a bit, rather than just between your ears, its sorta like ears plus 6 inches outward. Sorry if that sounds very strange but it's a weird concept to try to describe.
Everything about the sound of these is the way they should be, yeah that sounds vague but everything is in it's place. Nothing over shadows the other. The bass is very punchy and powerful when it's called for, like a giants hand popping out of the darkness. Pops out and disappears just as quickly, not lingering and bleeding over. The mid range sounds just right, I can't say I'd change a thing. The highs are still smooth and not ear piercing, cymbals of drums have a very lifelike lingering effect.
With all the sound and performance out of the way, here's the thing. And it's a BIG thing. These have the new ADEL technology, which in a nut shell is designed to let out sound pressure between the drivers and your ear drum to be less harmful to your ears. It does that by having a 5mm metal rod about 2mm thick, riding on dual O-rings, being pushed by the sound pressure. It's supposed to act like a secondary ear drum, absorbing/releasing the pressure like a second ear drum. Frankly, I don't know about all the claims for hearing protection and they haven't released any scientific data to back up that claim either. It VERY much helps with widening the sound stage though, it's the magic touch that separates the ADEL equipped IEMs from competitors. ADEL helps give everything that airy sound and it really helps cross that gap that IEMs never could before, sounding like an over-ear headphone. When I thought about what IEMs sound similar to A12s, I really couldn't. The only IEM that I felt sounded as good, in a different way, was the Noble K10. What does the A12 really sound more like? Like the big boy over-ear headphones. Personally I thought they were far more similar to HiFiMan HE-X (the "budget" HE-1000s). This is a great and horrible thing...
Like alot of IEM users, my listening is mostly done on the go. On the way to work, shopping, at work, walks, etc. This is a big problem for these, why? Just like an open back headphone, there is very little in the way of isolation. This was a BIG shock to me on that first night. When I demoed the A12s at RMAF, you're just sitting there calmly, not moving. So while these things really really sing in a quiet setting, they are a whole different animal in the real world. I went out for a walk that first night and had my image of the A12 pretty shattered. As I walked around town on a nice evening, I kept hearing this THWAPP THWAPP THWAPP noise during low-medium volume sections of songs. I thought maybe the cables were bouncing around as I walked, they weren't. Perhaps the seal in my ears were breaking? They weren't. I touched the ADELs and it went away instantly. You know what it was? My shoes on the pavement. As the ADELs were moving around doing their thing, they were letting in the sounds of my feet. You can also imagine how irritating that is.
One thing that hasn't seemed to be factored into the ADEL design is, your body moves. While ADEL achieves its goal and the A12 really performs when you're sitting calmly and not moving, the movement of your body when you're walking (or whatever else you might be doing) throws the whole process off. Sorta sounds like somebody waving their hand in front of a speaker, it's inconsistent and really noticeable. At low volumes or between songs, you can hear the ADEL moving around on their own, it sounds just like having water in your ear. Tipping your head or even walking.
I thought maybe keeping the ADEL closed (through an adjustable module which is in development) would maybe be the winning touch but even just holding the ADELs closed with your fingers shows otherwise. The sound stage shrinks dramatically and the treble really falls flat, they really tuned to ADEL being there.
What 64 Audio has really done here is created an open back headphone but in IEM form. When you think about where you listen to over ears and how they behave, it lines up perfectly. Would you take an open back with you on the bus? Probably not because all that extra noise bleeding in (not to mention the obvious bulk and probably needing an amp). So if you think about these as open back headphones, it makes far far more sense as to how they behave. For myself, if I had read that on head-fi from other owners, I know it really wouldn't fit how I listen to IEMs.
These are really perfect for an engineer sitting in a studio that doesn't want bulky over ear headphones, or those calm nights drinking tea, but NOT for leaving the house like you would any other IEM where isolation is a requirement. I'm still going back and forth on what to do with my pair, I have already spoke to the 64 Audio about all of these things and I have the option of a refund if we can't come up with a solution. 90% of my listening is done on the mobile side of things and I feel that trying to plug off the ADELs to gain isolation can be seen like trying to take a fully built GT race car and putting street tires on it to try and make it a street car. It just doesn't really work, it's tuned to work a perfect system and do one job in one specific setting. It does that one job amazingly well, trying to convert it to something else leads to very poor results.
...but they sound so damn good in a quiet setting that I don't know if I'm going to be willing to part with them, even as unpractical as they may be. They truly are astonishingly special.
As for scoring, when you use them in their environment they easily get a 5 star rating. However, most IEM users actually want to take their toys on the go with them, these aren't suited for that...at all. So I don't know if they should be penalized for that or not, much like you wouldn't ding an open back over-ear headphone for not being friendly for mobile use, that's what makes this tough. So if you use them at home, 5 star, but try to use them as a portable option 3 stars? It can be done but I find the lack of isolation and microphonics insanely irritating. Snaps you out of your nirvana like listening zone instantly, like being woken up by a near by wood pecker. I rather use my cheap Shure SE215s for portable use than the A12s, that should say something.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Updated 12.5.2015
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ok, so I ended up reverting back to my Shure's for a week or two as I talked with 64 Audio between email and phone calls. Right off the bat I want to say that dealing with 64 Audio's customer service was never a pain or stressful, they're a great bunch of people and it was honestly a big reason I went with them originally after getting to talk to a number of company heads and engineers at RMAF. They just have the vibe of wanting to share their product with people and hoping you like it as much as they do, rather than "we are the company, you are the customer and you'll give us however much we demand for it". Very willing to make sure their customers are totally happy with their product, no matter what.
As I have mentioned, I kept the A12s in the case for a while, maybe taking them out for an hour or two per week for a listen, then I'd just get frustrated. They sounded so good when they were in their element but I couldn't handle the hand-waving-in-front-of-speaker effect or woppy sound I'd get as I tipped my head. I was very close to sending them back and ordering up a pair of Noble K10s. VERY CLOSE.
64 Audio put me in touch with Stephen Ambrose, who is the inventor of ADEL and I was able to spend the afternoon with him & his wife. We went over all the video explanations of ADEL that many of you have probably already seen (if not, youtube them), as well as talking about everything I had been experiencing with my ADELs. For lack of better wording, it was a perfect situation of finding a problem with somebody's product, talking about it in detail with them, then having a perfect fix. (We also tested my Auto ADELs to make doubly sure they weren't defective, they weren't)
The Solution...
Manual ADEL modules. Those of you who had been following the kick starter project, knew that was a thing (and suggested that would be the fix, but since they aren't currently on the available, it didn't help much, even though those that suggested were absolutely correct!). They were made before the automatic ADELs (that now come with A & U Series), this happened partially because a number of people felt they might not be able to dial-in the manual ADELs for their ears perfectly, therefore easy simple no-touch-necessary ADELs were put in the IEMs. This is the perfect situation for alot of people, I'm not one of them. Maybe you aren't either. I've even been told by other customers that they don't hear the same microphonics as I have, therefore it must all be in my head. This isn't the case.
Here's the deal. Each ear is different obviously, not just person to person, but your left and right. Each has a different design of canal, making pressure levels and their changes more noticeable in certain ears. My ears are much more sensitive to that pressure, my right one more than the left. This is why I was hearing the ADEL flap around more in my right than my left, the pressure was different. Swap the ADEL module themselves from IEM to IEM and it doesn't matter, same response. I would plug the hole on the ADEL and it'd stop. My assumption of the ADEL bouncing around on it's O-Rings up & down were wrong, the pressure was just letting them move way more than what's pleasing, almost like a bottoming out speaker (sorta).
With the manual ADELs, I get NONE of the annoying downsides of the A12s. I actually haven't taken the A12s out of my ears since we swapped in the manual ADELs five hours ago. You are now able to adjust how much the ADEL is absorbing by dialing them tops in and out, much like the top of an adjustable shock absorber. As you dial, you can hear an audible click of a magnet inside snapping back into place, allowing you to count and keep track of your settings. Like an all-season tire, jack of all trade/master of none, the automatic ADEL does what most customer and their ears would want without being told and doing a pretty good job at it, but the manual ADEL lets you dial in specifically what you want out of them. Or to stick with tires, being able to swap from snow tire to summer tire on the fly, while matching the pressure of each ear.
These are now top-notch sounding IEMs, regardless of sitting calm at your desk OR out around town on the go.
I had issues with the Automatic ADEL modules that came stock with my A12s (as you'll read below), but I'm going to keep the original post in case new customers get their IEMs in the mail and have the same issue my ears did. You will be able to read my frustration, possibly relate if your ears are like mine and are hearing all kinds of noises in various settings and don't know what to make of it.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________
This is my first audio specific review, so bare with me. Earlier this week, I received my pair of A12 Custom IEMs from 64 Audio. I demoed pretty much every flagship IEM at Rocky Mountain Audio Fest in October and these were what I ended up with.
After many of you might be able to relate, the waiting for custom IEMs can seem much longer than a matter of several weeks. I actually had them brought to me at work by a family member once they arrived at the house, I couldn't wait to inspect and listen to them.
The case they come in is nothing to write home about in the looks department. Hard black plastic with an etched logo and your name at the bottom, gloss black in matte black. It does feel like you could very confidently drop it down a flight of stairs without worry and thats what actually matters. Inside each IEM gets its own little compartment and posts to wrap the cable around, along with a shirt clip. Not really fancy but very functional and well thought out.
The craftsmanship is fantastic, much better than my JH Audio Roxannes (I had to send them back for repair once one of the faceplates partially separated from the body, they reglued it and polished the pair...and I promptly put them on the used market). As you can see in the picture, I got my A12s in clear on clear so I can see all the guts. There's a partial finger print on one of the drivers and a very small bubble in the acrylic on the body, that's an absolute minor detail but keeps them from perfect construction.
The sound: This is a tough one. My first night with them was amazing then totally frustrating. I'm not going to get super in depth about the sound signature, mostly because I know others can put it much better with fancy descriptions, I'm not the best at that. I will say that they are utterly fantastic. I have them paired with my AK120ii, I've used a wide range of quality files. From DSD to your standard not-so-good mp3s and as you'd expect, they're really revealing. Even then though, they're pretty forgiving. The poor quality stuff still sounds very nice, not amazing but still very enjoyable. When you play better recorded files, they really REALLY come to life. So its really a matter of solidly good, even at the worst, then only gets better from there.
The sound is very full bodied and balanced. That's really the best and simplest way I can put it. It's a very airy sound that I've never heard from an IEM before, most of that is due to ADEL (which I'll get to in a minute). The tone is very rich and lifelike. The sound stage they offer is massive, I've never heard IEMs that produce a sound stage similar to top tier over-ear headphones before, it was a very large part of why I picked A12s instead of the very sweet Noble K10s. IEMs tend to focus the music in what I would say purely in your head, almost like your head is empty and that's just where it's all going on. However ADEL helps the A12s really bring that out a bit, rather than just between your ears, its sorta like ears plus 6 inches outward. Sorry if that sounds very strange but it's a weird concept to try to describe.
Everything about the sound of these is the way they should be, yeah that sounds vague but everything is in it's place. Nothing over shadows the other. The bass is very punchy and powerful when it's called for, like a giants hand popping out of the darkness. Pops out and disappears just as quickly, not lingering and bleeding over. The mid range sounds just right, I can't say I'd change a thing. The highs are still smooth and not ear piercing, cymbals of drums have a very lifelike lingering effect.
With all the sound and performance out of the way, here's the thing. And it's a BIG thing. These have the new ADEL technology, which in a nut shell is designed to let out sound pressure between the drivers and your ear drum to be less harmful to your ears. It does that by having a 5mm metal rod about 2mm thick, riding on dual O-rings, being pushed by the sound pressure. It's supposed to act like a secondary ear drum, absorbing/releasing the pressure like a second ear drum. Frankly, I don't know about all the claims for hearing protection and they haven't released any scientific data to back up that claim either. It VERY much helps with widening the sound stage though, it's the magic touch that separates the ADEL equipped IEMs from competitors. ADEL helps give everything that airy sound and it really helps cross that gap that IEMs never could before, sounding like an over-ear headphone. When I thought about what IEMs sound similar to A12s, I really couldn't. The only IEM that I felt sounded as good, in a different way, was the Noble K10. What does the A12 really sound more like? Like the big boy over-ear headphones. Personally I thought they were far more similar to HiFiMan HE-X (the "budget" HE-1000s). This is a great and horrible thing...
Like alot of IEM users, my listening is mostly done on the go. On the way to work, shopping, at work, walks, etc. This is a big problem for these, why? Just like an open back headphone, there is very little in the way of isolation. This was a BIG shock to me on that first night. When I demoed the A12s at RMAF, you're just sitting there calmly, not moving. So while these things really really sing in a quiet setting, they are a whole different animal in the real world. I went out for a walk that first night and had my image of the A12 pretty shattered. As I walked around town on a nice evening, I kept hearing this THWAPP THWAPP THWAPP noise during low-medium volume sections of songs. I thought maybe the cables were bouncing around as I walked, they weren't. Perhaps the seal in my ears were breaking? They weren't. I touched the ADELs and it went away instantly. You know what it was? My shoes on the pavement. As the ADELs were moving around doing their thing, they were letting in the sounds of my feet. You can also imagine how irritating that is.
One thing that hasn't seemed to be factored into the ADEL design is, your body moves. While ADEL achieves its goal and the A12 really performs when you're sitting calmly and not moving, the movement of your body when you're walking (or whatever else you might be doing) throws the whole process off. Sorta sounds like somebody waving their hand in front of a speaker, it's inconsistent and really noticeable. At low volumes or between songs, you can hear the ADEL moving around on their own, it sounds just like having water in your ear. Tipping your head or even walking.
I thought maybe keeping the ADEL closed (through an adjustable module which is in development) would maybe be the winning touch but even just holding the ADELs closed with your fingers shows otherwise. The sound stage shrinks dramatically and the treble really falls flat, they really tuned to ADEL being there.
What 64 Audio has really done here is created an open back headphone but in IEM form. When you think about where you listen to over ears and how they behave, it lines up perfectly. Would you take an open back with you on the bus? Probably not because all that extra noise bleeding in (not to mention the obvious bulk and probably needing an amp). So if you think about these as open back headphones, it makes far far more sense as to how they behave. For myself, if I had read that on head-fi from other owners, I know it really wouldn't fit how I listen to IEMs.
These are really perfect for an engineer sitting in a studio that doesn't want bulky over ear headphones, or those calm nights drinking tea, but NOT for leaving the house like you would any other IEM where isolation is a requirement. I'm still going back and forth on what to do with my pair, I have already spoke to the 64 Audio about all of these things and I have the option of a refund if we can't come up with a solution. 90% of my listening is done on the mobile side of things and I feel that trying to plug off the ADELs to gain isolation can be seen like trying to take a fully built GT race car and putting street tires on it to try and make it a street car. It just doesn't really work, it's tuned to work a perfect system and do one job in one specific setting. It does that one job amazingly well, trying to convert it to something else leads to very poor results.
...but they sound so damn good in a quiet setting that I don't know if I'm going to be willing to part with them, even as unpractical as they may be. They truly are astonishingly special.
As for scoring, when you use them in their environment they easily get a 5 star rating. However, most IEM users actually want to take their toys on the go with them, these aren't suited for that...at all. So I don't know if they should be penalized for that or not, much like you wouldn't ding an open back over-ear headphone for not being friendly for mobile use, that's what makes this tough. So if you use them at home, 5 star, but try to use them as a portable option 3 stars? It can be done but I find the lack of isolation and microphonics insanely irritating. Snaps you out of your nirvana like listening zone instantly, like being woken up by a near by wood pecker. I rather use my cheap Shure SE215s for portable use than the A12s, that should say something.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Updated 12.5.2015
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Ok, so I ended up reverting back to my Shure's for a week or two as I talked with 64 Audio between email and phone calls. Right off the bat I want to say that dealing with 64 Audio's customer service was never a pain or stressful, they're a great bunch of people and it was honestly a big reason I went with them originally after getting to talk to a number of company heads and engineers at RMAF. They just have the vibe of wanting to share their product with people and hoping you like it as much as they do, rather than "we are the company, you are the customer and you'll give us however much we demand for it". Very willing to make sure their customers are totally happy with their product, no matter what.
As I have mentioned, I kept the A12s in the case for a while, maybe taking them out for an hour or two per week for a listen, then I'd just get frustrated. They sounded so good when they were in their element but I couldn't handle the hand-waving-in-front-of-speaker effect or woppy sound I'd get as I tipped my head. I was very close to sending them back and ordering up a pair of Noble K10s. VERY CLOSE.
64 Audio put me in touch with Stephen Ambrose, who is the inventor of ADEL and I was able to spend the afternoon with him & his wife. We went over all the video explanations of ADEL that many of you have probably already seen (if not, youtube them), as well as talking about everything I had been experiencing with my ADELs. For lack of better wording, it was a perfect situation of finding a problem with somebody's product, talking about it in detail with them, then having a perfect fix. (We also tested my Auto ADELs to make doubly sure they weren't defective, they weren't)
The Solution...
Manual ADEL modules. Those of you who had been following the kick starter project, knew that was a thing (and suggested that would be the fix, but since they aren't currently on the available, it didn't help much, even though those that suggested were absolutely correct!). They were made before the automatic ADELs (that now come with A & U Series), this happened partially because a number of people felt they might not be able to dial-in the manual ADELs for their ears perfectly, therefore easy simple no-touch-necessary ADELs were put in the IEMs. This is the perfect situation for alot of people, I'm not one of them. Maybe you aren't either. I've even been told by other customers that they don't hear the same microphonics as I have, therefore it must all be in my head. This isn't the case.
Here's the deal. Each ear is different obviously, not just person to person, but your left and right. Each has a different design of canal, making pressure levels and their changes more noticeable in certain ears. My ears are much more sensitive to that pressure, my right one more than the left. This is why I was hearing the ADEL flap around more in my right than my left, the pressure was different. Swap the ADEL module themselves from IEM to IEM and it doesn't matter, same response. I would plug the hole on the ADEL and it'd stop. My assumption of the ADEL bouncing around on it's O-Rings up & down were wrong, the pressure was just letting them move way more than what's pleasing, almost like a bottoming out speaker (sorta).
With the manual ADELs, I get NONE of the annoying downsides of the A12s. I actually haven't taken the A12s out of my ears since we swapped in the manual ADELs five hours ago. You are now able to adjust how much the ADEL is absorbing by dialing them tops in and out, much like the top of an adjustable shock absorber. As you dial, you can hear an audible click of a magnet inside snapping back into place, allowing you to count and keep track of your settings. Like an all-season tire, jack of all trade/master of none, the automatic ADEL does what most customer and their ears would want without being told and doing a pretty good job at it, but the manual ADEL lets you dial in specifically what you want out of them. Or to stick with tires, being able to swap from snow tire to summer tire on the fly, while matching the pressure of each ear.
These are now top-notch sounding IEMs, regardless of sitting calm at your desk OR out around town on the go.
That sounds pretty cool!!!