When DQ6 first came out, it didn't quite land on my radar.
I was new to IEMs back then, and my primary source of information was zPolt's channel. He loved them, but whenever he added them to one of his sound comparisons, DQ6 was by far the worst IEM in every single one of those to my ears.
Almost a year later, in September 2021, I started hearing about them again, this time courtesy of my friend
@RikudouGoku, who started hyping the DQ6 as the best IEM under $300, if you apply a simple mod - cut a piece of earbud foam into 16 parts, and put one of those parts into each of the DQ6's tips. I am normally not the modding type, but the mod seemed so easy, and Riku's claim so outlandish that I had to go and test it. A couple weeks later, the DQ6 arrived, and...
...it was a mess. First of all, the stock tips are some of the flimsiest, thinnest pieces of crap that I have ever encountered. They did not manage to create a seal in my ears at all. After experimenting with some other tips (Sony EX11, KZ Starline, Spinfits CP145), I found the Starlines to offer the best fit - why didn't KZ bundle them with the IEM? No idea mate.
After settling on the Starline tips, I found the sound... Terrible. Awful. Disgusting. It had potential, there were good parts to it (bass response seemed decent, at least), but I absolutely hated them. So I decided to try Riku's mod. I cut up some earbud foams, put them in the nozzles, and...
Okay, what the absolute fudge was that?
The mod sounded so simple and stupid, and I didn't believe it would actually do anything, but... It did.
Suddenly, instead of sharp, music on the DQ6 started sounding warm and soothing. I fell asleep listening to them, and by the morning, I fell in love.
However, the foam mod wasn't perfect. The foams kept sliding out of the nozzle, and I had to put them back in after every single listen. That was annoying enough for me to disqualify the mod. I tried another one of Riku's inventions (used the filter from my Tanchjim Hana 21), but the sound wasn't as good, and the mod was even more finicky.
That's when I had an idea of my own - don't foam tips tend to reduce the treble? Coincidentally, the Polish reseller included some with my DQ6, so I put them on, and... Bam. This was it. They sounded almost exactly the same as they did with the foam mod. I fell in love all over again. That's why, despite usually clowning on the idea of reviewing modded products, my DQ6 will have 2 scores: for silicone (Starline) tips and foam tips. The rationale being: the stock tips are unusable, so you will have to tip-roll anyway. Why not show you just how much more you can get out of this set by just using some good old foams.
All The Disclaimers:
I bought the DQ6 with my own money, nobody is paying me for this opinion, and I'm basing the rating on a comparison with over 60 different transducers (IEMs, Open Earbuds, Headphones), most of which can be found here:
Szymon's Cracked Sound Tier List
You can find a detailed explanation of how my tier list works in my
Etymotic ER2XR Review, but as a tl;dr:
I use two rating systems. The Sound Tier is based on sound ONLY, meaning a B Tier transducer sounds better than a C Tier transducer, regardless of the price or anything else. The Star Rating is my overall recommendation, and includes things like price, value, fit, accessories and everything else that could weigh on a product being recommended or not.
As much as I try to be objective, the tier list will inevitably be a little biased towards my preferences - I like a sound signature closer to neutral or warm neutral, and listen to a variety of genres, but mostly rock, metal and acoustic, and probably 75% of vocalists on my playlist are male.
With all that said, let's get to the review!
Build and Accessories
The DQ6 is an immediately very interesting set, because it uses a configuration that's not often seen in the IEM world: 3 Dynamic Drivers. The main driver here is the notorious XUN DD, KZ's very own large dynamic driver, which takes care of the bass and mids here, with two smaller DDs taking care of the treble.
The first thing that stood out to me about this IEM is that wow, it is a lot smaller than the pictures make it look. I expected a behemoth the size of ThieAudio Monarch, but it's actually on the small side. It's a typical for KZ resin shell and aluminium driver combo, which is not a knock against them - it works, is durable, and feels appropriate for the price. As for the design, I got sent a black unit by mistake, and I'm actually kind of glad - the matte black faceplate and smoked resin look great in person.
As for the accessories, you get the typical KZ cable, which is
ffffiiiine. It's better than something like the wiry mess included with the Blon 03, but nothing close to the soft cable included with the Tin T2. It's okay, serves its job and doesn't get tangled easily, but I would personally look towards getting a nicer cable down the line.
The included eartips are just awful, though. They are short, thin and flimsy, and I couldn't get a seal with them however I tried. Not that you'd want to anyway, because the sound without foam tips, is... How do I put it nicely.
Stock Sound
Just don't bother. I tried it with regular tips (Sony EX11) again for review purposes, and was borderline scarred for life. In
Clean by
Taylor Swift, her vocals were incredibly shouty and annoying, the tonality of her vocals also sounded completely wrong. The mbira, which is a sort of hand piano instrument, does not draw your attention here, unlike the
real DQ6 (we'll get to it). The bass response is very nice, but overshadowed by the other issues. In
DiE4u by
Bring Me The Horizon, the vocal is instantly sharp, piercing and very sibilant. The presentation is very muddy, but curiously, lower notes of electric guitars sound better than with foam tips, I presume due to a more prevalent 6k. In
Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby by
Cigarettes After Sex, the bass guitar sounds amazing... Until the vocal comes in and makes your ears bleed.
Stock rating:
Tier: D+
(Tuning: D-, Technicalities: B+)
Sound Signature
When you put foam tips on the DQ6 (or mod it with tuning foam, but I think changing tips is way simpler) it tames the unnecessary peaks in the upper mids and treble, changing the signature to more of a warm neutral kind of tuning. And a damn good at that. The bass shelf is almost 1 to 1 with the one found on the best IEM I have ever heard - the $1700 Sony Z1R. The midrange is similar as well, and the tuning difference between the two shows up mainly in the treble region, where the Z1R is not only better extended, but also brighter.
That is extremely impressive for an earphone that will cost you only about $30 with the required tips. But how does it actually sound?
In short, excellent. It works for pretty much any genre - rap songs like
No Name by
NF and
E-Girls Are Ruining My Life by
Corpse are incredibly engaging. Pop songs like
3AM by
Charli XCX and
Drinks by
Cyn sound amazing with very natural and realistic vocal tonality for the female vocalists, while
Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby by
Cigarettes After Sex sounds warm and comforting. Faster tracks like
Drum Go Dum by
K/DA pull you in with simply perfect rendition of the vocals, but keep you hooked with the drums, which, due to the elevated mid-bass of this set give the track an almost tribal vibe.
But where this set REALLY shines is
rock and metal. Tracks like
Supremacy by
Muse sound not only engaging, but also very "full" in that every part of the spectrum. The electric guitar, the bass guitar, the kick drums, the cymbals and the vocals are all represented in perfect quantities, you don't feel like there's too much or not enough of anything. This is true in a bunch of other songs like
Am I Evil? by
Metallica (which I prefer on the DQ6 over IEMs like the excellent in its own way $700 ThieAudio Monarch) or
Kingslayer and
DiE4u by
Bring Me The Horizon. I'm especially impressed by DQ6's play back of the latter, notoriously hard song - it is very easy for this song to sound thin and shrill, but the KZ avoids that, giving enough body to Oli Sykes' vocals and keeping the weeping electric guitar >just< forward enough without making it piercing.
This is touching a little on the technical performance of this IEM, but a lot of times when you have a warm neutral set, the treble becomes buried under the bass and mids, but I am pleased to say that it is not the case here. Things like the mbira in
Taylor Swift's
Clean not only comes through cleanly, but puts you in a state of awe with its amazing timbre, as do the trumpets and female vocals in
Dull Flames Of Desire by
Björk.
The tonality here is so well balanced that I feel like a shill writing it, but thankfully I have found one issue with it during my review process that I can complain about - there is a dip around 6kHz which makes some lower male vocals and lower electric guitar notes sound kinda veiled, almost recessed in the mix. This didn't bother me often, but in
Kingslayer in particular I would have liked more energy for the electric guitar's and Oli's vocals, especially considering how excellently the DQ6 handles Babymetal's female vocalist in that very song. In
No Name that dip manifested itself as a lack of crispness in the initial vowels of words, which is extremely important in rap. It didn't *ruin* the song, but it was definitely noticeable.
For the EQ peeps out there, a 4dB peak filter at 6k should fix the issue and make the tonality legitimately TOTL, but I am not an EQ person, so I had to "put up" with only an A+ tuning. Fortunately, DQ6 makes it easy because of its amazing bass.
Bass
Let us not beat around the bush, the bass response is why you get the DQ6. Not only because of the quantity, it's actually less bassy than something like the
CCA CRA or
Blon 03. What DQ6 has over these two, though, is the bass quality. The texture and detail in the bass response is something frankly mind-blowing at this price point, easily beating out more expensive IEMs like the
Tanchjim Hana 2021 or
Fiio FH5, neither of which is a slouch when it comes to it, either.
Whether the bass is coming from a real instrument, like the kick drums in
Supremacy by
Muse, or from a synthesiser, like it is in
Clean by
Taylor Swift, the sheer amount of texture makes it easy to get lost in the music. There is also a very present sensation I like to call the bass blanket effect, where it feels like the bass envelops you completely. This is a combination of tuning, soundstage and bass quality, and of all the IEMs I have ever heard, only the
Sony IER-Z1R does that better than the DQ6. For example, in
Nothing's Gonna Hurt You Baby the bass guitar feels like it's resonating through your entire body, as does the kick drum in
Sleep On The Floor by
The Lumineers. It's great.
That said, while the quality is great, the tuning is what some people might take issue with. For me personally, it matches my basshead target exactly, but bassheads might complain about the focus on mid-bass rather than sub-bass (the bass is more "musical" than "strong") and "muh clean mids" people might complain the fact that it does sometimes bleed into the midrange, like in
Clean, or in
Out Of My Head by
Charli XCX.
That said, one think no one is going to complain is the bass extension - the low sub-bass rumble is very present in
Drinks by
Cyn,
Time by
Hans Zimmer and
Leaving Earth from the
Mass Effect 3 soundtrack by
Clint Mansell.
For me, the bass presentation is damn near perfect. It is strong and physical when it needs to be, but it doesn't force itself on you when it shouldn't. It's warm, engaging and enveloping, and makes songs like
Drum Go Dum a complete blast to listen to. I would call the KZ DQ6 "the midhead's basshead set". If, like me, you are part of the #nobassgang and prefer a more neutral kind of tuning, spending $30 on the DQ6 and a set of foam tips is the ideal way for you to have an option for when you *do* want some bass in your life.
Midrange
The midrange here is definitely not a "clean" one, like you would get in a Harman-tuned IEM.
It is instead very natural, organic and warm. Going from a more neutral set like the
Tin T2 to the DQ6 feels kind of like taking my
HD600 and plugging them out of a solid state amp and into a tube amp. Even though you know this is not how the music is supposed to sound, it somehow sounds
more real.
Aside from the aforementioned issue where some male vocals can sound a little veiled and lost in the mix, like in
Kingslayer, the tonality is spot on, and most other vocalists like
Charli XCX and Chester Bennington from
Linking Park sound just like they should, as does the acoustic guitar in
Something In The Way by
Nirvana from their MTV Unplugged album, exhibiting wonderful, natural timbre. A great song that showcases how natural instruments sound on the DQ6 is
Supremacy, because of how many are there. But whether it's the strings, the electric guitar, the various drums, the bass guitar, or Matt Bellamy's vocals, all of them sound great.
Detail in the midrange is inconsistent, though. Generally, the lower a sound is, the more detailed it will be. A great few great examples are songs with multiple vocalists like the aforementioned
Out Of My Head by
Charli XCX and
Tove Lo, where Charli's vocals are much more detailed than Tove Lo's. Detail is excellent in some songs that stick to lower tones, for example
Oft gefragt by
AnnenMayKantereit, where the male vocals and Piano come through more detailed than on my Hana 2021, and then it's nothing to write home about on some others. Kinda hit or miss.
Treble
You would expect this to be the worst part of an IEM focused on mid-bass and lower mids, but no. After a detail slump of sorts in the lower mids, the treble picks up the pace. It's fairly obvious where the treble drivers take over, because higher-pitched sounds like the electric guitars in
Supremacy have good detail to them. Nothing outstanding, but more than adequate for the price and competitive with sets like Hana 2021 and
Etymotic ER2XR.
Curiously enough, while earlier I said that in some songs with multiple vocalists the lower vocal would be much more detailed, the opposite is the case in
Girl Like Me by
Black Eyed Peas and
Shakira. Will.I.Am and Shakira's normal singing vocals hit the DQ6's "blind spot", but when Shakira start singing in a higher pitch, there suddenly is way more detail in her vocals. Kinda weird.
As for extension and texture, it's decent. In
Drinks there is way more shimmer than when listening with something like the ER2, but still not enough for my taste.
The tuning of the treble is generally
okay, but the 6k dip really makes itself known in songs like
Neon Church by
Tim McGraw, where both his vocals and the acoustic guitars sound strangely muffled.
Technical Performance
Okay, but SURELY I'm out of positive things to say about this budget meme by now, right?
...right?
Well, not quite. See, the technical performance on the DQ6, aside from the lack of detail in the upper midrange, is also excellent. The transients here are generally on the heavy side, but fast enough that the earphone never feels bloated. The guitar plucks at the start of
A Place of My Head by
Linking Park are thick, but crisp.
Crisp is also how I would describe the imaging. In
Letter by
Yosi Horikawa you are easily able to pinpoint the location of the pencil as it writes a letter all around your head, all over the soundstage...
...and the soundstage is the biggest strength of the DQ6. It is one of the largest, most grandiose soundstages in any IEM. Period.
Bloody period.
It's just amazing. The songs that benefit the most are live arrangements like
Nirvana's Unplugged version of
Something In The Way, or
Björk's
The Dull Flame Of Desire. These songs are normally quite disappointing when I use IEMs for them, but the DQ6 manages to give them the space they need to sound their best. So, as we come towards the resolution of this review...
...I need to mention that the resolution on this earphone is also very good for the price. This, finally, is something where more expensive IEMs like
Fiio FH5 and
Hana 21 start making up some ground in that they are a bit better than the DQ6. The DQ6 is still very resolving though, more so than something like the
ER2XR, It manages to separate all the instruments on quite demanding songs like
Oft Gefragt and
Am I Evil?, which, in my opinion, is absolutely essential for playing busy metal songs like the latter.
The resolution is also helpful in songs that would normally collapse in a worse IEM with similar tuning (like the legendary
Blon 03) because of the bass bleed, like the
Drinks song I mentioned earlier. Despite a very similar tonality between those earphones, I would much rather listen to this song on the DQ6, because it feels significantly less bloated here.
Conclusion
I feel weird giving reviews as positive as this one. Working a large chunk of my life as a salesman, I started reviewing gear as a hobby in which I could finally be critical of products, instead of talking only about positives. So writing this review felt as if I was selling stuff again instead of reviewing it, but I just can't help singing the praises of this IEM. At this price, it offers insane value, and could be endgame for many people, especially those who use EQ and can boost up the 6k dip I mentioned multiple times in this review. So where will the DQ6 place in my
tier list?
Tier: A+
(Tuning: A+, Technicalities: A-)
Value Stars: * * * - worth a blind buy
BUT!
Even though it places near the top of my tier list and I give them all 3 value stars...
I would wait before pulling the trigger on this one.
Why?
Well, first of all, there's the CCA CRA. According to my friend and fellow reviewer
@RikudouGoku, the CRA is not as strong as the DQ6 in the bass and soundstage, but is a better all-rounder, doing great even in areas the DQ6 struggles, like upper-midrange detail. Not to mention, it can be worn without foam tips, unlike the DQ6. I have received my CRA last week, but didn't have enough time to fully form an opinion on it yet, especially with another IEM I find even more interesting arriving a day later.
Second of all... Let's get the elephant out of the room. KZ has just announced the DQ6S, a collaboration with another friend of mine, whom I cannot mention on this forum, so I'm just going to talk about the product itself. What the DQ6S is is an attempt to achieve the tonality that the original DQ6 has while using foam tips, but make it accessible to people who do not wish to use them. I do not have it with me yet, but I will try to get a review copy soon enough, and I am proud to say that I have provided feedback on the tuning in order to get it as close as possible to what foam tips make it sound like.
(Just as a disclaimer, I have no monetary stake in the DQ6S, so I have no veiled interests in hyping it up. The person doing the tuning just figured that since I (along with Riku) was one of the people responsible for making the DQ6 popular again, I would be a good person to ask for feedback.)
On that note, the budget space is getting really spicy. Besides the CRA and DQ6S, in the coming month I will also be reviewing the mystery IEM mentioned later. In February, as part of the #nobassmonth, I will also be reviewing some earbuds, including the oft-hyped LBBS, and taking a look back at a headphone that DankPods singlehandedly made sell out everywhere - the Grado SR60e.
The next month is shaping up to be really exciting, so if you want to stay in touch, you should follow me here (I still haven't figured out if that is even an option on head-fi, I should really look into it, hm) and on
my YouTube Channel.
