Campfire Audio Comet in-ear Headphones - Official Thread

Campfire Audio’s Comet has just launched! At sub $200 dollars, they are Campfire’s cheapest offering yet. They come with a detachable MMXC cable with an in-line mic and 3 button configuration which shows that Campfire is pushing the Comet towards a more consumer-friendly, entry-level market.

My initial impressions were mixed as I felt everything was muddled. But after spending some time with them over the last week I feel pretty positive about the Comets. They aren’t perfect but they do have good detail and clarity. They have bass that may turn off those who lean towards neutral to bright sound signatures. Overall a pretty good offering from Campfire in my opinion. Any one else have them or thoughts on them?

Also here’s an unboxing video

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Great video. The Comets look great. Hard to tell them apart from the Atlas… what’s the difference?

Eleven hundred dollars.

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Haha. I hope there are more differences than that :wink:

Moved this post to official headphone model discussion

Nice to see campfire with a more accessible option. Anyone know what it sounds like?

I listened to them at CanJam a few weeks ago. It was noisy around the Campfire booth though. I’ve got a pair at home that I haven’t had a chance to listen to yet.

I know Tarons been spending some time with them. @taronlissimore any thoughts?

I think I’m ready to give some more impressions on the Comet after spending a couple weeks with them. My go to beater in-ears have been my 1More Quad Drivers (also MSRP $199 but can usually be found for cheaper) and I was hoping the Comet would be replacing them.

To me the Comets are a frustrating headphone. For $200 bucks you get a sweet carrying case, tons of different tips, a MMXC cable with in-line buttons and mic(good and bad) and some pretty decent sound.

First things first, I like the Comets at times. There are times a song will come on where I will be like these sound really damn good and then the next song comes on and I wonder if my Comets suddenly got switched out of my ear for something else. The Comets have pretty good low-end but it does sometimes get muddy in the mids with recessed highs. Despite that description of the sound, I still stumble upon a song (Sunny Tales (Chill Mix) by Sunlounger comes to mind ) that sounds absolutely amazing and makes me want to keep the Comets in my ears all day. Which is why they are frustrating. I can’t quite place it but their sound seems to be inconsistent.

The Comets are housed in a Stainless Steel housing. The housing looks nice and shiny but it also attracts fingerprints super fast so unless you’re wiping them after every use, be ready for some smudged headphones. Its a pretty unique build and they fit super well. I found it super easy to get a seal on them and was happy that they were straight up in-ears instead of the wire behind the ears (in-ear monitor style). The housing is also super durable and I don’t see it attracting the same amount of chips that my Quad Drivers have.

Moving over to the MMXC cable, unfortunately after about 2 weeks the connection between the left driver and the cable became a little loose which resulted in them to be unusable for walking and commuting. Every step would cause the connection to pop. The cable itself is pretty nice and the mic is OK for taking calls. The three buttons on the remote are spaced rather close together with nothing on them (raised + -, etc) to help distinguish them if you are just trying to fumble your fingers around to change a song or get the volume turned up without looking at the buttons.

Overall I think the Comet does check more of the right boxes than the wrong ones. My issue with their inconsistency could be because of a faulty cable and maybe once I get the a new cable it will be better across the board. They are definitely on par with other in-ears in their price range just based on the amount of accessories provided and they can sound pretty good too. I’d recommend giving them a try but wouldn’t say they are the best in their price range.

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I have a pair on loan and I’m pretty lukewarm on them. I like the build but they’re not the most impressive-sounding. They pretty severely lack low treble, the bass and low midrange/upper bass warmth are elevated but it can be overwhelming (more the fault of the warmth than the bass, since they’re not that bassy) and lack separation and has typical BA timbre on top of it, and the upper midrange is but the timbre isn’t fantastic. At $150 they’d make an alright package but nothing fantastic, but for $200 I feel like if we’re speaking purely in terms of sound, they’re not a particularly good value.

They’re kind of like an SE535, but with a more forward upper midrange.

I took some measurements here:

For reference, here’s the SE535:

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I’m with you. I wanted to get a new cable and use them for about another month before I gave up on them but I can see your impressions are pretty similar. I imagine they will still sell pretty well based on Campfire’s reputation but I do wish they were tuned with a little more clarity and detail in mind.

I’ve got to wait until the end of May to get my hands on the Atlas but I’m pretty excited to take them for a spin. They sounded like a pretty good compliment to the Andromedas we have kicking around at the office when I listened to them at CanJam Socal so hoping it carries over when we get a pair and part of it wasn’t just hype.

Yeah, I think Campfire’s pretty limited with what they can do with just a single armature. From my experience, single BA designs sound really congested when you try to elevate the low end but of course, bass seems to sell well and Ken Ball’s preferences seem to gravitate towards elevated low end as well.

Going back and forth between these and my ER4S’ is really interesting.

Oh yeah, these Comets actually need to be sent in because one side is buzzing. I hope that’s not a common issue.

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I purchased the Comets when they first came out a couple weeks ago. Found the sound was great. Liked the dynamics and the signature. I just could not get comfortable with the fit. It is a unique design. Not a bad piece for the money, just not for me. I ended up sending back and purchasing the Andromeda instead. Have a great respect for Ken and love his work.

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My first higher end iem, I mostly use beats-x and skull Candy for the gym, if I like these I’ll see about upgrading to the Andromeda.

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The Comet to the Andromeda is quite the jump!

Congrats on the purchase! I wasn’t a fan of them upon my initial 10 hours or so of listening but I have come around on them a bit since then. Let us know how you find them.

30min in and I can tell all the “pads”/“buds” are not for me, I’ve always had a hard time with IEMs being uncomfortable, I swapped to my Comply sport pros and that helped some. Outside of comfort, coming from beats x and skullcandy, these sound exponentially better. Also it is crazy how much of a difference the different “buds” make with the sound. some made them more bright while others with better seals made them much warmer(duh I know). But overall 30min in and I like the sound, now to get that comfort right…I should get this in the mail tomorrow MEE BTX1 (2018) which will hopefully make these a little more comfortable. I also like having the in ear wing? like Bose sports have, maybe I need to find some tips that have something similar that would fit these (they would look ridiculous with that though I have a feeling lol).

I tend to jump up the chain pretty quickly lol…what would be a better next inline from the Comet ? I really enjoy the HD800/HD700 and also my Fostex purplehearts. Does Campfire have buds that fall inline with any of those?

How do these compare to the Orions? I’m eyeing those as my next IEM.

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@taronlissimore So, started listening with Foobar and my FLAC files, and yeah it is all over the place! some songs sound amazing…then others are a hot mess. Just switched to Spotify high quality…and still a hot mess. I did switch to the smallest spin fits and I think that is where the problem is. Without the right earbud cover it makes a huge difference. Ok just pad rolled to the largest spin fits… and night and day difference. Songs have clarity and overall better tonality. So I can only do the large spinfits for about an hour before the ache is too much though. I’ll keep evaluating and seeing what works, but so far the bigger foam and spin fit have given the best experience, to the chagrin of my ear canals.

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Glad to see I’m not the only one with the same impressions. We have some more Comets coming through so I want to give them another shot at some point.

I’m still not a huge fan of the cable on them though. I like what they tried to do but I found the microphone to be pretty subpar and because of the size and position of the buttons, it wasn’t super convenient for switching songs if I was running them from my phone.

@ryan just wrote up some great impressions of the Orion in this thread .

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