Campfire Audio IO In-Ear Monitor Headphones - Official Thread

To get this out of the way first…

Well, drama-wise – my measurements match pretty much what was posted earlier if you like to interpret graphs. The yellow/green curves are from reddit user malvinnvn and mines are the red and blue ones using different tips. I tried to match the same tips and settings he did, but unfortunately the Symbio tips I had, which is what he used, didnt fit the coupler. He sent me his exported data for comparison sake.

Listening Impressions:

In terms of listening, I find these not the best things for vocals, and specifically female vocals have a weird haze to it. Cymbals also exhibit this behavior. It has a low fidelity sound to it – a veil. I think some of the more negative impressions on head-fi have some merit, in terms of how I am hearing it. The bass and low end sounds great for my preferences and that is an improvement over the Orion. Male vocals don’t exhibit the same issues as females, though there still is a weird tinny-haze to them occasionally.

Treble is much more extended than Orion, from memory, and has a little bit of sparkle like Andromeda, though not as distinct and detailed. To me, it sounds like a really odd sounding mix of Orion and Andromeda with some weird mids that makes it not currently recommended for listening to vocals. It may perform better in instrumental music, which I havent dived too far into yet.

I’ve been A-Bing back and forth with Andromeda, Solaris and IO. Listening to Fleetwood Mac, Norah Jones, Chvrches, Chris Stapleton, U137, Radiohead, Massive Attack, and Cocteau Twins. Of those, U137 and Massive Attack sound pretty good, and they are more instrument/beat driven than vocal.

I think if I was blindly listening to these without a reference point, I’d still find it a little off, but could get used to it. But when put into perspective with another IEM which have more coherent mids, these sound a little off.

I’ll continue to post more impressions a little later.

Addition: Fit-wise, the longer Solaris-style bore makes this shell much more comfortable for me than the Andromeda/Orion and previous generation Campfires. I barely feel these on my ears and the sharp edges don’t touch the back of my ears anymore.

Also: Thanks for @taronlissimore for sending me this community preview unit to test out!

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