Introduction
In the explosion of the IEM scene in the last few years, Thieaudio has cemented themselves as one of the premiere Chinese brands. Part of their rise in popularity, and really, the Chinese IEM scene as a whole, is a focus on price-to-performance when compared to Western alternatives. Instead of flagship products coming in at say $3,000, they’re priced at $1,000. Expensive? Absolutely. But slightly more affordable, relatively speaking.
That said, more and more Chinese brands have started to chase the luxury market. Thieaudio is no exception. Their latest top-of-the-line model, the Thieaudio Valhalla, comes in at a cool $2,000. Has Thieaudio jumped the shark? Or do they believe there’s something within the Valhalla’s 19 driver set-up that justifies its eye-watering price? Join me as I unravel if the Valhalla is Thieaudio’s greatest IEM to date.
What we like
- Excellent bass quality
- Highly coherent sound and top notch technical ability
- Solid tuning effort
What we don’t like
- Upper treble peak can potentially be too bright for some
- Requires heavy tip rolling
- Very large shells means fit and comfort are mediocre
What’s in the Box?
Despite being Thieaudio’s flagship, the Valhalla comes with a fairly standard set of accessories. Here’s what’s inside the box.
- Two sets of tips. Both are generic silicone tips with slightly different styles.
- A black 2-pin cable. As part of their marketing, Thieaudio calls it the “EliteNoir” cable. It’s nothing special. The sleeving feels plasticky and the cable is a bit too thick for my liking. At least it comes with 3.5 and 4.4 mm adapters.
- The Valhalla shells. It feels very well built and crafted out of titanium. The glittering faceplate on a black background looks quite nice in person.
When it comes to fit, the Valhalla follows the unfortunate trend of massive shells to squeeze in an ever-increasing driver count. It’s a large, heavy, and chunky IEM. It doesn’t help that the nozzle isn’t very long at only 3.6 mm. This means that to get a deeper fit, the body of the shell starts to press against my ears. As such, I’m forced to go with a shallower fit. To top it off, the nozzle size comes in at a large 6.3 mm.
Because of these shortcomings, I settled on the Final Audio Type E tips for this review. It’s not all bad though. There is some decent ergonomic design with angling of the nozzle to help, and I’ve been able to wear them for a few hours. It’s just not comfortable.
For reference, the Thieaudio Valhalla has the following driver set-up per side. Though keep in mind that this doesn’t tell you anything about the sound. And yes, the Valhalla is an all-BA IEM.
- 4 Sonion 38D1XJ Sub-woofers
- 10 Sonion E50DA Dual Mid BAs
- 4 Knowles RDE-33729 High BAs
- 1 Knowles WBFK-30095 Ultra-high BA
Sound - Objective
Before we get into the subjective part of this review, let’s take a look at the frequency response graph of the Thieaudio Valhalla. If you’re new to reading graphs, here is the high-level explanation - if the line is within the grey region, it means it’s likely to sound balanced (or neutral, for lack of a better word). Put another way, frequencies that are outside the preference bounds are likely to sound colored.
We can see that the Valhalla is reasonably well tuned overall. It has a sizable bass shelf that’s right to the edge of the preference bounds. Most people are unlikely to find it too much, but it’ll have a bassy foundation for sure. Note that these measurements were taken on a clone IEC-711 rig which tends to display more bass than the B&K 5128’s more accurate acoustic impedance, especially for BA IEMs.
Not much to comment on in the midrange except the 1 - 2 kHz hump that many IEMs tend to have. Finally in the treble, we have a big upper treble peak. Don’t dwell too hard on the exact size or frequency it’s at - remember upper treble measurements are unreliable, doubly so on the IEC-711. Just know that you’re likely to run into a bright spot in the treble.
Here is the raw graph which is a different visualization of the same dataset.
Sound - Subjective
We’ll get into my subjective opinion on the Valhalla’s sound now. As a reminder, this is effectively my interpretation and experience of what the frequency response at the ear drum sounds like. Obviously, my ear anatomy will be different from the measurement rig.
It’s an important clarification because the language used to describe sound oftentimes categorizes sound quality into “tonality” or “technicalities”. While this can be a useful framework of understanding, particularly for an experiential hobby like this, it is important to recognize that they are intertwined with one another at the level of the frequency response. Neither of them exists independently outside of it.
On to the review.
Bass
The first thing that strikes me about the Valhalla is its bass quality. There’s a strong sense of physicality and weight behind every note, like a groundshaking of the underlying bass tones. Of course, the quantity doesn’t hurt. The Valhalla has a large subbass shelf with a generous midbass slope. It’s subbass focused, so notes fall with a deep boom and rumble rather than the quick punchiness of the midbass. Yet despite its low end elevation, the Valhalla’s bass is surprisingly agile. Transients are well defined without coming off as sharp while decay lingers just enough to complete any trailing tones without feeling congested. The density of its sound does mean that it isn’t the most textured per se, but I’m reaching for complaints here. If you told me there was a DD in here, I probably would’ve believed you. You certainly don’t get that hard defined edge to bass notes that’s common to a lot of other BA IEMs.
Drums see the greatest benefit from the Valhalla’s bass tuning. Toms have a full body to their resonance, and the kick reaches down into the subbass without sacrificing the definition of the beater head. Low synths are wholly enveloping while bass guitars pound densely through their bass lines. It’s about as close to basshead level bass as you can get on an IEM that still sounds relatively balanced, and sets a high bar for quality IEM bass. That said, I can see some people finding it a little too heavyhanded at times.
Mids
The midrange of the Valhalla takes a thick, dense slant thanks to a midbass slope that eases into the lower mids. For the upper mids, if you’ve been following the IEM scene and are familiar with the concept of the “new meta”, the Valhalla is not it. Like many other similarly tuned IEMs, it has a hump around 1 - 2 kHz for some vocal forwardness, but otherwise has an appropriate amount of eargain to sound present without being overly recessed or strained. It’s a good implementation that helps the midrange create separation from the low-end energy.
There is a warmer tint to the timbre of instruments, more body overall thanks to the lower mids rise and somewhat relaxed 4 kHz region. I hear this most prominently with acoustic guitars, cellos, and piano chords. Snare drums have a noticeable depth when paired with the crack of the skin. Male and female vocals are equally well voiced. The “vocal hump” is effective and I don’t find it adds any sort of nasally-ness or shoutiness here. Nor is there any sibilance beyond the recording.
But I wouldn’t say the Valhalla’s midrange is anything special. Despite not really having anything to complain about, there’s nothing I particularly enjoy about it either. It’s a tuning I’ve heard dozens of times before. That’s neither good nor bad - it feels almost utilitarian.
Treble
The Valhalla’s treble is so close to being great. So close. Unfortunately, there is a large upper treble peak around 12 - 14 kHz that is fairly noticeable with hats and cymbals. It’s one of the reasons why I needed to do so much tip rolling before settling in with the Final Audio Type E tips, and you can see in the graph below how the Type E softens the peak. You’ll have to find the combination that works for you.
The good news is that this peak isn’t painfully sharp. It’s somewhat rounded out at the apex of the note, so it’s still manageable. But it can be distracting when you do notice it. As always, it’ll depend on the mixing and recording of your music. For some tracks, you won’t even notice it if the instruments don’t have any character in that region. For others, maybe it adds in some treble vividity. In the worst case scenario, it’s in-your-face and even perhaps grating. In my library of mostly rock and rock-adjacent tracks, I’d say about 5 - 10% suffers from the worst case scenario.
Presentation
The first few times I listened to the Valhalla, I didn’t find anything particularly noteworthy about its technical presentation. While the bass response and dynamic impact was superb, I wasn’t immediately wow’d in comparison by its resolution or soundstage, for example. But with more ear time over the course of a few weeks, the Valhalla convinced me.
The best way I can describe the Valhalla’s sonic presentation is that it delivers what feels like a very intentional rendition of the mixing engineer’s vision for a track. At least, moreso than many IEMs I’ve heard. The Valhalla makes me imagine myself as the one behind the mixing console. I can hear, understand, and appreciate the decisions made in every passage. Such as how the notes are panned across the soundstage, the level of stage depth chosen for an instrument, or perhaps the slight difference in its positioning adjacent to others. The Valhalla makes me think about how compression effects might have been used to make bass notes pop, or how the engineer would have subtly faded in the choral harmonies.
These examples are what makes the Valhalla a very coherent experience for me. It does a fantastic job of managing the layers in music, and helps me understand the role each instrument is playing at a given moment. Even if I’m not intentionally listening critically, the Valhalla’s presentation keeps me in that analytical mindset as I run through familiar tracks.
Yet despite this praise for the Valhalla, I’m not in love with it. It’s weird. I can’t think of a reason for why I shouldn’t be getting lost in my music with it. Perhaps it’s because I view the Valhalla with almost an academic perspective - this is an IEM I want to listen to music with to get a better grasp of what I’m hearing. The Valhalla is undoubtedly good. I have a very strong appreciation for it. But I can’t seem to fall in love with it the way I have with other IEMs in the past. Once again, I think it’s because of that sense of utilitarianism I get in its tuning.
Comparisons
64 Audio U12t
In many ways, the U12t is the perfect Western analog to the Valhalla. Both IEMs come in at $2,000. Both IEMs are undeniably excellent technical performance. Both IEMs are reasonably well tuned, but without any special sauce in that department. Both IEMs I appreciate more than enjoy (though don’t get me wrong, I still like them).
From a sound perspective, the Valhalla is probably a better choice. The tuning is more engaging than the U12t’s and has better dynamic impact overall. The U12t wins in terms of that sheer sense of resolution and articulation. But the biggest advantage the U12t has over the Valhalla is in terms of fit. The U12t is significantly more comfortable than the Valhalla’s stupidly large shells.
Thieaudio Monarch MKII/III, V16 Divinity, Prestige LTD, and Origin
Let’s go over the other high end Thieaudio offerings quickly. The Valhalla is better than the Monarch MKIII and Prestige LTD without question. Versus the MkII or V16 Divinity, both of those older IEMs sound “cleaner”, though some might call them thin in comparison to the Valhalla’s warmer tone. The treble response is less problematic for me, though the technical presentation is less refined in comparison.
The comparison to the Origin is an interesting one. Like the Valhalla, the Origin has a fantastic bass performance. It’s even thicker and meatier. The Valhalla comes off as punchier and slammier, but this means it doesn’t emphasize depth and physicality the way the Origin does. Part of this is due to the softened treble of the Origin relative to the Valhalla.
I’d take the Origin for slower, better mixed tracks and the Valhalla for music that’s more energetic. The Origin can have a loss of clarity and notes become messy when there’s too much going on in a song. The Valhalla’s technical performance is simply a step above. But take this with more than the usual grains of salt as I hadn’t had as much time with the Origin.
Should You Buy It?
Yes, but I strongly encourage you to try it first or get it from a place where returns are easy. While I said I don’t love the Valhalla, I do think it is the best IEM in their current line-up, and has the potential to be someone’s endgame. The physicality in the bass is satisfying, the tuning is reasonable, and the highly coherent technical presentation is nothing but commendable. $2,000 is a lot of money, but if you're looking at this price range, you know what matters to you.
However, do keep in mind the caveats. The two biggest points of caution are its fit and comfort and the upper treble peak. Tip rolling will be crucial to get the best performance from the Valhalla, and you might have to try it on and off over a few days before settling into its sound. If it still doesn’t feel right, it’s OK to return it. It won’t be for everyone. The Valhalla does almost everything right - whether that adds up to something you'll want to naturally reach for is the question only you can answer.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://headphones.com/blogs/reviews/thieaudio-valhalla-review-slight-affection-genuine-appreciation