Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “These made me question everything – Kiwi Ears Orchestra Lite”.
Kiwi ears is yet another brand to come out of the Chinese high-fi scene, also known as chaii, which, as a white man, I feel a little uncomfortable saying every time I say it. Kiwi ears has sponsored this video and they sent us over a whole Bevy of delicious imem. We got the Dolce, we got the cadenzas, we got the quartets, we got the quintets and we got the orchestra light, which is what we’re going to be looking at today. Now I’ve heard of kiwi ears.
You know people often bring them up in discussions with other companies, but I actually haven’t had an opportunity to listen, listen to Kiwi ears before so. I’M actually pretty excited about this. Today, we’re looking at their Orchestra light imem, which has eight balanced armatures in each headphone.
That’S crazy! For those of you who don’t know a balanced armature is a type of headphone driver. So that’s what makes the sound one way to think about. It is it’s kind of like a diving board, it uh Wiggles up and down like this, and that’s what produces sound as opposed to being like a cone like a typical speaker or a dynamic driver, but that’s not the case for this. This is balanced armatures. All the way down and eight of them, which is kind of crazy to me, because that is a lot of little speakers for some very, very tiny headphones. I’M immediately.
I love these already kiwi ears says that these are made with a medical grade, epoxy resin and that they’re hand soldered and um. I believe it cuz. I don’t know how else a machine would make it in this exact fashion. It’S pretty dang cool.
These are going to be your balance, armatures that are focused on base right at the top. Those two big boys then, along the side. You can see one two three four, it’s kind of tough to see the fourth one of the mid-range drivers, and then you also see that tiny little pair right there, that’s two. Those are going to be handling the treble, that’s so cool. I love that you can see right inside of these.
Oh, I love these so much. These are so cool. We need to see what else is in the Box foam carrying case, which is nice. Something to know about these Orchestra light imem is that there, like a refresh – or I guess, a a different version of the orchestra imem that they’ve already released but they’re at like half of the price or something kiwi ear says that they found a lot of ways To make these more efficiently and on a cheaper budget and they’re trying to pass the savings on to you, but half the price mean half the performance. Well.
Kiwi ears claims that uh. That’S not true that these are going to be just as delightful and wonderful as their Orchestra, iems, which I have not listened to now back to what’s in the bag. So you get a nice custom, handcrafted cable, not the longest, cable um. What the hell was that you br the drawer, I mean to be fair.
It was held on by tape. Uh, it looks like the cable doesn’t have much memory, which means it’s not bouncing back and trying to reform into the coiled ball that was in here elsewhere. In the bin, we have wow a lot of ear tips.
We got ear tips in three different sizes and three different styles, I’m not sure. If there’s any actual difference between the styles of ear tips, they all look pretty similar. One thing I do wish that was included was maybe a set of foam ear tips uh.
I prefer foam ear tips but Sil again what we have to do. Let me grab my favorite pair and uh. Let’S addess them up, I will say that to get the uh three-way crossover of all of these balanced armatures, the nozzle on these has to be quite big and if you’re, somebody with uh small ear, canals Like Yours Truly, these could cause issues for fit. I guess there’s nothing left to do, but take a listen to them.
The nozzle on these are quite large and I can feel it in my ear canal, but I’m still getting a really good seal. My ears are plugged and uh cable noise. Cable noise is actually quite good, there’s still a little bit of like lower vibration on noise, but I think that it’s it’s it’s pretty good from what I’ve heard. It’S not like ringing or really resonating, so good job kiwi ears. One thing that kiwi ears set out to do was create Anem, that’s going to have a sound signature.
That’S going to please a lot of people, they’re, probably going to be doing something like targeting the Harmon curve, which is uh what we base our own uh headphone Target here at lmg on, and I think they’ve probably done a great job at that they’re fun. They have punched base, they’re still rich, and they have a lot of detail in the highs and I think specifically, the way they’ve tuned the highs. It gives it a feeling of space that you don’t get with a lot of headphones, and I find that that Sound Stage really resonates with these imem, and I think that that’s pretty impressive cuz I IM it’s always kind of difficult to make it sound like it’s Bigger than just the head, that’s wearing them.
I think that kiwi ears is actually getting quite a bit out of the eight armatures in here. They have those two base, balance armatures, give it plenty of punch and the uh two treble ones provide actually quite a bit of detail. I would border on maybe a little bit too crispy for my taste, but I’m sure if I uh spent a little bit more time with them. I would probably adapt quite well. It’S definitely not offensive. That’S for sure you might find that these will benefit from like a dedicated, Dak and amp, especially if you’re going for like really critical listening. But if you’re also looking for some versatility allowing you to maybe just take these when you travel, you don’t want to bring a whole proper source with you.
I think you’re also going to be pleased, but that’s my opinion. Let’S take a look at some squiggly lines. Looking at our Labs results, we can see that it does actually follow our curve pretty nicely. I think it’s funny that kiwi ears calls out like a base boost a base bump. But to me it sounds like it follows the Harmon curve pretty well it.
I wouldn’t call it very like boosted, but it definitely has the fun that is typical of a Harmon curve based headphone, and I thought it sounded quite delightful. You might find that there may be a little bit of honk if you’re particularly sensitive to that. That kind of sounds what it is like. It is maybe like horns and trouble section sounds like they more like, but as we go up, we see that the treble looks actually a little bit laidback compared to our Target.
Just in the lower Brilliance region. We see a dip of about 60b around 7K, which might be where I’m finding the dryness is. I think that that dip might be making things sound a little bit less full in the highend and making things sound a little bit more brittle because we have an increase in brilliance for the rest of it. Moving on to noise isolation, you can see that these have a pretty solid atten uation of the high end, which is exactly what you’d expect for earplugs and then, as we get lower down into the base and subbase region, they don’t attenuate so much. This is completely normal.
Usually if you want to get rid of any noise below the kind of like low mids, let’s say 500 HZ you’re going to need to use active noise cancellation which uh these don’t have. They don’t have microphones of any kind. But I found that yeah I got a really solid seal with these and they plugged things up. Hecking, quiet, Bel little to your left. It’S I you guys have to yell. It’S like I’ve, not listened to anything and it’s it’s very plugged.
My ears are very plugged in terms of actual Comfort. I find that the uh the shape, makes them very lovely. It’S a kind, it’s a very common shape that we’ve seen a little bump here, that kind of balances the weight of the earphone. So it doesn’t sit like it doesn’t feel like it’s hanging out of your ear and it Nestles nicely into this part of your ear. There’S a term for it.
I don’t know it, I’m not a scientist and I think that they’re actually pretty comfortable. Assuming that you have the ear canals that are big enough. You can get the Kiwi ears Orchestra light for 250 USD that’s dollars, my friends, and if this is out of your budget, don’t worry. Kiwi ears has got you covered with a whole beverage of Cheaper options that I don’t have time to check out today, but I will be checking out in my own time because I like headphones – and I like you thanks so much for watching and thanks kiwi ears For sponsoring this short circuit, if you like this video well, we have so many more that you can watch.
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