Fit Ear is a Japanese headphone manufacturer. They make pricey custom In Ear Monitors (IEM's, for short, a fancy word for earphone) for anyone who can afford to shell out nearly $2000USD for a pair. By custom, I don't mean you get to choose what colour they are, I mean the IEM will be custom molded to perfectly fit your inner ear. This has a few advantages with the two most prominent being comfort and acoustic isolation (or how well they block out external noise). Some people will also claim that the custom mold will improve sound quality by directly injecting the sound into your ear without any interference from tips and less interference with external noise masking details in certain frequencies, where isolation also aids in hearing protection.
Now custom IEM's are all good and fine
but in order to get one you need to get impressions of your inner ear
done by Fit Ear. This is a process where silicone goo is injected
deep inside your ear all the way out to your pinna and solidifies,
after which it is wiggled out and can thereafter be used to create a
mold of your ear canal. Most audiologists are qualified to do this
simple procedure however Fit Ear, being the perfectionists they are require
that their customers must have their impressions done by Fit Ear at
the Tokyo Fit Ear office headquarters, an establishment that
moonlights as a dental surgery. That means if you want Fit Ear IEM's
and don't live in Japan, you're shit out of luck. Or are you?
Enter the Fit Ear To Go! 334. It is a
universal IEM adapted from the Fit Ear custom MH334, the MH standing
for Mitsuharu Harada, the mastering engineer who tuned this model
(fun fact, the Fit Ear MH334 costs 147,000 yen, equal to $1,639.95USD
at the time of writing). Being universal in nature means that
customers are not required to make a trip to the Tokyo Fit Ear office
in order to purchase this IEM. Anyone worldwide can now purchase a
pair online for the low price of $1,349USD plus shipping. Yep...
So what do you get for your money? Here's a list:
1 pair of Fit Ear TG!334's containing 4
balanced armature drivers (the things that make sound)
1 detachable cable
1 Pelican 1010 hard case
1 soft carrying pouch
1 cleaning brush
4 set of ear tips
12 month warranty
A pretty spartan list of accessories,
if you consider the price involved.
So why do they cost so much?
Hand made construction of a solid
acrylic unit, mainly. Each unit is formed by hand lacquering the
drivers into place until the unit takes it's final shape. This
differs from other IEM and custom IEM manufacturers who simply glue
drivers inside a hollow shell that is prone to cracking, crushing,
resonance and driver rattle. Your result is an IEM with solid build
quality. Other things that may contribute to cost besides this
lengthy labour process are the cost of parts (for example, use of
expensive Oyaide 3.5mm TRS terminations – in other words the plug
end of your headphones you stick into your iPod), profit, Mitsuharu
Harada's royalties (purely my speculation), profit and the perceived
value of their sound quality.
What do I mean by 'perceived value of their sound quality'?
In the silly world of audiophilia, a
headphone is judged by how good it sounds to no ones surprise. The
better a headphone sounds, the more demand for the headphone and
thus, as market values state, the more demand you have, the more you
can justify selling the product at a higher price. Take, for example,
the Stax SR-009 Electrostatic headphones. They apparently sound
really good. I've never heard them before but how do I know they
sound good? Because they cost $5,250USD. In addition to
costing around $5,250 they require a special electrostatic amplifier
that can cost up to the same amount. $10,000 for a headphone system.
And how do I know this sounds good? Because people buy them. They buy
the shit out of them. They hear them once and sell all the rest of
their collection to afford them (if they earn an average joe's wage).
Their sound quality is perceived to be worth their high asking price.
Another good example of headphones
being sold at market value are the Audeze LCD-2 planar magnetic
headphones (I've heard these ones) and their LCD-3 planar magnetic
big brother model. One important fact about these two headphones is
that they look very similar. In fact, barring minor colour
differences, they look identical. The LCD-2's sound great. They also
cost $995USD. Now the LCD-3 sound pretty good too. They maybe sound
20% - 30% better than the LCD-2's, in this humble reviewers opinion.
The LCD-3's cost $1,945USD. Why the doubling in price? Profit. Welcome to the reality of diminishing returns, where the higher priced a product is, the lower the performance return for your dollar (price/performance ratio). The
fact is that people are willing to pay that much more for a slightly
better sounding LCD-2. I speculate that Audeze could easily sell the
LCD-2 for $500 and still make a respectable profit (my guess being they cost around $250 - $300 to manufacture).
Considering their remarkably similar appearance, I would hazard a
guess that the LCD-3 costs around the same to make and that the
majority of the sound quality increase comes down to technological
improvements, despite what the manufacturer wants you to think. It's their sound quality and the lack of lower priced,
better sounding alternative that justifies their sale price.
So how do the TG!334's sound?
Pretty good.
Can you elaborate on that?
Indeed. But first, I'd like explain how
we all hear things differently.
Our ears hear by channelling sound
waves (technically defined as an audible mechanical disturbance of
air that oscillates in pressure) via our pinna (the visible outer
part everyone thinks of when you say 'ear') into our ear canal where
it hits our ear drums. The ear drum, being an air tight flap of skin,
vibrates at the same frequency as the sound wave and transmits this
vibration to the ossicles (the three smallest bones in the human
body) which amplify the vibration to the cochlea. The cochlea (my
favourite part) is a spiral shaped, fluid filled tube filled with
little hairs that respond to the vibrations by firing electricity on
the auditory nerve, which transmits information on the
spatial-temporal nature of the vibrations to the brainstem which
interprets the resulting firing of electricity as the sound we hear!
Sound waves of a higher frequency get interpreted as being higher in
pitch and sound waves of a lower frequency get interpreted as being
lower in pitch.
(and who said our world isn't amazing?)
Now some may know that as we get older
we become insensitive to higher frequencies. This is why high pitched
ringtones exist that claim only teenagers are able to hear them. On
the other hand, we also become more sensitive to lower frequencies as
we age. Now you know why retirees complain so much about bassy house
parties – the bass is much more prominent and thus distracting for
them than it is for the youngsters partying amongst the music.
This interesting little tidbit means
that older people are more likely to find treble heavy, bass light
headphones as sounding balanced, and youngsters finding the opposite
to be true. A humorous example of this is during the point-of-view
scene in the movie Risky Business with Tom Cruise. Whilst his parents
are away, Tom Cruises characters plays music and dances around in his
underwear in the classic 80's scene. Afterwards his parents return
and his father scolds him on changing his equaliser setting. Pay
attention to the equaliser setting. Young Tom Cruise thinks a bassy
equaliser setting sounds good, his older father thinks a bass light,
treble focused sound signature sounds better. Your age very much
influences your audiophile preference.
The fact is that everyone’s
physiology is unique (barring identical twins) means that everyone
will hear differently based on how their pinna reflects and channels
sound waves or how wide or long their ear canal is or how much
hearing damage has been sustained by the individual. My hearing will
no doubt differ from yours. How much and to what degree, of course,
is the million dollar question.
Next comes the art of sound
reproduction. This is a field mainly based of electrical engineering
with a dabble of acoustics and a splash of sound engineering. My
equipment may produce different results from your equipment. If I
change my amplifier to one with a different output impedance
specification, the sound produced at the end of the line from the
same headphones may be different than what it was before. If I use a
different driver technology to reproduce sound, I will also get
varied results. Planar magnetic drivers are talented at reproducing
great bass, electrostatic drivers reproduce details with reported
ease with their excellent attack and decay performance, each type of
driver technology has it's unique set of abilities.
With this in mind, let me proceed.
So how do the Fit Ear TG!334's sound?
If I had to use one word, it would be
'uncompromising'. With other headphones I find that the biggest issue
is finding a headphone that performs adequately without any flaws.
Whether it be a deep notch on the upper midrange (like the cheap
Monoprice 8320 IEM's), horribly distorted bass heavy sound signatures
(like the infamous Dr Dre Beats) or an overly bright general
presentation (like the Sennheiser HD800's), each headphone usually
has it's strengths and weaknesses, depending on their technology, on
how they were tuned, on their construction, damping, delivery
mechanism (tips or pads). The TG!334's sound detailed yet inoffensive
to me. They reproduce music transparently which is a rare strength in
my experience. Some examples of transparent behaviour include the
ability to produce solid, enveloping bass for a track that calls for
it and the ability to produce soft, background ambient bass of a
completely different nature and timbre for a track that was mastered
that way. A transparent transducer will reproduce the signal as it
receives it without colouring it with it's own flaws or
idiosyncrasies. Every track will sound like completely like itself
with TG!334's. You'll listen to the music and not the headphones.
One aspect of the TG!334's I admire is
its ability to reproduce kick drum frequencies. The TG!334's utilise
balanced armature drivers which are very small. Being small means
that they are usually unable to mechanical disturb enough air to
create sound waves of every frequency at a sufficient amplitude. To
rectify this most balanced armature headphones must be sealed into
the ear so that the effect of moving air can be maximised within the
seal cavity. Lose the seal and you'll lose most of the bass. My
previous pair of quad balanced armature IEM's were the Westone 4's,
which I sold after a year of owning simply because they couldn't
output enough bass (due to tuning, and not because they couldn't
maintain a seal). For an older person, they may have sounded perfect
but again age plays a factor and I am young enough to yearn for a
little more bass to even things out. Now the Westone 4's sounded
great in the treble and midrange. Bass sounded very detailed and I
was impressed with their ability to reproduce the timbre of an
acoustic bass string. But the quantity was insufficient. I'd boost
all bass and lower mid range frequencies to the point of clipping and
still be yearning for more bass. The TG!334 on the other hand
reproduces all details and timbres of all frequencies in all the
sufficient quantities that I require, thanks to their tuning. Boom, slam, wobble and bam, all present. And yet the TG!334's
sound balanced and present the music how it's recorded. Kick drums
sound visceral and palpable, piano timbres sound natural, guitars are
detailed enough to guess the age and brand of the strings being used
and vocals sound spookily realistic... as if I were vocalising those
sounds in my head instead of my vocal chords.
The TG!334's also image very well for
IEM's. IEM's are disadvantaged in the world of headphones because
they bypass the pinna which reflects sound waves towards our ears in
a certain way. We are all used to hearing sound with our pinna as
part of the process. Taking it out of the process can have the effect
of detracting from a natural or realistic sound stage with less
precise points of spatial reference. Whilst the TG!334's would sound
better as a full sized headphone, they are thankfully tuned well
enough to still have very impressive imaging abilities.
So is it worth the price?
Objectively speaking, the Fit Ear
TG!334 sounds very good. Whether or not it's worth the price depends
on the consumer. Lets take a look at the rest of the package.
The build quality of the IEM's is
great. The body is smooth with no sharp edges which is how it should
be however it is also quite chunky in size. This is no problem for my
ears but causes my girlfriends little ears to hate them. I'm sure the
body size could be made more discreet so that's a downside.
The silicone tips included are
disappointing. The smallest tip is the only one I use now. If I smile
hard I lose a seal and thus the bass. If I use the medium tips I feel
like I'm literally plugging up my ear canals. It reminds me a lot of
anal training kits they stock at sex shops in the way that I feel
they're stretching and training my ears to accept a bigger tip.
Uncomfortable to say the least. The large tips I didn't bother with
and the bi-flange tips... well, if the medium is a training kit, the
bi-flange is like trying the real thing to these ears.
The connection of the cable to the body
is firm and solid. The two prongs click in with a satisfying amount
of confidence. It's a little detail that matters.
The cable itself however is a pain in
the arse. The memory wire aspect directly next to the two pronged
connector is fine, however the length of the whole cable is too
microphonic and is too stiff for a product of this price (by
microphonic, I mean I can hear every contact the cable makes with
something – every tap, rub and bounce is transmitted to my ears
through the solid acrylic headphone body and interferes with the
music. It doesn't happen often, but it's annoying when it does). A
product of this price range should include a transparent cable that
has a consistency of thin rope that isn't microphonic. If price was
not considered I would only be subtly iffed by the cable. Its a good
enough cable that does what it's meant to. However the price demanded
for these headphones means I'm going to criticise every flaw
ferociously. It better be perfect at this price.
The Oyaide cable plug (remember, it's
called a 3.5mm or 1/8” TRS termination) is solid. Oyaide is an
expensive brand (I speculate it's because they're meant to be good)
and the plug seems fine to me however I would prefer a 45 degree
angle plug instead of the straight plug for better ergonomics whilst
it's plugged into your audio player. I do have a little nitpick
though. The barrel can be easily unscrewed from the tip. How do I
know this? Due to the stiffness of the cable, it has a tendency to
spiral around and out if it isn't straight. To fix this irksome issue
I twist the plug while it's in my mp3 player around till the cable is
straight to get rid of the spiralling. Most times I try this I just
start to unscrew the barrel from the plug. How annoying. I wouldn't
mind this aspect so much if the cable was more flexible. Or if the
headphones didn't cost as much as a used car.
The hard Pelican 1010 case is awesome,
in a word. It's simple but works. Its hard enough on the outside to
protect it even in the case of being run over by a car, has plentiful
rubber padding inside to absorb shock and keep the IEM's fastened in
place and has a secure but easy to use clasp to keep the case closed.
It also has a carabineer but I don't see any immediate use for it,
unless I buy a bag with hoops inside it. I'm certainly not going to
bounce $1.4 grand headphones around on my belt. It could come in
handy if I had to travel and wanted to make sure the Fit Ear case
didn't move from where I wanted it to be in my bag but I don't think that'll be a likely scenario.
What can I say about the soft carrying
case? It's soft? You can close the opening by tightening the
fastener? Nonetheless, it's handy for keeping the headphones in place
inside the hard case, making sure they don't bounce around.
The cleaning tool I've never needed to
use. I'm not an ear wax factory. I guess others could find it useful
but it's not helping justify the price here.
That's it for accessories. Besides the
hard case, it's pretty disappointing.
For a $1.4 grand product, the 12 month
warranty is pathetic. Not worth mentioning to be honest. Sure, it's
good to have in case your IEM's fuck up within the first 12 months
but it's such a minimal amount for something in this price range.
Completely laughable. In comparison, iBasso's DX100 (which is a
Digital Audio Player) costs $829 and also comes with a 1 year
warranty, but it also comes with 10 years of free labour! Yes, that's
right. 10 years of free labour. That's more like it. Have you heard
of KOSS? They make a few popular headphones. They all comes with a
lifetime warranty. Yes, a lifetime warranty. Send your KOSS product
in at any time and they'll send you a working product in return. This
is a company that makes anything from earbuds starting at $4.99 to
electrostatic full sized headphones costing $999. Life time warranty
for all. 12 months is incredibly measly for such an expensive IEM.
So would you recommend them?
It depends on the person. Are you a
millionare? Then I'd say go for it. Are you a hardcore audiophile
who's tried them and find that they are to your taste? I'd say you
could be satisfied with them, if you had the funds to upgrade the cable and tips for better comfort. To your average joe, I'd say you could
find something that sounds nearly as good for much, much, much less.
You might not get the same level of build or sound quality, but you
could buy many many pairs instead. How important is build quality or
sound quality for you? Is it worth $1.4 grand?
The Fit Ear TG!334's sound great. They
do. But for me to fully recommend them at this current price Fit Ear
would need to supply a better, more flexible, less microphonic cable
(such as the SPC Sunrise cables supplied by BTG Audio – look how
affordable they are! Especially in comparison with Fit Ear's
expensive 'upgraded' 000 cable), supply a wider and more varied range
of tips including foam tips and silicone covered foam tips and, most
especially, provide a warranty befitting a product of this calibre.
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