64 audio U12t - Review day 2
View attachment 276115
View attachment 276118View attachment 276119View attachment 276120View attachment 276121
So I was expecting to wake up and go about my day and in the afternoon try to listen to about 4 albums I know very well to try and test those and give me the chance to get used to their sound signature.
It didn’t took 30 minutes after my morning shower and coffee that I had the IEM in my ear canals but this time with a different ear tip, the big open one .
So I pulled them out of the leather puck set them up and connected them to my Universal Audio Apollo Twin-X headphone amp.
I started by listening to the album
Where we come from by
Popcaan. An album I must have played from beginning to end about a 100 time in my life.
“Hold on” started very smoothly and I was really not overwhelmed by the bass this time and I let it go without really paying attention. Good vibe and nothing was bothering me. I was still half asleep I guess.
Then when “Everything nice” started, I instantly noticed a lot of Air and brilliance which really caught my attention as yesterday it was completely absent.
I started to actually pay attention at that point and I instantly noticed that the overwhelming bass and sub frequencies were gone and almost nowhere to be seen like the presence was yesterday.
That got me extra confused and started playing with my gain knob on the Twin-X. Cranked it up at Party level and noticed that the bass and sub frequencies stayed very shy but that the whole mid came all the way up front. Still the mid highs stayed very polite and the presence stayed shy. No sparkle. But to be fair, it’s not something I’m after on that specific album.
I kept on paying attention and obviously brought the level back to a very conservative level to see what was up with the dynamic range that the drivers would reproduce and still, it was pretty flat. I did notice that the stereo field kind of opened and got a good chunk deeper. When “The System” synth line started I noticed that the stereo field also got a lot more defined. It was not about a laser beam centre and a full right and full left anymore. There was some contrast appearing.
When “Hustle” with Pusha T started I thought, let’s see how those IEM fair with ultra low sub frequency bass line from this bass sweep so I decided to crank it up but every single kick drum hit started to distort but not like if the driver was cramping but like if the sample itself sounded like crap. So I skipped the song confused and the same phenomena happened on “Waiting so long”.
So I decided to search for
Dr Dre - Chronic 2001 and put on Still Dre and again, a weird distorted kick appeared. At the point I started to play with the cable and adapter as it made no sense whatsoever. Well, another surprise appeared, the whole centre position of the sound-stage completely disappeared leaving me with only the instrumental with a few percussion and no kick nor snare and obviously no vocals hahaha. It’s at that point I started to understand that I had a cable issue. So I played with the cable from top to bottom , left and right , front to back. Yeah, there it was , the cable was radically changing the sound width, depth but also tonal balance .
I was a bit scared that I had an issue with my headphone amp output so I connected my beloved AKG Q701 and there was no issue at all. Played with the connector to make sure it was not an output problem and nothing. Not a single creaking.
Plugged back the U12t in its full metal adapter and noticed that it was kind of loose. Not enough to pull it out without pressure but just enough to feel like I could move it through the adapter Input.
So I plugged them back to the Twin-X and played the latest
Gang Starr - Family and Loyalty but also the good old
Above the clouds. and they both had that weird distorting kick. If you know Gang Starr, the distorting kick sound I'm describing sound like the one in
You know my steez.
At that point it was clear that I was not only experiencing some technical issue but that in all of that, my ear was getting used to the IEM’s.
I put back “Chan Chan” by Buena Vista Social Club and realized that something had clearly changed.
Same thing on “Is This Love” by Bob Marley.
No more overwhelming bass nor sub frequencies.
So for not totally ruining my experience I decided to put them aside for the rest of the day as tomorrow there’s a little Santa Claus gift coming in.
A Brand new cable from Moon Audio. Precisely, a 2 pin at 0.78 spacing terminated with a 1/4 TRS jack. So no more disgusting adapter and one less thing to worry about.
Let’s hope that tomorrow will be the day for the U12t because if they don’t start to deliver, I’ll have to start to think about asking him to resign and go back playing in the high school yard .
I still keep hope. I heard some very promising things today through all those issues.
Fingers crossed.