The gentleman's helmet. Let Google translate a French headfi review into English. Routinely casque à écouteurs will render as helmet. I find that hilarious. Some of the contraptions we're supposed to wear for musical pleasure do indeed resemble pugilistic protectors; and weigh accordingly. On that score the Binom-ER's thinness, lightness and elegance render it a gentleman's helmet, no cufflinks required. By executing his slider adjustments magnetically, Oleh avoids visible click stops which the next photo shows with Raal 1995's Magna. The only minor issue I encountered was an occasional chamber resonance when sustained bass tones rode a trigger frequency. This manifested exactly like a narrow-band room mode will with loudspeakers. When I told Oleh, he'd just become aware of it the day prior. Apparently Alcantara's thickness varies slightly with colour. Sorting his memory foam for acoustic permeability on his own jig when batches from the same supplier vary greatly in density, he had strategically combined foam of the correct value with his darker olive Alcantara which is approximately 68% polyester, 32% polyurethane. He'd not tested my light grey pads acoustically because he'd not yet learnt that their faux-leather wrap's thickness differs enough to influence their behaviour. To confirm that our observations matched, he now sent me a pair of Basic and Classic pads in the darker olive which he knew to work to spec. If those cancelled my chamber resonance observation as expected, he already knew how to match the thicker grey wrap to the correct foam transmissibility. I mention this for two reasons. 1, our Ukrainian expat has embraced Germanic perfectionism at a very high pitch. 2, headphone tuning is a far darker art than we might suspect. This becomes hyper critical with minimal venting. It traps pressurized air in the sealed chamber to cause invisible reflections, turbulence and modes which must be managed with pad geometry, foam density and perf pattern. Oleh is keenly aware of this management. He simply complicated it for himself by first adding a silver finish beyond his original black, then two different pad colours to accompany the new natural aluminium look. No good deed does unpunished go.

Being the recipient of Oleh's next good deed, it's time to report that swapping pads is far fiddlier than Meze's magnetized jobs. It's the one aspect I disliked. Granted, once we've worked our way through the three options to imply three or at the most four rounds, we won't be doing it again until we've worn out our favourite set. So this is a champagne not potatoes problem. Bottoms up. Onto achromatopsia i.e. color blindness. Or rather not. The darker Classic pads instantly banished my standing wave—poof—and lightened up the general bass balance. Cruising through my favourite electronica and DnB folders, this tracked consistently to remove my one point of sonic critique. What a difference a fractional millimetre of Alcantara can make. Wicked!

This segues straight into the final stretch before the chequered flags. The 2024 Binom-ER strikes me as the perfect love child—only blessed no botched genes—from passionate sex between D-8000 & Susvara. From Final it inherits fruity tone and bass mass. From HifiMan it wins superior damping and articulation. This selective distillate of two premium genre examples marks it a kind of next-level 'idealized' isodynamic. It's vital to stress that this doesn't vacate the planarmagnetic profile in an attempt to clone another transducer type or create a hybrid. The expected strengths of big tone and heavy bass are present albeit refined to feel expertly balanced against resolution and enunciation. Still above and beyond that the Binom-ER adds friendly benefits of virtually sealed behaviour for self-contained tune fests that don't spill outward, mobile-friendly drive, light wear and superlative finishing.

The title track from the Vangelis Katsoulis Through the Dark album shown on FiiO's display above is a prime example for ER's low-frequency power and blackness. The bass roars yet stays battened down around the edges like a fully wind-filled short sail without any slacking patches. The Fusion Monster album by Arkin Allen combines rapid synth beats over droning pedals to challenge brisk stoppage against sustained power. Now ER sailed through such juxtapositions without being caught in any turbulence. Jamshied Sharifi's quasi desert soundtrack of One with "Dafur is Burning" was more evidence that ER is equal to big cinematic drums without losing its composure. Ditto Hans Zimmer's The Dune Sketchbook. As things scaled and then scaled up again, flashing back on how small these actual driver openings are felt like a mind-stopping Zen koan. My best attempt at diffusing its dichotomy envisioned strategically funneled air which exits highly pressurized so firm not fuzzy, accelerated not lazy. This could be nonsense but if so, still reflects a valid observation. This posh hifi helmet makes big authoritative sound. It may not weigh very much but really loads up the scales with rich dense tone colours of fully saturated black values. Where it exceeds others in this discipline is bolting on pace, rhythm and timing from expert damping. It's how the fruity, fleshy and firm coexist.