Here we see the Alba pack unpacked. Due to being bijou of size yet super shapely and light, in the ear canal she proved anything but an albatross.
The mounted medium tips were a perfect fit. Other than the plugged sensation per se, I quickly forgot about wearing in-ears. As a mostly stationary listener, I rarely use IEM though I collected a few along the way. All of them are bigger and heavier so far more prone to eventual detachment to need reseating. Right off Alba felt ergonomically far more sound so comfortable.
On my Shanling, low gain at 30 equalled usual SPL. I had enough headroom to blast myself to the pearly gates deaf as an octopus. With comfort and sensitivity ticked off, time to get critical.
For size, this pole picture shows two Campfire Audio angular metal-body IEM bracketing HifiMan's gold-body old flagship. Again, shallower lighter Alba exerted the least lateral pull and wore the most flush. Her wire harness is about twice as thick as Ken Ball's angel hair and still thicker than Fang Bian's rubbery leash. On porta premiums, both Campfires carried off in sheepskin-lined zippered hard pouches with a little cleaning brush. The HifiMan stowed away in a small metal can like a hole-less donut. You already saw Alba's zippered white oval. Unlike Ken Ball's freely rotating MMCX connectors, Alba's 2-pin jobs are fixed but don't lock. The red cable mark identifies channels at a glance and because the cable won't turn, there's no doubt about insertion orientation. Since the permanently curved cable ends obviously run behind our ears, there's only one and very obvious way to seat these. On comfort, Alba kicked my aged bunch to the curb in an easy demo of soft girl power. As I'm no IEM expert but rather a type aghast that this miniaturization works at all never mind so well, I'll report on Alba sound as a quasi newbie who arrives from big stationary kit. Let's skip the obvious walkabout, invisibility, price and smartphone drive angles and talk purely acoustic experience. What's gained, what's lost?
If we skip big multi-way horns, widebanders with directional bass systems are probably speakerdom's most likely candidates for headfi-reminiscent speed and directness. Against them, open-backed circumaural dynamic headphones still amplify those qualities. In trade they shrink stage width and mostly flatline true depth layering. Gains in immediacy, resolution and often LF bandwidth go hand in hand with miniaturizing the sensory experience. Next come speakerfi's spatial and tonal moving targets. How wide and free from boundaries we place our speakers massively impacts how they stage and balance out tonally. And that's before our room dimensions and hard boundaries intrude with standing waves, reflections and their serious impact on the amplitude and time domains. Compared to that gratuitous 'remastering', headphones purify playback not just from room toxicity. Head width and how far pad thickness places diaphragms fixes lateral soundstage expanse. There's no moving target. With a headfi stage, the wealthy chap in the enormous ball room has no edge over us in the closet beneath the stairs. True, strategic tricks like AKG's turned-out K1000 or the frontal leakage zones of Raal's Magna & Immanis injecting acoustic crossfeed somewhat eclipse skull width; but only to a degree. Compared to over-ears, IEM get even more unembellished. The experience scales back once more to arguably focus most intensely on what's actually recorded. IEM create the most abstract, stripped-back intimate and brain-implant-direct playback venue. It's the most intensely private sound bubble with the least distance between us and our music. There's no need to close eyes to shut out the world. Eyes wide open, inner sounds remain super present, the constant din of modern life locked out. It's why outdoors IEM listeners seem so oblivious to their surroundings. Unless they run sufficiently faint levels to dilute its presence, their in-head soundtrack overshadows all. If we want a musical trip not drug induced, IEM seem to be the premium pills, period.
