High-end audio's general dismissal of IEM playback is badly oblivious to what it means growing up with cloud streaming over earbuds and smartphones. Very direct full-bandwidth far more uncoloured sound without room-based bullshit, secret setup formulae, complexity, size and cost are what our hobby's "next and current generation" take for granted. It's how they start – as the first step not last. Our high-end fails to admit that most SpeakerFi badly trails their status quo on clarity, resolution, bandwidth, linearity and accessibility. No wonder that earbuddies who visit shows in hopes of meeting next-level sound routinely pass on speakers. Whilst those do go louder and bigger to perhaps impress a few non-critical adolescents wanting to rock out, observant inner-ear listeners very quickly recognize the truth. Their current IEM bests most of a show's big systems on high fidelity aka the absolute sound. On that score they're mature experts already. That—hello!—is true also for €159 Alba. If I had former Stereophile writer Sam Tellig's trademarked evil laugh, cue it now. What delicious irony. [At right, Meze's Advar which appears to be shaped the same to show how Alba seats in the ear.]
There's more. Just like actually wearable and legible wrist watches must fit a narrow size spec no matter how swish their silly Swiss stickers, so must IEM lest they become ill-fitting protuberances. Where speaker extremists with big rooms can opt for dual 15-inch 4-ways with separate 2m tall subwoofer towers of multiple pairs of force-cancelling woofers per side, IEM drivers must all fit into the same small casing. Whilst one could certainly 3D print an IEM body of some hyper-dense exotic composite one nozzle spurt at a time, weight restrictions quickly intrude. And do tiny drivers create sufficient internal pressure to warrant overkill builds in the first place? Given available real estate and wear, all IEM builders must work in and to the same ultra-confined space. That rather equalizes the field like true socialism. How much of a real not assumed performance delta does this allow when actual loudness needs hit very quick end stops, too? Even a diamond-coated membrane of IEM size won't escalate pricing as wildly as already a 1" tweeter dome does, never mind a midrange. Bling details of platinum plating, mother-of-pearl inlays and fully customized artwork excepted, IEM can only push so far. There's only so much that can be done. Insanities perhaps justified by capacious mansions and rave parties don't apply with this transducer category. The innards and componentry of a €159 Alba are fundamentally no different than those of a €1'590 equivalent; or that of a €15'900 job should it exist. [For argument's sake, this skipped over massively paralleled micro balanced armatures.] The IEM genre's entry level and state of the art sit far closer together than that of loudspeakers or amplifiers whose number and size of drivers, output devices and power specs and bandwidth vary wildly. The upshot must be that Alba-type coin crosses far broader terrain than it would in any other hifi category. It's minimum effort for maximum joy; on multiple levels. Which gets me at basic Alba specifics.
Against my time with Meze's Classic 99, 109 Pro, Liric 2 and first Empyrean models, I anticipated more overt warmth. Perhaps on measurements it's still the same 'house' tuning? Sans reflective gain of circumaural pads, it simply didn't translate. Whilst it wasn't any cool voicing, it struck me as more even-tempered so linear and neutral. Dynamics very obviously compressed more but any sense of a resonant milieu bled off with that signature breathing bore.
Given my love of Raal ribbon headphones and Susvara, I'm not one to miss what I think most people coming from speakers mean by warmth. Rather good riddance. To whatever degree their warmth factors, I consider it bloat, blur, fat, opacity and resolution loss. Alba felt blessedly free from such response and resonance shaping.
Aside from genre-set miniaturization of overall scale, Alba also diluted weight and colour saturation over its over-ear siblings. Shrinkage wasn't just about size but substance. On that material score, I expect €699 Advar to pile on above and beyond to earn its keep.
With an IEM's puny diaphragm so close to our biological membrane, friskiness would go kaput very quickly. As a relative IEM novice, I don't know whether Sennheiser's original HD800 voicing exists for this breed? I already disliked the HD800's hot presence tuning over my ears. I would outright despise it any closer in the ear. With Alba I heard no whiff of forwardness, sharpness or brightness. To my hearing, this happy lack of annoyance didn't mean warmth though, just a general soft focus.
Sub bass on electronica and slam beats on dub and reggae were ace for even showing up. That this LF action also in 4.4mm balanced mode was texturally less damped than I know it to be from flagship kit like Immanis or Binom-ER barely factored in my real-world assessment.
My probably biggest kick came from encountering familiar tunes denuded of overt tuning. It felt as though Alba distilled musical structures down to their essence or true bones whilst making wear and participation super comfortable. As Chuang Tzu said, when the shoe fits the foot is forgotten. It won't be lost on you that just like punters don't give ugly speakers on a shop floor the time of day, headphones won't get much use if they're not forgetfully comfy. That's not the last box to tick on a prospective ownership list. It's the very first. Here Alba was so ahead of my bunch that nothing else mattered the same.
So I shall leave 'V-shaped' this and 'Harman curve offset' that to other commentators who have proper comparative context for this component class. As a devout stationary guy, mobile use for me means the very occasional rusty bench in the yard to catch some rays whilst watching the Shannon river. The other day it meant weeding our large gravel patch off its annual miscreants. They cross the grassy borders without visa to green up the grey pebbly track around the house which during heavy rains prevents the ground from turning to mud.
Without me noticing, Ivette had come out to chat me up. I don't know for how long she stood there talking. When I finally saw her shadow cross my weeds to look up, her mouth moved animatedly. Enjoying the moment from behind my mirrored sunglasses, I waited a bit until I pointed at one ear and pulled Alba out. Ivette hadn't noticed that I'd not heard a thing; nor seen that I wore headphones when the DAP was buried deep in a thigh pocket. Which rather wraps this up with a bow.
Quality budget-friendly IEM like Alba present us with an easy key to an inner musical sanctuary which goes wherever we go. We don't pollute our immediate space with noise which others must suffer. They can't intrude on ours with their own noise. True, at its heart IEM foster egoic anti-social behaviour. We zone out and in to escape into total privacy. In this age of oversharing on social media, privacy is terribly underrated. Yet I hadn't partaken of this miniaturized form of escape 'in public' in a long while. With a silly grin I confess that I really enjoyed it. Though as a review this was rather less critical than many probably hoped for, it's all I got to make it back out while the sun still shines. Says Mick to Paddy, "how did you find the weather on your holiday?" Paddy, "I just went outside and there it was!"
