Sound QualityHere's where this product really shines. The sound with the gray filter is very detailed and articulate without being strident or harsh. They sounded amazingly clear to me, quite unusually so; they easily handle complex music without confusion. The sound is balanced and very coherent bottom to top, but the bass does lack a little weight to my ears. (This is very typical for an IEM without a bit of extra bass boost.) The black filter does bring a bit of balanced bass heft into the picture, but does cause the midrange to withdraw a bit. The green filter goes a bit farther, and does end up a bit muffled sounding to my ears. With my penchant for a slightly dark sound I preferred the black filter to the gray, but the stellar clarity of the gray filter would probably win me over with acoustic and vocal music. Measurements
I did run a full set of measurements for these headphones with each of the filters. Click to download the full measurement pdf for the gray, black, and green filters.
Fig 1 shows the compensated frequency response I measured for the Audéo PFE with the three different filters installed.
I suspect that slight differences in the seal of the headphones produced the variations seen in the very low bass.
Fig 2 shows the Audéo measurements for the three different filters.
As you can see, other than the slightly different response of the two different measurement systems, the two graphs correspond fairly well. It's so nice to review gear by competent makers.
Fig 3 shows the 300Hz square wave response for the three different filters.
Here you can see quite clearly that the gray filter has a bit of an overshoot, but otherwise quite clean square wave. The highs were certainly very clear and apparent with the gray filters, but were not heard as harsh. The black filter response shows much reduced overshoot and a slight uphill top indicating the reduced treble and slightly warm sound. The green filter response is similar, but with more uphill slope indicating a more muffled sound which was heard in listening.
Summary
Like quick and articulate? Like warm and smooth? Fortunately, the choice is yours with these little chameleons. Not only in terms of the sound character with filter changes, but also in terms of whether or not to accessorize. An Audéo Perfect Bass Earphone with an additional purchase of black and gray filters would satisfy me. But the added cost moving up to the Perfect Fit Earphone with it's nicely complete set of accessories is probably worth while.
There are very few balanced armature headphones in this price range, and to get sound this good you would normally need to spend about $100 more. These little gems look good, are a pleasure to wear, sound absolutely terrific, and are a bargain. They clearly get my solid recommendation.
Websites for Audéo and Phonak.
Head-Fi Review by ClieOS, threads here, here, and here.
A similar and very good, but more expensive, in-ear headphones with tunable filters, the Sleek SA7.
