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Showing 1 of 47 conversations about:
TONEKING T88K IEM
strooper
48
Jan 5, 2019
Received mine today from previous drop. Somewhat surprised to find that they have a vent hole. I suppose this makes some sense--the 31618 BAs are themselves vented. But none of the photos for these include the port.
lemonspice
0
Jan 6, 2019
strooperhow are your initial impressions?
strooper
48
Jan 6, 2019
lemonspiceInitial impressions in no real order. Size: bit bigger than I anticipated. My ears will have to get used to them, but I think they can/will. Sound: much more bass than I expected. BA-based iems are often quite bright to my ears. I am careful to avoid models that people describe as highly resolving or bright. The T88ks have extended treble, but not harsh or overstated. The midrange is quite nice--fast, voices are never shouty. The bass is definitely there, much more so than any previous BA iem I've had (various Shures, Campfire Jupiter, Magaosi X3). I'm still deciding if I need to equalize the mid bass downward. I like bass, so I probably won't, but others might find it a bit much.
Overall, I like them a lot. The one thing I keep noticing about them is a bit hard to explain to others, but I'll give it a crack. Most earphones create music that sounds "too cute" to me. Sure, I can hear the edge on a guitar, or the weird harmonics in the crash of a cymbal, but they don't have the "grunt" of floor speakers. I describe this to myself as sounding "toylike", not cheap sounding, but as if the sound is meant for children: sanitized somehow. This might be the result of having less THD for all I know and may be a "good thing." The point is this: the T88ks sound the least toylike of any of my iems. Everything I hear in other earphones is there. Instruments separate nicely, there's depth and width, yada yada. But there's a "heft" as well that makes them sound more live to me.
I don't know about BA-based earphones and break in (what's real, what's conditioning of the listerner), but I've only had these out of the box for three days, albeit listening to them a LOT.
One quick thing: when I first unboxed them, I went straight to my office desktop set-up, a Schiit Magni 3 with a 75-ohm resistor on the 1/8" to 1/4" adapter (so I have a little adjustability on volume with iems, otherwise I can only turn the volume knob a tad above minimum). The T88ks sounded like tinny earbuds and I immediately started regretting shelling out $300+ for them. After 10 minutes of despair, I decided to put them on a balanced cable and run them through my Ibasso DX150. Completely different--they had the full sound I describe above. Went back to the Magni with a regular adaptor (no resistors) and they sounded like they did on the DX150. This suggests that you'll not want to use an Ifi imatch with these--putting resistance between them and the source drastically changes the sound.
UPDATE: The lefthand unit went treble-dead today. Massdrop will refund me. I really hope they offer another drop on these. The more I listened to them the more I liked them. Like I said, there's a realism to them I'm not hearing in my other earphones.
(Edited)
Arielext
11
Jan 18, 2019
strooperWhere is that hole? Can you post a pic?
strooper
48
Jan 19, 2019
ArielextI didn't take a picture and had to return them because the left unit lost treble. But the port was located at a right angle to the MMCX connector. In my ears, it faced pretty much straight up. Do a search for TFZ Secret Garden (the dynamic driver variety). The brass ring you see is the port and my T88k's had one just like that in same place.
Arielext
11
Jan 19, 2019
strooperInsane! I got these last week. No vent!
Did yours have a metal nozzle?
strooper
48
Jan 20, 2019
ArielextNo, they had an acryllic nozzles-same stuff as the body.
UnderTheHill
27
Feb 25, 2019
strooperThe same just happened to mine, but it was the right side. Had them for about three weeks, at first it didn't really click for me as it sounded like just more BAs just for the sake of it (would of rather have them use different types of drivers instead of doubling up / quad up on them per ear to give more nuance), but after about two weeks of burn time, I warmed to their sound, especially with the bass as this was the first IEMs I own where I can actually feel the bass. I would compare it how it sounded at first as if someone just kept adding the same speakers to a system instead of mixing it up for more depth, but it grew on me.
Then on Friday, the right ear, I could barely hear vocals from it. Big thumbs up to Massdrop as they will be issuing a refund once my RMA goes through.
My concern now is that this is the 2nd IEMs I've owned, from two different manufacturers where the Knowles driver has failed. First one (NuForce) failed after 8 months of usage, which NuForce was great and replaced them, now this after 3 weeks. I have the PMV Crescent on order, which also uses Knowles drivers, so hopefully those don't fail too.
I've own many IEMs without Knowles drivers and none of them have failed on me. This includes Westone, Etymotic, UE, Noble, 1MORE, Kinera, TFZ, Klipsch, Magaosi, etc.. and none of them have failed. This was my first foray in more than 5 BAs.
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