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Chi-fi tuning – Why it sounds piercing to Western ears (2020)

• krispyfi 2y ago
  > If you have ever heard Mainland Chinese recordings dated back 30-40 years ago, they were shouty, harsh and ear-piercing (plenty examples on YouTube). Sounds interesting, but I don't know what search terms to use. Does anyone have any representative examples?
  • cyp0633 2y ago
    Not in 80s or 90s, but 大海航行靠舵手 could be an example in my opinion. Songs in Mainland has been influenced by HK and Taiwan a lot since about 1980
• djtango 2y ago
  I bought a pair of BLON earbuds as my backup set that I keep in my bag so I've always got a set. Am very happy with the sound quality and thought they were fantastic value for money
• junaru 2y ago
  Got a pair of TIN HiFi T2 - failed within a year. Got a pair of Moondrop SSR - failed within a year. Got a pair of Apple earpods - works for two years without issues for a fraction of the price. I'm done with the Chinese IEM meme.
  • spinningarrow 2y ago
    I’ve never tried any of the Chi-Fi brands so I’m not saying this to favor them but: my Apple AirPods Pro have had issues too - uneven battery usage so one earpiece would discharge before the other, and hissing during quiet passages. Tried them for a week or two and then returned them.
    • junaru 2y ago
      Hissing most likely comes from media, unequal discharge rate is legit problem. I'm not an apple fan but when it comes to reliability major brands at least do some product design and quality checks, meanwhile most chi-fi IEMs have options for MMCX connectors that are entirely unsuitable for the use case and should have been shot down during the design phase, but hey - "the more options the better". P.S. For anyone thinking i bash just because of China or western audiophile superiority - no i just got burned by articles like this and crinnancle reviews twice and sharing my experience.
      • spinningarrow 2y ago
        > Hissing most likely comes from media Not when there is no media playing. This was back when the first Pros came out and when I googled it, there were a lot of reports of the same issue. I say all this as a generally-happy Apple product consumer btw - and of course, there are many people who don’t experience these issues. But that goes for the Chi-Fi brands as well, since we’re ultimately talking about quality control.
      • userbinator 2y ago
        meanwhile most chi-fi IEMs have options for MMCX connectors that are entirely unsuitable for the use case It seems they're far more common to have a 2-pin connector now instead of MMCX.
    • adzm 2y ago
      The hissing is almost certainly an issue with either the transparency or noise cancellation features
      • ryukoposting 2y ago
        My Samsungs didn't hiss due to their implementation of those features (although they died after about 9 months of regular use)
    • cameronh90 2y ago
      Hissing is _usually_ something to do with the noise cancellation. In my case it was that the microphones were dirty.
  • Demiurge 2y ago
    That's nice anecdata. Got a pair of FiiO earbuds - works after 5 years Got a pair of Skullcandy earbuds - failed within a month Got a pair of Sony WF-1000XM5 - failed within a year Got a pair of AirPod Pro2 - works after 2 years Got a pair of Beat Fit Pro - failed within a year Got a pair of Moondrop Blessing 2 - works after 2 years I can keep going for a while. Aren't all of these assembled in China? The Chinese meme strong is strong with us.
    • snakeyjake 2y ago
      >Aren't all of these assembled in China? Some Airpods are manufactured in Vietnam.
    • Clamchop 2y ago
      Manufactured in China to a specification. No anti-Chinese goods sentiment here, just agreement that provenance isn't much of an indicator of anything on its own. But I'd expect Apple above any other to have things buttoned down.
• matthewmorgan 2y ago
  I once saw a YouTube a short clip of some kind of Chinese street music / singing performed by old men. It was ear piercing and weird and also strangely fascinating. I'll never be able to find it again
  • m-i-l 2y ago
    My children were given a soft toy a few years back from a relative who had bought it from a Chinese street market while on holiday in China. When it was switched on it jumped about frantically and sang a very loud and shrill song. Not 100% sure which language it was, but it is entirely possible it was some form of Chinese street music, and certainly fits the article's description of "Mainland Chinese recordings" as "shouty, harsh and ear-piercing". Normally my children love things that adults find annoying, but even they were afraid of this one.
  • pjc50 2y ago
    Chinese music is tuned to a different scale to western music, so it all sounds "weird" even if it's not objectively high frequency or loud.
  • AlanYx 2y ago
    Chinese folk music does often tend towards higher pitches than western folk music. Some of it is related to influence of the ranges of traditional instruments (e.g., the erhu and pipa), some of it is perceptual relating to the pentatonic scale, and a big part of it is cultural.
  • readthenotes1 2y ago
    "The idea is high-pitched sound brings attention and awareness effectively. " I was in a restaurant in a small town outside of Shanghai years ago when an old lady came to regale us with her singing accompanied by a one-string stick sort of violin. It was unbearable. Her high pitched voice was weak Waverly and shrill and that one string violin was piercing and offsetting. I mentioned that I would be willing to pay to send the person away and one of my young Chinese dinner companions said "me too"
• codeflo 2y ago
  [flagged]
  • isoprophlex 2y ago
    Not bowing down to propaganda terms du jour is probably very bad for his business...
    • seabass-labrax 2y ago
      If you are doing business in China, it probably does make a difference. Yet, the author claims to be in Singapore, so going out of their way to explicitly equate Hong Kong and Taiwan as 'territories' is a bit provocative. Of course, the Taiwanese government does indeed consider the island as a territory of 'China' (which they claim to rule) so it's not wrong either!
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• ipsum2 2y ago
  This article is very out of date and irrelevant now. The Chi-fi market has changed drastically in the last 4 years. You can get very neutral sounding IEMs from China now, V-shaped, U-shaped, sparkly, heavy bass, etc. One of the best-sounding, lowest distortion I've tried is also the cheapest, the Truthear Zero 2, available on Amazon for $25. If you're interested in scientific measurements of the IEM, AudioScienceReview has it covered: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/7hz-x-crinacle-zero-2-iem-review.50534/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/7...
  • Demiurge 2y ago
    I agree, this is a bit out of date, and more on the sub 15$ side of things, as far as the past few years are go. I love Moondrop products, they don't have anything like a piercing treble. Love my Moondrop x Dusk, Blessing 2, and just got wireless MOCAs, which beat AirPod Pro 2 for sound quality, for a third of the price. I remember 10-15 years ago, it was impossible to find affordable IEMs that had decent quality, and Etymotic HF2 were like the first revelation, that hey, this is possible with an iPhone compatible mic. But, things have really changed, definitely thanks to the Chi-fi explosion.
    • Workaccount2 2y ago
      I tell people that it is impossible to be the worlds manufacturer for 30 years and not get incredibly good at making things.
  • rgarber11 2y ago
    Mild nitpick, but the 7Hz x Crinacle Zero:2 and the Truthear Zeros are actually different headphone lines. The Truthear version is more in the 50-60 dollar range, with Harman Earphone target tuning. A second version with different tuning, the Truthear x Crinacle Zero:RED also exists.
    • ipsum2 2y ago
      You're right, I was referring to the former but got mixed up with the different Zeros.
• ofalkaed 2y ago
  The bass heavy tendency of western consumer grade headphones/speakers is tuned for western pop music and does not sound very good with much else, some of the non-western pop traditions are not bad. Headphones/speakers with a flat response will sound lacking in bass but will not sound piercing with sources which were not mixed with bass heavy systems in mind and will play better with EQ. While flat may lack the deep powerful bass you will get used to it and you will be able to hear everything else in the track better, including the bass. The way they get that deep powerful bass is not just by increasing the bass, that would leave everything outside of the bass too quite in comparison, they also put dips in the frequency response to accentuate the bass. These dips work fairly well as long as the instruments are fairly consistent in their ranges which is quite regular in western pop, everything is essential a bass, a guitar and vocals even when they are not and you have 10 instruments in the mix, everyone sticks to the various ranges which sound right and the engineer (assuming they are good) fudges things with the mixing. But the dips come at a cost, you lose detail.
  • SSLy 2y ago
    quiet*
  • namaria 2y ago
    If music sounds off in your flat response audio reproduction system, it's a poor mix or poor compression. A lossless version of a professional and well done mix always sounds amazing on my flat response system.
    • Demiurge 2y ago
      i agree, I feel the same with my studio monitors in my home office. The issue seems to be that flat frequency response with a full range is extremely hard to achieve with IEMs, there is something to the room and distance transfer function that is missing to IEMs, and even headphones. Thats why you're not supposed to mix on your headphones. You can master some in headphones, if you know how they compare to a room, but not in any IEMs I know of, but mixing exclusively in headphones is considered a no-no by all professionals.
  • 2y ago
• boomskats 2y ago
  This is an interesting read but it is also a little bit sensationalist (for the intended audience anyway). It's true that that that market is so big now that manufacturers are looking for gaps in taste by trying loads of stuff - look at sites like squig.link and you'll see how much variety there is. But I don't think it's anywhere near as culturally driven as that. I think it's simply that high end detail used to be considered the main indicator of consumer grade audio 'quality', so that's what they all tooled up for back when they were manufacturing primarily for western consumption. I've followed Dr. Fang of HifiMan & some of their newer competition for over 15 years, and watched that industry develop and leapfrog its western equivalent in both quality and market size. As an enthusiast it's been wonderful to see - they have converged to a mass-market audio segment in which sound quality and tuning preference is either the primary feature or an overwhelming consideration, which we simply don't have over here, at least not outside the realms of gatekept audiosnobbery; we've had celebrity endorsements and beats and boses and told that woofers which fart into our brains is what 'good' sounds like. Though I guess this might be the 'western tuning' they refer to. One thing I'm looking forward to is seeing how their custom iem market grows and develops. Custom IEMs are such a humongous leap in quality of experience, but they're simply not popular or even known outside of professional performer and high end audiophile circles, almost certainly due to cost of production and complexity of fitting. But as modern tech makes ear impressions reusable[0], and skin-friendly 3d printing tech advances, fully automated production of custom tech wear feels like the natural next step. And being able to put something into your ears that you literally can't feel once it's in there and warmed up, and cuts 40db so you can comfortably listen to it at volumes far lower than conventional earphones, is divine, it's a level-up that is difficult to explain. It's certainly something more people should have access to, and a market segment that can really afford to go down in price. [0]: https://github.com/boomskats/my-earcanals https://github.com/boomskats/my-earcanals
• pragma_x 2y ago
  Nostalgia is a powerful thing. > This is great, but for the real experience, you need to listen to this album with demonstrably worse gear.
• Tsiklon 2y ago
  “Chi-Fi” IEMs in particular has been an area that has had phenomenal competition and growth in the years since this article has come out. A significant proportion of tastes in sound are catered for, at all price points; with particular heat generated at and below the sub $100 mark. This is especially noticeable in the build quality and the quality of the tuning which has significantly improved in this market segment as competition has heated up.
• snvzz 2y ago
  Unapologetic neutral is the way to go. Coloring is distortion. Salvageable headphones include, but not limited to (I hope...) Sennheiser HD600 and Audio Technica ath-r70x.
  • jerf 2y ago
    Plus, should you decide you want some coloring, "neutral" (as close as one can get to it) is a better starting point. My neutral setup can have its bass boosted correctly more easily than a bass-boosted system can have its bass-boost removed.
    • lukas099 2y ago
      If I know that I consistently like bass boost, it’s rational to buy headphones that are tuned that way by default.
      • snvzz 2y ago
        You need to know know, not just think you know, first. Extended use of a neutral setup is a requisite.
        • lukas099 2y ago
          No it isn't. I think I have a pretty good idea of what I like from the million music-listening experiences I've had. Sure, maybe to get a perfect eq curve for my tastes I would need a perfectly neutral setup. But not really just to know that I like more bass than most people. If somebody consistently turns up the bass when listening to Bose or Beats or something that's are known for being bass-heavy, do you really think they'd need a neutral setup to know that they like bass?
  • lukas099 2y ago
    > Unapologetic neutral is the way to go. Coloring is distortion. Sure, if it's axiomatic that distortion is always bad. My axiom is that my enjoyment is good. If EQ helps me enjoy music more, I don't care if it's distortion.
• blackeyeblitzar 2y ago
  It’s not about Eastern versus western. It’s more that most Chi Fi is just bad. There isn’t a real differentiator to most products so they just make a marketing splash when released and then are forgotten. Maybe Hifiman is the exception. And there are some occasional good IEMs if you like their signature. I also see more experimentation with new driver types like bone conduction in Chi Fi. But if you want reasonably accurate sound reproduction (with your preferred signature on top of that) and high build quality with consistency unit to unit, you probably need to look at brands that seem “old” like Shure, which often can just be made to sound the way you want with equalizer settings. On the IEM side there are also some great brands in the Pacific Northwest of the US like Campfire Audio, 64 Audio, and Fir Audio.
• etskinner 2y ago
  Why tune anyway? Isn't the job of speakers and earphones to reliably reproduce the sound that the person who produced the track wanted? The only tuning that should be done by default is to compensate for the form factor or the room, such that what the listener hears is exactly what the producer heard when making the track. Of course, give the user an equalizer with some presets they might want, but leave it up to the end user, not what the manufacturer thinks the user wants.