If anyone knows anything about car Audio, you probably know about Kicker's square subwoofers, which, by using the square shape helps reduce sound distortion by increasing the rigidity of the speaker. Kinera has made a Square Planar driver, so, imagine bass that has no distortion, while having the accuracy of Planar driver. To take up the heavy lifting, you also have a Balanced Armature somehow crammed into the shell that does all the heavy lifting for the treble.
But, what about the mids? Well... here is the rub, the Planar handles the lower mids while the BA handles the upper mids. If you are listening to music where the sound sits in the lower and upper mids, the crossover between the planar and the BA can be an unpleasant experience. This effect can be most noticeable with guitars with more than six strings, I listened to "BFG Division" from the Doom soundtrack and it was not pleasant experience. So, sorry heavy guitar fans, these are not for you. These are fine with Punk rock and other rock music, EDM sounds amazing, clubby pop music and Hip Hop are fine, even more so if the production and mixing is well done.
These will work with a phone, though with the volume turned up to 70-80% to get a nice volume level
Summary: EDM Enthusiasts, Club pop music People, Hip Hop habitué's, These IEM's are made for you. Low distortion, clear Bass and low mids with a thump that is respectable for a IEM and a nice crisp Treble that is not drowned out by the bass. deducted the one star for having avoid the urge to throw up after attempting to listen to "BFG Division".
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