AUDIO ADDICTED

I like FiiO products. They are a more polished or mature audio company than many of the IEM or DAP players new to the market. I really like the M11 Pro and it’s my go-to player for portable audio. I have not been overly impressed with their IEM’s though. Yes they sound good, yes they have one of the best unboxing experiences, yes they have great accessoires and Finally yes the IEM’s themselves are very refined looking. But I guess they always feel “safe” to me. They are not too bright or detailed. They are not to heavy in the bass. Their mids sound good. But I don’t feel excited listening to them. I don’t get that “I want to listen to all my music again’ feeling. To be fair that’s the experience with 90% of what’s out there. And their is something to be said to paying my hard earned money for a set of IEM’s that sound very good and have the great ownership experience that FiiO gives you. Much better than paying for something that does not. I like that they use MMCX connectors, for me, 2 pin connectors always get worn and the IEM’s start falling off the cables.

All that said, I really liked the FiiO FH3 right from the get-go. The ubox was great with that typical FiiO heart shape wire packaging. The great selection of ear tips, the really cool hard plastic case with with a smaller soft case inside that. I also really like the FiiO cables; they are very well made and high tech looking.

On to listening, here is where things get a little muddy, literally. I had also purchased the TFZ King edition at the same time so I was comparing them as they were within $10 of each other in price. I also was listening to the Thieaudio Monarch and Fearless Tequila. Not fair comparisons for sure but they were in the pool. I didn’t expect the FiiO to give me the experience of the higher end IEM’s but I wanted to see just how far away they were. With influx of Chinese manufactures into the IEM “game” quality vs price has been spun on its head and many times IEM’s that cost little are better than higher priced ones.

The FiiO FH3 had very good detail, I tried maybe 5 different tips including spiral dots to see what effect they had. I listened to many songs on these. I spent at least a week on and off listening and comparing. I have a couple of friends that have these and really like them so I wanted to give them a fair shake. I didn’t want a “first sound impressions” to jade my opinion and make my friends “mad” at me. Which probably is showing my hand at how this review is headed. After extensive listening and 4 hours of burn-in on my desk amp what I can say is “I liked them” but I didn’t love them. Back and forth with all the previously mentioned IEM’s I could hear a “veil” over the music. The detail was there I could hear it, the treble was there, the mids and the bass was good. But it felt like things just were not clear or sparkly.

Timbre was good, not great, but acceptable. Stage was about average. On songs like Diana Krall “A case of you” from her “Live in paris” album I could hear the detail but truly the detail was much better on the TFZ King and the Monarch and Tequila were far and away better. The treble area, symbols and higher octave vocals sounded good but not with the “clarity” I would like. The TFZ was better here but it had its issues also. I will say I did not get any spikey treble that hurt my ears like I did on the King. The mids/vocals sounded good. I listened to Brett Eldredge for male vocals and Diana Krall, Amanda Martinez and the like for female vocals. A good example of the difference in detail was when Diana Krall sings “A case of you” she is right on that mic and you can hear her tongue smacking the roof of her mouth on the TFZ but not as clearly on the FH3. These little details lend themselves to the “realism” of a recording as your listening.

I used some heavy metal and jazz for instrument listening. I didn’t get that feeling of realism that I like. Horn’s sounded good but veiled. Symbols were ok but the rolloff and decay was not “how I like it”, I write it, say it, that way because its a subjective area and some might love these.

I think I have covered enough about the sound and build. So, are these a good buy? Absolutely, they are completely worth their price. The build quality, accessories alone put them into this price range and way above. The fit and sound firmly plant them. I’m not hypeing these, there are things about the sound I didn’t like; as mentioned. But I believe for most these are a great buy. Keep in mind that price is not always a benchmark for sound quality. But if it is accepted as such, then increase in sound quality with the increase of price is very small. In other words as the price climbs steeply the quality of the sound produced only goes up slightly.