The night I received these I listened to the Beach Boys Pet Sounds, Arcade Fire’s Funeral and Diana Krall live in Paris in their entirety – with a huge smile on my face for hours. In Perfect Circle’s The Package, you can hear James Maynard Keenan clear his cottonmouth before his delivery. I heard details I hadn’t noticed before, a vulnerable tremble in Yorke’s delivery. Radiohead’s Idioteque from Kid A, with its bumpy, ramping electronica explodes once Thom Yorke’s vocals hit, simultaneously feeble and forceful. I fired up a selection of my favourite songs for testing audio equipment and I was left suitably impressed. The highs are never brittle, there’s no impudent sibilance and the bass is never muddy. Where it shines most, I found, was in its midrange and its vocals which come through with outstanding precision. Everything is astoundingly crisp and clear, with the bass perhaps bordering on being analytical neutral and just short of being sterile. Instead, what you get is studio quality replication of audio – and honestly? It’s transformative, revelatory. As a reference set, the X20i’s are perfectly balanced offering no biases towards the high or low end. Because the balanced armature design means that the X20i’s don’t push out air, they won’t give you the sort of thunderous bass you may expect from a really high-end set. Here you’ve got Klipsch’s KG-926T woofer in union with their KG-125B super tweeter. Instead of air-pushing drivers intended to cover the entire frequency range, balanced armatures use a crossover to split the signal into multiple frequency bands. They consist of a balanced armature design instead of the dynamic drivers you’d find in most headsets and speakers. There’s an inline microphone and iDevice compatible remote, with dedicated volume up and down buttons and a centred multifunction one for call and track navigation. The semi-detachable cable (screw-type coaxial SSMCX connectors for both left and right sides) is sturdy, its translucent hazelnut showing its braided wires underneath. The buds are made from injection-moulded stainless steel, with a heft to them that screams quality. They use the company’s patented oval tips, so comfort with at least one set is almost guaranteed. You’ll also find an owner’s manual and a clip card of silicone tips so that you can ensure a perfect fit. A faux walnut wooden box (with a lovely magnetic lid) houses a small leather pouch for the IEMs themselves. That means you can both shut yourself off from the world to appreciate music, without forcing your tastes upon others.įirst impressions matter, and the X20i nails it. ![]() A little different from traditional in-ear buds, they rest partially inside your ear canal, creating a seal that ensures passive noise cancelling with minimal audio spillage. That has changed, and Klipsch is to blame.įor the past few weeks, I’ve been using a pair of Klipsch X20i in-ear-monitors. I’ve never seen any need for anything better. I’ve got a nice set of over-ear Sennheisers to fill my audio needs – and for years they’ve filled them perfectly. I appreciate good audio – but I have a cost threshold. I’m not against digital either, but I’d take a FLAC over an MP3 any day of the week. ![]() I’m not a vinyl junkie, I don’t still have an original PlayStation 1 to play my CDs and I don’t spend most of my time incessantly fiddling with knobs and tweaking cables to get the sound just right. I appreciate good audio, but I’m hardly what anyone would consider a bona fide audiophile.
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