Is this the Emerald everyone’s looking for? 

PROS: Premium build quality, attractive shell design, well done W-shaped vibrant and exciting signature, open, airy and spacious soundstage, left to right separation, micro-detail retrieval, layering, very good unboxing experience, good quality accessories, different types of premium quality cables and stock ear tips from Azla, Spinfits, Final-E and Symbio.

CONS: Slightly brighter than neutral treble tuning can sound slightly sizzly and airy at first if you’ve been listening to warm IEMs, Bone Conduction driver’s ringing with tapping and mouth movements can be distracting at times. 

---

About Kinera.

Kinera was established in 2011 as YuTai Electronic Acoustics in Dongguan, China. They developed the world’s first high resistance 5mm micro dynamic speaker for military hearing aids. In 2013, they began mass manufacturing balanced armature driver and became an internationally and locally renowned supplier of drivers. In 2014 till 2015, Yutai Electronic Acoustics has developed a number of patents for various driver technologies such as bone conduction. In 2016, they released the first hybrid driver IEM BD005 under the “ Kinera “ brand. Since then they’ve released several DD, BA, hybrid and tri-brid IEMs.

Links – Kinera Loki Emerald (Official Website)

---

Technical Specifications.

• 6 Knowles BA + 4 Sonion EST + 1 DD + 1 Bone Conduction Driver
• Impedance: 12 ohm
• Sensitivity: 107 dB
• Frequency Response: 20Hz-50kHz

Included in the box.

• One pair of Kinera Imperial Loki In-ear monitors.
• One Effect Audio UP-OCC Cable, EA 4.4mm.
• One Kinera’s cloth covered Silver plated OFC and Gold plated OFC cable. 
• Final Type E Eartips x 5 sets (SS/S/M/L/LL)
• AZLA SednaEarfit Crystal Eartips x 3 sets (SS/MS/ML)
• Spinfit CP145 Eartips x 3 sets (S/M/L)
• Symbio F Foam Tips x 2sets (S/M)
• Genuine Leather Carry Case.
• Cleaning Brush.
• User Manual.
• Thank You Card.
• Design Background Intro Card.

Driver Tech in Loki Emerald, particularly about the Bone Conduction unit.

 

Loki Emerald has one 6mm dynamic driver for the low-frequency range, 4 Knowles Mid Range BAs for midrange, 2 Knowles Treble BAs for high-frequency drivers, 4 Sonion EST Drives for the ultra-high frequencies and one Kinera’s custom-made contact-type bone conduction unit that works in tandem with the low-frequency dynamic driver.

I’m sure most would be intrigued to know more about the Bone Conduction driver being used here so here is the info I gathered while having a word with Aaron, Kinera’s CEO. This unit unlike dBC’s piezoelectric unit in the MEST and Sonion’s Bone Conduction driver in BGVP Phantom, is developed in house by Kinera themselves. They say that they’ve applied and are waiting on a patent for the driver too. Here is a schematic of internals to show how it is implemented. 

You can actually hear the Bone Conduction driver in play by tapping Loki Emerald’s faceplate, which is quite unlike other BC drivers, so I asked Aaron (Kinera’s CEO) about it again. He let me know that this is because their Bone Conduction driver’s sensitivity is much higher and as a result, it has much higher power of around 30mW, whereas other drivers are generally in the range of 3-5mW. 

Packaging and Build Quality.

Loki Emerald’s packaging, unboxing experience and accessories are all really well selected and executed, even better than Nanna 2.0’s. Just the design, the way the bottom box separates and slides down slowly, the way the internal part is split into two shelves, how the IEM is placed in the top shelf with the Effect Audio Ares S cable and how everything else is laid out in the box in the bottom shelf, two cables (one Efect Audio Ares S and one Kinera’s Silver plated OFC and Gold plated OFC) and a variety of top brand ear tips (Azla, Spinfits, Symbio and Final-E) that they’ve included – everything is designed very tastefully to give the buyer a sense of money well spent.

Build wise, Loki Emerald has a standard resin build with very attractive green-ish blue sparkle faceplates, hand painted sparkly green-ish blue bottom shells with triple hole venting for the dynamic driver on top and Titanium nozzle tips – which not only look really good but also keeps the tips in place really well. Even though design liking is quite subjective, I personally quite dig the overall aesthetic (much more than the Loki Chinese version’s). 

Cable – There are two stock cables included in the package – Effect Audio’s Ares S (4-core UP-OCC) and Kinera’s own Silver plated OFC and Gold plated OFC intertwined cable. Both are very good, high quality premium stock cables, until you start comparing them to Empire Odin’s Stormbreaker’s $1300 asking price and similar cables included with other $4k+ IEMs. Well, not wanting to question the economics of cable pricing which are highly exorbitant in my opinion, I think Ares S and Kinera’s own cable do the job perfectly fine and having two, very nice premium cables included as stock sure is a win in every aspect in my opinion. 

Case –  Nice zipper leather case that has the Kinera logo on top and easily fits the IEMs with either of the stock cables. Nothing to complain about here. 

Fit and Comfort.

I have medium-large size ears and Loki Emerald has a very comfortable fit for me even though the shells are on the chonky side. It has a 6mm nozzle size and it takes on all the tips really well and I get a nice fit with most types of ear tips. Even with the triple hole venting on the top, the noise isolation is pretty good, just don’t expect it to level snug fitting, non-vented IEMs. 

Page 2 – Sound Analysis.
Page 3 – Comparisons and Conclusion.