Sound Analysis.

I analyzed the King sound performance paired up with L&P P6 Pro and A&K SP3000M sound sources while playing a variety of test tracks, such as Agnes Obel’s “The Curse”, Sandro Cavazza’s “So much Better” (Avicii remix), C-Bool “Never go away”, Ed Sheeran “Shape of you”, Alan Walker “Darkside”, Galantis “Hunter”, Iggy Azalea “Black widow”, Indila “Boite en argent”, Dua Lipa “Love Again”, Counting Crows “Big yellow taxi”, Bob Marley “Jamming”, David Elias “Vision of her”, and Michael Jackson “Dirty Diana”.  I was told IEM had at least 100 hours of burn-in when I received it.  I was using a stock cable and SpinFit W1 eartips.

As a refresher, the Emperor and Empress have neutral tuning with a clear natural tonality. The sound is clean, transparent, and resolving, focusing on a mid-forward presentation. The Emperor stands out with a punchier mid-bass and a little more emphasis in mid-treble than the flatter Empress bass with its smoother treble.  Both had a neutral bass quantity, pushing their transparent mids forward and giving the tuning a more neutral, revealing sound characteristic.

The King takes the Emperor’s baseline tuning and fine-tunes it to a balanced sound signature with a more natural clean tonality. The change in bass is probably the first thing you will hear, going from a neutral, flatter quantity (in Emperor/Empress) to a deeper and more elevated sub-bass rumble and a more powerful and articulate mid-bass punch.  As already mentioned, the DD driver in the King was updated, along with the bass crossover, which was rearranged to let the DD cover a wider frequency range.

The lower mids of the King gain body, giving them more natural tonality while keeping the same clarity and resolution without adding any color. Despite the scaled-up bass going from flat to more balanced, it was impressive that the mids/vocals position in the mix remained forward, focused, clear, and detailed. Also, even with added body and more natural tonality, the mids don’t sound colored.  The mid-treble was also enhanced to add more sparkle and air to the sound and improve the layering, separation, and resolution to compensate for the bass lift and fuller body mids.  Adding more body to the lower mids usually has an opposite effect, with the sound becoming more organic, musical, and less resolving. However, the King transformed the Emperor’s flat neutral mids into natural, detailed, and engaging ones.

Like with Emperor and Empress, the King’s 15-driver tribrid tuning remains coherent.  Again, despite the enhancement in bass and fuller body lower mids, the sound is still clean, clear, detailed, and uncolored.  There is no congestion, no muddiness, good separation of instruments and vocals, and even an improvement in layering, thanks to enhanced mid-treble, injecting more air between the layers of the sound.  The soundstage of the King also expanded in width, becoming more rounded, unlike the Emperor/Empress, which had more depth/height than width.

In my Emperor/Empress review, I suggested that their tuning was better suited for those who like to monitor and analyze the sound, don’t mind neutral bass, and want to hear more natural resolving details without exaggeration or coloring. The King tuning enhancement made it suitable for every style of music, from EDM, Top 40, Pop/Rock to classical, instrumental, and vocal.  It will still appeal to those who like to analyze the sound and can also attract the audience looking for a fun audiophile tuning.

Eartips Selection.

The selection of eartips is crucial to any universal in-ear monitor and will affect the sound, especially the bass impact, depending on the seal.  Due to a large opening of my ear canals, I usually go for the largest size eartips to get a better seal.  Also, please remember that eartips impressions are subjective and will be based on the anatomy of your ears.  I suggest building your eartips collection and trying each one with every new IEM you get to find the pair that yields the best sound for your ears.

• w/SpinFit W1 – balanced sound sig with a deeper sub-bass rumble, punchy, articulate mid-bass, fuller body, clear natural mids, and detailed, crisp treble.
• w/Azla Crystal, the sub-bass rumble is elevated, and the mids sound more organic.
• w/Eletech Baroque – widens the soundstage expansion, the mids sound more organic.
• w/Final Type-E – deeper sub-bass rumble, stronger mid-bass punch, mids become a bit more forward, even a bit shouty, and the treble is a little more revealing.
• w/Symbio W – the sound is still balanced. The bass is slightly more elevated across the sub-bass rumble and has a stronger mid-bass punch. The mids are clear, natural, detailed, uncolored, and a little more forward, and the treble is also clear, natural, and detailed.

Regarding my ears and the sound preference, SpinFit W1 and Symbio W were my favorite eartips with the King.

Page 3 – Cable pair up, Source pair up, and Conclusion.