Forte Ears Violetta

Sound Analysis.

I analyzed V’s sound performance using SP4000, while playing a variety of test tracks, such as Agnes Obel’s “The Curse”, Sandro Cavazza’s “So much Better” (Avicii remix), C-Bool’s “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”, Michael Jackson “Dirty Diana”, and SaberZ “Without your love”. Out of habit and given its use of DD drivers, I had V on burn-in for about 100 hours before I started collecting my impressions. I was using a stock Eletech cable and Azla Origin silicone eartips.

To my ears, V has a balanced sound signature, with a clean, neutral, natural tonality. The tuning is unique to a single DD design: it is not V-, U-, or W-shaped, but rather a well-balanced, coherent signature with a natural, resolving tonality. One thing I will note right away: due to a very short nozzle to accommodate its acoustic chamber design, to my ears, there is a noticeable dependence on eartips for tuning and technical performance of V. So, while many could agree on the overall sound signature and tonality, the technical performance and the soundstage and layering/separation of the sounds will vary significantly depending on the eartips selection, which control the insertion depth and the seal of these IEMs.

Given my ear canal anatomy, I settled on Azla Origin tips, which have long core stems that extend the shells out of my ears to improve soundstage width and mid clarity, while also giving me the best seal to help the bass respond more tactilely. Based on using these eartips with a stock cable (instead of stock Baroque Stage), here is how I hear V in more detail.

The bass has slightly north-of-neutral quantity, with a more rounded impact, and an average speed of attack and decay. The bass is well controlled, with a nice, textured rumble and more bloom with less impact. It’s not exactly the neutral type of bass that disappears behind the mids. V’s bass presentation is more neutral in quantity, but still unmistakably DD in quality. Eartips selection is very important; a good seal will help you achieve greater impact with more weight in rumble. Still, stock Baroque eartips were not “tall” enough to push the shells out of my ears, causing more bass decay to spill into the lower mids and reducing bass control. When I switched to Origin, they gave the bass notes noticeably more control over their decay, which cleaned up the lower mids and added more clarity to the sound. Obviously, the bass quantity will not be satisfactory for a basshead. Still, it is very tastefully done for any genre of music, as long as you are not craving more elevated, harder-hitting impact.

Mids are the star of V’s tuning, giving you a very rich, fuller-bodied, organic tonality with plenty of natural detail retrieval and, thankfully, a clear, detailed treble to improve the mids’ resolution. Again, I want to emphasize that eartips selection could be a deal-breaker here, as it was for me, when it comes to controlling the decay of bass notes. With Origin eartips, I was able to get a neutral, fuller-bodied lower midrange without any muddiness or veil in the sound. The mids have fantastic presence, with neutral, natural, fuller body, musical tonality, and more organic, smoother coloring. Lower mids add body to the sound, giving instruments and vocals their fullness. Upper mids are clear, detailed, and natural. Not for those who want to extract analytical details or crave precision in layering and separation of the sounds. These are musical, detailed mids, with natural retrieval of details.

Treble is also natural, relaxed, and, at the same time, crystal-clear and detailed. You won’t get too much brightness, and you don’t have to worry about any harshness or metallic crunch. Treble is usually the biggest problem for me with single DD driver IEMs, where I struggle with over-energetic peaks. Here, the treble was crystal-clear, well-defined, and very carefully tuned to avoid overemphasizing any peaks. While I still think the mids are the star of the tuning here, I really enjoyed the treble tuning and how clear, natural, and detailed it made the sound. It even offers a nice extension where the tails of the crashes continue to resonate without a fast fade-out. Don’t expect a lot of airiness, or too much air between the layers of the sound, but do expect plenty of natural clarity up top.

From a technical perspective, the soundstage expansion will also depend heavily on the eartips selection and the insertion depth. Of course, relative to your ear canal anatomy, in my case, with a shallower insertion of Baroque eartips, the width collapsed, producing plenty of depth and height, including nicely done, close-to-holographic-level imaging. But the width was narrow. Once I switched to Origin eartips, the soundstage width expanded, and noticeably, I might add, with more rounded expansion in all 3 directions, still with a touch more depth and height, but improved width. The imaging remained close to a holographic level in the placement of the sounds in space. Other than that, as already mentioned, don’t expect too much air between the layers of the sound. There was also zero congestion or veil, and everything was nicely separated, with everything easily distinguished in the mix of the song.

Eartips Selection.

The selection of eartips is always crucial for any universal in-ear monitor and will significantly affect the sound, particularly the bass impact and treble energy, depending on the seal. The insertion depth, often controlled by the eartips’ design, will also affect the soundstage expansion and imaging. Due to a large opening in my ear canals, I usually opt for the largest eartips to achieve a better seal. Also, please keep in mind that eartips impressions are subjective and will be based on the anatomy of your ears. My suggestion is to build up your eartips collection and try each one with every new IEM you get to find the pair that yields a perfect sound for your ears.

w/Eletech Baroque Stage – softer bass with less controlled decay, fuller body, more organic mids, clear, detailed, polite treble. Soundstage is not as wide, with more depth/height.

w/Eletech Baroque original – a little more neutral bass with better control of note decay, with mids being a bit less organic, less colored, and more detailed. The soundstage expansion is similar to Stage.

w/Azla Origin – tighter, punchier, better-controlled bass with improved rumble; lower mids are not as thick as with Baroque, giving the sound more transparency and improved detail retrieval in the upper mids; mids here definitely have more clarity; treble has crunch, still natural, but slightly more engaging and livelier. The soundstage has more L/R spread, to create a more rounded expansion.

w/SpinFit W1 – very similar to Origin, except the bass is more neutral and has a bit less rumble. The shape of W1 eartips and the extended stem, just like with Origin, push the shells more out of my ear.

w/Azla Crystal – the soundstage width is narrower with these collapsed, bringing L/R closer to the center, with noticeably greater depth/height expansion. The bass has good extension and a decent rumble, with notes decaying slightly longer, adding to the body of the lower mids. Treble is snappy, crystal clear.

w/Final Type-E – Good sub-bass rumble; mids have more thickness, fuller body, while treble has a bit of extra crystal zing. But the soundstage was too narrow.

w/Symbio Hybrid – The bass was too neutral, pushing mids more forward, and the soundstage was rather narrow as well.

w/Eletech Rococo – Received these together with Ballad of Caesar cable, and they are very close to Origin performance, with a punchier and better controlled bass, great sub-bass rumble, not as thick lower mids, more detailed upper mids, with improved layering and separation of the sounds; and even treble has some improvement in crunch. I still find Origin to give me a wider soundstage expansion because they push earpieces slightly more out of my ears, but both Rocoo and Origin were my favorite eartips with V.

I do want to add that the above sound description comments are subjective. In terms of my ear anatomy, I found Origin to provide the most refined sound tuning and technical performance of V.

Cable pair-up.

I’m aware that some people are skeptical about the role of cables in the audio chain. It’s not my intent to start an argument here. Instead, I would like to share what I hear during my testing. To me, a metal wire is a material with physical properties such as resistivity, conductivity, and purity, all of which act as filters between your source and earphones. Variations in these properties can affect the conductivity of an analog signal, resulting in changes in sound ranging from subtle to noticeable. If discussing cables bothers you, feel free to skip this section.

As a reminder, V comes with stock Eletech dual-type OCC copper Litz cable.

w/ Eletech Modello (dual copper blend) – V’s soundstage extended more in depth; also, I hear less texture in mids.

w/Eletech Cartone (dual SPC) – V’s soundstage got more center-focused, the sub-bass rumble sounds more physical and deeper, and mids have more body.

w/Eletech Fresco (dual Tin-Plated Copper) – while V’s tuning remains very similar, the technical performance scales up with a noticeably more holographic soundstage expansion, improved layering and separation of the sounds, still natural, but with higher precision in detail retrieval.

w/Eletech Ballad of Caesar (solid-core Silver, Gold-Silver-Palladium-Platinum alloy, Gold-Plated Gold-Silver alloy, Palladium-Plated Gold-Silver alloy) – more holographic soundstage expansion, noticeably improved detail retrieval, especially micro-details. This is a more technical cable, and it does scale up V’s performance in that direction. But it costs twice as much as the V itself, and if you want a more reasonably priced cable relative to the V’s price that offers better technical performance, Fresco might be a better upgrade.

w/Eletech Ode to Laura (triple-copper) – Wider soundstage expansion compared to stock, but otherwise the tonality and technical performance were not too far off.

I have a lot of high-end cables that cost more than the IEM itself, and to me, it makes no sense to spend double the IEM’s price. As previously mentioned, these IEMs and the cable were developed together to achieve a specific tuning synergy and complement each other. That was also why I was curious to try other Eletech cables with different wire materials to understand better why they chose this particular cable as their stock. At the end of the day, I’m more than happy with the synergy between V and its stock cable, but I also found that V’s tuning benefits from the reasonably priced Fresco cable. If you have other cables, go ahead; it’s always fun to experiment.