Sound Impressions
Bass
Most enthusiasts are going to immediately fire up a track and say the E-Prototype has elevated bass and is intended for bass heads. Sorry, but you are wrong. That is just how cello’s sound, mates. That is the level of bass that was recorded in the track that your “accurate” headphones have actually not been accurate with.
I generally baseline bass to the Stax 007 headphones for being so exceptional at being honest to the track with regard to how much bass is coming through. How do you test? Easy. Listen to upright bass or cello’s and see if it matches up in real life if you’ve ever been to a concert or heard anyone play. I have.
I’ve been in the studio many times, I have recorded some, used to DJ too. Bass is a thing in life. Some instruments and digital tracks have bass in them. I know right? GASP.
Sorry but it is true, cellos have a massive low end and can rumble your chest when you are near them. I think these E-Prototypes get the low-end right without the need for adding in any bass.
What is there, is likely there on the track and you just never heard it before the right way. You can test that by…you know…going to a concert or finding someone with an instrument to play for you live and close up.
Actual Bass EQ Response
Interestingly, I cannot achieve nearly the same amount of shift in bass quantity increase with the E-Prototype as I can with a few other IEM’s, this is a snobbish little IEM that refuses to alter and after chatting with Davies, he seems to have intended it to be heard the same way by everyone. I can’t get the E-Prototype to be much bassier until I hit a whopping +10dB of extra bass added.
However, what is even nuttier is that I hear literally no fidelity drop off from +1dB to +10dB. No other IEMs I’ve ever heard or tested ever achieved this. We’ve found the lord of snark and stubbornness in an IEM. I can’t drop off and I can’t add much to the experience through EQ.
Bass Slam
So, as mentioned, the aim of the E-Prototype was to relay undistorted sound as best as possible or ”totally”, as Davies said it was. It is as true to the tone and hit as possible to achieve in the ear canal and he told me that our ear might not even be able to pick up on the subtle cues that this IEM can throw.
Every Little Step
You need this specific design in this patent to even pick up on those details. That is a hard pill to swallow but if that is true, then I can understand what he meant by this in a track by Bobby Brown titled Every Little Step.
Anyway. The track starts out with something I have never heard before quite like it before in an IEM, bass slam? I’ve listened to this track hundreds of times, maybe more. Never felt the kick of the drum and synth bass before like this in an IEM.
The closest I can recall is the Sony XB1000, which has a great slam effect without it being annoying. But in this instance, I am talking about just never noticing it’s even there right as the track starts. Booted up some other IEM’s, don’t even hear it with the Shozy Black Hole.
I don’t feel it with any other IEM I have on hand to compare with, but I do hear this on the Stax 007. I do not hear it on my HD800, nor my Beyer T5, I do hear it in my Swan Song Audio open-back headphone, but this headphone is boosted on the low end with bass wooden plates installed intended to increase bass viscosity.
Slam is here, and I think a lot of this has to do with the physical design of the IEM housing itself. The impact is lush right at the end of the track where just some record scratch sounds and a few bass synth notes are dropped. It is pristine in quality and also kicks nicely without snap factor. We call that soft impact. And I love it.
C# minor improv
I then reconfirmed this in the track titled C# minor improv – by Matteo Mancuso and I again heard bass impact where I had not heard it ever before. Why aren’t any other IEM or headphones I have producing the low end with this type of slam and kick factor? But the E-Prototype is intended to be dead realistic and as true to the track as possible without any added low-end tuning?
Matteo might be the best guitarist on the planet at the moment outside of Bireli Lagrene, but holy cow when they tell you that you will hear things you never heard before…generally an audio journalist like me doesn’t ever experience that. I was wrong. I heard it.
Bass slam on this E-Prototype is literally the best I’ve ever heard in this price tier but that is very subjective. It gets the kick drums and bass synth so good, so lush and so yummy that it is so hard for me to put them down. If you like the soft impact that almost feels like air moving in your ear canal, but one that isn’t wince-worthy, this is a godsend for you.
Mids
The E-Prototype is super forward and enveloping in midrange placement. This is the most forward and immersed IEM field I currently have in my entire inventory.
I must have A/B’ed 3 dozen IEM’s just to see if anything sounds as forward and looming as this and the answer was a hard no. If you enjoy very forward mids and a very forward sense of envelopment into the track, this is a great buy for you.
Vocals sound much larger than the Shozy Black Hole and the Euclid, both were astounding IEMs of 2021 by the way. The raw coherency factor rivals some larger full-size headphones in just the literal feel of how big voices can sound.
Swapping some IEMs out for the Stax 007 for example, you can tell the IEM playing the same sound physically sounds smaller and the Stax 007 sounds realistically large. Well, this E-Prototype feels like that too, not quite as large, but for an IEM this is big tier vocal feels.
I love my Jazz, I love my old-style Big Band tracks and I can safely tell you that if you like Michael Bublé or Sinatra, just go grab one of these now because it is supremely well-tailored for vocalist experiences.
This may not be for you though if you want a super-wide field sound that is wider than tall. Something a ’la the HD800 headphone, this is not. A lot of people like that relaxed placement sound field, but this IEM is not one of those and I wouldn’t rate it as a middle ground that plays well and in favor of both forward sound and relaxed placement tracks.
True, that some very distant and live tracks are physically better suited elsewhere, but that has nothing to do with the fidelity factor of the E-Prototype. Some people like distance, some don’t so choose wisely.
Timbre
The top end of this IEM has gorgeous impact and styling. Again, similar to how the bass kicks with a soft impact and you can almost feel the air coming out of your ear from the large snare drum kicks in a track, so too, the treble feels windy.
By that, I mean it sounds and feels like it rings out naturally without it sounding painful. Take the track Dirty Loops – Rock You, on YouTube. Listen to the track and near the end please tell me if you heard anyone at the 4:45 mark as the credits roll.
I’ve never heard anyone or anything in the track before but, with the E-Prototype, I heard what sounded like someone saying hay, or some type of ‘errrhhh’ sound that someone made.
Not a clue what it was, but it is driving me crazy and I can’t hear it on my HD800, nor the numerous other IEMs I have. I can just hardly hear it on the 007. Why can I hear this sound on the E-Prototype and not the other sets? Is it really that detailed?
The top side is supremely detailed but you can really be in for a world of hurt if the track is trash. This IEM will seriously make you want to stop listening if the track is absolutely an abomination and had been recorded with painful treble.
There are some older tracks I enjoy that require massive treble downplay and I found a total washout with this IEM, and that is not the fault of the IEM at all. When the track feels lopsided, the IEM passes that along to you just as it was intended.
Staging & Dynamics
If there is a weak point in the IEM, it is the vastness of the imaging. This IEM plays tricks on me, when I use it, I feel like the stage width is massive, but then I switch to the Euclid and I feel audible more width and far less height on the Euclid.
This IEM is a Beyerdynamic T1 on steroids, that is what this is. It is the most coherent and realistically large and well-formed IEM I’ve ever heard I think, and because the instruments feel so physically large, it sort of masks the width factor entirely, and your ears generally naturally pick up on-stage height. The realism factor and depth of field are just good for me.
Yes, some IEMs like the Shozy Black Hole and even my Euclid sound “more realistic” as in reach out and touch whatever is out there in front of me. However,…a paradox is ongoing.
The stage depth is just good, but those IEMs I just mentioned that feel deeper in the void in front of you also sound teeny tiny by comparison. They don’t feel anywhere near as nice in sizing and “realistic” in terms of how large someone’s voice or an instrument sound when you are close to them.
Synergy
I don’t feel there is much to grip about with regard to Synergy. The headphone is supremely easy to drive and requires no amplifiers. In fact, amps do nothing for it. I thought for sure my Burson desktop amp and my XRK portable amp would be doing more for this experience but it doesn’t do much.
This IEM doesn’t scale much. Yes, there is a difference between just my xDuuo X3, but you don’t even need those amps. In fact, I hear almost no difference between my Sony Xperia 1iii’s 3.5mm out and my X3 DAP.
And from there, I don’t feel much of a difference to justify anything at all from my DAP to a much more expensive amplifier. This IEM was made to be powered by your cell phone and nothing else. Davies told me he intended it that way.
Select Comparisons
Audeze Euclid
The E-Prototype feels more forward and engaging, more coherent and realistically formed similar to how the Beyerdynamic headphones portray imaging and realistic feeling. It doesn’t extend supremely wide, but the height and depth factors are good enough to offset that.
The Euclid build is solid metal and invokes a higher sense of style, it also has detachable cables that I do wish the E-Prototype also had.
Shozy Black Hole
The open-back Shozy feels much thinner and lacks the raw density and heft of the E-Prototype. The Shozy also lacks bass depth, where I have said that it thought the Black Hole was fairly bassy on a flat EQ, it pales in physical quantity to what the E-Prototype picks up and gives you on the same track.
The Flare Audio IEM is also much more efficient and sounds great right out of my phone, whereas the Black Hole demands an excellent portable amplifier.
LZ A6
Another IEM that I reviewed quite some time ago was the LZ A6 at the time. There is no comparison at all. The LZ A6 sounds like it is 5x less the price of the E-Prototype and I still regard the A6 as a very good option at a similar price to the E-Prototype.
The bar has shifted, the A6 was the $300 recommendation from me for the last 2 years. Now, it is the Flare Audio E-Prototype and I can safely tell you the various accessories of the A6 do not help it in raw fidelity or bass appeal.
The A6 sounds hazy when I A/B compared it. However, the A6 is also a much wider feeling, although, it has very little depth of field-realistic factor compared to the E-Prototype. I wanted to shine a light on the more expensive IEMs vs the E-Prototype and also one that costs about the same.
Our Verdict
The E-Prototype could be the new benchmark IEM in my entire inventory for this price tier. It is weird looking for sure with that custom ear canal design, but whatever it is that is in that housing, it sounds very good. It sounds way too good for $337.
If you like bass, this is a great IEM for you. I am unhappy to see no detachable cable and the mic cable on this model. That hurts me and cuts deep as an audiophile. But it is fine, it works with the DAPS but not all desktop rigs, so you might want to buy a splitter in case you want to use it on higher-end gear.
The E-Prototype is powerful and well-equipped, but if I were them, I might have tried to tame the treble a bit. I know, I know that the name of the game is distortion and trying to get rid of it.
However, at the same time, sometimes bad tracks suffer from a messy treble and there are times when I actually want that suppressed and not to be portrayed as it was recorded.
This IEM has a real talent for showing you exactly what is wrong with your track from top to bottom and if the mic is not positioned properly centered, you can feel it offset and your ear and brain feel like you are slanting as you sit there.
Again, not a fault of the IEM, a fault of the recording. But personally, would prefer a few dB dropped off that treble so I can lessen the likelihood of fatigue, even at the cost of no longer being totally true to the top side of the track recording.
Flare Audio E-Prototype Specifications
- CONNECTOR: 3.5mm gold plated jack
- DRIVER DIAMETER: 10mm dynamic driver
- MICROPHONE: Phone calls and music control
- MATERIAL: 3D printed resin with the latest laser printer technology
