BASSY IEM... done differently - XENNS Mangird Top Pro subjective impressions

Okay, so in today's video we're going to give some quick impressions of a new in-ear headphone, a new IEM that has seemingly captured the hearts and minds of the audio community or various audio communities out there. I'm talking of course about the Zen's Top Pro. This is of course the legendary brand behind products like the Mangard T, which of course everybody knows and loves. I mean, if you know about the Mangard T, drop a comment below because that means you're cool. But yeah, this has generated some interest in the communities. And so I figured I would give some impressions and talk about it. Let's go. Okay, just as we get going here, this unit was provided by Lin Sol for review. Big thanks to Lin Sol for letting me check it out. And as always, these videos are made possible by headphones.com. So if you want to support what we do here, consider supporting us by checking out headphones.com the next time you're in the market for a new pair of headphones or related audio product. So without further ado, let's get going and give some impressions of the Zens Top Pro. And I do want to give you guys a bit of a heads up that I have actually, Jesus, I have actually briefly, just briefly listened to this product, and I'm going to listen to it more over the course of this video and let you guys know what I think. And there'll be some measurements to follow as well. So what do you get with the Zens Top Pro? I keep wanting to say Mangard Top Pro, but that's not what it is. It says Zen's Top Pro here. Right away, you are greeted with this lovely carrying case, and this is one of the nicer cases that I've come across. You get a little baggy, you get a bunch of little accessories here, but the case itself is very nice. This feels like a really nice accessory case, much nicer than many of the other ones that I've come across. This is what the IEM looks like here. I'll just take it out of its plastic stuff. This does seem to be, I believe an acrylic shell. It's a little bit translucent. You can kind of see through it here, but this is sort of the flashy, colorful shell. I do prefer something that is more understated and muted than this. This feels a little bit, I don't know what the word is for this, feels a little bit trying too hard to be fancy when it doesn't actually feel that fancy for the rest of it. But you know, for those who are looking for that ear jewelry, this has that. It is also fairly lightweight. The cable also doesn't feel particularly premium, but it's totally fine. I'm very much okay with cables like this if the alternative is those huge bulky cables that are kind of annoying to use. Let's just go through the rest of this here. Bunch of different tips. Also love to see different tips included. You also do get different terminations, different cable ends here depending on the devices that you're using. So if you want your 4.4 balanced, you got that. And then also this 6.35 millimeter, a quarter inch. All right, quickly, let's talk about the tips here. There's sound balance, sound insulation, and noise reduction. And then you get strong atmosphere and low frequency cohesion. So we'll have to see what all of those different ones do. And hopefully by the time you guys are watching this, I'll have measured these and be able to put that in the video. We'll see. This looks like just different bore size. Okay, and then you get, of course, yeah, the foam tips, which nobody uses. to the bin. I'm joking, of course. It's nice that they include foam tips. People use foam tips. Only some haters out there don't like foam tips. I'm one of them. Let me give it a listen here. And like I said, I have already briefly, just briefly listened to this IEM just for like a track at most. Is it the next best thing? Is it the current best thing? We'll find out. I'll be running it here with the Fosse Audio DS2, which has served me well. I do actually have my test tracks, and I will link those in the description for anybody who wants to check out what I'm listening to. But I have something in mind specifically for this one, and it is Adam Baldich Legends. So the mid-range and mid-to-trouble transition is handled extremely well, in my opinion. It's not to say that it's dead on neutral. There are some colorations here, but in general, this sounds like a really natural and well-balanced mid-range with a hint of focus towards clarity. So when listening to instrumental tones, certain parts of those instrumental tones are pulled forward a little bit to make them sound a little bit more detailed. At the same time though, for that track in particular, there's kind of like, it sounds very dynamic and intense generally in a good way, but there's also this kind of like low bass grumble, I'm gonna call it. It almost kind of sludges things up a little bit, and I'm not a fan of that for this track. There's also definitely some upper treble shimmer that is creeping through. So far, you know, I like what I'm hearing. There are some colorations here that are not entirely unenjoyable. Some of them, I think, are really, really well handled. Others, maybe not so much. So let's keep listening. Change the World by Eric Clapton. It's the track that'll disqualify things for me. Yeah, and then right away I can hear there's this sort of upper treble shimmering quality that a lot of these IEMs tend to go for. It sounds, it has that sort of like new meta kind of sound, so that means that you're not gonna, it doesn't have that sort of compressed sound, right? It sounds like things are ringing out clearly and then almost like there's just too much focus on the edges of the spectrum rather than the center, so you're losing a little bit of that mid-range presence that's actually really balanced and well done here. And one of the benefits of this kind of sound signature is that you can turn up the volume quite a bit. Be careful with how loud you listen, but you can turn up the volume and it's not going to be fatiguing because again, what's emphasized here is the low bass and the upper treble. I'm gonna listen to some heavy metal here, Empire by Wheel. Yeah, for this, this works great. I wouldn't say it's my preferred way to listen to that kind of music, but it does quite a bit better for that kind of music than some of the more kind of jazz focused stuff I was listening to before. Where upright double bass tones have that, again, I'm calling it a grumble, whatever that means. Even though it doesn't sound super bloated or muddy or anything like that, like the mids, you can still hear them. There's just the kind of like almost like a looseness to the bass that I'm not thrilled by. So this is a bit of a give and take here. All right, let's try something a little bit more upbeat. Let's try Playing God by Polyphia. Yeah, it's super fun for this kind of music where there's a ton of intense, low-frequency content going on with a lot of high-frequency stuff at the same time. This will really accentuate those tones, and it hits hard. One thing I want to note, though, is before that, before the bass comes in, where it's just these guitar tones, more mid-range focused tones going on, they sound very detailed. So how the mid-range is handled here, you know, for certain types of music, it does come across with this extra sense of detail to it without being fatiguing. It's just that I feel that character is overshadowed by the massive bass and treble that this has. Let's keep going here. This is a song called Suffering by Ulf Wakenius. All right, so there are times when this sounds absolutely incredible, but then there are times where things just sound a little bit incoherent. That's sort of the problem with this style of sound signature. It can work really great for certain music, some of this more kind of upbeat, intense kind of music, and it can really accentuate that stuff. But then when you listen to something like, you know, jazz guitar trios or whatever, that kind of music, some of those tones kind of get buried a little bit. You can't really hear all of the tones ringing out as cleanly as you might want to because there's some overshadowing going on from the low frequency presence. But overall, there's nothing really that stands out as like fatiguing or like super compressed, and I really like that. All right, let's try one more track here. Retrograde, James Blake. Very vocal heavy track. Yeah, it works for this. It's good. It works really well for that. Again, this is one of those instances where the low bass kind of rumble or that sort of grunt that it has actually does lend itself well to the music and then the upper treble emphasis is not as problematic all right I would say that this is like 90% excellent and 10% questionable and it's just occasionally you know some of those tracks don't quite work quite as well because maybe there is more upper frequency information where you know that stuff is that emphasis the treble emphasis that around like I don't know what it would be like 12 kilohertz is going to cause problems. So let me just quickly listen to this with these other tips here. Strong atmosphere and low frequency cohesion. All right. Those sound like things that I might like. What do you guys think strong atmosphere means? All right. I'm replacing soundstage with strong atmosphere from now on. It's interesting. One thing I'm noticing is that there's just occasionally a little bit of sibilance creeping through. I didn't quite notice that as much with these, so I'll have to do some measurements here, and then I will put them in the video, and then you'll be able to see. One thing I just want to note here is that the comfort is pretty good. I don't have any complaints. The nozzle looks pretty chonky. I was a bit worried about that when I first saw it, but there's nothing that feels like it's falling out or anything like that and it doesn't feel uncomfortable at all in my ears so I think they've done a pretty good job with the ergonomics of this shell design. Okay so that basically does it for the impressions here. I'm going to throw the graphs on the screen but just subjectively I think this is a fairly competent sounding product. I think it's one that it follows that sort of new meta style of tuning reasonably well but it falls into the same traps that most of the products that are aiming for this kind of sound signature also fall into which is that they end up being too v-shaped, too u-shaped, too much bass and treble, overshadowing the best parts about it, which is the mid-range. And in this instance, it sounds like the mid-range is even better than many of the other ones. Like, I think the mid-range is better on the Top Pro than the Softier's Volume S, like, significantly better. Like, the mids sound a lot more natural and coherent on this, with an extra kind of hint of detail. I would give this a solid B+, A-, overall, at least from my initial subjective impressions. But if you guys have heard this one, let me know what you think down in the comments below. Also, if you guys are curious about this concept of the new IEM tunings and understanding how IEMs should be tuned, we've got some discussion going on on the forum at forum.headphones.com. I'll leave a link to that in the description. So if you have an opinion, feel free to chime in there. And then you can also chat with me or other like-minded audio people on our Discord, also linked below. And until next time, I'll see you guys later. Bye for now.