Did FiiO Nail their FT1 Upgrade? - FiiO FT13 Review

So, one of the recent success stories in overear headphones has to be the FiiO FT1, which is a closeback headphone that came in at around $150 when it was released. And FiiO has been doing good things with overear headphones recently, and they've been very wellreceived like the FT1 Pro and the FT7. Uh, and now they've followed up the FT1, the closeback, with another closeback, the FiiO FT13. This one is also an overear closeback dynamic driver headphone. Uh, but it looks a bit more fancy and it comes in at $330. So, the question is, did they achieve similar heights at a higher price tag with a more premium looking build, feel, design, all that good stuff? And in today's video, that's what we're going to talk about. So, let's get going. All right. And just a quick disclaimer here. This unit was provided by FiiO for evaluation, but of course, I haven't been paid to say anything particular about it, and all thoughts and opinions here are my own. Okay. So, let's talk about this one. Obviously, there's a pretty big difference in terms of the design of the cups. This is sort of this uh more polished purpleish wooden looking thing. It looks and feels a lot more premium than the FT1. One of the concerns with the FT1 was the quality control to do with one of the screws for the yolk attachment point and they've moved to an entirely different system with this one here. So hopefully that's a thing that will make it last longer. But as far as it looks, it looks good. In my opinion, this gives me purple heart vibes like what you might have found with those older Fostex headphones. So, it looks and feels nicer than the FT1. And that's also for the top headband piece. So, one of the issues with the original FT1 was that there's these little sections of padding underneath here. You'll notice that I put the capper strap on it because by default, the FT1 just isn't very comfortable and the capper strap makes it quite a bit more comfortable cuz it's a wider surface area. With the FT13, there's more padding consistently underneath for the entire headband and also the material that they use under here is softer. So, I find that I don't have any issues with the comfort up top for this headphone. You also get an extra set of pads. These are the leather pads here that come with it by default. They come on the headphone. And the ones that are on here right now are made of more like a a suede type material. And the inside, you can actually see the grill for the baffle there as well. And the driver is a very nice looking driver. This is a different internal baffle structure from what you get on the FT1 and on the FT1 Pro. Those were actually very similar. So, it doesn't seem like this is just, you know, repurposing the same tooling for a new headphone. This looks like there's a a different design going on here. This is circular, whereas with that one, it's more of like kind of a rectangular shape to the inside of the baffle. While this is a better built and better feeling and better looking headphone, there are some problems to do with the coupling. But actually, as far as comfort is concerned, I do find this one to be more comfortable than the FiiO FT1 because the pad opening feels like it's a bit larger. So, I have an easier time getting my larger than average ears into the cups. But, this is one where the mechanical design itself does leave a lot to be desired. I have a fairly large head. When I put this on my head, I've got it almost at like the lowest clicks, and this feels like it's a little bit too big, and it feels like there's just nothing pushing it in. Now, on the one hand, that is comfortable. That's nice. But for closeback headphones, they rely on really good coupling to give it the intended frequency response, the intended performance of the headphone. So, I can feel like it's sitting on my head comfortably, but it's almost like there's not enough angle pushing the headphone into my head the way that it should sit. And that is kind of a problem on the FT1, but the FT1's pad design makes it so that you don't really notice that as as much. And with this one, with this one, the pad design, I guess, is just it doesn't really help with that problem. And I can only imagine for people with smaller heads that this is going to be an even bigger problem cuz if you look at where the clicks are for me, that's that's where it is, right? Or on this side here, right? Not really all that much. And I have a very large head. So like it can go all the way to this, which is ridiculous in my opinion. Like who's gonna All right, guys. just like at this point, this is this is now earrings. Only the big-headed among us are going to find this one uh okay at the very least. It's not uncomfortable. I'll give them that. Now, let's get to the sound quality here. If you considered the sound quality of the FT1, it was good bass, good mids, and the treble was decent, but it was a bit dark. You can almost characterize it as having kind of like a a dark, bright sound signature. You get that same kind of character with the FT13. And it's almost like they tried to make this less dark, but didn't make it less dark bright. So, I'll get to what I mean there when we dive into the graphs. But for my subjective sense of this, my just pure vibes-based sense of how this sounds with the leather pads, this is a similar overall presentation to the FT1, just with a lot more treble harshness. You know, it's not exactly on the dull side. It doesn't sound blunted or anything like that, but it does sound harsh. It sounds strident. It sounds sibilent at times. And I really don't like it. I this one I really don't like the sound for the treble specifically with the suede pads. It's the same kind of performance basically for the mids and for the treble. Maybe a little bit less fatiguing in the treble, but the bass is just unhinged. It's it's enormous. Uh it's hilarious amounts of bass. I actually do prefer the suede pads cuz it's more comfortable, but the sound is uh yeah, very very uh V-shaped when you do that. And I wanted to test what this would have sounded like with the regular FT1 pads on it, but the mounting system doesn't work the same way and also because the shape of the baffle is different as well. So, I wasn't able to try that. But also, this means that the compatibility with different pads is going to be non-existent because you have to you're limited to pads that use this kind of mounting system. So, not a not a big fan of that. Now, let's get into the measurements. And I just want to remind folks that all the measurements that you see here from us, that is all made possible by headphones.com. They're the ones who provide the measurement equipment and empower us to provide this to all of you guys. So, if you find any of the measurements that we've done valuable or interesting or any of the EQ profiles that we've made useful to you in any way, consider checking out headphones.com the next time you are in the market for a new pair of headphones or related audio equipment because that's what makes all of this possible. And the better access that we have to evaluative tools, the more we can, you know, help you guys understand this stuff as well and put this stuff out there into the world. So another way to think about this is that if you are shopping through headphones.com, you are actively contributing to the betterment of the discourse on this topic. Okay, let's get to the data. So I'm showing you guys the measurements here done on the BNK 528 and we want to be using this system for closeback headphones and inear headphones in particular because it has the more accurate acoustic impedance. And so I want to remind folks that when we talk about this being the most accurate headphone measurement system at the moment, it's because it is more accurate for its acoustic impedance. And with closeback headphones and inear headphones and acoustic impedance sensitive devices like this, that's where this really matters. So let's take a look at the FT13 with the leather pads first. And uh you can kind of see what I'm talking about here for that sort of dark bright character. The bass is elevated pretty similar to the FT1. There's a bit of a dip there in the ear gain. And this is where the ear amplifies frequencies the most strongly. That rise that you see up there uh to 3 kHz, that's the largest contribution for the ear canal. It's okay if things are a little bit withdrawn in that band because ear canals vary and people have different preferences for that range. You'll note that there's quite a strong dip there at around 4 kHz and then there's quite a forward character at around 6 kHz and then also again at around uh 10 11 12 that upper treble air uh region. And while you can kind of see some of the areas that might be a bit challenging, like 6 kHz, 10, 11, 12 kHz, it's not obvious just from looking at the treble alone, it's kind of like, you know, that in contrast with that darker character for the ear gain that kind of makes it stand out a little bit. Um, and I'll show you guys what how this actually measures on my own head relative to the FT1 because the FT1 measures similarly to this on on the measurement fixture, but because the coupling is different, it measures a bit differently in situ when it's actually being worn. Uh, so depending on the head size and the shape and all that kind of stuff. Now, moving over to the suede pads, you can see it's basically the same. It's a little bit less fatiguing in the treble in both of those same spots that I found to be a bit problematic. Uh, but the bass is just ridiculous. So, from like 80 Hz up until like 240 Hz, this is just a lot of bass and too much in my opinion. So, that's what I EQed down. I actually ended up using the suede pads with this and uh doing quite a bit of uh EQ. I could just be imagining it, but like in my head it's it's like the they're less of a bouncy material. So, I had an easier time getting that to properly couple. Anyways, let's now take a look at how this measures relative to the FT1. And you can see it's pretty similar overall. It's just that the FT1's not quite as bright in the treble in a number of those problem areas that I noticed subjectively. And also not quite as dark in the lower treble band. And now here is the FT13 relative to the FT1 on my head. um just to get a sense of how the coupling difference is between these two headphones when it's actually being worn by a real human. It's everything to do with the headband structure, the yolk structure, how the pads conform to the side of the head, and it really does feel different as well when just wearing it. So, I imagine that this is going to contribute to how it sounds subjectively across different heads. So, the way that I think about this headphone is it I don't think this is better than the FT1. I think it's considerably worse than the FT1 with both sets of pads, like either one of them. But I can also kind of understand what they were trying to do here. For some people, this may correspond to an extra sense of detail, right? Because there's more upper treble energy, more upper treble presence, that sort of aireriness and shimmery quality that some people associate with detail that's there on the FT13 where it's not quite as present on the FT1. And maybe that was what they were trying to do here. But the problem here is that the whole experience sounds a bit disjointed. The crashy elements of symbol hits, for example, are somewhat incoherent with the where the tonal focus should be. And uh this is a pretty big hit to tambber. It does not sound natural at all. It sounds harsh. It sounds uh fatiguing. So my recommendation is to just get the FT1 uh if you were looking for this kind of sound signature. Saves you a bunch of money. I believe that FiiO have fixed the uh QC issue to do with the yolk structure, the yolk attachment point. I think they were very good about that. And if you have issues with the comfort of the FT1, just get yourself a capper strap. They're not that expensive. My suggestion to FO here is not that this is bad in overall like the idea what they were shooting for here. Like I kind of get the sense of what they were trying to do. maybe try shifting that balance more towards making it a bit smoother rather than trying to emphasize, you know, the that sort of mid and upper treble region. Uh because as it is right now, it's quite disjointed. And I also really feel that uh this this mechanical design that's going on here, why it might be better for QC or from a production standpoint than what you get on the FiiO FT1, but um mechanically it it doesn't it doesn't quite work that well and I don't think it's going to accommodate a wide range of heads. So, I would want them to maybe revisit this design a little bit, make it so that the angling can be a little bit better going inwards. That's something that can be accommodated by having narrower pads at the top and thicker pads at the bottom. I've seen other brands do this as well, and that's something that you could in theory even do with aftermarket pads for the FiiO FT1. Like the Yaki pads for the TH600 series or TH900 series do function that way on the FT1. So, it's an option. So, yeah, ultimately I'm disappointed with the FT13. FIA's been on quite the positive trajectory with uh their recent releases. This is the first one that's a bit of a stumble in my books and so hopefully they can take this as constructive feedback and uh we can get something better for the next one. And that's going to do it for this video. As always, if you're interested in the measurements of these uh with additional measurements, that will be posted on the in the forum linked below at forum.phones.com. And if you'd like to chat with me or other like-minded audio folks, you can do so in a Discord, also linked below. Until next time, I'll see you guys later. Bye for now.