The FiiO FT7 sounds great, but...

Okay, let's talk about FiiO. FiiO is a headphone brand that has been absolutely crushing it with their latest releases, their more budget-oriented releases in the FT1 and the FT1 Pro, especially the closed-back, the FT1, which performs well above its price point. And apart from some QC issues to do with the hinges and the mechanical design, these are headphones that people have been really enjoying. So it's been super interesting for a lot of us to see FiiO working on a more high-end headphone now, the FT7. That's this headphone here, and that's what we're going to talk about in today's video. The question is, did they knock this out of the park the way that they did for those more budget offerings, and does the FT7, at its higher price tag of around $700, I believe, compete with other headphones that cost significantly more? The answer is, sort of. Let's get into it. Okay, so a quick disclaimer, this unit has been provided by FiiO for review. I do not get to keep it. I haven't been paid to say anything in particular about it, and all thoughts and opinions here are my own. With that out of the way, let's get going into the review. All right, first of all, what do you actually get with the FD7? So you obviously get the headphones. You also get a separate set of pads. These leather ones here actually come with the headphones. I put the suede ones on here now. I'll talk more about the pads when we talk about the sound quality, because it does make actually a meaningful difference. You also get this nice case. And inside the case, you actually get a bunch of different terminations. These have fallen out. You get 6.35 millimeter and you also get a XLR adapter. And the cable for this is terminated in Pentagon. It's a 3.5 millimeter on the connector side. The cable for this headphone is a little bit on the stiff side. I'm not the biggest fan of this cable, but it does look nice. and it has a carbon fiber section on the terminations, which is a nice touch. So visually, I think it's great, but ergonomically, it is not my favorite cable. It's a bit stiff. Now, let's just take a look at the headphone itself. This is a really nice looking headphone, in my opinion. It gives me Audeze LCD 5 vibes with this style of design for the cup. This has sort of like a polished wooden grill style to it. Carbon fiber on the outside ring section, carbon fiber connectors. And then the pads are also removable here very easily with these little snaps. On the inside here, you can see the driver. It's a fairly straightforward planar magnetic driver here with magnets on both sides. The headband piece is also this carbon fiber, along with this sliding mechanism and a strap underneath. I'm not the biggest fan of this sliding mechanism as I do find it can be a little bit stiff to move, but it works reasonably well. and the comfort on it is okay. It is a little bit on the heavier side for anybody who's not used to plantar magnetic headphones, but it is lighter than what you get with the likes of Audeze. I'll put the weight up on the screen here, but it was comfortable enough for me to be able to wear it for the majority of the day, so that's good. For the ear pads, they are round on the inside, as you can see here. I'm not the biggest fan of round ear pads. I find that occasionally my ear does touch the inside of the pads here, but it's not that bad. Now, just one thing to do with the driver design to show you guys something. This sort of struck me as interesting when I took a look at the driver from the backside of the grill. This here is the Hifiman Susvara, which is one of the highest end planar magnetic headphones. And this is obviously the FiiO FT7. You have a driver structure here that is very similar. If you can see through the driver to the other side here, the overall space, the overall size of this driver is very, very similar. And I think that's kind of interesting. I'm not sure if this is intentional, but if the idea was to make something, you know, at least on the driver front, similar to the Susvara, I think they did get fairly close with that. But obviously the driver is just one part of the story. As it happens, the driver is actually one of my few areas of criticism to do with this headphone. I will get into that. That is for the nerdier section if you want to skip ahead. Now for drivability, I'll put the specs up on the screen here. You shouldn't have that much trouble driving this or running this from various different sources. And I did measure the impedance here. It has linear impedance, so it doesn't use any weird filtering or anything like that, meaning that you can be fairly confident about running it off of a wide range of different amplifiers. Don't worry too much about any sort of output impedance synergies because the frequency response won't change. Now, let's get into the reason you guys are all here, the sound quality. Just before I do, I wanna give a quick shout out to headphones.com. Headphones.com is the sponsor of this channel. It makes what we do here possible. And the cool thing about headphones.com is that there is a 365 day return policy. So when you come across all that kind of stuff that people are talking about when it comes to sound quality, whether it's to do with the frequency response or whether it's to do with the dynamics or whatever it is, and you wanna know what that actually sounds like, but you're still unsure if that's the right thing for you, Well, this is where headphones.com can help you out because you can buy with confidence knowing that you'll have a year to return the product. Okay, back to the review. Now, let's talk about the sound quality for the FiiO FT7. So this headphone sound signature in general with either pad here is mostly sensible with a couple of colorations here and there. Those colorations are more noticeable with these pads here, whereas with the suede pads, everything's more cohesive. It's more timbrely appropriate while retaining still some of that character and flair that this headphone gives you. Now, as far as how that actually sounds, this is a neutral, bright-ish headphone, sort of, because it's not to say that there's anything lacking in the bass here. In fact, the bass is some of the best quality bass that you can find in a planar magnetic headphone around this price. A lot of the time, planar magnetic headphones will just have flat linear bass extension all the way across, or they'll kind of taper down like what you get with headphones kind of like the Cosmo behind me. With this one, yeah, it has a little bit more of that sense of punch and dynamism to do with the bass, while still being nimble and tactile, hard-hitting, all of those sorts of words. So the overall balance between bass and mids is really well handled here. Then there's just a little bit of flaring going on in the mids at around one kilohertz. I find at least that this does impart an enhanced sense of detail for certain instrument tones. Again, piano tones, guitar tones, that sort of thing. That's where these pads have a much more significant emphasis, right? So with these pads, the leather ones, you get a lot more of that sort of 1k coloration. And then with both sets of pads, there's quite a bit of upper treble air. Now, this is again, where I find that with the suede pads, the overall sound signature here is just awesome. Like, yes, there is this emphasis to the upper treble, but it's not imbalanced, at least not to my ear. It sounds like it's more of a wideband gradual elevation rather than the sort of disjointed kind of elevation that I get with these pads here. So again, this is where I'm just going to say these suede pads are just better overall. They're a more cohesive listen overall. And these pads here, they're just, it's got more of that sort of coloration going on. At the same time, like a lot of headphones that have that, they are perceived as being more detailed. And I do know, I get it. It's a character that a lot of other headphones have, like the Cosmo has it as well. but I find that there's just a bit more appropriate restraint applied with these pads here. It still retains a lot of the things that people like plantar magnetic headphones for, like that sort of plucked character that I've called in the past. It has all of that, and of course this does also come with a little bit of excess upper treble. Now let's get into the graphs here. Let's talk about how this actually measures on a test fixture. Now for this actually we use two test fixtures. We use the B&K5128 and we also use the GRAS 43AG systems and we show this because headphones behave differently on different heads. Now actually the FiiO FT7 here performs quite consistently all the way up until the upper treble where things do change quite dramatically. So you can see basically the sound signature I'm talking about with the suede pads here. Things are mostly normal with just a hint of flare in a couple spots there at around like one kilohertz and then there's sort of a recession at around like five kilohertz in the lower treble region. But for the most part, this is a pretty solid result. And as you can see, there's this upper treble air presence to it. But again, personally, I don't find this to be bad at all. This just sounds like a very gradual wideband elevation with extra air, which is a nice kind of, it gives it kind of this open, airy feeling to it, which is nice. With the leather pads, you can see it's just got a bit more coloration there overall, particularly too with the mids and the treble. And as a result, I think that's also why the upper treble elevation is more noticeable with the leather pads. So overall with the suede pads, it's a fairly competent performing headphone generally. However, there is a scrungle here. And the problem with this headphone is that I don't really know what it's supposed to sound like. So let me explain what I mean. So far, I've been showing you just the averages. So this is the averages of 10 different seatings per channel. However, when I zoom in a little bit and take a look at the individual channels, you'll see that there are quite a few fine-grained peaks and dips and things like that that are in different spots for each channel. And it's not really that big of a problem perceptually. So why is it a problem? Well, this indicates that this headphone driver has a much more modal response to it, meaning that these jaggies that you see in the treble, they are likely to be in different spots for each driver. Now this is something that happens if you have a more loosely tensioned diaphragm that is undamped and for this headphone it is undamped with a fairly low resonance frequency and that's all stuff we don't need to get into in this video. The thing is this is a problem on many large diaphragm planar magnetic headphones like this one here. So as an example this is a problem on the Susvara as well. It's not as extreme on the as VARA, at least not on this unit, but it's entirely possible for there to be other units that have a more modal response, given what they're doing with these large diaphragms. And again, I have to stress, this is not that perceptually relevant. Like when I'm listening to music, it's really hard to pick up that stuff. But when we're talking about the actual performance of the drivers and how they relate to one another, this is going to be more challenging for them to get consistent unit to unit behavior. And also, you know, from one channel to the other, it also becomes difficult to know what to EQ if you want to EQ, right? Because your unit might not have those modal features in the same spots. Now, speaking of EQ, again, with these suede pads, I didn't find the need to EQ this really at all. You might want to give it a bass shelf. You might want to curb some of that upper treble, but for the most part, it's just a really solid sound. And as far as harmonic distortion is concerned, I didn't run into any problems here. There is a little bit more harmonic distortion here than what you might find on, say, Audeze's, but this is still fine, right? There is no audible harmonic distortion with these headphones. It's certainly below that threshold. Okay, now to do some comparisons, and I'm just going to kind of give you a sense of how this performs relative to other headphones that are also worth considering in this price bracket. So compared to the Hifiman Sundara, the FT7 just, it sounds more detailed, more resolving, sounds better, more clarity. With these pads, it sounds weirder with these compared to the Edition XS, I would also take the FT7. Again, stock configuration. In fact, personally, I like the sound of this better than the Aria Stealth even, because I find the Aria Stealth to be just a little bit too edgy for me in the treble. That's not to say this isn't, but I think for more of its response, it is a little bit closer to my preferences, especially in the lower treble. But I think that is a worthwhile point of comparison. I find the Aria Stealth to be more of that sort of spaciousness kind of sound. But this one here, I find is a little bit better at that sense of punch and impact and that overall sense of cohesion. I'm not going to say either of them are like the most natural sounding headphone, but the overall balance for the FT7 is more versatile. Just keep in mind that, you know, this does have more upper treble. And if you're sensitive to upper treble, this one is going to be a bit of a problem still. Now going up in price compared to the Cosmo behind me, I personally like the Cosmo more, but there is a case to be made for the FT7 over the Cosmo because this sound signature, again, it is a little bit more normal. The Cosmo has a few more colorations. It's a bit smoother in the treble and also has that feature around like one kilohertz that's more prominent. So that one really is more of like a, you know, if you're looking for that tasteful coloration that enhances that sense of detail without being fatiguing while still being smooth than the treble. The Cosmo does that. It's also got less ear gain on the Cosmo, less of that three kilohertz. The FT7, again, just more generalist for the FT7 with these suede pads. So I can see a preference for the FT7 over the Cosmo, but personally, for what I like, I still prefer the Cosmo. Also because the Cosmo's driver is really unique and it strikes an exceptional balance between, you know, its damping and overall modal characteristics. So it doesn't have those same issues that the FT7 has, plus all the pad swapping that you can do with that one. It's great. Comparing this to the LCDX, I actually would prefer the FT7 mainly because it's lighter and also its sound signature is more balanced overall. I think really if you're looking for that warmer kind of sound signature for much of its ear gain, the LCDX would still be more you know, appropriate because this definitely has more of that traditional kind of normal sound just with a bit of extra, you know, upper treble air as well. And actually in a way, the sound signature here reminds me almost kind of like a planar version of a Focal Clear. I'm not going to say exactly like that because there are definitely some differences particularly to do with the shape of the ear gain. But, you know, there's a similarity there in the sense that that lower treble section is a bit withdrawn on both of them. And there's a forward character to the one kilohertz range, giving it that extra sense of detail for certain types of tones, like piano tones, guitar tones. Again, this is, this is stuff that I really notice it on. Maybe you'll notice it on other instruments. So there's a familiarity there with that kind of sound signature. And I think it does a great job of it. So in conclusion, overall, it kind of delivers on the majority of the things that a high-end headphone should. There's so many headphones These days we were like, what was the point of that? This has competence and reasonableness written all over it, despite some of the scrungles that come up to do with the more modal character of the drivers and the channel matching. And some of those issues that I feel Theo is going to have to deal with. And I'm just hopeful that, you know, the positive experiences that people are going to have with this headphone, mine included, are going to be consistent. I'd give this an A minus, which is pretty good. My ranking goes all the way up to S. So there's still some room to grow here, but I think that they have delivered on a good product and it's one that I like. Okay, that does it for this review. Thank you for taking the time to watch it. And if you guys are interested in the measurements of this one, I'll have posted that up on the forum. That's forum.headphones.com. There'll be a big measurement post there with additional impressions from myself and maybe some other folks who've heard it as well. And then also you can chat with me or other like-minded people on our Discord, also linked below. And if you've heard this headphone, let me know what you think. I'm always curious what other folks' impressions are of these things. Okay, that's it for me. I'll see you guys later.