Is Truthear Pure BETTER than Hexa?

00:00:00 <Andrew Park>
Hello everyone, today we're going to be talking about the Truthear Pure. This is the follow-up to the Hexa, which was one of my favorite IEMs at its asking price. What?The Pure comes in right at around $90, which is, I believe, at around the same price as what the Hexa is now.And in this video, we're going to find out if the Pure is a worthy successor to the Hexa, whether or not it's any good, and if this is my new favorite at its asking price.And actually, make sure you stick around to the end of the video, because I will be talking to the person involved in the tuning choices that were made going from the Hexa to the Pure.So stick around for that.Okay, let's get going with the video.Alright, just a quick disclaimer, this was sent to me by Shenzhen Audio for review.Big thanks to Shenzhen for sending it in.Of course, they haven't paid me to say anything in particular about it, and all thoughts and opinions here are my own.Alright, so to start off with, this is the box for the Pure, and as you can see, they've stuck with the cartoon child aesthetic.Always nice to see the cartoon children are out in full force.Many of them, I'm sure, will be in the comments, complaining about the fact that I said cartoon children.Oh my god, the horror.Alright, so inside the box, you of course get this baggie here.It's a no-nonsense kind of baggie; crumpling up style of baggy, but it actually does work reasonably well.Just don't put it in something where the IEM could get crushed because there really is no protection here whatsoever.That's fine in my opinion, but just keep that in mind.You also get two different sets of tips.I'm using the black tips here, which are narrow bore, but then you also get some wider bore gray tips right here.And they do have an effect on the sound.And then you also get some foam tips, but nobody uses those.So those can go straight to the bin.I mean, it's fine if you use foam tips.Let's don't let anybody bully you if you use foam foam tips all right.So let's talk about the shell ergonomics uh, the design and all that good stuff.Uh, it's very similar to the original Hexa, nearly identical.They've made some changes to the face plate; it's more of like a serrated-looking face plate to it.I actually prefer the way the original looks personally, uh, but you know it's fine.The inside of it as well is pretty similar with this sort of translucent stuff, for its overall size.If you had issues with the fit of the previous one, you'll have issues with this one, but if you didn't have issues with it, you won't have issues with this one either, and I personally find the Pure and the Hexa to be both very comfortable for long listening sessions.The cable doesn't have, it doesn't feel stiff or anything like that, and so no issues with the cable personally, and the ear hooks are reasonably flexible.Sometimes IEMs have really stiff ear hooks, and that can also dig in in an uncomfortable way, but these are, for these, it's no problem whatsoever.Two pin style connector for the cable.And then the cable itself is quite no nonsense.No extra terminations or anything like that on the end.It's fine for this price.Remember, this is a more budget-friendly IEM.But that's basically it.I just have to say that I do appreciate the more understated looking shells.I generally don't like shells that are super flashy and blingy.And so Truthear coming out with products like the Hexa and now the Pure.This speaks to me, a product.My only complaint about the visual design elements that they go for here is that they put Truthear on one of the shells right here, and I just wish that they had left that blank.Like, I don't want to walk around with somebody thinking, oh, he's got Truthear going on.Oh, he's listening to the truth.For the most part, it's fine, and I do really like the rest of the aesthetic vibe that it's going for.Now, let's talk about the sound quality.So, for folks who are not familiar with the original Hexa, That was a really great sounding IEM because it was mostly neutral, just with maybe a hint of glare or forwardness in the treble in certain places.For me, it could occasionally be a bit on the edgy side in the lower treble, but it was generally well received for being neutral across the board.It still had decent bass presence, and it was also very detailed, very clear sounding overall.The same, just with a couple of key differences, particularly for some of the areas that I personally found to be problematic.And that's what I'm most happy about with this.But that doesn't mean that it didn't come with trade-offs.There are some, and so I'm going to dive into the data now and explain some of this to you guys as well.But I also want to let you guys know: the way I hear this product is not how it measures; and how you are going to hear this product is going to also be influenced by shape and depth of your ear canal.So this might get technical.So what I'm showing you guys here is the HPTM variation for an IEM.And you might not be used to reading IEM measurement data like this.So, what I've done here is measured at multiple different insertion depths to give you a better picture of the range of possible experiences that you might get with this product.As soon as you get up into the treble.At around six kilohertz, six, seven kilohertz, uh, things start to widen, and that's because of the behavior of this series or pattern of resonances that is the result of the distance between the driver and your eardrum.And so if the IM is sitting further out of your ear, that's going to sound different from if it's further into your ear, or if you have, you know, larger ear canals versus smaller ear canals, that air volume in between the driver and your eardrum is going to impact how you hear this range.And so for me, it actually sounds a little bit different from how this center line graphs.But again, the important thing here to understand is why it makes sense to show the HPTF visualization for this, for IEMs as well as over-ear headphone data.We've been doing this for over-ear headphones for a while, and now we want to roll it out for IEMs as well.Briefly, let me just show you guys the difference between the narrow bore tips of the darker ones and the lighter gray ones.So this is the black tips, the narrow bore tips.Now let's look at the gray tips.With some key differences throughout the treble, I can tell you that for me, the gray tips, so the wider bore tips, just don't work at all.It causes the sound to be a little bit more grating, a little bit more harsh, but the narrow bore tips sound very, very good to me.So let's just assume that we're running with these tips that I have on here right now.The Pure is, as you can see, a mostly neutral IEM, very neutral.But with that said, there are a couple of features here to talk about.One is that there is a bit of bloom or forwardness in the low mid-upper bass section.So, overall, the mix sounds mostly really good, really natural.It doesn't sound like, you know, think actually the original Hexa it did come across occasionally as a little bit on the on the lean or shouty side of things a little bit glary to do with a balance between the upper mids and lower mids now with the Pure You have a lot more of a forward character to that low mid section causing a bit of bloom or cloudiness to the mids which it does make things sound a bit more full and rich but at the same time it does detract a little bit from that clarity about my piano jazz that kind of thing I actually think this is where the original Hexa did a little bit better it was a little bit more detailed sounding but this one also doesn't have any of that leanness problem so in that respect it's a bit of an improvement and because of where this feature is relative to the bass I find at least that the bass when I'm listening to things that have a ton of bass that bass comes across with a lot better sense of dynamism and impact and physicality bass which I think is in part because of this more forward character to that sort of you know upper bass low mid bloom section I'm not going to say that this is how I prefer it to be.I would have preferred a little bit less at around 200 hertz or 300 hertz, wherever this is.But there are definitely moments with this IEM where things can hit very hard.Now, here's the other side of this.Because there is less treble overall on the Pure compared to the original Hexa, I feel that also does make some of that bloom come forward a little bit more, I guess the overall balance shifts a little bit more towards the lower frequencies, which I think is a good thing.So this does fix that issue that I had with the original Hexa being a little bit too glary occasionally with some of that more forward presence in the low and mid treble.With that said though, the one thing that this doesn't quite fix for me is the length mode resonance issue that I personally deal with.I get a resonance between six and seven kilohertz.For me with this IEM, with the Pure.I also get kind of a weird forward character at around 4.2 kilohertz, which does not show up on the graph really at all.So that could be just a unique thing to my ear.But the other side of this is that because there is less treble overall, that reveals things about the lower treble and the mid-range more.But okay, let's now do a quick comparison with the original Hex.So let me just, so here you can see the general differences that I've been talking about.mid and upper bass energy, and it has less treble generally.And again, for me, I would get these sort of length mode issues on both of them, but I still get it on the Pure, right?So this doesn't sound perfectly smooth to me in the treble.There's a bit of hardness there still with the Pure.And actually, this is why I kind of don't hear this product as being as warm as it might measure.Because for me, it's almost like, you know, at around like six to seven kilohertz, like a bump up there but if you have a differently shaped ear canal which you probably do i mean it'd be weird if you had the same shape to the ear canal you're likely not going to hear it quite like that and so for you it might actually come across as warmer and smoother now i've been thinking about how to like reference this to over ear headphones that people might be familiar with and i was originally thinking this is kind of like the difference between an hd 600 and an hd 650 but i actually don't think that that description makes sense for how i hear it the pure at least subjectively bit more like an HD 550 just with the kind of forward low mid upper bass bloom that you get from an HD 650.I would actually say that it is more generally neutral.It doesn't have quite that same richness and sweetness that you get from the 650 and the 600s.In my mind, the deciding factor between these two IEMs, between the HEXA and the Pure, it should probably be based around that low mid feature.If you're looking for something that is more analytic and more I guess, clarity focused.The original Hexa, I think, is the better choice.But if you're looking for something that is a little bit more relaxed, less analytical, more smooth in the treble, again, depending on your ear canal, that's sort of an asterisk for any IEM, then the Pure would be the way to go.And for me personally, that's the reason why I actually prefer the Pure over the original Hexa.The things that stand out to me on the original Hexa, despite the fact that I love that IEM, that more glaring and biting kind of thing, that is a more bothersome feature than the more forward character of the low-mid, upper-bass emphasis that I get with the Pure.With that in mind, if you compare these to IEMs that cost way more, like hundreds of dollars, even in the $1,000 price range, they are more neutral.These are both more typically neutral, balanced sound signatures than what you're going to get with the vast majority of products that are out there.And if you're new to IEMs and if you're just considering getting into this at all, you really cannot go wrong with either of these IEMs.So, I guess for anybody who is looking for, you know, the HD6XX of IEMs, this is probably the closest that I can think of right now to that kind of sound signature, even though there are some differences as well.So, that's going to do it for the review portion of this video.Obviously, yes, I recommend it, but I think it just matters, you know, what kind of sound signature you're going for between the Pure and the Hexa.Now, let's talk to the person who was involved in the tuning choices for this product.But just before getting into that, I want to remind folks that these videos are made possible by Headphones.com.Headphones.com is not just another audio store.They've empowered reviewers such as us here on this channel to do all kinds of technical deep dives, and their support has given us the tools and resources to understand sound quality better than ever before.If you find any of the information we provide here on this channel useful or interesting, consider joining our community and checking out Headphones.com the next time you're shopping for some new audio gear.Okay, back to the video.All right, so I am here with Listener, who was involved in the tuning process for the Truthear Pure.Listener, what do you have to say for yourself?

00:12:58 <Griffin Silver>
Starting right out of the gate with an accusatory tone.I love it.Yeah, so I mean, just the quick cliff notes for it.Yes, I was involved in the tuning of the Truthear Pure.There was no prototyping phase of it, so they never sent me any prototypes for me to sign off on or give feedback about.I had no involvement with the visual design, accessories, any of that stuff.

00:13:24 <Andrew Park>
So the cartoon child was not your choice?

00:13:26 <Griffin Silver>
It was not my choice.I will say this one is probably my favorite of the art from Truthears releases up to this point.But yeah.Please cut that out in the edit.

00:13:39 <Andrew Park>
No, that's going in.Griffin is a weeb.Confirmed.

00:13:45 <Griffin Silver>
But the last and most important thing, I think, is that I'm not making any money on this.This is not something that I did for profit.I just kind of slid into the Truthear Engineers DMs and wanted to talk about tuning IEMs.And it just so happened that I did so at what ended up being the right time.

00:14:04 <Andrew Park>
Yeah.So this is not a collab.This is just.

00:14:07 <Griffin Silver>
No, this is not a listener collab.You're not going to see my name or anything about me on the box.You're not going to see anything about headphones.com on the box.I was not a full-time employee when I did this.So this was not like a headphones.com co-branded effort or anything like that.It was just me helping out a brand that I believe in.

00:14:25 <Andrew Park>
What did you have in mind when you were, I guess, expressing your desires for an IEM?You obviously were very familiar with the HEXA.When you approached Truthear about this, what was kind of the pitch?

00:14:39 <Griffin Silver>
Yeah, so this was right after my article, The Shape of IEMs to Come, had come out.And I basically just hit up their engineer and was like, 'You know, the 5-128 gives us some information about what may be a route we can take to make IEMs sound a little bit closer to headphones and a little bit less shouty, nasally, small sounding.'And I got talking about kind of IEMs that we liked.For me, my inspirations, as far as the IEM sphere would go, was like the AudioSense DT200 and the Led Short Cadenza 12, both of which were featured in that article.But honestly, my main inspiration was the HD650.Like I wanted something that was like warm, reasonably well-rounded and accessible because I felt like that was something that was really lacking in the under $100 sphere.I seem to mean that I don't know uh where you ended up landing on it uh because I haven't watched this review yet.

00:15:32 <Andrew Park>
Yeah, I mean I think certainly the comparisons the HD 650 makes sense.Um, there's a lot of similarity or familiarity there.But I also think that, you know, I was originally struggling with what to compare this to because I do think the 650 is also different in, you know, the upper frequencies.But I can absolutely see where, yeah, I can see where, I guess, that comparison makes sense.When you were-the process for this, you know, Was it kind of like telling the folks at Truthear, hey, like, you know, make this adjustment here or, you know, like, I guess what's the.Like, do you have to let them know hey you know make change this crossover change this driver or like what's actually involved in like the uh advice giving process?

00:16:22 <Griffin Silver>
Yeah, sure.So I had kind of reached out to the engineer and given him my whole spiel.And he hit me back and he was like, 'Hey, thanks for all this information.It's really interesting.It's going to take a little time to digest.'Once he'd digested it, he let me in on the fact he was actually already working on the follow-up to the Hexa.And it looked quite a bit different than what we got.It kind of went the opposite direction that the Pure went, so instead of warmer mids, it was colder in the mids and there was more treble and there was a more distinct bass shelf.After a while of talking, we had kind of agreed that that was territory that was already tread by the Zero Red, so I kind of maybe convinced him a little bit to double down on the Hexa, and what I think made the Hexa special, which was that it was you know more of a neutral kind of thing, it wasn't so much about bass and contrast and all that, it was more about just like reasonable tuning.And most of my iterative tweaking was just kind of getting the mid-range balance to where we both were happy.And I think where I maybe flexed a little bit more of my judgment was on the treble, making sure it was relaxed enough that it kind of fit within the HRTF expectation that the 5.128 and population average HRTFs tell us might be a good thing to aim for, but also that it would be something that works with a variety of tips.Kind of don't love about the modern IEM sphere is that because IEMs are so bright, you basically get locked into a single tip type.And for me, it's usually narrow bore tips because they roll off upper treble.But for the Pure, I found most tips sounded pretty good.But there was one tip that I think sounded best and it ended up being the stock wide bore tip for me.

00:18:02 <Andrew Park>
Interesting.So you prefer the wide bore tips?

00:18:05 <Griffin Silver>
I do.I like the fact that it dips a little bit in that 9 kilohertz to 10 kilohertz area that it doesn't sound dipped in my ear at all.I think for people who want more of like a linear kind of transfer between the low treble and the upper treble, like a smoother mid-treble transition, the narrow bore tips are going to be better.But for me, yeah, I don't know if it's my HRTF or whatever's going on in my ear canal, but I do like that little dip in the mid-treble that happens with the wide bore tips.

00:18:35 <Andrew Park>
That the trouble ended up firmly within the realm of reasonable or what I would call reasonable at least now if you, if you had to sum up sort of your sense of the difference between the Hexa and the Pure.How would you kind of characterize that?

00:18:49 <Griffin Silver>
So I think the main difference is, yeah, the mids and treble, because actually the sub-bass amount is basically identical.Something that I had lamented about the Hexa was that, you know, it often got complaints about the bass quality not being great.And to my perception, it was because there was too much sub-bass kind of overwhelming the mid and upper bass.So, I wanted to kind of fill in that upper bass region to kind of bring forth some of the early overtones of, you know, bass and stuff like that, and I think we did that.It also ended up, you know, making the mid-range a little bit more headphone-like, I guess I'll say.As far as the difference between the Pure and the Hexa, I would say the Hexa is kind of like an HD560S where it's got you know full bass extension but it doesn't really feel impactful or full or warm in any sense of the word.It's a fairly lean listen despite still having a fairly prominent sub-bass and the treble is just a little bit too spicy for me.I mean that's true for a lot of IEMs for me, but was certainly also true of the Hexa and kind of stopped me being able to hear it as as a lot of other people heard it.The Pure I feel like is more akin to the HD 650, maybe even like worn pads HD 650 conversation where it's just, it's a very kind of euphonic warm type of signature.I mean, it's definitely got a little bit too much of that kind of halo around like male vocals and it's got like a glow to it that the 650 also has.It's a little bit too warm for me in the mids, but I would say that's kind of where I would choose to compare them.Pure is a little bit on the warm side of neutral, but the Hexa is a little bit too lean.I wouldn't say either of them is perfect.But I would say they're both within the camp of neutral such that they both make sense to be called a neutral item if that makes sense, yeah, no, I completely agree that's actually how I characterized it just before we jumped on this call so okay good that aligns great.

00:20:54 <Andrew Park>
Well thanks for your explanation uh for uh the things that you have done and uh so for folks who uh you know want uh all the treble in the world you can blame listener for the purest existence Yeah, I mean if you want more treble you have every other IEM out there to choose from frankly That's fair.

00:21:17 <Griffin Silver>
This was really just to fill a hole in the market And you know there's really nothing else that's tuned like it.So I think Truthear was really brave to take this risk and double down on the kind of neutral for neutral's sake that the Hexa represented and now the Pure kind of represents.

00:21:34 <Andrew Park>
I like it.I mean, it solves the ouchie zones for me for the most part, which is an improvement.

00:21:44 <Griffin Silver>
Like an IEM for you is going to need to be drastically different than an IEM for me, I think.I think you really just need a lot less low trouble than I'm going to need just because of your anatomy.

00:21:55 <Andrew Park>
Yeah.If folks want to learn more generally, join our Discord and you can chat with a listener or myself there.But otherwise, that's going to do it for this video.Thanks to everybody for watching.We'll see you guys in the next one.Bye for now.

00:22:08 <Griffin Silver>
Thanks, guys. Bye.