Headphones

Here's my new set of Kiwi Ears Melodies.

I picked them up as a bit of an impulse purchase because I don't have a planar IEM and I already own the Kiwi Ears Quintet and I like what that company is doing. The idea of a bass focused planar from them(a very different sound from the Quintet) for only 90$ was something I wanted to check out.

The included cable is fine, a little stiffer than the one that comes with the quintet, but perfectly usable and a nice feeling cable. The cable in the photo here is the Tripowin cable that everyone buys, and it turns out that's for a good reason. They look and feel great for 15$. The IEM itself is solid feeling, not much to report about a pretty low-key shell. I like it, but I like boring looking IEMs.

Onto the sound, this thing really is bass focused, but not to the exclusion of everything else. The bass goes deep and has a really fun thump to it, but it has a really warm if slightly stepped back vocal presentation.

The mids a little dropped as you might expect for this much of a v-shape but that's kind've the idea, but as mentioned above, I don't feel like I'm missing much.

As far as treble goes, it has fun zing, and it's on maybe 1 in 20 songs where I can hear a little planar sizzle, but mostly it's crisp, clear, and fast, and overall really enjoyable.

The soundstage is odd. It's pretty narrow, but everything feels like it's pleasantly like 10 feet in a relatively wide angle front of you. I'd describe it as being in the front row of a show rather than on stage with the band. Imaging is actually pretty good, but this odd soundstage plus the lack of upper mid/lower treble makes it pretty bad for games(something the Quintet does exceptionally well).

Overall this is a really fun IEM, and I find myself reaching for it a lot because a lot of the music I listen to is fairly low-fi but pleasant sounding EDM and Synthwave, which just plays really nicely with this flavor of IEM tuning, and it's a blissful reprieve from the "Harman with a bass bump" standard these days. For 90$ it's a super easy recommendation as a first IEM or something to have in the collection.