Etymotic Evo Earphone review – Refined Balance
Evo
$499
Pros
- Excellent build, mastering signature
- Solid shells, Cool modern design
- Transparent neutral detail
Cons
- Cable thinness a concern for durability
- Nozzles pretty long, so care needed
- Upper region harshness with less warm sources
Fast and with a fair amount of energy, the Etymotic Evo earphones transition effortlessly and can navigate with ease and clean movement.
As detail and transparency is key to the target audience demographic, there is quite a lot of emphasis on Treble which I am a fan of.
For the most part staying natural, the upper end frequency range has good extension and some flashes of sparkle while remaining clean.
Depending on your source, musical preference and listening range, this upper region may get polarised responses due to the wrong combination of the afore mentioned elements. This could resulting in some harshness especially when paired with energetic bright sources.
The sources that worked best for me was primarily the more organic sounding digital audio players and as my followers know I am fan of non-oversampling chipset. The Altmann Tera player and Hifiman R2R2000 with the PCM1704 chipset complimented the Evo earphones, taming any abrasive character that may be encounter at times.
The coupling of the excellent imaging and transparency kept the technicals in focus, while still remaining musical yet clean.
Live vocals are intimate and clear, along with acoustic instruments and strings in this region.
Classical music works extremely well, as does ambient electronica.
The clean treble is crisp in its clarity and as mentioned with the right pairing can really shine.
