Campfire Audio Solaris Review – An Expansive Pinnacle Of Audio
Solaris
$1499
Pros
- Huge Grand Scale Expansive Staging, Dynamic sound signature.
- Solid build quality, high quality elegant jaw dropping design
- Litz cable and luxury leather carry case
Cons
- Large Shell size and Nozzle width may not suit smaller ears
- MMCX connection, some people don't like this type of connector
- Only one colour style choice
Sound Signature:
As advised by the manufacturer we left the unit on 24 hour burn in for a duration of 7 days to stabilise and open up the fluidity of the signature and dynamics before starting any listening sessions.
As mentioned before, correct tip selection is essential to get the full experience with these earphones, we finally settled on the Final Audio Design E Type medium tips. We also used some silicon custom tips that helped with a more custom type fit style.
Right from the get go, the signature fullness and vastness of expanse hits you. Abundant with depth and musicality these beautiful earphones have a very natural feel and dynamic engaging presence to them.
What is a bit of an enigma is that usually when sound signatures have a really impacting initial listen you get overwhelmed and it feels a little too much but thankfully that is not the case with the Campfire Solaris earphones. After a few minutes your ears get familiar with the immersive signature and you learn to acclimatise and embrace the epic scale. Stepping in the blind expanse with a desire and comforting expectation.
The signature style has a natural weighted character and in our experience this is very difficult to capture with earphone tuning. These earphones portray accurate instrument realism, relaying key notes with controlled sustained perfect weighted decay.
The slight airy aspect of signature helps give space to the vocals adding to the natural style. Tuned to maintain the listeners focus, relaying an emotional richness. Shifts in air movement is captured effortlessly making you feel like it is a personal intimate rendition being played just for you. Emotion and passion is conveyed with such realism and verve especially for live well mastered recorded music.
Imaging and detail separation is well managed and always sounding musical. There is an openness between notes and excellent precision of detail especially in the upper regions. Crashing complex decays on cymbals sounding very realistic.
Treble helps the extended highs and has a precise control that is expertly tuned, showing off sparkles at times and gives a shine to the upper end elements with a good breath of extension.
Occasionally I experienced some abrupt note edges, giving at little sharpness but after some time and with certain tip pairings this seems to have dissipated and resulted in being smoothed out.
One of the most impressive signature aspects is the expansive scale and breath of staging. It is really sizeable and creates an immersive grand musical experience to get fully embraced with. The depth and range of stage doesn’t have an unrealistic feel, quite the opposite helping to give a more three dimensional feel to the layering and imaging placement composition. Staying smooth and well blended, so that everything sounds pure with an organic natural type feel.
Layering is excellent without sounding artificial, maintaining precision and blending well to add to the immersion and scale of this grand signature.
Bass has good extension and is well textured, which portrays an ease of transitioning, quick to attack with coherence across the frequency spectrum. The earphones tuning is able to adapt to all variety of styles and rhythmic paces, making it always sound musical and fun at all times. Sometimes intense and adding to the immersion of the music, it is well balanced with good layering blend.
Mid range is very well tuned, giving the meat and body to the signature. This area holds true to the instruments and vocals, especially for well mastered tracks, this gave Blue Note recordings a very emotional live set presence when listening. Bringing verve and flare to this already majestic earphone. I did notice that poorly encoded recording are laid bare, showing all elements, so it is recommended to have high res and well mastered recordings to get the full Solaris experience.
The signature as a whole has an effortless aspect to it that is really astounding, adding to the beauty of the natural character of sound signature. The decays seem to be a little laid back helping with the realism of experience. Coupled with the strong refined mids, immersive staging, impacting bass and precise transition aspects makes the Solaris one of the most pleasurable well tuned earphones that the team at earphonia.com have had the chance to experience.
Ken has now set the bar extremely high and you can see his curve of progression from Vega to Andromeda to Atlas and now the summit-fi in ear Solaris.
Now he has climbed to majestic heights with the Solaris , we are keen to see where the masters path will lead for his next earphone after producing this expansive pinnacle of audio musicality.
The team at earphonia.com can certainly recommend the Campfire Solaris and it sits amidst the best in ear experience we have had the chance to experience – Thanks !
