CampfireAudio Comet Review – Excellent value, Solid Body, Steampunk Design
Campfire Audio Comet
USD199
Pros
- Beautiful design aesthetics and excellent solid build quality
- Copper Litz Cable, Great carry case and tip selection. Very good value
- Musical full signature with great immersion and staging presence.
Cons
- Detail and imaging could be improved
- People might be weary of MMCX connectors.
- Very tip dependent for sound character
Sound Signature:
As always the most vital part of any earphone review is the sound signature.
Let me start of by saying straight away that tip selection and fit is essential to getting the full experience from the Campfire Audio Comet earphones.
At first the signature felt a little veiled with the default installed Comply tips but after some tip rolling and testing I managed to attain a more balanced representation using the Spin-Fits. I recommend you try the full suite of supplied tips and your own preferred tips before making any concrete signature judgements as there was quite a large impact on signature.
So how is the signature, now we have a nice comfortable fit.
Let me go through the familiar band of frequency ranges that all us earphone fans are interested in.
The Campfire Comet has strong bass and mid characteristics resulting in an overall weighty signature. The bass slams with strong impact, powerful but not extremely refined especially at the lower sub range end. It is very musical, quick to resolve and versatile across many musical genres. This area gives overall body and produces a punchy thick style, not overly dominating but full and with a kick. This area of tuning should be very appealing and I’m sure it will have ideal strength and impact for many in-ear listeners out there. There is slight overlap into the lowermids but I think this tuning is intentional.
Lowermids have slight veiling of some instruments but this is a trade that I am comfortable with and helps with the overall signature coherence.
Mids are again full sounding, providing more focus to vocals and a slight rounded wider feel to some instruments. This region directs the listeners focus and provides a style of signature richness all round.
Uppermids appear to be lifted and results in a weighty presence adding to the signature fullness and sense of immersion. Decay is a times a little quick and my preference would have been for the decay to extend a fraction more to soften the impact a little, however with the current tuning I suspect the variety of musical styles is more accessible.
Clarity of detail and resolution accuracy is not the most precise, due to it taking a slight back seat to the signature meatyness and musicality. In this price range you rarely get the micro detail level of articulation and imaging found in some of the higher range earphones. However the style of tuning is in-line with the overall signature and generally well balanced, so should be well suited to most listeners tastes.
Treble presentation is relatively tightly controlled with very fast decays. Extension pushes quite far and there is no sight of harsh peaking or sharpness. Due to the thickness of overall signature the treble sparkles you get on some earphones are not present on this earphone from our experience, however this doesn’t take away from the musical signature style it just results in slightly less energetics being present essentially on fast intricate percussive tracks. No fatiguing is experienced on longer listening sessions.
Our team are big fans of sound stage presence on earphones, hard to to achieve accurately, too much and everything sounds distant and a bit artificial, too little and breath of signature is lost. The Comet earphones sound stage presence is immersive and full, with a strong surround presence, not so expansive or extended but more wide in character. Supporting the range of weight in the signature body, this in conjunction with the solid bass tuning works well and is impressive for such a modestly priced earphone.
Overall I think for this price point Campfire Audio have produced an excellent package, with fantastic build quality, great accessorises and a solid earphone with wide sound stage, full body signature, solid bass and musical appeal.
Looks like at $199USD the Campfire Audio team have struck gold, all you need to do now is produce one in Gold for the team at earphonia.com to cherish (my picture below for inspiration).
https://campfireaudio.com/shop/comet/
