Craft Ears Four – Great Value, Quad Driver Customs
CE4
EU550
Pros
- Awesome Value Custom Earphone, High quality build production, attentive design style.
- Rich low end depth, intimate staging with solid musicality
- Clean and responsive signature character
Cons
- Upper end a little bright and fast at times
- No MMCX options so aftermarket choices limited
Sound Signature:
Looking at the Specification you can tell these awesome looking Customs are prepped and ready for business.
As these customs fit like a velvet glove and these babies are burned in to vibrational perfection, lets see how the sound signature flows.
Straight away you will get instant pleasure with the warmish sizable weight of the musicality apparent with the CE4 earphones.
Signature fullness is comforting and doesn’t feel coloured but shows a well tuned balance across the frequency spectrum, helped by the lowend emphasis, as well as the engaging midrange section adding an organic rounded presence to it’s sound style.
As mentioned previously, the Craft Fours ease of drive-ability and source synergies gives plenty of options for your own musical preferences and my preferred affinity was with some of the NOS Daps and kept getting drawn to the Hifiman R2R2000.
The CE4s feature dual (sub)woofers, single mid driver and single super tweeter drivers coupled with the four way crossover calibration and tri-bore nozzle design.
As stated these certainly do posses reinforced lows, creating sound forms of rich depth, that are comforting yet precise with a substantial fleshy tone.
These bass aspects relay a refined collected presence with just the right amount of power and strength.
Maintaining a clean fluid weight that is slightly feathered in the sub region with a stronger emphasis on the core bass section, lifting the layers and creating the textured organic realism in the musicality portrayed.
Throughout, the blend and texturing of bass is excellently balanced without artificial unrealistic colouring and able to relay a rounded tight punchy attack presence when called for.
Treble decays a little fast at times and I think holding a touch longer would add some more magic to these already competent earphones.
You may think that due to the mid and low focus that the Craft Fours are tuned too would relay a darkness of sound character but this is not the case and these relay a soft delicate warm slightly bright signature, resulting in non-fatiguing ease of listening and a versatile musical style.
Due to the complimenting wide sound staging, this leads to a very potent experience, especially when coupled with emotional vocals. On well mastered live tracks a lot of the vocal nuances are captured faithfully and delicate shifts of air movement adds to the immersive feel.
From a micro detail perspective I would say this is not the Craft Fours strongest aspect but then I feel the less technical focus of this earphone is far outweighed by the pleasurably cohesive musical style. There is a lightness and bright aspect, as well and at times the upper region detail is not as intricate or prominent as my musical preferences align with.
These can be used in a live stage environment, as Jedrek’s artists client list includes a number of respected musicians and sound engineers. This is testament to the earphones performance and industry use.
Pianos sound real with a natural weight very difficult to capture, key notes are sustained accurately and decay perfectly.
Frequency cohesion is balanced across the full spectrum without any unwanted anomalies or sound region dominance and everything is tuned in character with the original target signature goal.
The rich low end compliments the depth required for bass instruments and the transition speed for percussion is handled with ease, not seeming to struggle at all.
Layering and separation is well balanced with good cohesion, blending to produce a slightly warm bright style with textured weight.
One characteristic that stands out is the sense of space and wideness of the sound stage. The CE4 staging although widish in nature doesn’t feel artificially projected and instrument placement has fair realistic positioning.
The Craft Fours showcases what may lead to be a classic house sound style from Craft Ears, coupled with the excellent value for a Custom Earphone and expert craftsmanship, these earphones are a force to be reckoned with and I am hard pushed to name a CIEM at this price tier that competes.
Jedrek’s has stepped into the audiophile arena boldly and with an impressive in ear offering. The team at earphonia.com welcome Craft Ears to the market and it is a welcome breath of fresh air that his products are priced is so affordably, opening up the CIEM market to a new audience.
The Craft Fours resonate passion throughout and shine with depth and character. Looking forward to seeing what magic Jedrek and his team can come of with in future products. You certain get our approval for this wonderful offering.
