CustomArt FIBAE 4 – warm hug
The shells look truly wonderful :)
Disclaimer: English isn’t my native langugage but I’ll do my best to describe eveyrthing that’s important for potential customer. Enjoy the review!
If you’re not familiar CustomArt is a Polish-based company that manufactures high quality IEMs. Their main goal is to provide the best possible value to each model of headphones and I think they nail it basically every time 😊 I received FIBAE 4s for a month and during this time I’ve tested them in a lot of environments and with different genres of music. So let’s take a look at this mid-range model featuring 4 balanced armatures – FIBAE4!
A little bit about me
I’m 19 years old and been listening to music intentionally since I was 10. When it comes to sound signature I prefer the brighter, more resolving side of the spectrum and I really enjoy three qualities in pretty much any audio equipment that I own/test:
- soundstage and imaging
- clarity of the vocals
- highs reproduction as good as possible
Music is really important part of my life as it’s a part of my job (I’m kinda-pro writer and I do reviews for a living). Depending on a day, I spend beetween 3 to 6 hours wearing headphones or listening to music through speakers. Because of that I have a lot of time to discover new albums and artists and also to play what I already know. I listen to a lot of genres from jazz and lo-fi, samba and bolero up to electronic music (mainly some techno artists like Moderat, Zamilska or 999999999). Here you have a list of some artists (most of them actually) I’ve been listening to through my testing:
6LACK, Amy Winehouse, Agnes Obel, Alt-j, Aphex Twin, Buena Vista Social Club, Cigarettes After Sex, Diana Krall, Diana Panton, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Flume, Frank Ocean, Grimes, Jamie xx, jinsang, Kendrick Lamar, Kupla, Kaleo, Kraftwerk, Led Zeppelin, Logic, Mac DeMarco, Matt Costa, Marcin Wasilewski Trio, Mikromusic, Miles Davis, Pink Floyd, Radiohead, Real Estate, Stan Getz, Tame Impala, Tommy Guererro, The xx, Tycho, Venetian Snares, Zamilska
Yeah… I listen to a lot of music…
Build quality & comfort
CustomArt’s founder Piotr Granicki is absolutely in love with perfection and it can be seen in build of the monitors themselves. Maybe it’s weird saying this about IEMs made out of acrylic but F4s are build like a tank. The universal-fit model is perfectly assembled with no bubbles on shells or any other defects. The nozzle turned out to be long enough for my ear canals and it should be OK for most people. Universals made by CustomArt in general are very nicely-shaped and FIBAE 4 turned out to be one of the most comfortable IEM’s I’ve ever used. Comfort of long listening sessions is on part with other models that I had a chance to test – Harmony 8.2 and the younger brother FIBAE 3. In general there’s a lot to like when it comes to FIBAE 4s build quality and usability. The fit is great and they’re masterfully crafted too.
With the IEMs you obviously get a cable. And the one added to the F4s is awesome. It’s made out of silver and has insulation that’s really nice to look at and to touch. The supplied cable has practically zero microphonics and isn’t prone to tangle so that’s great. I was really happy with it during my longer-term use and I think it’s the best cable that CustomArt has ever added to their headphones
Isolation
During the entire testing time I’ve been using these with JBL’s eartips from T290 earphones that stopped working for me after a few months of daily use. Well, they were cheap but since then I realized I’m not going to buy anything without removable cable. In general I’m done with the stuff that’s poorly made 😉 But let’s focus on FIBAE 4 and their noise isolation. As it goes for pretty much all the IEMs the answer is „it depends”. Overall it’s really good and noisy street isn’t a problem while wearing these. It also depends on which eartips you’re using if you didn’t consider custom-fit of course. If you order universal-fit FIBAE 4 you can definitely tune the sound signature a little bit by changing the eartips to the ones you like the most. The nozzle is long enough to provide great seal and has diameter of +/- 6mm so different SpinFit models (o rany toher tips) should fit really well. I can’t really say which of those eartips work the best with F4 because I don’t use SpinFit products (but who knows… maybe in the near future).
Testing platform
Sources
- Toshiba C660D (my laptop)
- Galaxy Note 4 (my daily phone)
- Audioquest Dragonfly Black 1.5 (plugged to my computer 99% of the time I use it)
On my phone I’ve been listening to music through Samsung Music app. On the other side, Foobar2000 v1.4.1 (+ Spotify) is my choice while I’m using a laptop.
Sound quality
Oh lord, the sound! If I had to describe signature of the FIBAE 4 shortly it would be that:
Warm hug of bass perfectly blended with direct midrange and non-obtrusive but present highs. Interested in more details? Continue to read 😊
Each shell is built with such high attention to detail... basically it's an eyecandy :)
Bass of the F4s is pretty amazing. It has a lot of punch and overall impact. It’s actually the best bass when it comes to power and kick of the sub-bass that I’ve ever heard from balanced armature. I can definitely feel warmth of the sound that’s coming mainly from the low-end. I was really astonished by the presentation of bass because it can hit hard thanks to technical capabilities of the BA itself. But also it’s not in your face most of the time. I really love this type of bass, especially in the in-ear form factor!
Midrange of this IEMs is the most stunning part. It’s directly presented on the soundstage. Every time I was listening something with female vocals I had goosebumps 😊 It’s really that good and I feel like it could be even better. During my EQ setting journey I realised that FIBAE 4 have a really technically-capable armature responsible for mid-range. The same thing goes for the high’s drivers. The moment I was sold happened while listening to Synu by polish band called Mikromusic (or you can say Micromusic if you prefer it that way). Natalia Grosiak who sings in that song is incredibly well reproduced. The vocals here are very clear, especially for the price of this IEM (it’s 725€ so not that bad when you look at world of premium IEMs costing $2000+). To be honest they would be even more clear and extended just by the tuning of the FIBAE 4. CustomArt did a really good job already but there’s definitely a room to improve 😊 While talking about even better mid-range you can definitely tune it to your taste as these IEMs have very sensitive response to EQ. In comparison to the Harmony 8.2 vocals in F4s are more directly presented at cost of soundstage which is still good enough. FIBAE 4 is quite spacious sounding earphone but not as airy as Harmony 8.2. What brings attention here is imaging. It’s outstanding. When your recordings are good you can tell exactly where are the sounds coming from. Pin-point recognition of the artist and different instruments placement is guaranteed here and it stunned me. I think the imaging is on part with comapny’s flagship – the Harmony 8.2 I mentioned earlier. Is it worth it to pay more for the Harmony? In my honest opinion it is. Those IEMs are even more capable technically (8 armatures vs 4), you get better resolution and highs that are almost perfect even for my treblehead taste. Also the soundstage is like x2 on good recordings compared to FIBAE 4. The choice is yours 😊
https://i.redd.it/ovhu1abwlh631.jpg
Highs is the point when I got a little confused and my expectations weren’t fulfilled. The two balanced armatures responsible for reproducing high frequencies are very capable technically. I could tell that just by setting EQ to my taste. F4 with bumped-up highs still sound unconstrained and very organic. In my opinion highest frequencies here should be better in terms of quantity. The quality itself is awesome – the presentation is unbelievably smooth to the point when music is creamy and so so delighful. It’s easy to love that. Despite that fact, as a treble-head I love great resolution in headphones that’s overall dependent mostly on the treble reproduction. CustomArt has some really great armatures already and I think they can bring the sound to insane levels just by fine tuning. Loooking at it from the other perspective there’s a huge advantage in this warm type of sound – you can tweak the F4 to your taste very easily and by not doing anything you get pleasingly warm and smooth IEM that is awesome for listening to genres like jazz. Again, very capable and adjustable. It’s a big plus in my opinion 😊
My EQ setting that made me like the FIBAE 4 even more
Summary
Overall FIBAE 4 is a really great IEM at considerably reasonable pricing. For 725€ (approximately $825) you get an amazing product worth its money. Depending on what you like you might get an awesome looking IEM that’s also really well-built. The cable is solid and nicely finished with zero microphonics. Sound quality is something special if you’re looking for a warm sounding headphones in general. For some they might be a little bit simmilar to HD600 or LCD-2 from Audeze but without all that veil and you don’t need a powerful DAC/AMP to run FIBAE 4. The sound is really inviting and I think a lot of people that are into IEM market are going to find something really good in these headphones.
I can clearly recommend F4s as a daily-driver IEM. If you can afford them it’s basically a no-brainer 😊 You can run them just from a phone and be perfectly happy with what these little gems can create in & around your head.
Submitted June 25, 2019 at 02:22PM by itsdave2000 http://bit.ly/2Y9lAEZ
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