TFZ No.3 IEMs Reviews | Drop

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TFZ No.3 IEMs

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TFZ No.3 IEMs

lasharela

Nov 10, 2019

Verified Buyer

For the price they are great!

Before purchasing this one I had read and watched hundreds of reviews and purchased a handful of different models. Tone King Nine Tail had become my EDC ones until these arrived. These beat tonekings by slightly better noise isolation (9/10 vs 8/10) and comfort (9/10 vs 0/10). They also are better at highs (8/10 vs 7/10) but are far inferior in bass (3/10 vs 6/10). The bass is present, but that's all. It's powerless, lacking sub, and if you try to EQ, then it becomes muddy. Sound wise I still prefer Tonekings to No.3 , but being extremely uncomfortable (painful to be true), I think I'll keep the former in the cabinet and use the latter daily. Rated these considering the price, which is, although strange, considered cheap. I don't know how >$2k IEMs sound, but if they at least provide the same range and details as middle class cans do (which I doubt a lot), then they deserve 4 stars and No.3 deserves at least 3.

Recommends this product? Yes

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reaper10

Dec 14, 2019

lasharelaAre you sure that the TFZ No.3 is lacking in bass? It's considered a basshead IEM by a lot of reviewers, and I also own a pair so I can confirm that the no.3 does have a lot of bass.

(Edited)

lasharela

Dec 14, 2019

reaper10Oh, yes! Absolutely! I'm not a basshead, I love naturally sounding instruments and natural distribution of the loudness among the instruments as it is on concerts and as it was meant by the sound engineers of the records. Before not long ago I hadn't iems and for private listening was using my Japanese audiotechnica cans ath-w100 which, in my opinion has a natural frequency response, so compared to them the whole base region is laid back in no.3 but the sub-base is especially diminished. if you are listening to Tin audio so called "iems" that can reproduce sound signals only above 800Hz, then you'd consider any normal earphone for bassheads. I'm pretty sure that lousy earphone manufacturers deliberately introduced that term "headphones" referring to the people with good taste who can't ignore the bass part of the music. This way they can sell their sh*t advertised as normal headphones, but still they claim their sh*t is has frequency response from 10Hz!!! up to 40kHz!!! which is a lie in every sense and in every case and which is proved wrong even by the curves sometimes they are so kind to publish. You can see that even with applied Marantz correction, the curves show that the actual reproducible range is 300-13000 Hz, while it's certified with Hi-Fi logo and specs read: 10-40000Hz. So yes, No.3 has weak and uneven bass representation. If I were a basshead, I'd say the the bass is absent!

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reaper10

Dec 14, 2019

lasharelaHmm interesting insight and I appreciate your response! I do not own a lot of natural sounding iems but I do own Blon 03 and Lypertek Tevi that have a more natural sounding bass. However, I'd like to point out that perhaps we have a different definition of 'bassheads' because I would consider myself a basshead and tfz no.3 doesn't come across as imbalanced bass. In fact, I find that the bass doesn't overpower the other frequencies and yet the bass is strong. Have you read other reviews on the TFZ?

(Edited)

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lasharela

Dec 14, 2019

reaper10I read them before I bought it and I bought it based on the reviews. I'd say I was pleasantly surprised, because even the reviews were positive, I didn't expect such a quality sound and strong bass. Yes, strong based on todays IEM standards, not really strong, compared to middle class cans I have or high class bass-edition cans which I haven't opportunity to listen to and which, I think, deliver the amount of bass which is neutral and no more. Before that I had bought half a dozen of iems based on reviews and that made me skeptical to reviews as all of the previous reviews were unprofessional and deceptive, especially in the bass response part. I was more surprised by bl-03 as the price also controbuted to my skepticism. I like them both and recommend them to every one, but this doesn't mean, I'm satisfied with their bass representation. I'm just satisfied given the fact that iems lack bass in general and for the given price they are the best options by my experience. Nine Tail is also very good, but one need to be a masochist to wear them for extended periods of time.

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reaper10

Dec 14, 2019

lasharelaOhh, I see so that's what you meant! Hmm personally I do not know of any similarly-priced IEMs that can compete with the TFZ. The only one that I know of is Klipsch's T5 neckband which costs 2x as much. Since you've provided some of the examples in your analysis, I'll go have a look and see what the reviewers are saying!

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lasharela

Dec 14, 2019

reaper10Excuse me for asking, but why reading reviews when you already have no3, bl-03 and others?

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reaper10

Dec 14, 2019

lasharelaWell massdrop basically sent me a newsletter saying that the TFZ is on sales, so out of curiosity I went on to check the discounted price and the reviews to see if everyone had been enjoying the TFZ like I did.

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lasharela

Dec 14, 2019

reaper10Not only did I enjoy them, I finally felt relieved after so many disappointments from previous purchases of those highly regarded trashy "iems". Though I like their appearance too, those fancy metal ones are so much more attractive that had my budget allowed to, I'd have bought those No.3 Ti version and enjoyed more. BTW do you know if there is any difference other than the shells between plastic and titanium models? I couldn't find a single word about it so still presume there must be no difference, but who knows...

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reaper10

Dec 15, 2019

lasharelaYup that was my curiosity as well but thankfully I managed to find some reviews that talk about them. One such review is from here: www.audio123reviews.com/2019/05/30/tfz-no-3-ti The above-mentioned review is saying that the Ti has more sub-bass and the transparency in the mid-range is better. Based on the review, one can also expect a holographic feeling when listening to the Ti. Pretty impressive if you'd ask me, but to me it's still not worth paying a $100 more just to hear these differences.

(Edited)

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lasharela

Dec 15, 2019

reaper10Thanks for the link. It made me want Ti version more, and I'd pay extra $100 for the same performance in the metal body, but unfortunately, it's above my abilities.