In-Ear Fidelity

Tin Audio T2, T2 Pro and T3: First Impressions and Measurements

Well, they’re finally here. After people have asked me for months, I finally have them in my hands.

Some glam shots to tantalise the palate:

Tin Audio T2
I was going to take a separate shot of the T2 Pro, but they both look exactly alike anyways...
The current hype: T3

Initial impressions

T2: Very solid performer. A little soft in the lowest subbass octaves, imaging is somewhat below-average and has that pervasive in-your-head feeling. However it’s tuned very well to neutral, has decent resolution and almost no timbre issues.

Not a giant killer, but this could be my mainstay recommendation for the price.

T2 Pro: Not as bad as the graph would suggest, but still approaching sibilance and the tonality is skewed too much to be natural. Artificially boosted detail does work for some tracks but gets painful in others.

T3: It’s reminiscent of the “generic hybrid” sound but tuned in a much more balanced direction. Compared to the T2, the T3s do sound cleaner but at the cost of a bit of plasticky, grainy timbre that slightly ruins male vocals and anything resembling a bowed string instrument.

Overall though, colour me impressed. It doesn’t have the midbass bleed that plagues cheap chifi hybrids and doesn’t need a subbass rolloff to achieve it either. No tonal issues apart from maybe what I feel to be slightly recessed vocals, nothing that breaks the deal at least.


 

And of course, the measurements. IEC60318-4 compliant system, 1/12 octave smoothing.

Tin Audio T2
Tin Audio T2 Pro
Tin Audio T3

Full review in the coming days, which of course includes the final ranks. Patrons of my Patreon (all tiers) will get early access whenever it comes out.

2 thoughts on “Tin Audio T2, T2 Pro and T3: First Impressions and Measurements”

  1. Great charts and very useful. I have both the T2 Pro and the T2 and like them both and have ordered the T3. My hearing likes the treble on both the T2 and the T2pro. Ugggh getting old. We measure, thankfully, and importantly, to understand our world. Much more the domain of the left brain. Our left brain and its motor skills measure QUANTITY. When we ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ or have ‘joy’ then we are in the world of QUALITY, “I like” “I don’t like”. Much more the domain of the right brain. We are all wired differently though. That QUALITY is so personal, that there may be general similarities in what we enjoy, but many unique differences matter to us. For those who love football, Ronaldinho may have worse statistics than another player, QUANTITY, but the quality, magic and ‘Je ne sais quois’ is there to see. A medicine cures one man and takes the life of another. So two IEM’s with similar graphs can sound different. It’s hard to make a chart of QUALITY. We can crave our likes and try to rest in that ‘Je ne sais quois’, but then we may have to look at what craving is. We may have to study Buddhism a little.

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