满篇跑火车

这翻译，我选择看英文

好荤的翻译

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Spoiler: An Aside - A Rant on Value for Money

Here's my opportunity to vent cathartic about all the world's problems. Or at least, those that relate to headphones. While I absolutely love to see genuine progress and innovation, I've always had an irrational antipathy toward those that try to bull****, rail against known scientific facts and exploit others for their own financial gain.

A few years ago, Ultimate Ears (Logitech) released an "upgraded" UE900 - the UE900s. It cost an additional $100, but many loved it and wrote rave about how much better it sounded than the older UE900. It turned out there was only one difference - the cardboard packaging. Fast forward to Focal's Utopia - a pretty standard dynamic driver headphone that sold for more than many electrostatic systems. Plenty of people seem to have gone nuts over it. To my ears, it wasn't in any way revolutionary. Then came the 64 Audio TIA Fourte. Another pretty standard attempt at a hybrid multi-driver IEM, but with a giant leap forward in price. The Fourte also came with some dubious science (Apex) and some obviously false claims (acoustic tubing creates distortion and acoustic resonances, whereas machined aluminum housings don't). Again, there are people going crazy over it, calling it the best headphone ever made.

There are worthwhile innovations out there that result in expensive headphones, for example, those that are genuinely unique and required years of expensive R&D, dedicated driver manufacturing and accompanying hardware (e.g., electrostatic amps). But it seems there's always an opportunity to exploit the gullible and ignorant, simply by taking established technology and slapping an ever-higher price tag on it.

The Xelento aren't cheap, but they're comparable in price to earlier single dynamic driver IEMs like the IE800, which were generally well respected. The added bonuses with the Xelento are the improved sound quality, replaceable cables with mmcx connections and the option of a well-designed remote for those that want to use it with their smartphones. I'm not entirely convinced there are major new technological breakthroughs with the Tesla driver (given how similar its sound is to that of the Skull Candy Smokin' Buds 2), but it has been very well tuned and overall I would consider it medium/fair value for money, considering it is one of the very best-sounding IEMs I've ever heard.

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Summary

I found the Xelento to be easily one of the best-sounding IEMs you can currently buy - at any price. I do prefer Shure's KSE1500 for detail retrieval, but the Xelento isn't all that far behind. The only other non-electrostatic IEM I've heard that had this level of fit and sound quality is the outstanding FLC-8S. However, the FLC-8S comes with a caveat - you need to be prepared to spend quite a bit of time tuning it, and it has tiny filter components that can be easily lost. The FLC-8S isn't for the casual listener or for the faint of heart. The Xelento sounds fantastic right out of the box, and even though it can't be tuned, its frequency response is already very close to that of my ideal sound signature.
If you've never heard the Xelento, I highly recommend you try to get a demo with these outstanding headphones. I doubt you'd be disappointed.