By Nick Smith, 5th November 2023
“…BA bass”. There – I said it!
Is it an audiophile faux pas? An obscenity deserving of washing one’s mouth out with soap? Was it secretly Harry Potter’s fourth Unforgivable Curse?
If you’re flummoxed by this rest easy, a super-short history lesson will bring you right up to speed on…. actually you know what, let’s skip it. All you need to know is Balanced Armature drivers (BAs) were used in hearing aids for decades, until a guy named Jerry Harvey thought they’d work in earphones too.
So why the audiophile hate for BAs? Well mostly on account of a really annoying thing called physics.
You see BAs are tiny which means you can stuff an earphone full of them, but they don’t move a lot of air. That’s not an issue when you’re reproducing the sound of violins, but when it comes to beefy bass drums – different story.
Saying earphones reliant on BAs to do bass have struggled is like saying Donald Trump’s presidency may have been slightly controversial. Unlike Trump BAs aren’t great at producing lots of wind, and moving large volumes of air is what creating reverberating bass you can feel is all about.
I have good news though – the times they are a changin’.
When Penon Audio asked if I wanted to accept a free pair of their new USD $549 Turbo earphones in exchange for a review, my first thought (free stuff = good!) was different to my reaction upon learning of their 6x BA configuration. (could this be bad?)
BA-only IEMs can be polarising, and to make things even more controversial the Turbos are deliberately turned to have an overwhelming amount of bass – almost deliberately provoking anyone who thinks BA bass can’t cut it!
Suddenly I was intrigued, and couldn’t wait for them to arrive. In the interim I began reading, and soon learned they feature no less than four tuning switches, one of which named Super Bass Boost sounded particularly ominous.
So I began asking myself the question – why have BA bass drivers disappointed many of us in the past? One answer is although they’ve let us hear bass frequencies, they’ve struggled to make us feel them.
However I noted the Turbos use a pair of beefy Sonion double-vented BAs to produce bass frequencies, which I believe have only fairly recently hit the market – could this finally be the moment BAs bass drivers attain absolution for past failures?
Days later a package arrived on my doorstep, which I hurriedly unwrapped seeking answers…
Packaging
The Turbos are packaged almost identically to the Penon Globes I previously reviewed, arriving in a small cardboard box, inside of which is a leather carry case containing the IEMs.
Alongside a smaller leather accessories case, no less than tree sets of eartips in 3 sizes are supplied, along with a cleaning tool & shirt clip. Also included are two different tools to aid in flipping the Turbos’ tuning switches, one of which appears to be a SIM card ejector. The overall package is about what you’d expect for an IEM in this price range, and the tuning switch tools are a thoughtful & useful inclusion.
The stock cable is a Penon CS819, a very flexible & lightweight 8 wire OCC copper & silver-plated copper cable that sells separately for USD $49, in your choice of 4.4mm, 3.5mm or 2.5mm terminations. I have nothing but good things to say about the CS819, which may be my favourite cable under $100.
Ergonomics
Physically the Turbos feel extremely similar to the ISN Neo5s I recently reviewed – which is to say for my ears their comfort is superb, on par with or better than almost any multi-driver IEM on the market.
Intrinsic to this is their small size which stems from their relatively low driver count, but also in the case of the Turbos their lack of a dynamic driver. Not only are they small, but their shape matches my ear geometry almost perfectly and I can keep them in my ears for hours without discomfort. They’re also vented so pressure build-up isn’t an issue.
The only slight downside to such tiny & lightweight IEMs is their isolation doesn’t benefit from extra bulk blocking my ear canals. To me the comfort tradeoff is worth it and I find the Turbos’ isolation adequate even on noisy trains, but slightly down from the most isolating universal IEMs I’ve tried.
Page 1 – Introduction, Packaging & Ergonomics
Page 2 – Sound Impressions, Technical Performance & Tuning Switches
Page 3 – IEM Comparisons
Page 4 – More IEM Comparisons
Page 5 – Amplfication Performance & Cable Comparisons
Page 6 – Conclusion
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