Conclusion
There comes a time in every man’s life when he must find his voice and take a stand against injustice.
BA bass, you are redeemed – your long history of audiophile persecution must come to an end.
The Penon Turbos have convinced me the latest generation of BA drivers have finally crossed the rubicon and reached the promised land of acceptable bass performance, free of audiophile prejudice.
Have BAs breached the bass-texture gap between themselves and dynamic drivers? Not quite I think, though they’re coming very close. Which I means if bass slam & texture is something you prioritise you may end up sticking with DDs, and that’s fine.
In fact I wonder if it’s largely the slower speeds of DDs, allowing them to produce bass that decays more gradually, that results in more satisfying bass sensations? Which would beg the question why you’d want to slow a BA driver down to achieve the same result, when doing so would have other ramifications.
All-BA earphones can potentially achieve the very highest levels of technical performance thanks to their ability to respond so quickly -especially during busy passages of music- but the moment any driver slow enough to reproduce bass decay fully is added to mix, some of that supreme precision is lost.
Slower, more visceral bass or better technical performance?
The Turbos are Penon’s take on having the best of both worlds, and though they’re bettered by IEMs worth thousands of dollars I’d label them a commendable effort…
…that potentially offers a glimpse into the industry’s future.
Comments