Astral Acoustics Luna Preview: First Impressions
If you’ve been keeping track of trending IEMs, you’ve probably heard of them. Astral Acoustics, a Hong Kong–based custom upgrade cable brand, gained global recognition through its collaboration with Alpha&Omega. Together, they co-designed the limited-edition, flagship IEM, the Alpha&Omega Fulgrim.
As part two of their project, Astral Acoustics has announced the Luna, an upgrade cable born and designed for Alpha&Omega Fulgrim. While created to provide a peak experience for Fulgrim, Luna has exceptional performances and traits worth pairing with a variety of different high-end IEMs. As a sneak peek at the upcoming full review, let’s briefly cover the features of Luna, sound impressions, and pairing experience with Fulgrim. Astral Acoustics Luna is priced at $1,499 and available in two variants – Standard Edition and Fulgrim Edition. Both versions are identical in sound and only differ in color. The Fulgrim Edition is exclusively available to Fulgrim owners.
Jumbo-Sized, Premium SPC Conductors
Luna features Astral Acoustics’ latest FST (Ferromagnetic Shielding Technology), which is a special layer installed between the coaxial signal and shielding wires. The additional FST layer absorbs the magnetic and atmospheric noise (RFI) that’s picked up by the positive and negative polarities of the cable.
Ultimately, this allows Luna to have “an ultra-quiet background”. Amethyst is a 19.5AWG 2-braid coaxial cable with Premium 7N OCC SPC conductors. Astral Acoustics also left a small interesting info to us that every Luna cable is shipped out to the customers after 1 week of 50hrs+ burning in, allowing Luna to be ready for its proper sound from the moment the customers start listening to it.
How does it sound?
Luna is a very unique cable. There’s a perception that SPC is a material for lower-grade cable wires, but that isn’t the case at all in this case. Alongside, despite using silver-plated conductors, it’s different from typical SPC cables as Luna has a neutral-warm tone, and makes the overall sound smoother and more comfortable to listen to. Mids are added with body and weight, with highs that are smoother/warmer to listen to, while not losing their sharpness and micro details.
Bass is deep and full, achieving prominent layerings, allowing the IEMs to get extra spatial without sounding “artificially 3D-boosted”. The overall headroom expands large and grand with reverbs and timbre tightly controlled. With agility and transparency kept intact, Luna has soothing, creamy textures.
Pay Attention if you’re a user of Fulgrim
While I’ve noticed Luna pairs wonderfully with a variety of IEMs and brings consistent improvements, there’s no doubt that the one IEM that’ll get the most out of Luna would be Alpha&Omega Fulgrim. Rightfully so, since Luna itself is a follow-up project that is designed and tuned to make Fulgrim even better! The Fulgrim Edition not only looks great. However, more importantly, Luna brings the Fulgrim series of sonic upgrades. Fulgrim is known for its overpowering transparency, along with vast headroom and extensions. Fulgrim is sibilance-free with perfect mid-range control – yet due to its neutral-bright nature, those who are treble-shy or keen on dark sound may find Fulgrim a tad bright. This is where Luna steps in as a trouble shooter.
While keeping the original timbre and resolution intact, Luna meticulously smooths out the timbre to be slightly warmer and darker. It’s a subtle yet major tweak as it keeps the airy, open-ended presentation and analyticity that Fulgrim originally had, yet makes it comfier and smoother to listen to. It’s of course not going to resolve those who find Fulgrim already extremely fatiguing to begin with, though if it’s only a slight warm-up that you’re looking to add to Fulgrim, Luna will do that perfectly.
Thus, making Fulgrim smoother to listen to isn’t the only change Luna will bring to Fulgrim. It makes the bass fuller and deeper, mids to carry more weight while staying agile and transparent, fuller-bodied timbre and density, and extra grand headroom. In whole, Luna makes Fulgrim sound even more expansive and immersive.
Stay Tuned – For The Highest Quality by Astral Acoustics!
You’ll already know this if you’ve been cable-rolling enough, though don’t let the cable material deceive you! It’s not your typical SPC cable, but with premium tuning and flagship-tier sound, meant to be paired with high-end IEMs and headphones. And as I’ve elaborated, Luna is simply a must to try and acquire if you’re an owner of Alpha&Omega Fulgrim.
Stay tuned for our upcoming official review of Luna, where we’ll be covering the full extent of Luna’s sound profile, in-depth impressions, and putting it to the test with different flagship cables and IEMs – including more extensive sound impressions for the Luna & Fulgrim combo!
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