Elastic, Creamy Bass
Durandal has a neutral, gently w-shaped sound signature – an all-rounder tuning simply said. The bass inherited the “gentle giant” vibe that the Camelot (Review link) had, yet gentler in both nuance and quantity. Durandal desires a distinctive, clear bass while keeping a linear, clean bass atmosphere. The ultra-low rumbles are vivid, gently flowing across the lower bottom of the room but the quantity isn’t emphasized as to the point of shaking up the space.
The bass scales large and is tuned to have an even, steady flow for the ultra-low and upper-lows – which is the elaboration of what I’ve stated earlier, that the Durandal’s bass flow is “linear” even while it’s musical and rich in bass. Once again, not the bass quantity itself but the bass flow.
Durandal has full-bodied lows with meaty sub-bass, yet Durandal strictly controls up to where the bass dynamics could flourish, keeping the bass do its performance only on the lower headroom. The bass quantity would not be strong enough for bassheads, yet for most users, this would be an intricate tuning of achieving both musical fun and ‘close-to-reference’, or should I say monitor-like accuracy.
Those who like their bass to play in the middle ground (or right in the face) may find the bass rather too ‘calm’ or ‘weak’, though the bass response or extension of Durandal is nowhere lacking. The bass with high purity in tone diving cleanly into the pitch-black lower ground is one pleasant experience to gain from Durandal.
Dulcet, Airy, and Addictive Vocals
Speaking of ‘pitch-black’, we can now move on to talking about the vocals as I’ve got a highlightable strength related to that with Durandal’s vocals. Having a pitch-black sound is one of the biggest strengths of this IEM, and while this characteristic is prominent throughout the frequency range, the pitch-black tone especially shines for the vocals. It gives calmness to the atmosphere, as well as allows the music to properly bring the gradual and subtle decays of vocals thanks to the quiet and pure background tone.
Another major strength of Durandal is the unique spatial headroom it creates. While many, including me, would surely prefer vocals that are natural in presentation and staging. Durandal, however, made an audacious tuning with the vocals that reinterprets the vocals to further highlight the liveliness and realistic mid-range atmosphere. This effect is distinctively different from simply turning on the 3D effect from the source player. It’s not out of focus or phasing, nor unnatural.
Durandal has its own tone color, but this hasn’t come across as colored even to my extra-timbre-color-sensitive ears. It feels to me more like Durandal’s ‘theme color’ than coloration, and Durandal proves it through its ability to properly display the intended tone that the music tracks sound like. Most likely Nostalgia had to go through delicate, micro adjustments and tuning not only for the IEMs but also through the Vortex Hruodland stock cable. This unique tone is what I consider another strong charm of Durandal.
Also, Durandal’s vocal texture is crisp yet soft. Wait, how can something something be crisp and soft at the same time? Well, let me elaborate to avoid misleading you – the textures are crisp, yet the ‘rigidity’ or the solidity of the sound is soft. The textures have their tightness, yet Durandal’s vocals are strongly highlighted with airiness and transparency, having the vocals behave like they’re making gentle sways. The vocals are thick enough in color and are in-depth, so they don’t ‘fly away’, yet the vocals are definitely on the delicate, feminine side. The mid-range as a whole shows a very steady and even presentation as it escalates towards the trebles without noticeable dips or sibilance, offering a perfectly fatigue-free airiness to the vocals.
Delicate & Silky Trebles
The detailed explanation made about Durandal’s spatial sounding feature and tone extends to the trebles. While vocals had abundant and gentle sways of airiness, trebles are relatively tightened and slightly reduced the level of airiness for agility and technical accuracy. If the vocals were the soft (yet not mushy) whitebread, the trebles are the well-baked, buttered-up crust. Treble strikes are very tasteful while staying thoroughly natural, and make its presence dominant without getting shouty or taking over the stage.
What I particularly like about Durandal’s trebles is how they don’t sound pinched but expansive. Wouldn’t being expansive cause the treble density to drop? Nevertheless, Durandal keeps the trebles well-packed with density. The trebles naturally expand across the upper headroom evenly and being well organized is very addictive. As hinted above, the tasteful tone even strengthens the fun of tuning into Durandal’s treble details. The high extension and separation are superb, fetching the micro details with ease, and correctly displaying the position and distancing of each instrument and treble elements.
Even for the tricky tracks where intensified trebles rush in with great quantity, neither shoutiness nor pinchy treble spikes didn’t happen for Durandal, thanks to its evenly distributed & expansive highs. This is impressive as TOTL IEMs with similar prices or those that are even more expensive would commonly suffer for this part, yet Durandal perfectly executed my difficult tests.
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