Sound Impressions
Tonality. Xe6 is first and foremost a warm, coloured, ‘fun’ IEM. Its tonality is characterised by a massive midbass and lower midrange shelf, an unusual tuning choice which pushes up the levels that more mainstream tunings (even ‘fun’ tunings) push down. There’s no linear bass with a midrange ‘cut’ to separate bass and midrange; instead, there’s a doubling down on big bass and mids.
Everything Xe6 does is based on some or other variation of its thick-but-clear personality. A vocal performance with a forward bassline will have you thinking that everything sounds too thick and warm, and yet when the singing begins and higher-frequency instruments start playing, there’s somehow no veil.
Despite its quantity, bass delivery is of exceptional quality too. Sub-bass focus suffers a bit because of the overabundant midbass, but there’s still some rumble when called for, and the midbass isn’t so loose that it spills all over the mids and highs. This is probably the result of Xe6’s unique combination of Kinetic Bass and a dedicated open balanced armature woofer, giving you ‘the best of both worlds’ when it comes to bass delivery mechanics.
The elevated bass and, more significantly, ‘overcooked’ lower mids would have been a bigger issue if the quality of the mids wasn’t so good. Instruments are full and weighty, yet still quite fast, with a pleasant, natural decay. Vocals, both male and female, are lush, warm and organic, but more importantly very, very smooth. There’s no harshness here, and the resolution of the open drivers is such that the smoothness doesn’t come at the cost of detail.
The same resolving smoothness extends to the treble, which is some of the best I’ve personally heard from an IEM. Keep in mind I like treble to take a small step back from the main performance, to give the overall presentation just enough sparkle and air, and then get out the way. Xe6 does this, but it also doesn’t roll off any high notes, and its use of an e-stat to add air up top without making everything sound ‘electrostatically ethereal’ is very clever indeed.
It’s hard for me to sum up Xe6’s tonality like I would most other IEMs. Is it a U or a W, for example? Depends on the track, sometimes it’s both. It can also be a V, with the mids taking a back seat, and it can be a reverse J, with everything subservient to the bass and lower mids with a touch of added air up top.
Tonally, Xe6 is like a chameleon, and although warm, thick and bassy are a given, they’re not always going to define what you actually hear once the music starts to play.
Technicalities. I think the reason Xe6 is so adaptable despite its exaggerated tonality is because of its technical performance. Resolution is top-shelf, and the stage, while not the widest I’ve heard, has a grandness of depth and height that few IEMs can match.
For a warm IEM, Xe6 can also deliver the goods, with the right music, with an ink-black background and impressive separation and layering of vocals and instruments. Sure, when the bass is let out the cage or the lower mids are pumped up in the recording, the finer nuances take a back seat, but I never feel like Xe6 has lost control at any point.
That could be because of all the IEMs I’ve heard, Xe6 has some of the better dynamic swings in the business. It can play tiny nuances in one instance and flip the switch to full-throttle explosive in the next movement.
This makes it an interesting choice for more conservative genres like large orchestral music, where big, brash and warm aren’t your go-to keywords, but in many ways it’s like listening to a performance at a live venue when you’ve had just enough to drink to make sitting through a classical ensemble seem almost…pleasant.
I jest of course, but I keep going back to the idea that with Xe6, you’re not hearing what you expect to. Still, because it’s so competent technically, the quality is good enough for even the more conservative among us to look past the tuning quirks, if indeed that’s how you hear them.
Technically, Xe6 can comfortably sit at the same table as some of the technical specialists of the IEM world, like Traillii, Fourté and Mentor, and while I don’t think it can replace any of those esteemed IEMs, I know which one I’d rather use most of the time.
Continue to listening notes…
