Sound impressions
I tested Turii Ti using a variety of sources, although my primary source was the new HiBy RS8 flagship R2R DAP (full review coming soon). I find the RS8 to have a highly resolving, spacious, and fairly balanced tuning, which allowed me to evaluate Turii Ti’s tonal and technical performance unhindered.
My test track list varies, but generally consists of modern female indie, pop, and dream pop tracks, modern instrumental and epic orchestral music, some electronic and ambient, and occasionally a couple of jazz and classical tracks for good measure. Artists include Lana Del Rey, Brandi Carlile, Ethel Cain, Billie Eilish, Thomas Bergersen, Max Richter, Neko Case, Beyries, Angel Olsen, Aes Dana, Dire Straits, Def Leppard, Bon Jovi and Norah Jones, to name a few.
Please keep in mind that I can only give impressions based on the music I listen to and am familiar with, and therefore everything that follows is entirely my subjective opinion.
Tonality
The most immediately recognisable trait for me is the sense of tonal balance with most genres. While some tracks push the limits of upper midrange and mid-treble for me on occasion, I don’t think one frequency dominates to the detriment of another.
To my ears, Turii Ti has a W-shaped tuning profile, but skewed to the right, with higher frequencies providing more air and lightness (rather than brightness) compared to the more neutral bass. I’ll break down what this means in each frequency band below.
Bass. Turii Ti has a distinct midbass tilt to its bass balance, with a reasonable amount of supporting sub-bass that unfortunately (for me) rolls off far too early for my liking. Bass is emphasised to a point, with excellent punch and texture when called for, but lacks any real weight or rumble down low for those wanting to feel the guttural slam of an EDM drop or electronic kick drums. This results in albums like Billie Eilish’s Happier Than Ever sounding off-kilter, with large parts of the sub-bass extension gone missing.
While bass quantity may not appeal to bassheads or (sub)bass lovers in general, there’s still enough quality, resolution and texture to impress. The rumbly intro to Lorde’s The Louvre is perfectly satisfactory, more for its texture than raw physicality, but as the track progresses, I feel the mid-bass tilt borders on excessive. Switching to a more energetically electronic track in The Knife’s Silent Shout, and the bass is more on point, with a healthy balance of punch and rumble that works better for less vocal-laden music.
Where Turii Ti earns its keep, as far as bass goes, is timbre. Upright bass in Jazzy tracks like Norah Jones’s Cold Cold Heart, and instrumental jazz favourites like Allen Toussaint’s St. James Infirmary have a vivid realism and almost perfect tonal weight to them. This extends to kick drums (and drums in general), in tracks like Brandi Carlile’s Again Today, where I get a real sense of the drummer’s hits and surface texture.
I’m still not sold on the mid-bass emphasis, which to me adds a thin veil over the lower mids (which are themselves boosted), and to my ears results in some congestion further up top. I’m also not sold on the lack of sufficient sub-bass, which robs drums of their natural air ‘suck-out’ effect, which in turn makes them sound appreciably smaller than life-size. That said, if you’re into the warmer mid-bassy sound in your music, especially for instrumental, electronic and ambient genres, are a stickler for accurate timbre, and prefer bass to sit more in line with the rest of the music, it could prove just the right formula for you.
Midrange. There’s an immediacy and intimacy to Turii Ti’s vocals that bring them front and centre on most tracks. While this has the counter-effect of shrinking stage width (for vocal music anyway), it does add some depth to an otherwise flattish stage (more on this later), and helps separate vocals from surrounding instruments.
To me, despite its overall balanced tonality, the midrange is without question the star of the show. Fundamental instrument timbre is right on point, from Paul Simon’s delicate guitar in Kathy’s Song, to Max Richter’s poignant piano in Elena & Lila. Even Miri Ben Ari’s electric violin in Armin Van Buuren’s Intense has a richness and intricacy to it that makes it seem as real as the real thing.
Vocal timbre, on the whole, is very correct too, with both female (Katie Pruitt’s emotional It’s Always Been You and Heidi Talbott’s sweet Cathedrals), and male (Neil Diamond’s gravely Hello Again and Mark Knopfler’s whispered Brother’s In Arms) performances sounding generally realistic to me.
Vocals do lean a touch dry though. I’m also hearing some admittedly rare female vocal shoutiness/glare, in Bjork’s Hunter and some of Lana Del Rey’s older and less expertly-mastered recordings, for instance. This is probably the result of the abundant mid-treble energy that infuses upper vocal harmonics with lots of detail and sparkle, but robs them of some tonal weight and lushness in the process.
Still, this is an excellent midrange performance, and mid-lovers will find lots to like here with almost any genre.
Treble. Even the best single dynamic driver IEMs are limited in where they excel, and while Turii Ti gets most things right more often than most, it still has some quirks. For me those quirks are mostly found in the treble.
Following the bold pinna gain, Turii Ti takes a small dip in the lower treble, which eliminates all but the harshest sibilance in most recordings, but then adds appreciable lifts in the mid-treble (8kHz) and some added upper treble air for good measure. While the tuning magnifies details and improves resolution, it can also be quite unforgiving on poorer recordings, or any recordings with excessive treble energy or compression to begin with.
Play a track like Seven Lions’ Island (featuring Nevve) and both vocals and synths have far too much treble energy and zing to be enjoyable, even at lower volumes. In other instances, the treble energy simply overwhelms the other frequencies, recessing Michael Jackson’s vocals in Billie Jean and thinning out the midrange notes too much for my liking.
Despite these issues, instances where Turii Ti made me wince were few and far between. The flipside of the treble tuning is a light, airy and open presentation that does wonders for vast, flowing musical genres like ambient music, with Aes Dana’s Leylines sounding rich and immersive, tiny flecks of treble detail everywhere. The added treble focus also elevates Turii Ti’s resolving ability above many other single dynamics, to the point where it starts competing with some higher-end multi-drivers for sheer resolving ability.
Overall, I find Turii Ti’s tonal balance to be its standout feature. Breaking it down into frequency bands exposes some issues, but the overall ‘gestalt’ of the tuning, and the perfectly cohesive presentation, makes it a ‘big picture’ listen, and more than just the sum of its parts.
Technicalities
If tonal balance and timbral accuracy are generally considered the strengths of dynamic driver IEMs, the ‘intangible’ technicalities are not. This is where higher-end IEMs start to justify their considerably higher price tags, however, and Turii Ti is no exception.
Staging here is fairly wide, at least with instrumental and electronic music, but not the widest I’ve heard by any measure. It’s also not the deepest or tallest stage, but it’s not too small or intimate either.
I’d call Turii Ti’s stage very natural, and it’s rare that the stage itself causes any congestion I occasionally hear when the midbass and upper-midrange bumps dominate a track. My go-to stage size test is Yosi Horikawa’s Bubbles, and regardless of the tips or sources I used I couldn’t get the stage to sound larger than average. I suspect this has something to do with the mid-bass emphasis here, which to me smeared some of the finer details.
Imaging is very well done, no doubt in part due to the cohesive nature of the single driver design, but instrument and vocal placement is very accurate. Separation and layering are also excellent, but also very track dependent. Novo Amor’s Anchor, with its ethereal soundscape, had some of the best layering and separation I’ve heard with this track, but I then found some vocal and instrument congestion at the crescendo of Two Steps From Hell’s Breathe, an epic orchestral piece that I don’t regard as Turii Ti’s forte.
Resolution and clarity are above average, albeit not quite as resolving as the best BA and planar drivers I’ve heard. The quality and quantity of treble lends itself to resolving even the finest details in a complex piece, like Aes Dana’s Inks and Daft Punk’s Contact, even though some of the screech effects in the latter are rendered slightly hot in the process. There’s certainly no dullness here, with clarity another remarkable trait of Turii Ti’s delivery.
Overall, I find Turii Ti to be one of the more technically-gifted IEMs I’ve used, not just the most technical single dynamic. But it tempers that technical proficiency with a sense of musicality that stops it from sounding overly analytical or, God forbid, clinical.
There’s a real sense of dynamism here, and I get great joy from the way Turii Ti delivers the details and nuances in the music. It won’t wow you with out-of-head vastness, but it’s not an inside-your-head sound either, presenting music in a balanced, measured and very natural way, both tonally and technically.
