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Noble Audio Kaiser 10 custom-fit in-ear monitor

Noble Audio Kaiser 10 custom-fit in-ear monitor

For those not familiar with the terminology, ‘custom-fit in-ear monitors’ (CIEMs) are very high performance in-ear headphones whose earpieces have been custom-moulded to fit the exact contours of their owners’ ears. When properly made, CIEMs offer exquisite and obviously personalised fit, plus unbeatable levels of noise isolation, highly sophisticated driver arrays, and extensive customisation options in terms of physical appearance and design. Put all these factors together and it becomes easy to see why growing numbers of music lovers are now turning to CIEMs as their personal listening devices of choice. The Kaiser 10 (£999 or $1,599) tested here is flagship of the California-based Noble Audio company, and is a fine example of the concept, as it is one of the most technically ambitious CIEMs on the market today.

Noble Audio is a relatively small and comparatively new firm, but in the year or so that Noble has been on the scene, the company has already made quite a name for itself among earphone cognoscenti. Some key principals in the firm are Dr. John ‘Wizard’ Moulton (Noble’s president, co-owner, and head of sonic and visual design), Brannan Mason (Noble’s co-owner and overseer of business matters and customer relations), and Kaiser Soze (a highly skilled earphone technician who teams with Dr. Moulton in development of new designs and in whose honour the Kaiser 10 is named) – yes, Kaiser Soze; but not that Kaiser Soze.

, Noble Audio Kaiser 10 custom-fit in-ear monitor

The Kaiser 10 (or K10) is a four-way, triple-bore, custom-fit in-ear monitor that employs an impressive array of ten (no, that’s not a typo) balanced armature drivers per earpiece. The array comprises two bass drivers, two mid drivers, two mid/high drivers, two high frequency drivers, and two super high frequency drivers. The earpieces of all standard K10 models are custom-moulded of acrylic material and are beautifully finished. K10s ship with detachable, user-replaceable signal cables that are roughly 1m long and that use an industry-standard two-pin connector on each earpiece. The Kaiser 10s arrive in a sturdy, watertight, padded hard-shell carrying case that bears a Noble logo plate on the outside, with the owner’s name etched into the top surface. On the inside, the case includes the K10s sealed bag, a pair of Noble-branded rubber straps (used to attach one’s portable audio device or smartphone to a portable headphone amp or the like), a cleaning tool, and an owner’s card.

 

The Kaiser 10 and most other Noble CIEM models can be ordered with simple on up through very elaborate visual design treatments, starting with monochrome-coloured acrylic earpieces, but ranging upward through three additional-cost design options: Personal Design (customers’ personal design selections based on a Noble-provided menu of design elements), Wizard Reprints (£130 or $200, featuring an extensive library of Moulton-created artwork motifs), and Wizard Design (£260 or $400, featuring one-of-a-kind visual themes created by Moulton). Moulton has a rich imagination and a keen sense for striking designs, so somewhere within his catalogue of works is a design likely to strike your fancy.

For Kaiser 10 customers seeking even higher levels of customisation, Noble offer what it calls its Prestige-series design treatments. Unlike standard Kaiser 10s, Prestige-version K10’s do not use moulded acrylic earpieces. Instead, their earpieces are precision cut from an extensive range of rare, beautiful, and exotic solid materials at a range of prices to match. A few examples of available Prestige options would be spalted tamarind wood, or colour-infused aerospace-style honeycomb or carbon-glass materials. The point is that Noble aims for the K10s to be a treat not only for the ears, but for the eyes.

, Noble Audio Kaiser 10 custom-fit in-ear monitor

Noble describes the K10 as being one of John Moulton and Kaiser Soze’s proudest creations—one said to be, “seemingly unchallenged at every frequency and capacity.” More to the point, Noble claims these monitors offer, “Ten drivers working in unison as one (to create) what is likely the most coherent sound ever produced by a portable audio product.” Now, bold performance claims like these are easy to make while serious high-end sound is difficult to achieve, so one key question is whether the K10 can live up to its billing. Let’s find out.

For my listening sessions, I fed the Kaiser 10s a variety of standard and high-res uncompressed digital audio files from a Lenovo-based music server running jRiver Media Center 19. Files were played through a variety of amp/DACs, with the bulk of my listening done through the Chord Electronics Hugo and the iFi Micro iDSD. For comparison purposes, I had on hand several sets of competing CIEMs, including Westone ES-5’s and Ultimate Ear’s Personal Reference Monitors (PRMs) and In-Ear Reference Monitors (IERMs).

 

The K10s are not ‘monitoring’ CIEMs, in that they do not provide (or claim to provide) ruler-flat frequency response. Instead, the Kaiser 10 offers slightly elevated bass response, neutral midrange and upper midrange response, and subtly subdued highs. Thus, the K10’s sound reminded me of the sonic presentation of certain loudspeakers that offer a ‘mid-hall’ listening perspective, as opposed to a ‘front-row centre’ or ultra-close-mic’d perspective.

While the Kaiser 10s do enjoy a certain amount of bass lift, their low end does not sound slow, sluggish, bloated, or painfully overblown. On the contrary, they offer excellent bass pitch definition, detail, transient speed, and dynamics. Thus, the listener is treated to a mildly ‘zoomed-in’ view of the low-frequency content in his or her favourite recordings—a view that reveals richly textured and densely layered pieces of important bass information of the sort that often gets lost or goes under-represented with most earphones and speaker systems.

To grasp the K10’s impressive low-end capabilities, it would help for you to hear them powered by a good amp/DAC and playing the album Planet Drum from former Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart [Rykodisc]. The album is a veritable treasure trove of beautifully recorded percussion sounds, many with deep low-frequency content, but a particularly revealing track is ‘Temple Caves’. ‘Temple Caves’ features an elaborate mix of mid and high-pitched percussion instruments set against the backdrop of an extremely low-pitched drum whose fundamentals range all the way down into pipe organ territory. Through the K10s you not only hear those deep fundamentals, but also the drum’s fast-rising and thunderously powerful attack, the ‘skin sounds’ of the drum head, the shuddering envelope of notes sustaining within a reverberant space, and the slow decay of notes gradually fading away.  With the K10, then, bass is no longer vague low-frequency stuff happening down below the ‘real’ music, but rather it takes its rightful place as part of the main musical event.

, Noble Audio Kaiser 10 custom-fit in-ear monitor

The midrange of the K10 is, as mentioned above, reasonably neutral in its balance, but what I did not mention is that it is also uncommonly expressive and dynamically alive. By ‘dynamically alive’ I mean that the Kaiser 10s not only take big, explosive dynamic moments in their stride, but that—perhaps more importantly—they get all the small and subtle dynamic shifts right, too. For an enticing example of these qualities in action, try listening to the song ‘Poison & Wine’ from The Civil Wars’ Barton Hollow [Sensibility Music]. The Civil Wars is a folk/pop duo featuring vocalists Joy Williams and John Paul White who are justly famous for their uncannily precise, evocative, and tightly synchronised harmonies. From Williams and White we hear something very rare and beautiful, which is two distinct voices seemingly actuated by one shared musical mind. Thus, the singers start and stop phrases exactly at the same time and track flawlessly with one another through subtle and often intricate shifts in inflection and dynamic emphasis. The K10s faithfully allow the listener access to the deep, inner secrets of Williams and White’s performances, especially on the haunting chorus refrain, “Oh I don’t love you but I always will…” This ability to probe the inner depths of recordings is one of the main things that potentially makes the K10s so desirable.

As I stated near the outset, the Kaiser 10 doesn’t offer monitoring-grade levels of tonal neutrality and in my assessment this is most apparent in the treble region, where the Nobles apply a deliberate touch of treble roll-off. Ordinarily, such a voicing choice could and probably would make for a slightly subdued or even dull-sounding presentation, but for the fact that the K10’s highs, though somewhat restrained in level, are nevertheless beautifully extended and detailed. For a terrific example of how this works in practice, go back to the previously mentioned track ‘Temple Caves’ from Planet Drum, this time paying careful attention to the high harmonics of the higher-pitched percussion instruments and also to the almost subliminal high-frequency reverberant sounds captured in the recording. What you discover is that the highs, though pulled back in the mix to some degree, remain precisely (even sumptuously) detailed and exhibit admirable extension, thus conveying an uncanny sense of the ‘air’ surrounding the instruments. What is more, this high-frequency ‘air’ helps give the presentation a wonderfully three-dimensional quality.

Granted, listeners who favour monitoring-grade tonality might prefer more neutrally voiced CIEMs, such as Noble’s 4C or 4S models. However, taken on their own terms the K10s have about them a terrifically seductive quality that tends to win over critical listeners in spite of themselves. I found that, after listening to the K10s for an hour or so, it was actually surprisingly difficult to switch back to competing ‘neutral’ CIEMs because, by comparison, they seemed to lack natural musical richness and warmth and to sound a bit sterile, mechanical, and shrill.

 

Finally, we come to the quality of sonic coherency. Stated simply, Noble’s claims regarding coherency are the real deal—not hype, meaning that John Moulton and Kaiser Soze have somehow compelled ten frequency-specialised balanced armature drivers to sound like one highly capable full-range drive unit. As you listen through the K10s, then, there is an underlying quality of consistency about their presentation, which means that in each frequency band the flagship Noble CIEMs offer more than ample levels of resolution, definition, dynamic headroom, and transient speed. Not surprisingly then, textures remain consistent from top to bottom. Partly as a result of this coherency and partly as a result of Noble’s voicing choices, the Kaiser 10s do an exceptional job of rendering spatial cues in the music and to foster a sense of ‘total immersion’ in the music at hand. Not many earphones or CIEMs can do true 3D soundstaging, but the K10s can and it is delight to hear.

By way of summing up, let me concede in advance that the Kaiser 10s won’t suit every taste (and, truth to tell, I initially wondered if they would suit my own). The K10 might not be the CIEM of choice for in-studio monitoring applications (where the emphasis is more on knowing the exact contents of a given recording than on enjoying the music at hand). But for purposes of relaxing and listening for pure enjoyment, allowing oneself to become complete caught up in the complex, intoxicating beauty of music, Noble Audio’s Kaiser 10 is very tough to beat.

Technical Specifications

  • Type: Four-way, triple-bore, ten-driver custom-fit in-ear monitors.
  • Driver complement: Ten balanced armature-type drivers per earpiece, comprising two bass drivers, two mid drivers, two mid/high drivers, two high frequency drivers, and two super high frequency drivers.
  • Frequency response: Not specified.
  • Impedance: <35 Ohms
  • Noise isolation: 26 dB
  • Distortion: Not specified.
  • Sensitivity: Not specified.
  • Accessories: Detachable ~1m signal cable with industry-standard 2-pin connector, cleaning tool, rubber straps, owners card, and rugged watertight hard-shell carrying case.
  • Weight: Not specified.
  • Warranty: Two (2) years, parts and labour
  • Price: £999 or $1,599, and up. Pricing varies with the exact levels and types of custom finishes ordered. Note: Noble recently announced a universal-fit version of the K10, called the Kaiser 10U, also priced at £999 or $1,599.
  • Other: Noble offers a special Ownership Transfer Service where, for a £150 or $250 fee, it will remanufacturer earpieces for an existing set of Noble CIEMs to fit a third party owner who has purchased a set of Noble CIEMs second hand. To our knowledge, no other CIEM maker offers such a program.

Manufacturer information: Noble, 19 W. Carrilllo St., Santa Barbara, CA 93101

Tel: +1 (805) 886-5255

US URL: www.nobleaudio.com

UK & European URL: www.nobleaudio.co.uk

Japanese URL: www.nobleaudio.jp

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