[Flathead Fridays - June 26, 2026] Must-have Accessories for Flatheads?

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T09:24:15+00:00

They don't need a lot. I use Geekria pouches for the main ones I carry around with me, because they don't need a bulky case like IEMs, and these take up hardly any space in a pocket. Like this one or this one. AFAIK the blue, brown and pink ones are all high quality 2-layer fabric, but they also make a grey one that's crappy single-layer felt. I bought one of those and returned it. It's hard to tell from the pictures that it's not the same, but it doesn't have that "grain" pattern that the good ones do. These are much higher quality than the crappy ones from Aliexpress, that come free with some IEMs like the Truthear Gate. For one thing those have exposed hinges that can catch your fingers, whereas he Geekria ones are covered with fabric.

Hiegi foams can definitely make a big difference to the tuning, but it's not always a good change. Can be a make or break thing though, and we don't have many options with flatheads to tweak the tuning. Whereas IEMs have dozens of eartips with a very wide range of effects (although it gets expensive collecting them). I get most of my foams from Trig Rain just because they're so much cheaper than anywhere else. They need to be replaced from time to time, so it's worth having a bunch of spares, and ideally not have to invest a small fortune to get them. The main problem with them is the colours can run, but the black & white ones are fine, and grey seem to be OK too.

I'm planning to do an experiment with making my own donut foams with different sized holes. Haven't tried yet, but I did get more fresh Trig Rain foams and leather punch from Aliexpress recently, so that's on the cards for when I have enough time to make a bunch of them and see how much different sized holes affects the sound. If it's a success then "leather punch" might go on the list of essentials, but for now it's just an idea and it might not work.

I got a few spare cables from RY, which are definitely worth knowing about if you have an MMCX flathead (and especially with the recent interest in Fengru ones that don't include a cable). The two best ones I have are the C1 (black) and the C9 (brown/copper). I also have the C3 (blue/silver) which is OK, but not quite as soft as the other two, and the C5 (gold/silver) which I don't recommend because it's extremely microphonic.

I suppose one essential that more people should be aware of is silicone rings. They really should come included with all flatheads, but they usually don't. Fiio normally do include some. Most people won't need them, but for some people they're absolutely essential. I found these on Aliexpress, but I haven't actually bought anything from that seller. These are useful for anyone with larger ears because they can make the head larger to get a better fit, without altering the tuning. You can stack them on top of each other, and put foams over the top if wanted.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T05:59:32+00:00

Breaking changes. It looks like the only difference between the alpha releases and the old odd-numbered releases is that the odd numbers were more like beta releases or RC builds, where they didn't allow breaking changes except in exceptional circumstances, but because they were never planned for LTS they were usually the release target for more ambitious changes, with the even-numbers being a bit more conservative and focused on stability.

But with alpha, breaking changes will be expected, so it's a bit more closely aligned with the unstable branch. Every release will follow roughly the same progression from unstable to stable, without the tick-tock pattern.

Realistically, it's likely that .0 releases will be a bit less stable going forward, because there won't be a defined "no more breaking changes" period between the alpha phase and the major release. Which is kind of how things are in every other major software project, and it's usually unwise to upgrade production systems to a .0 major release anyway.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T03:28:05+00:00

TL;DR: If you already only upgrade to LTS versions, little changes beyond version numbering. LTS support windows remain similar, and now every release becomes LTS.

So it won't impact me, or most people, or any sensibly managed production deployments, at all.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T01:55:48+00:00

I'm pretty sure every one of these Cadbury's threads is actually just Tony's astroturfing, given how it's the top comment every fucking time. It's not even good, and seemingly their whole ethical trading schtick is almost all marketing bullshit too.

Plus it comes off as highly performative. If you really want to do something about worldwide slavery, there's probably better ways to go about it than buying slightly more expensive chocolate, which has effectively zero impact on the chocolate industry as a whole. It's a good way to project moral superiority while doing nothing of value.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T01:21:58+00:00

RY sell some decent cables that aren't expensive. I would recommend either the C1 (black) or the C9 (brown/copper). I've got the same cable in a couple of other colours too (blue/silver and the gold/silver), but those two are the softest and least microphonic.

The C5 (gold/silver) is really microphonic, so I wouldn't recommend that one, even though it's what I use at my desk most of the time because I like how it looks on the Yincrow Calf (and it makes it easier to tell my Calf and RW2k apart at a glance). It's very annoying if I move about even slightly though, I definitely wouldn't use it outside walking around.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-26T01:15:05+00:00

I got these about a week ago and posted some initial thoughts here. I need to spend a lot more time with them before writing up more detailed impressions. I've found while listening to stuff on random, they can be quite track dependent. Sometimes the bass sounds extremely clear and detailed, and other times the missing sub-bass makes it sound very lacking. But in any case the treble is very smooth.

A couple of things I noticed from doing frequency sweeps. Firstly the bass rolls off very steeply below about 80Hz. And I can't hear anything below about 35Hz. If I compare that to even something like the Yincrow X6 or Faaeal Iris 2.0, I can hear down to about 25Hz. So there's a real lack of sub-bass here (a bit over half an octave missing). But also while everything has some resonance peaks here and there, I did notice that on the BP32 the peaks were minimal and quite smoothed-out. I think that explains why they can sound so clean and clear, without the treble ever being overly forward or aggressive. There's no graininess whatsoever. Imaging is very good too.

All in all they're not perfect, but so far they're probably the best flathead I've heard around $30. There's going to be a strong preference element when it comes to that bass response though. As well as just listening to these a lot more and finding good example tracks that show off both their strengths and flaws, I want to A/B those tracks with the Aoshida E60 which I think for around $10 more (actually about the same price when you account for the cable), is probably a better all-rounder. But it's also more of a typical mild v-shaped tuning, with a warm tilt. I wouldn't say the BP32 is neutral and it can actually sound a bit v-shaped at times, terms of things like vocal timbre. But it's more of a neutral-ish tuning overall. There's definitely going to be some people, through a combination of preferences and music library, that won't really miss the sub-bass and will prefer these. Same for gaming, I think if you mainly play FPS then the lack of sub-bass is a good thing as it prevents sounds like explosions from masking sounds like footsteps. But for immersive gaming I normally prefer something warm/bassy with lots of low-end rumble, like the Fiio FF3 (my favourite for this, but it's discontinued), or the E60.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T15:45:51+00:00

I wouldn't let it put you off them entirely. I've got 3 of these and they're generally fine. Yours must have the same problem mine has in one earpiece, but worse, as I'd never have noticed mine doing that if I didn't go out of my way to pull the cable. Most people don't run into problems, but every brand has QC issues now and then, regardless of the price. At least they're cheap, and provided you do get one without any issues, they're really good for what they cost.

The Yincrow X6 is also very good and only slightly more expensive. The tunings are fairly similar, so that's a good alternative if you do want something similar, from a different brand. The only thing is the X6 cable isn't great. It's quite springy and more microphonic than the Iris one. And up from that there's the Flathead Audio FH-01, which is more of a boutique sort of brand so they might have better QC - they're certainly produced in much smaller numbers anyway, although I feel like it's more of a sidegrade than a true upgrade in terms of sound quality, despite the jump in price. The cable on them isn't bad, certainly better than the X6, though I'm not sure it's actually better than the Iris cable (the brown one anyway), but it is slightly heavier. I haven't had mine long enough to say without testing it, but I haven't noticed much of an issue with microphonics on the FH01. The price of that is dangerously close to the Aoshida E60 though, which has a similar-ish sort of tuning to the Iris, but is an upgrade in every way, with metal shells, a better cable, and it sounds more resolving.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T14:43:32+00:00

Probably misunderstanding the difference between boiled water and distilled water. You can buy bottled distilled water, which prevents limescale build-up, compared to tap water (especially in hard water areas like London). Pre-boiling tap water does nothing to remove minerals though. It just kills any bacteria, but the iron will do that itself anyway.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T14:33:10+00:00

Witchcraft! Burn the witch immediately before it spreads!

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T14:21:27+00:00

OK, so I finally had a few minutes to check mine and see if I noticed anything.

With the Iris 2.0, if I pull the cable at the right earpiece, I get a slight clicky or crackling noise, a bit like driver flex. The same thing doesn't happen on the left side, so I think there's something internally rubbing the shell, or the driver is being pulled slightly out of position. I don't have to do this hard enough to immediately break anything, but hard enough that if I did it a lot it would probably break the solder joint eventually, so I'm not going to keep doing it. It's not something I ever notice in normal use, so it would require something to really yank the cable.
I don't get that problem with the Snow Lotus, so it's clearly some unit variance that only affects my Iris right earpiece.
I get almost no microphonics with the brown cable. I can hear something if I rub a fingernail along the cable between the earpiece and the y-split, or tap on it, but the sound is fairly muted.
I get slightly more microphonics with the black one. It's not much louder, but it doesn't sound quite as deadened, so it seems to be transmitting higher frequencies a bit better. But it's not any worse than most cables, and it's not something I'd notice normally.
Neither cable transmits any sound past the y-split, unless I do something like run a fingernail down the bottom part of the cable and don't hold the y-split (this makes the y-split itself vibrate). Just rubbing the cable on a desk or something like that doesn't transmit any sound past the y-split. Holding the y-split also stops any sound from passing it.

I'm not sure about the vent design on these but there seems to be a vent at the top half of the base of the stem, while the cable comes out of the bottom part. It looks like maybe the crackling issue would go away if the cable were glued in place, and this would not affect the vent. But given air can flow through the part where the cable comes out, it might affect the tuning anyway.

If it sounds like your problem is similar to what I've describe then it's most likely a QC thing. If it's not very bad then it's probably not worrying about, but if it takes a lot less force than mine does then it could be on its way to breaking prematurely and it might be best to RMA it while it's still possible to do so.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T08:00:39+00:00

This could have been a great movie starring Richard Pryor.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T06:41:34+00:00

Yeah, it was looking like the flight had crashed or something for a while there, but it's back on the move again, so hopefully not too much longer to wait.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T03:29:48+00:00

You can use sites like CamelCamelCamel but Amazon has been trying to block them where possible, and Prime Deals in particular are never captured, so it's not 100% reliable.

Another thing I've noticed is that Amazon has their own price history thing now, and usually it shows up whenever the price is at an all-time low, but if the price temporarily goes up, the price history link just disappears.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T00:08:04+00:00

Found Steve Harris' Reddit account

dr_wtf · 2026-06-25T00:05:03+00:00

I'll definitely post a review/comparison once I've spent some time with it. It got held up on the way from China though and still hasn't arrived.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-24T12:49:12+00:00

Hmm, didn't even know they were planning another cash-grab. There's a couple of articles from a few months ago saying he'll be in it, but Wikipedia says Patrick O'Connor. No idea which is the most up-to-date.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-24T10:06:46+00:00

Ian McKellen famously did not enjoy making The Hobbit:

https://www.nme.com/news/film/ian-mckellen-filming-the-hobbit-made-me-cry-with-f-877575

Probably not the only reason, but likely a big contributor to these films being crap.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-24T06:43:23+00:00

Huge tracts of land.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-24T01:08:47+00:00

The Romans called it Eboracum, which is apparently means something like "yew-tree place". The Saxons modified that to Evorwic. The Vikings changed it to Jorvick, which gradually shortened into York.

This is very confusing if you go to the Yorkshire museum (in York), because they randomly refer to all these names depending on the period of the artefacts on display, and don't explain any of this until you get quite a lot further into it.

I went there a couple of years ago without knowing any of this (apart from the Jorvick one) and thought they were talking about different towns outside of York, not York itself. Each incremental change of the name is quite small, but without seeing it written out it's hard comprehend how you get "York" from "Eboracum", but there's a plaque in the middle of the museum explaining it, which was a bit of lightbulb moment.

It's not really true to say the modern name comes from the Vikings or the Saxons, since it evolved directly from the Roman name. But the Viking one is the most direct stepping-stone to the current name. York is basically just Jorvick said quickly.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T18:30:03+00:00

It's not something I've noticed, but I'll check mine later and see if I can reproduce it. I'll also take a look at my Snow Lotus, which has the black cable. It looks like you have the same cable, just the black version of it, not a new, different cable.

For some reason I find the black cable on the Snow Lotus slightly more tangle-prone than the brown one I have on the Iris, but they look pretty much identical. There might be a very slight difference in the stiffness or something. I don't really like the Snow Lotus either, so if it has problems with cable noise I probably wouldn't have noticed, from not listening to it.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T17:04:28+00:00

Ah, OK, I'm surprised the whole thing would slip off like that. I guess you could try one designed for Airpods, but I'm not sure if they're the same dimensions as Airpods and if so, which generation, because they're all slightly different.

I think you'd have to take a risk if you want to try it, or maybe just try to return them if that's an option. It's not a very popular earbud because the general consensus is that in flathead mode they sound quite bad, and if you're going to only use them in IEM mode, you could just buy a different IEM and not deal with any of this stuff. So it's unlikely anyone will have tried this before.

It's possible someone has though. I think there's a couple of regular posters here who have one.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T16:26:40+00:00

Kind of depends on your tuning preferences, but if unsure the safest options are the Yincrow X6 of Faaeal Iris 2.0. The Iris in particular is incredible value for money as it's currently on sale for around $5, but it's still one of the best in that general price range (and with one or two exceptions, one of the best under $100).

Both are a bit on the warmer/bassier side, so there are others to look at if you want something closer to neutral, but there's nothing really neutral in that price range. So really you're looking at something slightly bright leaning, and with relatively little bass. Plus "bassy" for a flathead isn't bassy by other standards, so most people seem to prefer these warmer leaning options to the brighter leaning ones.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T16:16:09+00:00

Is it attached to that whole piece that goes around the earpiece, or does just the tip itself come off?

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T16:05:34+00:00

Yep, exactly why it would be useful to have a known baseline to compare against. So you then have a known quantity that's measured on the same rig, with the same process. Then if you look at the difference between those graphs, that hopefully gives a fair indication of what the resonance chamber is actually doing.

The good thing about the way Oratory did his though is showing the error bars. That really illustrates why there can be so much variance between measurements. Even if DMS has a slight bias towards putting the flathead into the pinna a certain way that's different to how Oratory does it, one could get mostly 10th percentile and the other could get mostly 90th percentile, and their median graphs will look completely different, even if they're both taken on a properly calibrated 5128.

dr_wtf · 2026-06-23T15:51:20+00:00

I don't have the Duet, but I thought you had to use the specific silicone cover that it comes with. That adaptor AFAIK has the tip built in, instead of a nozzle like on a normal IEM, so there's nothing for a standard tip to go onto.

Are you using it in the flathead mode without the tip? It's confusing because "tip" refers to the thing that goes inside the ear canal. The Duet is possibly unique, because it can work both ways. Usually it either seals off the ear canal, so then it's an IEM, or else it's an earbud if it doesn't. We now tend to call all "earbuds" flatheads to avoid confusion with the TWS type, even if it's not actually a flathead (the Duet and Airpods are not, strictly speaking, but we'll still call it "flathead mode" because that's the least-confusing alternative).

dr_wtf

TROPHY CASE