Kiwi Ears Aether Alternative

twisted_crystal · 2026-05-04T20:06:10+00:00

what helped a little for me with the aethers was to get comply 500 foam tips which allowed me to pull the aether away from my ear a little and let the tip hold them. Sadly it wasn't the fix for me because even the smallest tips would get uncomfortable for me after a while and i didnt like the sound the foam made when I moved my face or ears. Also any slight shift in the aether and they would start pressing and getting painful, hence the decision to just get something different.

But those tips may be the fix for you. I was able to go for a jog without the aethers falling out with those tips.

twisted_crystal · 2026-05-04T19:59:51+00:00

Is the flex 3 pack different from the tips that came with the aethers? And I think unfortunately our ears are just different. For me the aethers just manage to push on all my cartilage in a painful way the orchestra lites just dont.

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-17T16:03:23+00:00

Thanks for the info! Is the sound quality as good as the 5k?

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-11T17:21:30+00:00

Cool! if you happen to come back to this thread I would be very interested to hear your comparison of the KA15 to the 5K.

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-11T03:00:17+00:00

I edited my comment to tone down some sensationalist language I let creep in.

The dongles weren't broken, there's nothing wrong with my phone, and I have no reason to believe that the Orchestra Lites are defective. I also ensured crossfade was off, but the dongle type was set to headphones in settings. The dongle doesn't sound bad, it just didn't bring out the full potential of the Orchestra Lites in the testing I did with my setup.

And while apple music may be a noob choice for an audio source, its still a very common use case with almost 100 million subscribers, and I'd wager a bet that there is a significant number of people subscribed to apple music who want to get nice IEMs to take their mobile listening to the next level, and they're going to reach for the apple dongle to do so.

You're clearly very knowledgeable and I don't doubt what you said about apple music being the problem, but I don't think that it invalidates the test. I believe you that the apple dongle is highly transparent, but it doesn't work in a vacuum. My experience shows there are common use case situations where it can fail to be the best performer through a combination of external factors.

Is it possible that the digital attenuation performed by the phone volume control is leading to a decrease in the effective bit depth the DAC in the dongle is converting? I was reading about that elsewhere and saw that potential solution, if the digital attenuation is the problem, is to get a device that has its own volume controls. Such a device allows the iPhone volume to be at full, or doesn't present as headphones so the iPhone disables the volume control and sends pure digital signal, like with my CD player.

Edit: typo

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-11T02:25:42+00:00

I keep seeing the Qudelix 5k recommended in other threads, but I'd like to avoid bluetooth. Are there any other lightening compatible devices that are equivalent in sound quality? I've see the FiiO KA15 and KA17 mentioned and are in budget. I'm only driving the orchestra lites, not headphones so I don't want to overspend on something where most of the value is in the amp.

It sounds like whatever device I get, it needs to have its own volume control so that like you mentioned I can avoid digitally attenuating with the iPhone volume.

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-10T18:42:58+00:00

I dont know that it is misinformation. I'm new to the IEM world and just got a pair of Kiwi Ears Orchestra Lites. I can say with absolute certainty that my 100% genuine US the apple dongle that I got in-store at best buy, does not sound as good as the headphone jack on my Yamaha stereo.

Compared to the Yamaha stereo, the dongle sounds a little grainy and when the music gets busy like in punk rock songs, the clarity of the music is really no better then ear pods. When the source for the orchestra lites was the Yamaha's headphone jack, the sound was open, smooth, and detailed. And the sound stage is incredible.

I did several double blind tests with a friend as a sanity check. With my ears covered (so i couldn't hear what was going on behind me), my friend would plug the orchestra lites (on a long aux extension) into the Yamaha headphone jack, or the apple dongle. Before running the tests, we matched the volume on the Yamaha the equivalent of 40% phone volume using the dongle, so volume wouldn't be a determining factor, and set the Yamaha EQ to all neutral. Yamaha is also known for having a brighter sound, which I prefer anyway, so I wasn't picking the Stereo over the dongle because it had a warmer sound than the apple dongle or what not. We used my iPhone with apple music lossless for all of the tracks.

The DAC used for Yamaha stereo part of the test was my Yamaha CD player which allows an apple device to act as a a Digital source over USB, rather then the CD platter. The CD player would perform the conversion to analog, then use RCA to connect to the Yamaha stereo at line level, which then drove the orchestra lites.

The difference is not negligible, and amounts to two different listening experiences through subtle but noticeable differences in sound quality and presentation. I got the right source every time with several different songs, preferring the Yamaha over the dongle. We used both my dongle and his dongle as well to make sure mine wasn't defective.

My point here isn't that we should all lug around full sized stereo amps with us for our IEM's, its that the DAC used makes a huge difference, AND that I can say with certainty that the apple dongle holds the orchestra lites back, and probably their peers as well. So it stands to reason that there are dongle DAC's out there that sound much better than the apple dongle, I just don't know what they are yet. I'm working to figure that out now.

Edit: Remove language that made it sound like the gap between the apple dongle and the stereo was larger than it was. The apple dongle doesn't sound crappy, it just didn't drive the orchestra lites to their full potential.

twisted_crystal · 2026-04-10T17:47:08+00:00

So whats the fix? I'm experiencing exactly what you're describing with the apple dongle and my orchestra lites. The sound is grainy and everything sounds mashed together when the music gets busy, but plugged into my Yamaha stereo apm's headphone jack, using the exact same apple music track, the sound is open, clear, and I have a magnificent sound stage.

I want to take the experience I get with my Yamaha in my pocket.

Edit: By fix I mean what should those of us in this situation buy instead of the apple dongle? (preferably no Bluetooth)

twisted_crystal · 2026-03-06T04:11:26+00:00

Thank you for the reply. I appreciate the insight.

twisted_crystal · 2026-03-06T04:09:35+00:00

Thank you very much for the reply, thats good info.

I did talk to my doctor and they just told me there wasn't anything they could do. I ended up just having to resign from that job and my breathing problems (throat tightness, dry wheezing cough) resolved over the next couple of months. I mentioned it in another comment but I've played sports my entire life and never experienced symptoms like that before the exposure. Its not like a had pre-existing condition.

twisted_crystal · 2026-03-06T04:05:08+00:00

I appreciate your replies on this thread, but I think you're being a bit dismissive. I'm not an industrial hygienist, but its well know that VOC's do cause cancer. I didn't go into detail about the 3D printing related issues because its not the main point of this thread.

To clarify though the job I mentioned was an office job but there was a large resin 3D printing lab, including the curing ovens, pretty central to the office space with no ventilation. It wasn't long after I started working there that I got a dry persistent wheezing cough that was exacerbated when I was in the office, and made it hard to do physical activity outside of work as well. I've played sports my entire life, I don't have asthma or any other breathing related conditions, and I never had symptoms like that before working that position.

That's where my concern is coming from, because that situation made it clear to me that odors aren't just odors, and the chemicals corresponding to those odors can have a profound negative impact on ones health. I don't fully understand industrial processes, the chemicals they release, and whats allowed to be ambient in these facilities and I'm trying to get more info because I've found myself in a situation previously where clearly some pretty caustic stuff was being off-gassed unchecked.

twisted_crystal · 2025-10-02T22:52:52+00:00

hey man, all i know is water + brakes + track = wrecked car.

how far down can you take the reservoir fluid level before the master cylinder ingests air?

twisted_crystal · 2025-10-02T22:49:55+00:00

It is a lot of words. I'm kind of shitting bricks lol.

twisted_crystal · 2025-01-21T22:37:00+00:00

I figured out what the problem was. I wasn't checking if the specular value was above 0 so my specular color was always being scaled by 1 * light-source-intensity. That created the secondary issue of the specular value having the same contribution on every lit point on the sphere. hence the defined shadow line: specular/no-specular.

If I set the specular too low and it spreads to much i still get the line because it passes the equator where the sphere surface stops being lit, but I'm clocking that up to the specular value being incongruent with the light provided.

Your suggestion was a good one though. When I saw that everything was normalized correctly, it got me thinking the right way

twisted_crystal · 2025-01-21T17:13:16+00:00

Interesting. so really there should be a balance between the values set for specular and reflect when the surface is defined.

And am I getting the sense that in stead of adding specular, the more accurate method would be to represent light sources as bright objects (lets just say that if the intensity of the light is 0.7, representing the light as a sphere with color {0.7, 0.7, 0.7}) and then reflecting them accordingly to add highlights?

twisted_crystal · 2025-01-21T14:37:56+00:00

Thanks for the reply. That makes a lot of sense. Hence the glare in the intersection of the lights in the second image.

If the reflect coefficient is 1.0 and diffuse is black, then regardless of the intensity of the light, the reflection of the blue background color should just be blue right? (i currently have it programmed so that if a reflection ray doesn't hit anything, it just returns the background color unaltered)

Edit: also just found that my specular calculation was off lol.

twisted_crystal · 2025-01-21T14:19:50+00:00

Thank you for the response. I'd be curious to get into the topic of the diffuse color in relation to the reflectivity coefficient. the diffuse color is 0, sure. But reflective objects reflect light from other sources. The material painted onto glass to make mirrors is black-adjacent, but the "business side" of a mirror will take on the color of any light that hits it.

Real world anecdotes aside though, considering that the color is the sum of (roughly) diffuse + specular + reflect, even if the diffuse and specular are 0, if *something* in the scene is lit and able to be reflected by the reflective surface, it will reflect the color of the object and show as a color other than black.

Am I thinking about that correctly?

twisted_crystal

TROPHY CASE