Review: Fearless HyperS12 – Blues

Treble

Treble section is very good with nice extension, richness and articulation. There’s still a problem in terms of size, but not as much as the mid area. Once again highs sound a little thin and they somewhat lack some texture, but they’re okay for the price. Micro details are great and you get good transparency.

Treble has good positioning, accentuation and separation. There’s good crispness, sparkle and articulation in a consistent way. Just like the mid part the sound is very clean here. Also the positioning of the treble helps to have a nice sound-stage overall. The S12 left me really good impressions in the treble area as a whole. The only problem is that, the treble is slightly thin, which is not a huge problem. We don’t have an obvious weakness here.

Technical Performance

The strongest part of the Fearless HyperS12 is its sound-stage. I’m really impressed with the staging because of its vast and wide performance. The depth is not that much impressive, but the width certainly is a wonder with this IEM. I congratulate Fearless for their staging success. I’m not sure there’s a better choice in this price range, if you’re obsessed for sound-stage magnitude.

After its staging, the next best thing about the S12 is the separation performance. You have good spaciousness in the whole sound and all the elements have enough room, even in complicated passages. When you think about the great sound-stage the S12 gives, you can have an idea about how good this IEM performs in stereo imaging. It’s indeed wonderful. As much as I criticized its tonality in the mid section, I can also praise the performance in this part because it’s simply great.

Overall resolution is very good with great transparency and detail. It leaves nothing on the table for these three topics with the support of the 12 driver setup. So technicalities-wise you have almost everything here; sound-stage, separation, transparency, stereo image and resolution.

Fearless HyperS12

The Fearless HyperS12 is very easy to drive and you can also confirm it when you look at the figures. It has 12 Ω impedance and 118 dB sensitivity. That means you can use it with almost everything, expect the ones that hiss to much. So that topic is easily covered.

Cables

I found the S12 quite sensitive to different cables, therefore I obtained some findings when I tried it with aftermarket choices. The Effect Audio Ares II is a good cable for the S12 for example, giving more body to the mid-bass area and creating a sound which is warmer and a little more organic. The tonality slightly improves as well. I really liked this pairing.

Another cable is the Japanese Brise Audio STR7-Ref. The review of the STR7 is very very soon, but I wanted to share my findings of it with the S12. The S12 is even better with the STR7, sounding much more coherent and fuller in bass and mids, showing better tonality & timbre, and more easier and thicker treble with good detail. This basically shows what S12 can do with better wires, especially copper.

Of course, one wouldn’t likely pair this IEM with a cable that costs this much, but what I want to highlight is, copper cables sound really well with the S12.

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