MIDS
The Austru has very good and a little forward sounding mids that have a good definition and resolution. They sound detailed and they’re very well controlled. The tonal accuracy is mostly correct on the reproduction but they’re not completely colourless either. The Austru isn’t as coloured as the Oriolus is and there still is the musicality and easy going nature. The mids body-wise are on the thinner side just a little, but they have a good energy and liveliness. Very very good.
In brief, I think the most successful part of this monitor is the mid frequency part. The only thing that suffers somewhat is the midbass bleeding that I mentioned in bass section. This affects some thick notes in mid area, especially vocals. Thinner voices and instruments are OK here. The dynamism and energy are the great parts that make you smile when you listen to your favourite tracks.
HIGHS
What I liked the most about the treble on the Austru is the control and non-aggressive approach. There’s not a single time that I heard a bothering, sibilant sound in this area. Everything is under control. Reminder; this is not a dark sounding monitor. They didn’t choose the easy way and just go for a dark IEM just to sound easy going but they have done an excellent job with the driver tuning for the highs instead. This deserves some praise. Treble sounds clean, open but not too bright at the same time.
The only negative point is the roll off. Lower treble is very good but once you try to focus on the highest parts you can notice the small lack of extension. As a consequence, this is not the IEM for perfectly extending highs. To get that you need to raise your budget to get those “diminishing returns”. Therefore, bear in mind that you simply can not get the best airiness around this price range. Maybe for this price they could’ve given a little more extending treble but I’m on the fence at this point. Because there are IEM’s that cost over 1000USD but still can’t give that kind of quality so I wouldn’t bear down this monitor because of that.
TECHNICAL
It has quite a good resolution and a black background. For this price there’s no flaw regarding those points that I can bring up. Also detail retrieval is surprisingly good given that several micro sounds are apparent on my listened to recordings. Sound stage is wide but not very deep and positioning is very nice as a whole.
Separation between mids and highs is a very strong point of the Austru. It possesses an airy sound, but as I mentioned in bass section, midbass can be a little loose. That is the only apparent problem of the IEM in my opinion. I think it can be solved by doing some kind of adjustment or tuning on the dynamic driver. If they can somehow improve this area, this will be a wonderful IEM without any issues.
In terms of source matching, I think Austru will work seamlessly with every kind of source because it’s a good all rounder and it’s not an extreme monitor. I mean it’s not fully flat or aggressive, it doesn’t have a big bass etc. So you don’t need to match it with a perfectly suitable source and that’s a good thing. But even so, I can recommend matching it with a source that has a good bass body. The driving factor is a important and you should take that into account as the Austru has a 75.9 ohm impedance and 112.85 dB sensitivity. As as result, some amount of power is handy.
CUSTOM CABLE
To check the difference, I decided to try the Custom No.5 cable from PW Audio, which was supplied with the Oriolus MKII. And wow, what a difference a cable makes! The IEM started to show it’s real potential with the aftermarket cable and that was a good reminder to me that IEM cables can make a big difference.
With the No.5 cable the separation became much better and especially the situation with the midbass was non-existent. When you focus on the voices in the recording, they are cleared from that small midbass bleeding. Positioning and separation was also better and because of these factors the stereo imaging was clearer and the low end response became more controlled as well. The highs were the same with a small amount of benefit to the resolution.
When I tested the Austru with the stock cable it performed good but when I switched to the PW audio cable, I realized that this IEM has more potential than what it showed in the first place. I’m really curious about getting more cables for the Austru now. Maybe a pure silver cable will make it even better as far as resolution and treble are concerned. Unfortunately I couldn’t test that as I don’t have other cables here to test for now but the sure thing is; Austru desperately improves with a good cable.
SUMMARY
I think the Austru is a promising IEM by Cypher Labs. They really show that they can build impressive IEM’s with a great build quality and sound. They only just need a little more critical tuning to come close to perfection. Other than that it’s a great IEM from top to bottom. Of course there are better IEM’s out there but to get even better, you will probably pay more than $1000 USD in today’s market.
With a a good aftermarket cable the Austru really shines with great sounding mids and a good bass response, as well as a very nice soundstage.
So that’s it for the 1st review of 2017. Stay tuned!
