Review: Lend Me UR Ears FLC8s – More than meets the eye

Sound

Finding the sound you want takes time, and depending on finger shape and size, can be damn frustrating. When you finally find what you want, it’s good.

Without any filter in place, it’s scratchy, whingey, and chaotically trips every high end noise alarm installed in my brain. The biggest difference in sound comes from changing the treble filters. High-end sound pressure differences between gold and blue filters are immense. The blue filter tunes the earphone medium-dark, but not claustrophobic. The gold filter is open, extended, but not too bright. The green filter nudges that openness to a mild, treble-tipped v-shape against the bassy red (inside) or black (face) ports.

Apart from installing the blue treble ports, no matter which single filter or combo you install, the FLC8s has an obvious signature. That is: open, generally bright, with excellent bass pressure and overall speed.

Its bass thrums deep with good to great energy if not a lot of organic texture. It’s got a slight plastic-wrapped tinge, which works brilliantly in most music I’ve tried. It’s an otherworldly thing I love both it and the IQ for.

Of course, speed is a hallmark of second generation hybrids. Even first-gen hybirds were good. Ultrasone’s IQ is exceptionally fast. It’s just that quality control issues and chance sibilance cut short its status at the top.

You can’t get the FLC8s‘s sound stage to go as wide or deep as the IQ’s. It somewhat trails Dunu’s offerings, too. In this sense, it reminds me of the Astrotech 60, whose biting v-shaped signature drove speedy and hard, but with a smallish stereo/3D footprint.

And, it lacks the wettish reverb in the midrange that still endears me to the IQ. But it shows no faults, anywhere. And, you can tune it to your delight. That latter part makes it a bit hard to say much about any part of the sound range.

The blue filters, however, are a bit much. They just suck out the top range, but without balancing it with a shiny or reverb-wet midrange tuned. There’s no way to split it: the FLC8s is a great-sounding earphone.

End words

I’d love if the FLC8s fit better. I’d love if its cable was less microphonic. I’d love if its plastic and silicon filters were easier to install and remove. Apart from that, this earphone blows me away. Not only is the number tuning options unparalleled, almost every one makes sense and has a target model in the headphone world.

There’s no other way to look at it than as a ground-breaking if not definitional feat of engineering.