Review: Oriveti Basic – Bassic!

Sound

Oriveti Basic is parts textured, parts balanced, parts throb. Elsewhere it has been called laid-back. In its way it is. It has also been called bassy. Here I will disagree. It is warm, with a nearly flat-field descent from lows to mids. Truly low bass doesn’t piddle out toward 20Hz. It is strong, detailed, and gregarious, and everything is in its wake. It goes low enough and hits with enough pressure to truly yawn out the opening seconds to Markus Schulz’s Mainstage (my constant, non-theoretical benchmark for really low lows). But that pressure smoothly cants down as frequencies rise to the midrange, the result of which is a warm, heady bass. It is an interesting, if not wholly meet companion to trance music.

That is, I prefer cooler tones when my music speeds up on the legs of high BPM bass-driven music. At every turn, beneath every genre, every album, every song, a warm rumble brews. It is heady when called for, and can get tiresome and pushy when the music is too fast.

HiFi Headphones made a lovely video about Basic. It is mostly spot on. But they mentioned that its bass could sometimes bloat. I beg to differ. Oriveti Basic’s bass doesn’t bloat. Simply, super lows are audible where usually they are not. They are audible and warm and bass texture is high. You are going to hear more of all the time. Therefore, more of your attention will divert its way. You will hear things you haven’t heard before, or haven’t heard in a long time. Depending on the music, you may even be fatigued. But bloat- I don’t think so.

Make no mistake, those lows are something else. In them is enough textural detail in there to psychoacoustically spread an already wide sound stage wider. The lowest fringe rumbles in Armin Van Buuren’s Burn the Sun [Mix Cut] rumble around the shoulders and curve up and gently out beyond the ears. On and between this cushion ring in the mids and highs in a positionally dynamic array that can wrap around the head. The lows kick like a real stage sub woofer, and that wrap around puts you in the club, albeit somewhere near the back.

Mids are pretty flat, unadorned, and in their high extremes susceptible to a bit of smear and texture breaching. Highs don’t reach dizzyingly and aren’t sibilant, but in comparison to mids, they stand ever so slightly out. Along with a detailed, spacious, and deep bass, they bookend an otherwise pretty neutral signature. Highs are not quite as detailed as bass, presenting stereo detail flat and unaccented.

There’s a pathos to Oriveti Basic that isn’t present in Primacy. It is yearning and hungry and probably is down to that crazy subwoofer in there, bringing forward details you normally don’t hear.

You’ll hear some hiss through Basic, but not a crazy amount.

End words

Despite Oriveti’s best attempts, the Oriveti Basic is more than an entry-level earphone shifting user demand upward. It fits better, has a more useful case, and in my opinion, it looks better. Super low bass is forward. You won’t forget it. And you won’t forget a pathos-riddled take on a slowly downward-canted frequency response. You may also find that Basic’s more anatomical body isolates better than Primacy. Might.

If you like sub woofing. If you like warmth. If you like low end detail but you won’t sacrifice delicate spatial cues further afield typical of neutral-field earphones, you may like Basic. But if you’re a trance head, you may want to look further afield.

Well done.

3.9/5 - (17 votes)
Facebooktwitterredditpinterestlinkedin

Back before he became the main photographer for bunches of audio magazines and stuff, Nathan was fiddling with pretty cool audio gear all day long at TouchMyApps. He loves Depeche Mode, trance, colonial hip-hop, and raisins. Sometimes, he gets to listening. Sometimes, he gets to shooting. Usually he's got a smile on his face. Always, he's got a whisky in his prehensile grip.

7 Comments

  • Reply March 17, 2017

    Barun C

    Nice review Nathan. Basic looks a bit chunky, but at that price it faces stiff competition from Ocharaku Co Donguri. Hoping you will review a pair in the future. If you’re up for it do let me know, I’ll send you my unit.

    • Reply March 22, 2017

      James

      I agree. But being bulky they are also more comfortable than the Primacy, so it looks like a fair trade.

  • Reply March 17, 2017

    SBnoon

    Been using it with Oriveti’s own aftermarket balance cable which actually cost about as much as the Basic (It was suppose to be use with Primacy).

    Totally worth it. I think I like it more than my (old) Primacy.

  • Reply April 24, 2017

    Juan Luis Quiroz

    How compared with rha ma750?? Could you say that is the best option under $100?

  • Reply November 26, 2017

    Mateo

    The xelento cable improves the sound in front of the stock cable?

    • Reply November 27, 2017

      ohm image

      I used it because it was more comfy than the stock cable.

      • Reply November 27, 2017

        Mateo

        And the sound I suppose is the same.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.