Teufel Aureol Fidelity

Before starting this review I just want to welcome “Jeroen” as a guest writer to Headfonia. He’s the one who did the Teufel review and as it’s one of his first reviews, let’s all be easy on him. Important to remember with these guest reviews is that they are the guest reviewer’s point of view and not necessarily Headfonia’s. We got this free sample from Teufel. Have fun reading! L.

 

Today we are going to talk about Teufel’s latest in-ear model: The Aureal Fidelity. Teufel is a German company located in Berlin, that started out some 30 years ago making speakers for wholesale. A few years later they went on in the retail business. Nowadays Teufel has an whole range of speakers focused on the hifi market. This Aureol Fidelity is the successor of their previous model, the Aureol Melody. Teufel equipped the Aureol Fidelity with an HD neodymium driver, that has a low impedance of 16 ohm and a frequency range that covers 20 – 20.000 Hz.

 

The Aureol Fidelity comes in a nice black box, that contains a handful of accessories. Besides the in-ears, you’ll also get a handy transport case, a shirt clip, a 3.5mm mini jack and an airplane adapter. Teufel offers 7 pair of silicon-made ear tips, unfortunately there wasn’t a single pair that fit me as it should. I have rather small ears, but even the smallest pair was still a little too big for me. The pairs are actually two times 3 pairs, but in two different colors, particularly black and white. I’d rather have had a bigger choice in size, than a variety in color. So as the smallest tip wouldn’t fit me as it should, it wasn’t always as simple to keep a tip in my ear while I was walking or eating. A tip with a flange would have helped me out I guess, but the ones I had didn’t fit the Teufel.

 

DESIGN & COMFORT

The first thing that stands out, when you open the box is the beautiful design of the Aureol Fidelity. Teufel designed a new housing for its HD neodymium driver. The in-ears are silver colored and tube shaped with an elegant ‘T’ on the back. The back side of the tube, where T stands, is perforated and that gives it a little bit dash. The perforation is only an aesthetic feature, it doesn’t create an open sound or doesn’t support a filter.

The 1.25m long cable is protected by a plastic shell, so it will prevent your cable to snap easily and it also helps a lot when it comes down to cable noise. I always wear my in-ears over the ear, and I didn’t experience any troubles with cable noise on these. Furthermore, thanks to the plastic shell, they don’t get so easily entangled and that’s always a great thumbs- up when it comes down to in-ears. The cable obviously gets a good score, I wish more products used this cable.

SOUND IMPRESSIONS

I only listened to these in-ears on an Iphone4 and a Macbook Pro, in combination with Fiio’s E11. When visiting Teufel’s website, they describe the sound of their Aureol Fidelity as silk-like highs, natural sounding mids and as highlight: some good, deep bass. As for the highs and the mids, they truly are good. The mids of the Aureol Fidelity are easy going and neutral. However I’ve encountered occasionally a peak in the higher mid-range, that caused a penetrating feeling on my eardrums. I’ve only felt it when I was listening to music with analog rhythm drums and percussion, like some 80s freestyle hip-hop.

The highs are crisp, detailed and articulate. There’s a perfect flow between the highs and mids, they are clear and certainly not fatiguing. The bass, on the other hand, wasn’t as deep as I thought it would be. It is not bassy, but very delineated, warm and shows much detail. All in all, the general feeling you get is that the Aureol sounds rather bright but detailed and with a nice imaging.

The Aureol Fidelity tends to stand out when you prefer general pop/rock music, good singer/songwriters and it also handles classical music very well. Otherwise the Aureol Fidelity does not sound forward and does not have the heavy punchy bass, so some music genres like heavy bass music, hip-hop or some more harder work like metal don’t really stand out like they should be. When I listened to metal, I had the impression that the music sounded slower than it should. And by this I mean, when you listen to a drum break it lacks some pace. Kind of like the drums aren’t in sync with the rest of the music. If these last musical types are not your favorite types of music, the Aureol Fidelity will certainly pass the test and please you a lot.

In comparison to the Fisher Eterna V1/2 and the VSonic GR04 (Full Vsonic lineup review to follow), which I have listened to the most recent months, I have to say that this Aureol Fidelity is missing some oomph and fun. It will not lend itself to all sorts of music and you don’t get that wow effect like the V2 and GR04 do.

I also put the Aureol Fidelity through the test with Fiio’s E11 and I have to say that I didn’t make much use of E11 because the clarity and detail aren’t as present as without the amp. The bass fun factor gets a good push in the back but I rather prefer the strong points of this IEM instead of getting an improved bass sound. Same, or even worse, problem with the Fiio concerning the volume levels between different songs. As a matter of fact, the amp emphasized it in my case, so I didn’t make use of it for a long time.

To summarize this beautiful looking Teufel: I was and still am delighted with the ease of the sound. It keeps you attracted to all details in a song while listening. This along with a reasonable price tag of € 99, I think this Aureol Fidelity is going to stand his ground in the fast growing market. And most important: it also reminded me to upgrade all my audio files to the same bit rate.

You can check the Aureol Fidelity and many more products on www.teufel.de

 

Gear used: Teufel Aureol Fidelity / MacBookPro / Iphone4 / Fiio 11

 

Lieven’s Bit

When Jeroen sent me this review I was quite surprised because most reviews on the internet describe this IEM as dark and very bassy. So the only way to find out more was to listen to it myself. Like him, my ear canals are really tiny and small and I had problems finding a tip to fit my ears. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any tip that suited me too and as a result I can only confirm the sound the way he described it, even on my iPod + Cypherlabs CLAS + C421 setup.

If I really push the earphones in my ear, and keep them there manually, the sound signature of this IEM does change and they do become darker and very bassy indeed while keeping the character he described above. So it really comes down to your ears. If you can have a good fit these are really bass heavy (bass taking over), and if you can’t you get a brighter more forward sounding IEM. Of course it isn’t advised to buy an IEM that doesn’t fit you as it should as you’re not supposed to walk around pushing the earphones constantly in your ears.

It’s the first time we both encounter an IEM that doesn’t fit either of us, I actually did find one other reviewer in Germany, who had the same problem with this IEM as we did, and he described the sound more or less like us. Of course everyone else declared the guy to be crazy but we know better now. One of the next IEM reviews will be of the full Vsonic line-up (thank you Lendmeurears.com) and luckily for everyone, they fit without any problem. 😉

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Lieven is living in Europe and he's the leader of the gang. He's running Headfonia as a side project next to his full time day job in Digital Marketing & Consultancy. He's a big fan of tube amps and custom inear monitors and has published hundreds of product reviews over the years.

3 Comments

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