Build Quality
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How can porcelain look or feel bad at all? The build quality with the Wavaya Penta is sublime. The porcelain shells feel incredibly smooth and satisfying when inspected at hand. The logos also have tremendous quality and detail, finishing this elegant design nicely.
The sound bores are perfect and the CIEMs utilize T2 cable sockets with Linum SuperBax cable. As you know, T2 is a great solution for long term monitoring usage. There’s no need to talk about the cable quality here, as Linum cables are renowned as sturdy and very comfortable. They’re also very reliable for hard and extensive use, especially for stage artists.
Craftsmanship-wise the only small dent I could find is the glue marks between the face plates and the shells. If you look carefully you can spot them in that very tiny line in-between. That’s the only thing I could spot and the rest of the CIEMs are extremely good build-wise. Considering how hard it is to produce these shells, I say this is easily tolerable.
Wavaya Penta
Fit
Wearing the Wavaya CIEMs is a unique experience. The smoothness of the glazed-porcelain is very satisfying once you insert them into your ears, as well as that certain coldness compared to acrylic monitors. The fit feels very natural and comfortable. I would say it’s not extremely different to others at first -apart from that coldness and smoothness I’ve just mentioned-, but over extended periods, the porcelain stays very comfortable and the feel stays the same.
This is not the case for me with other monitors to be honest. They don’t necessarily become too uncomfortable after some time, but I realized that Wavaya contacts my ears very naturally and I don’t feel any problems even with very long listening sessions. I think that is the real difference with porcelain. You won’t feel very different at first, but after some time you understand the difference. There’s less temperature, less sweating and less itchiness inside your ears. I should congratulate Wavaya for this achievement.
Other than those points above, the fit is very good for me and I think my 3D files worked perfectly. The fit is dense and stiff, thus providing very good isolation. You can also see from the photos that the canal parts are not very short. This also ensures that you have a very flush fit with good noise blockage.
For ensuring your ear impressions are okay, Wavaya also has an Impressions Approval Tool, which you upload several photos of your molds and send to them to know if there’s any problem with your impressions.
Wavaya Penta
Price
The Wavaya Penta sets you back a 1090 EUR if you don’t add any special options to your order. Wavaya carries out an equal policy about USD/EUR currencies, by setting all the prices at the same level for both.
A luster finishing costs additional 100 EUR, and you actually don’t pay an additional fee for the SuperBax cable which is very nice from Wavaya. If you take my order into account for example, it costs 1190 EUR in total. Personalized carrying case is free of charge. You can also add extra cables to your order, if you want to have a spare one. Do note that the luster finishing is free for the flagship Octa model.
When you look at the market for IEMs that use EST tweeters, the price here is reasonable. Also you have to consider the difficulty to treat the porcelain and shaping it to produce a personalized CIEM. You also get a Linum SuperBax cable and a personalized genuine leather case. The package content is quite rich in that regard. So when you take all of these into consideration together with the current state of the portable market, this is pretty fair in my opinion.
Like I mentioned before, you can go with the more expensive and premium Jewelry series with original Swarovski crystals as well. They cost approximately 500 EUR more for all models.
Another additional treatment from Wavaya is the VIP Service. For being a VIP customer you need to pay 200 EUR more to get some advantages. They pickup your ear impressions from your door via FedEx or TNT, and then you receive plastic ear shells to test out the fit. If it’s good then they start to produce, and also your order is treated as “priority” and you receive your CIEMs in 30 days at your door via the same shipping couriers. You also get a dedicated representative from the company for your special order.
Continue to sound on PAGE 4.
