The KZ company approached me and offered to write a review for them, and I didn’t refuse, as you can see, with my usual condition that they won’t be able to influence the review result. So! Here it is – the CCA Rhapsody in-ear wired hybrid headphones costing $42.
‘I’m looking for some decent earbuds. Wired model. I want to just hang these on my ears and not shove them inside. And so that these would be just a little bit audiophiliac!’ ‘Are you freaking serious,’ I thought. ‘Wow,’ I said. There was absolutely no way I could imagine the words ‘audiophilia’ or even just ‘good sound’ and ‘earbuds’ in one sentence – not to say in one product!
I didn’t have a chance to use any of the Aune products until recently, although I’ve read a lot of good reviews: their amplifiers usually have nice ratings on the Internet. That’s why I got curious when their first AR5000 headphones were announced in November 2023, and not just headphones but over-ear full-sized ones!
The TWS headphones are difficult to make. The Moondrop couldn’t, and the Noble couldn’t, too. This is why the WF-1000xm4 always were and still are an excellent model for me: the Sony managed to match some good sound, rich feature range, excellent ergonomics and software stability. And then Linkbuds S were released: ‘they’re the same picture’, though much cheaper. These are great, really the best TWS headphones to date, which I honestly stated. Did I expect much from the WF-1000xm5? Heck yes, I did!
A friendly reminder about important things.
How much do you think any decent closed-back wired headphones could cost? All of a sudden, the JadeAudio’s collab with the FiiO gets released, and it’s a pretty unusual JT1 model. This is your answer to the above question. These cost around $50 at the AliExpress sale. Would you expect anything great from such a thing? I don’t know! I wouldn’t.
