Posted by Pros: What a bass!
Excellent mids and treble reproduction with no bass bleed
Super comfortable
Fantastic Staging and Imaging
Great Cable
Comes with Velvet tips
Cons: Hard to find one except my peeve about that one song by Snarky Puppy
I remember a trip where I spent the better part of the bird watching trek looking for a nightjar. Which is a specimen of a bird, if you haven’t seen one. The Singularity from Nightjar Acoustics is another such fine specimen of engineering that thanks to Nightjar and Audio Geek India, I have a chance to try out and wax eloquent, so much gratitude. However, my impression is mine and your mileage may vary.
The review unit arrived in its fairly robust pouch with the iems in their little mesh bag and a fairly nice cable with a 4.4 termination. The shells are solid aluminium and black with a single brass ring jazzing up the face. The IEM is small enough to be super comfy for long sessions and after some of the hybrids that seem to rule the roost nowadays it’s a welcome change to my ears. There’s a lot of technicalities that Nightjar has thrown into this set. The proprietary Timbre + single DD with 43 ohms of impedance, the LoFlex system of pressure relief to reduce driver flex in bass heavy IEMs and allow for hours of listening, and the CAthedral which allows for the incredible staging, intricacy and imaging. The cable is OCC and supple and tangle free enough to use easily.
The IEMs come with Divinus Velvet tips and most of the review was done with those and the Dunu Candy.
Sources – VE Prime Stack, Fangsound Prometheus, Hidizs AP80 Pro Max, M33. Tidal and local flac files
TLDR what is that bass?!!! And how does everything sound perfect?!!
Bass
This is a basshead IEM. I could end this review right here and walk away and almost everything that I want to say would be covered. The Sub-bass envelopes you and decays out slowly lending its weight to not just the adjacent mid-bass and lower midrange but to the entire song. On “Tilted” by Cristine and the Queens, the synth bass that forms the foundation of the song has a decay that I had never heard on any other IEM with such clarity. The mid-bass feels slightly less prominent when compared to the sub but by itself has great texture, weight and punchiness. On “Tom Sawyer” by Rush, Geddy Lee’s bass and Neil Peart’s drums, which pretty much form the backbone of every Rush song (including but not limited to YYZ) are spot on with no bloat or excessive decay. The bass notes are clean and the kicks hold their own respective importance with no interference from any other instruments or even each other. There was an issue though with some Snarky Puppy tracks (“What about Me”) where the intro has a really intricate bass line by Michael League which I suspect is either sent through a processor or has a synth playing those notes an octave lower. This is the one edge case where I feel the resolution of the Singularity left me wanting just a little more.
Mids
To be very honest while the bass is incredible on this set, where this really really stands out is in the way it treats the rest of the track. The midrange is rich, lush and intricate all at the same time. Vocals and instruments are perfectly reproduced. Guitars, and horns (all over Snarky Puppy this time around) have a natural timbre. I honestly am beginning to believe that no matter how many drivers we manage to pack into an IEM, or how like a dynamic driver we tune a planar (yes Astralis, you!) – a well implemented dynamic driver is a treat to the ears. On Rosanna by Toto, the shuffle on the hi-hats and snare lie in the mids as do all the vocals, Steve Lukather’s solo and Steve Porcaro’s keyboards. And each is clear, uncluttered and every single note is separately heard and how! Female vocals also shine on this set. “Sowa” by Fatoumata Diawara, “Don’t know Why” by Norah Jones and “Sub-city” by Tracy Chapman did not have an ounce of shoutiness or sibilance. The last time I heard something this good was the Softears Twilight and then this broke the pedestal that the Twilight sat on.
Treble
The Singularity manages to deliver detail with no harsh treble. Or better put it doesn’t falsely push the treble forward to pretend to be detailed. It just is able to resolve all the intricacies of the track. Jazz Fusion and Progressive Rock/Metal and Orchestral music benefit most greatly in this region with all the nitty-gritties of the music coming through with none of the spice. It’s like a perfectly cooked dish with all the herbs and spices in perfect harmony with no zing of a wayward red hot chilli pepper. The perfect biryani (iykyk). “Ocean” by John Butler trio pushes any system to its maximum with his incredible guitar work and it sounds like a dream on the Singularity. And this is without any sub-bass or significant bass rhythm holding the track up, at least the intro bits. This track also tests the dynamics and the singularity performs with the confidence of the teacher’s pet. Yes I really like this IEM
Staging and Imaging
The reverb and staging is impressive with their technology speaking for itself. The staging is wide and holographic with impeccable imaging and layering. The usual suspects of Hotel California, Bubbles, Big Country and Africa went past the Timbre+ driver and passed with flying colours.
It’s hard to find anything wrong with this IEM and well, to be fair at $1300, there had better not be anything substantially wrong with it. It’s comfortable, sounds incredible and has a bass implementation that puts most other IEMs to shame. I haven’t heard to duality and my time with the E1000 was limited but I wouldn’t mind dying on this hill.