Final Audio Design High Resolution Headphone - Black (F4100)

bottom line: final (S'Next) have designed and crafted something extraordinary here. the f7200/f4100 is a signal achievement by final. i highly recommend the f7200 IEMs for CD bit-rate (or better) high-quality recordings of classical, jazz and world music not dominated by bass, if the f7200 is within your budget. please note that i would not hesitate to recommend each of the uiems compared in this review, taking into consideration the price at which it sells and the types of music it shines at presenting.just so you know where i speak from, long ago i used to be a loudspeaker kinda guy (large floor-standing klipsch pair), then a headphone guy (upper-end sennheiser). i have never been nuts about audio equipment. it is all about the music for me: classical (baroque through 20th & 21st century avant-garde), jazz vocal and world vocal and world classical. the equipment just needs to stay out of the way. if rock, rap, metal, edm, disco (or really, any music with a strong backbeat that repetitively thwacks your auditory receptors and simplest motoric neurons, and is designed to get your butt in motion) are your muse, stop here and read no further - the f7200 will most likely sorely disappoint you, even using an EQ. also to consider, i have slight high-frequency hearing loss in one ear, based on a recent medical test by an ENT specialist. and i do not have golden ears.in 2014, i bought my first pair of earphones (nice $80 IEMs by klipsch, on sale for $30 because they were being phased out in favor of the model with the inline smartphone controls), but rarely used them, preferring instead ath-m50x headphones (too bassy, not used now). a november 2017 pre-black-friday price drop triggered a buy of final sonorous iv headphones. the superb musical accuracy and luxurious build quality of these had me looking the following weekend for other audio phones from final. i was ultimately swayed by the poetic musings by "shotgunshane" (in his amazon user review) regarding the final fi-ba-ss, and i wound up buying a final heaven v and a final f7200 at black-friday prices; their sound, comfort and convenience made me switch from headphones to earphones, permanently i think (although if some generous and kind person gifted me a final d8000, i might reconsider :).long story short, i now own (these are all made by final) the sonorous iv, the heaven v, two! of the f7200, an f4100, an f3100, and an e5000. i also own a campfire comet made by campfire audio. i had a final e2000 and an e3000 for almost a year, and used them mostly on the go with an old ibasso dx90 dap while shopping locally for groceries, etc. excellent though they sound for the price, i recently gave away the e2000 and e3000, because the f7200, the f4100 and the e5000 wipe the floor with the former for the sort of listening i do. I have replaced the original cables on the f4100, the e5000, the campfire comet and one of the f7200s, with quality thick balanced cables (pure silver, or SPC or OCC copper), in spite of the high quality and beauty of the original cables on the f7200 and the e5000. my purchases evidence my struggle to come to grips with personal/portable audio gear, starting with an ibasso dx90 and klipsch iems in 2014; ironically, with the f7200, i had already arrived at my destination right at the beginning of the most recent year-long odyssey, but i kept traveling and looking until now. yes, i have spent more money on audio gear in the past year than in the previous decades of my life combined. and yes, i should have spent a little of that money instead on a keyboard with shift keys or a caps lock key; you will be glad that i did at least splurge to get the keyboard upgrade that included the spacebar and the punctuation keys.i have spent many weekends in protracted comparative listening sessions to all of the above transducers, using an excellent neutral desktop dac/amp (single-ended PO of topping nx4 dsd) and an equally excellent neutral dap (balanced PO of cayin n5ii), no EQ, always the same few well-recorded music tracks in flac ripped from cds (jazz vocal, world vocal in multiple languages, classical solo/chamber/vocal). also spent some time pushing music from the desktop dac/amp to the balanced PO of bluetooth receivers (earstudio es100, a&k xb10) operating in aptX HD mode (claimed to be better than CD quality). everything in the audio chain needs to be of sufficiently high quality, from the music composition to your ears/brain. music is a sort of massage of your brain, and the musical sound patterns that best stimulate pleasurable neuronal excitation depend very much on the evolution of your particular brain's sensitivity over your lifetime of attentive listening. however, among the non-human links in the audio chain, given the high performance of most modern dacs and amps, it is among the available choices of the earphone/headphone component (as also the placement of earphones within the ear) that one finds the greatest audio fidelity variability. note that i have no inline switcher, and the difficulties of volume matching without an SPL meter are also well-known, so take my impressions with a tablespoon of salt. even though i used high-quality audio gear and attentive listening to draw my conclusions, my impressions are subjective and not scientifically designed to avoid errors and bias, and of course they are bias-laden due to the history of which music sparks my neurons. to relate my impressions in words, for lack of anything better i resort to some of the admittedly vague synesthetic-analogue vocabulary that has evolved among audiophiles, expecting that if you are looking at the final f7200, you are likely to be familiar with its meaning.let's first deal with the seeming controversy of the bass response. initially, i was taken by the glorious sound of the heaven v, and i feared i had made a grave mistake in buying the f7200 (for which i could find almost no reviews at the time). the f7200's low frequency is finely textured, but lacks punch, rumble and slam. for maximum comfort, i was using the smallest size eartips, and the music sounded as if the (jazz upright plucked) bassist had been banished by the band to a neighboring room. this is an important point with the f7200, f4100 and f3100, and is mentioned in final's user manual (but was initially overlooked by me). isolation minimizes bass leakage, and one must use the largest size eartip that will not irritate one's ear canals in order to get the best seal. i listen now using the largest-sized eartips out of the five sizes provided, and the bass response is much improved with the f-series, though its amplitude does not equal that of the heaven v, the campfire comet, the f3100 or the e-series. the f7200/f4100 will not please many people in listening to music (including some classical and some jazz) that relies on pronounced bass instruments (including big/loud drums) for its primary musical message. i expect that this is a consequence of the tiny size of the single-BA drivers in the f-series. if you held the earphones in your hand for the first time, before putting the eartips on, their tininess would astonish you. unless you are a spy or counterspy, in which case you would be familiar with such tiny hearing devices since the days of the cold war, i expect. that they succeeded with such a tiny size is a superb technical achievement by final, and the size does allow practically the entire earphone to sit in the ear canal and the business end to sit closer to the eardrum than with any other earphones (as intended by final). this results in the fewest reflections within the sound nozzle and within the ear canal and the greatest clarity of sound, but the tiny single BA drivers are unable to provide the bass impact of larger BAs or dynamic drivers. final has thus far not entered the "first to pack a dozen BA drivers into each earpiece is the winner!" contest, and thus the f-series uses a full-range vented single-BA driver design, while the e-series uses a full-range single dynamic driver. paradoxically, the bass response of the f7200/f4100 is satisfying for me, and in a way its clear articulation of the bass is sometimes more ear-tickling than muddier bass with artificial punch. eventually, the f7200 won me over, and it is now my most-treasured pair(s) of earphones. if i were forced to give up all the headphones/earphones but one, i would keep the f7200. if i could keep two, they would be the f7200 and the f4100.to provide you with some points of reference from my experience with a limited number of IEMs. the heaven v and the campfire comet both sound great, and both are full-range vented single-BA designs. The heaven v sounds slightly sweeter than the comet in the treble, and the mids are raised, highlighting vocals, while the comet is more neutral overall, though the treble is raised enough that the upper-mids approach sibilance (though the comet stops short of overt sibilance and any hiss). both of them provide good bass, though not enough for bassheads who crave V-shaped or U-shaped frequency response tuning. the e5000 provides satisfying bass, and a softened sweetened treble, and needs to be driven at high enough volumes that the bass stops dominating the treble and upper-mids. given that the heaven v is a little too large to be comfortable in-ear for long listening, and given its flimsy microphonic non-replaceable cable, among these three i recommend the e5000 and the comet for the category of people who listen mostly to formula pop, classic/mainstream rock or symphonic classical, which is most people. (i also prefer the sound of the stainless steel housing to that of brass or aluminum, but that's just me.) the f3100 provides a beautiful sound and a better bass response than the f4100 and f7200, while retaining most of the same resolution as the latter (including in the bass), so it may also be a good option, though its single-ended cable is non-replaceable and it may (or may not) be eclipsed for this group of people by the e4000 to which i have not listened. for people who mainly listen to non-formulaic alt-pop, alt-rock/indie-rock and prog rock, the f3100, the e5000 and the campfire comet would make great options. the sumptuous sound of the e5000 may particularly flatter the bombast of prog rock and arena rock. for those unwilling to spend as much, the e2000 and e3000 are great options that will likely blow away the earbuds that came with your smartphone.coming last to the niche of the rest of music listeners, with tastes similar to mine, and coming to the f4100 and f7200. Owing to their tiny size, these (and the f3100) are the most comfortable for long listening sessions, among those mentioned above. the f-series can sit almost entirely in the ear canal, and are thus truly "in-ear" or intra-aural monitors, while the (more properly termed supra-aural) ca comet and the fi-ba-ss are larger and their driver housings sit outside the ear like most IEMs, with only their nozzles being in the ear canal. the f7200 and f4100 have remarkable sonic resolution, near-neutral but without sounding dry and over-analytical. Instead, they sound very musical, and the separation is excellent (and unexpected for such a tiny single driver). i do not know how well the separation holds up when the music gets busy with a lot of instruments, as in symphonies. in the mids and highs, their sound is similar (but slightly smoother in the highs) to that of the sonorous iv, though of course the latter has a fuller bass response. with their replaceable cables and stainless steel housings, the e5000 and campfire comet are worthy contenders in this category also. the e5000 comes with the same excellent single-ended cable as the f7200, but its lush sound does not quite cut it here, the bass coloring the mids a little, and the mids and treble being a little too smoothed for me and not attaining the detail resolution of the f7200/f4100, though female vocals attain a smooth nostalgic sound that some may love; by comparison with the f7200, though, i find the e5000's sounds a mite too rosy, and i hear the slightest nasal tinge in places. the psychoacoustic influence of the sumptuous bass make the mids feel slightly recessed. when i want to sway a little to the music, though, i do reach for the e5000 or the comet. the comet comes closer to the f7200, especially considering it is available for $200 (about 40% of the f7200 list price) directly from the campfire audio website, which is where i bought it using amazon pay. the comet's original cable with inline smartphone controls just has to be replaced, if you are serious about music-listening. the rest of this paragraph is about the comet's sound (relative to that of the f7200), to help readers who already own a ca comet. the comet sounds overall fairly neutral, and amazingly good for classical music and jazz vocals. only back-to-back comparisons of the comet with the f7200 yield the f7200 as the hands-down winner (unfair comparisons unless i remind you that in a price contest or in a contest where the test music calls for bass impact, it is the comet that is the winner; the comparison is meant to help shoppers who do not have a fixed price point in mind and want to understand the trade-off). the comet, though with a more extended and pleasing bass response, has a slight metallic brightness as if coming to you through a metallic tunnel and there are consequently more artificial resonances (i.e., slight ringing) and reflections, and also a slightly thinner sound in the mids and highs (less body, in spite of a larger BA driver), and there is also the veering towards sibilance resulting in the slightest wisp of a lisp by the singer in places; overall i would say that by comparison with the f7200, and only by comparison, where the sound signature of the f7200 in the mids and treble is liquid and firm, that of the comet is ever so faintly dry, hard, hollow and reedy; all of this when paired with a resolving analytical dac-amp with treble glare; the comet has better synergy with a warmer smoother dac-amp, which can tame the BA treble of the comet and ameliorate the very faint hints of sibilance/hardness/dryness that i hear. bear in mind that the differences between the comet's sound and that of the f7200/f4100 are small indeed; the comet sounds marvelous - it leaves almost anything in the sub $150 earphone category in the dust and i expect (from reading reviews online) that it sounds as good as many earphones more than twice its price; if i had never heard anything like the f7200, i would be tripping over myself in my hurry to come up with superlatives for the comet's sound. the comet's bass response strikes a happy neutral medium between the lush weight of the e5000's and the less prominent but resolving and dynamic one of the f7200/f4100. if you listen to a wider variety of music than i do, i highly recommend the campfire comet for you; for music with a smaller compass, that final describe as "gentle music", the f7200 is magical.by comparison with the comet's, the sound of the f7200 has an organic clarity and an immediacy that draws you in to the music itself - the singer sounds entirely flesh-and-blood and i feel as if i am looking at her in real-life rather than at a video (albeit high-res) of her. the f7200 sounds excellent with a smoother dac-amp, and sounds superb with an analytical dac-amp, resolving with no harshness at all. coming lastly to the sonic differences between the f7200 and the f4100. their sounds are almost identical, though the f4100 has been warmed and lifted slightly in the female vocal range. as a result, the f4100 is very pleasing for contralto vocals in particular. the difference between the two appears to me as that between a beautiful woman with subtle facial make-up who is seen through a mildly soft-focus lens (f4100), and one seen directly without make-up (f7200) - both enchant me - with the f4100's clarity falling slightly short of that of the f7200. if you intend to use a balanced cable, the f4100 may be the way to go, as the excellent single-ended cable of the f7200 accounts for a lot of the cost difference between the two, along with the machining of stainless steel and possible mfg cost differences between japan and china [as an aside, if you do not use a balanced dap output with the f7200 or e5000, i recommend you stick with the superb single-ended cable they come with; a replacement cable of such high quality would be expensive and difficult to find]. the two f7200 units i have sound identical to each other, so final manufactures and assembles these with great precision. in listening to female jazz vocals, classical instrumental (solo and chamber) and vocal (lieder and arias - soprano, mezzo, contralto, alto), as well as world music female vocals through the f7200 after listening through the other good transducers, it is as if an almost transparent veil has been lifted, and you see the music clearly at last, as the musicians and sound engineers recorded and produced it. just as the unostentatious visual beauty of the gleaming stainless steel housing disappears into the ear canal, so does the f7200 disappear from auditory sensation and let the music speak for itself. the presentation is matter-of-fact, everyday-zen-like, neither dark nor bright, no aspect is dramatized or editorialized by the gear, everything is harmonious and engaging. there is no attempt to tune for a wow factor that would inevitably grow tiresome in the long run. bass is sufficiently present and finely etched, mids are fresh, and highs are full-bodied without harshness (due to a well-shaped roll-off, i expect), resulting in non-fatiguing long-session listening. i speculate that all of this is an outcome of the simplicity of the single-BA approach (no crossovers, no phase errors), producing the least ringing tones, and also a lack of bass bleed that might have muddied the mids. i venture to guess that the f7200 would be well suited to teasing out the fine textures in a capella choral music, but i have not listened to this sub-genre with the f7200 yet.what is the competition? more money will likely buy you better sound, up to a point, beyond which it is more about status symbols and conspicuous consumption. i imagine the campfire atlas or sennheiser ie800s or audeze lcdi4 or final's own sonorous x and d8000 will sound better than the f7200/f4100. note that final's website (the company is named S'Next; final is just a brand name) continues to list fi-ba-ss as their flagship iem; the f7200 has not displaced fi-ba-ss. however, with audio equipment, one quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. the f7200 lists at ten times the price of the e2000. does it sound ten times better than the e2000? certainly not by any objective numbers researchers may measure (such as a conjectural THD of electrically-generated pure sine waves). but the telling sign of the sonic appeal is that once you get a sufficient taste of the f7200/f4100, you will be reluctant to return to the e2000/e3000. with earphones at the present time, the sweet spot for discerning music lovers is probably the $150 to $200 bracket, beyond which you run into diminishing roi. during the past year, based on perusing advertised features, amazon user reviews and reviews on the web (head-fi, headphone-list, twister6, etc.), i narrowed my selection of further (neutral-sounding) competitors to the following, none of which i have auditioned (nor do i now have any plans to do so). klipsch x20i, nuforce optoma hem-4, etymotic er4sr, ibasso it04, brainwavz b400 or b200, hifiman songbird re-600. there are probably at least a dozen more worthy competitors (and many more in the works, from news of canjam) in the $150 to $600 range for the sort of music-listening that i do, but i am happy with the f7200 and intend to look no further.

Actually, It's so nice for sound and game (FPS) I was really confused by the top comments. However, I think Final f7200 has a sound better than Final e5000. Mostly, f7200 has really beautiful high sounds. If you need or want to have Headset of the earphone. I recommend that to buy Shure's Headset recable which is approximately CAD $38. I usually use for Rainbow six SEIGE. I was using G355 Headset, but the earphone is more useful. It was made in Japan, so it must be high quality. In additional, the recable of this earphone is about $250. so if you have already had recable, I recommend to buy just head of earphone.

Balanced sound

These were the best sounding earbuds I've ever heard. Unfortunately, the design makes the earbud impossible to clean. My set was inaudible after just 3 months of casual use. The company has also been unresponsive when I inquired about the issue.For the price, I'd say this issue makes the F4100 one of my most regretted purchases.

right channel stopped working in less than 6 months. For the price, the sound was weak anyway, but for them to not last on top of having below average sound quality was very disappointing to say the least. I'll never buy Final audio again.