Disclaimer: The headphone I’m reviewing is a demo unit provided for an on-going tour.
Campfire Audio is a name I’m pretty familiar with as I thoroughly enjoyed their TOTL iem offering, the Andromeda. So when it was announced that Ken has been developing a headphone, piqued my interest. This headphones is the Campfire Cascade, which is the one I’m reviewing.
Cascade is a closed back headphone utilizing 42mm Beryllium PVD Diaphragm Dynamic Drivers. In terms of looks, it doesn’t have the typical rounded shaped headphone cups, but rather a rectangular shape. It’s not the largest cups for the ears, but fit my ears just fine, but feels like there is a bit of a limited room even if my ears are considered compact in size. People with bigger ears may find it more constricting.
The headphones comes in this large box similar to the small sized box that comes with their iems.
Within the box, contains a carrying case with the headphones inside, two envelopes. One of the envelopes contains the warranty card, two quick guides, and the filters. The other envelope contained the headphone cable.
The pads are easy to take out to swap out the filters. Nice feature of the Cascade is that the pads are held on by magnets on the pads and the drivers. So, it’s quite easy to pull out the pads, slide the filter in, and placing the pads back on. Pads go back on in precise placement by magnetic attraction without any fiddling. This is quite refreshing from headphones that take a bit work to pull out the pads. Sometimes they use little plastic coupler that you can accidently damage or wear out over time, or worse, they maybe adhered with an adhesive.
When I heard that these headphones come with filters, I expected to be some sort of foam inserts you find with MrSpeakers headphone. The filters used for the Cascades are totally different as they are not foam of any kind, but a cut sheet of plastic film that is placed on top portion of the earspeakers. There are 4 different types of filters sized from 1T to 4T, and with increasing number, the pore size increases from 7 to 15um. Each filter can be identified with a specific notch shape as shown on the quick reference guide provided.
Filters can be applied by pulling out the pads, and placing it on top of the round portion of the driver that is located at the center. There is a notch at the top that the top notch of the filter film can be aligned.
The quick guide(for the filters) provided states, “The lower number value of the acoustic dampener the higher the level of mid and low frequency response will be.” So, I decided on lowest filter, 1T, and I didn’t notice much of a difference in sound. Upon further investigation on the forum threads, somebody recommended to just not use filters altogether, and I thought there was a slight difference without the filter, reducing some warmth and bringing out more mids coherency, and highs in general. The bass response on the other hand, I couldn’t tell if there were reduction or not as the bass of the Cascade is very strong that if there is some reduction, it should be quite noticeable, but I couldn’t tell.
The cable came inside the black envelope. I was quite surprised the entire cable fit inside there. The cable isn’t long, and terminated with a 3.5mm connector. The driver connectors on the cable is same connectors used for HD800 headphones. The cable is covered in fabric material, and doesn’t get coiled up or has memory, which is quite nice. It’s quite light as well, and I think the cable works quite well for portable use.
Upon initial listen, first thing I noticed was hard slamming bass large in quantity. I immediately had to turn down the volume as that was a whole lot of hard hitting bass. I never had this the other way around, usually it’s the treble side I’d adjust the volume for.
Well, I can say, it’s for people that want to feel the music as there a highly significant bass presence to these. These in particular to many other headphones, pushes out significant bass, particularly the mid to lower mids bass. The bass hits very hard with it’s mid bass region, and outputs a particular woofer like resonance effect as well. Listening to genre like pop, hiphop, R&B, you get hit with these type of bass, particularly in large quantity. The hard bass gets reveal, but quite significantly if the track contains it, but if it does not, you won’t get hit with such hard bass. But a bit of warning, bass hit really hard and quite significant than the avg. Be forewarned.
When I got these, there was already a filter placed in the drivers, 1T, or the filter that should(according to the quick guide) should have the lowest level of mids to bass, and I still found the bass to be quite high and significant. Matter a fact, these headphones has the greatest bass quantity I’ve ever heard on an headphone. This maybe because I’m into more balanced response, and therefore I don’t have much opportunity with bass rich headphones..
A forum member mentioned that the lowest bass quantity would be without any filters applied, so I tried them without any filters. Although I didn’t notice much of a difference in terms of bass quantity(still quite high), taking out any filters seems to increase mids clarity slightly and seems to be slight increase in lower treble as well.
I can say that these headphones do sound like Andromeda(in the mids to upper frequencies ignoring the bass), particularly without the filters. It does have have a bit of that warm lower-mids presence to sound. This response is a bit above neutral that mids can come off a bit on the warm side. Mids sounds a bit less clear due to the warm nature of the signature(especially with the filters). What’s really interesting though is that even with such a large volume of bass, the bass doesn’t bleed much to the mids for a closed headphone, but there is still that warm presence in the mids that provide greater weight to the mids, and therefore find the mids to be reduced in clarity slightly compared to a response with lower bass quantity, but overall, it’s got to be the clearest sounding headphone for such large quantity of bass. I think the way the Cascade FR being emphasized more toward the mid to lower mid bass, probably keeps the bass from bleeding to the mids significantly. I didn’t hear any mids to upper mids-recession. I think the upper frequencies are well balanced.
Overall, I find these to be fun sounding headphones that with modern genre, and pop, by adding much ummph in the low end. These headphones do quite well with modern and pop genre of music, and doesn’t sound incisive in the upper frequencies. It’s not a response that you’d hear much sibilance either, which is a trait I like about the upper frequency response. It should play well with wide genre of music.
If you are looking for hard hitting bass with a bit of warmth, you should definitely look into the Cascades. It’s a good option for those love bass(have a particular taste for hard hitting bass), and looking for something that works portably. I’m not much of a bass-head, but can’t deny that these in general do sound good(but, lower bass would of course be closer to my preferred sig).
Like I’ve mentioned, these are suited for portable use being a closed back, comes with thin light cable with 3.5mm termination, and being easy to drive(which would be suited for portable devices),
I find that it does sound similar to Andromeda if ignoring the significantly raised mid to low-mid bass. It seems CA has similar philosophy for it’s target response. Overall warm, but without too much upper-mids treble, and articulate the treble with lower treble(but, not with too much in quantity), and in some cases like the Cascade, push lots of bass. Since I’m not really a bass-head, what I wonder about is, how the Cascade would sound without so much bass. I do find the upper frequencies pretty nicely done that I don’t hear any tonal abruptness, and sounds relatively smooth. So, I think a Cascade without such large quantity of bass would be the type of response that would jive well for me.
I’d like to thank Ken Ball from CA in providing opportunity for us to demo the Cascades.
Campfire Audio is a name I’m pretty familiar with as I thoroughly enjoyed their TOTL iem offering, the Andromeda. So when it was announced that Ken has been developing a headphone, piqued my interest. This headphones is the Campfire Cascade, which is the one I’m reviewing.
Cascade is a closed back headphone utilizing 42mm Beryllium PVD Diaphragm Dynamic Drivers. In terms of looks, it doesn’t have the typical rounded shaped headphone cups, but rather a rectangular shape. It’s not the largest cups for the ears, but fit my ears just fine, but feels like there is a bit of a limited room even if my ears are considered compact in size. People with bigger ears may find it more constricting.
The headphones comes in this large box similar to the small sized box that comes with their iems.
Within the box, contains a carrying case with the headphones inside, two envelopes. One of the envelopes contains the warranty card, two quick guides, and the filters. The other envelope contained the headphone cable.
The pads are easy to take out to swap out the filters. Nice feature of the Cascade is that the pads are held on by magnets on the pads and the drivers. So, it’s quite easy to pull out the pads, slide the filter in, and placing the pads back on. Pads go back on in precise placement by magnetic attraction without any fiddling. This is quite refreshing from headphones that take a bit work to pull out the pads. Sometimes they use little plastic coupler that you can accidently damage or wear out over time, or worse, they maybe adhered with an adhesive.
When I heard that these headphones come with filters, I expected to be some sort of foam inserts you find with MrSpeakers headphone. The filters used for the Cascades are totally different as they are not foam of any kind, but a cut sheet of plastic film that is placed on top portion of the earspeakers. There are 4 different types of filters sized from 1T to 4T, and with increasing number, the pore size increases from 7 to 15um. Each filter can be identified with a specific notch shape as shown on the quick reference guide provided.
Filters can be applied by pulling out the pads, and placing it on top of the round portion of the driver that is located at the center. There is a notch at the top that the top notch of the filter film can be aligned.
The quick guide(for the filters) provided states, “The lower number value of the acoustic dampener the higher the level of mid and low frequency response will be.” So, I decided on lowest filter, 1T, and I didn’t notice much of a difference in sound. Upon further investigation on the forum threads, somebody recommended to just not use filters altogether, and I thought there was a slight difference without the filter, reducing some warmth and bringing out more mids coherency, and highs in general. The bass response on the other hand, I couldn’t tell if there were reduction or not as the bass of the Cascade is very strong that if there is some reduction, it should be quite noticeable, but I couldn’t tell.
The cable came inside the black envelope. I was quite surprised the entire cable fit inside there. The cable isn’t long, and terminated with a 3.5mm connector. The driver connectors on the cable is same connectors used for HD800 headphones. The cable is covered in fabric material, and doesn’t get coiled up or has memory, which is quite nice. It’s quite light as well, and I think the cable works quite well for portable use.
Upon initial listen, first thing I noticed was hard slamming bass large in quantity. I immediately had to turn down the volume as that was a whole lot of hard hitting bass. I never had this the other way around, usually it’s the treble side I’d adjust the volume for.
Well, I can say, it’s for people that want to feel the music as there a highly significant bass presence to these. These in particular to many other headphones, pushes out significant bass, particularly the mid to lower mids bass. The bass hits very hard with it’s mid bass region, and outputs a particular woofer like resonance effect as well. Listening to genre like pop, hiphop, R&B, you get hit with these type of bass, particularly in large quantity. The hard bass gets reveal, but quite significantly if the track contains it, but if it does not, you won’t get hit with such hard bass. But a bit of warning, bass hit really hard and quite significant than the avg. Be forewarned.
When I got these, there was already a filter placed in the drivers, 1T, or the filter that should(according to the quick guide) should have the lowest level of mids to bass, and I still found the bass to be quite high and significant. Matter a fact, these headphones has the greatest bass quantity I’ve ever heard on an headphone. This maybe because I’m into more balanced response, and therefore I don’t have much opportunity with bass rich headphones..
A forum member mentioned that the lowest bass quantity would be without any filters applied, so I tried them without any filters. Although I didn’t notice much of a difference in terms of bass quantity(still quite high), taking out any filters seems to increase mids clarity slightly and seems to be slight increase in lower treble as well.
I can say that these headphones do sound like Andromeda(in the mids to upper frequencies ignoring the bass), particularly without the filters. It does have have a bit of that warm lower-mids presence to sound. This response is a bit above neutral that mids can come off a bit on the warm side. Mids sounds a bit less clear due to the warm nature of the signature(especially with the filters). What’s really interesting though is that even with such a large volume of bass, the bass doesn’t bleed much to the mids for a closed headphone, but there is still that warm presence in the mids that provide greater weight to the mids, and therefore find the mids to be reduced in clarity slightly compared to a response with lower bass quantity, but overall, it’s got to be the clearest sounding headphone for such large quantity of bass. I think the way the Cascade FR being emphasized more toward the mid to lower mid bass, probably keeps the bass from bleeding to the mids significantly. I didn’t hear any mids to upper mids-recession. I think the upper frequencies are well balanced.
Overall, I find these to be fun sounding headphones that with modern genre, and pop, by adding much ummph in the low end. These headphones do quite well with modern and pop genre of music, and doesn’t sound incisive in the upper frequencies. It’s not a response that you’d hear much sibilance either, which is a trait I like about the upper frequency response. It should play well with wide genre of music.
If you are looking for hard hitting bass with a bit of warmth, you should definitely look into the Cascades. It’s a good option for those love bass(have a particular taste for hard hitting bass), and looking for something that works portably. I’m not much of a bass-head, but can’t deny that these in general do sound good(but, lower bass would of course be closer to my preferred sig).
Like I’ve mentioned, these are suited for portable use being a closed back, comes with thin light cable with 3.5mm termination, and being easy to drive(which would be suited for portable devices),
I find that it does sound similar to Andromeda if ignoring the significantly raised mid to low-mid bass. It seems CA has similar philosophy for it’s target response. Overall warm, but without too much upper-mids treble, and articulate the treble with lower treble(but, not with too much in quantity), and in some cases like the Cascade, push lots of bass. Since I’m not really a bass-head, what I wonder about is, how the Cascade would sound without so much bass. I do find the upper frequencies pretty nicely done that I don’t hear any tonal abruptness, and sounds relatively smooth. So, I think a Cascade without such large quantity of bass would be the type of response that would jive well for me.
I’d like to thank Ken Ball from CA in providing opportunity for us to demo the Cascades.