KZ - Castor (Harman-Neutral Version)

I bought my first iem, castor neutral priced at 10$ and I am amazed with sound quality, better than my xm4. So I wanted to upgrade to potential end games and got myself a xenns tea pro for 340$ and a used wm1a and oh boy it's a clear upgrade in sound quality, and the tea pros are not fatiguing. Money well spent. I have now found my end game iem and will stick to this. Hope you find yours. 😇

I should have bought kefine klean instead of the kz castor.

Good point. Thats why i did tons of research after buying my first iem and dap which are kz castor and sony a35. Was overwhelmed with the vast number of iems and daps. Wanted to try it all in every price point but later decided it was not worth spending so much money so bought what i think is the best for me which was the wm1a and tea pros combo and sold my kz castor but kept my a35 as a backup. Now i can say i reached my endgame and no longer need to buy another device except when my current one breaks.

I'd pick harman neutral over bass-boosted. You can eq castor harman using peacegui and make a preset for gaming and music. The cx31993 is driverless so it'll be fine, personally i'd go with fiio ja11 purely because onboard eq.

Bro, should've bought better ones like kz castor x

eh the non bass version of kz castor is okay

Look at the KZ Castor they are tunable with the 4 dip switches on the back and they sound great and punch way above the price range.

I can’t really give you advice there because that’s what I did lol That being said I will be buying another pair of Castor Blacks just because I enjoy them and they’re less than $10 lol I’m loving the S12 so far and I’m still waiting on the Kefine Klean to be delivered, the Blue2 are very warm and detailed but the Castors just sweep them in bass.

You are very correct sir I’ve been playing with PEQ for hours and it just can’t get there, the Castor has a superb bass I don’t know how these Chinese elfs managed to do that. The zero is better in virtually everything else lol details, highs, lows, mids, spacing you name it. It’s a very subjective thing here I just literally enjoy having my eardrums tickled by some powerful deep bass.

This is true, KZs are cheap because their overall performance is lacking. It’s just those damn Castors lol they pack a hell of a punch.

I'm not sure I'd call the Cadenza a basshead tuning, but they certainly have plenty of bass. It gets deep and rumbly, with some punch but not as much as the Castor Bass (not sure about the Pro: apparently that's not as hard-hitting as the OG, which I have). The also have very smooth treble that's a touch darker than some similarly-tuned IEMs like the Chu 2, which adds to the overall warmth/bassiness, while they sill have good clarity, imaging, etc. Sometimes someone will complain that these have little or no bass and without fail it's because they aren't getting a proper seal. Make sure you try out all the tip sizes if you aren't hearing enough bass.

In all honesty, yes: I have the og Castor Harman, the Zvx pro, the Prx, the (CCA) Rhapsody, amd the AM16 Balanced, and they're all banger, banger sets. I've been lucky and haven't faced breaking QC issues, but then again, what brand doesn't have QC issues?

The og (NOT pro) kz castor harman (silver) in the 1100 configuration is still one of my favorites, even among more expensive sets

From that list Castor or Castor Pro but honestly I prefer Vader Balanced, Zenith, AM16, and ZS12 Pro X as my favorite KZ IEMs.

As someone who PEQ's a lot- the Castor bass punch, specifically from Castor OG, can't be replicated with just EQ. You can boost the bass that is there but it will not be the same quality of bass. Zero has better sub-bass but the mid-bass is much less and even for sub-bass I prefer Aoshida E20 or turning up the bass on Yu Xuan Ji.

DUDE HASHDAJDASJDHA WE ARE SHARING ALMOST THE SAME ROUTE LMAOOO My first IEM's were some cheap random brand ones, but they got exactly the SAME design as those QKZ of yours, idk they were like 2USD from ali, then got my KZ Castor (Silver) tho using them UUDD, and just got the Wan'er, they were slightly more expensive for me than the Castor (with mic cable), but the sound feels extreeeeemely dull to me, they having a lot of eartips add a plus but it's just wasn't for me I guess (the cable was also kinda worse in comparison ngl). I was wondering which tips you prefered, apparently one set are the "bass" ones and the others the balanced ones, not sure which one them as I thought they were the same, I'm using the black ones myself.