A modest price for premium sound

1More Quad Driver In-ear Headphones By Marcus Wong

byMarcus Wong

1More Quad Driver In-ear Headphones.

Along with the 1More Triple Driver Inear headphones (hence forth “Triple Drivers”), the 1More Quad Driver In-ear headphones (henceforth “Quad Drivers”) are the first headphones to earn THX certification, which means they’ve been tested for nominal deviation between left and right channels, and sufficient sensitivity to “achieve a premium level of audio output, while maintaining minimal distortion at the required sound pressure level”.

As with the Triple Drivers, the Quad Drivers come in a premium box filled with accessories. There’s again a leather carrying pouch to fit everything in, nine sets of spare ear tips of different sizes, a shirt clip, and an Airline Adapter. In short, everything you might want from a set of headphones except maybe a custom Lightning jack adapter.

Compared to the Triple Drivers, these have a much more premium finish. There’s more metal used across all the housings, and even the in-line remote feels more solidly built, as it’s now made of aluminum with slightly raised buttons for easier access.

Of course, the biggest difference lies in the drivers. The Quad Drivers use a Diamond-like carbon driver for mids and bass, and balance that out with two balanced armatures for highs and a third for ultra-high frequencies for absolute definition.

Whether or not that’s a difference you’ll hear at the extremes is obviously debatable, but these headphones clearly had a different tuning objective than the previous Triple Drivers. And that made a world of difference.

The one thing that stood out to us with these headphones is that they exhibit great imaging capabilities and naturalness. For example, on a recording of Ana Caram’s Correnteza, the Quad drivers rendered every note with good detail. The headphones surprised us with a slightly mellow bass line from the cello in the piece, but peppered it with great trebles and highs in terms of the shakers, percussion bells and the guitar work in the piece.

Moving to a faster piece in Johnny Frigo’s I Love Paris, we thought the headphones did a great job with the pacey piece, easily keeping up with the frantic cymbal work of the drummer and of course, the string work of Frigo and the cello player. Stereo imaging was on show when the saxophone kicked in too, as you could clearly hear where everything was – drums dead center, strings to your right while the sax is to your left. Needless to say, the headphones are great with jazz pieces.

It seems the headphones do well with rock too, as with a recording of Sweet Child O’ Mine by Guns N’ Roses, the headphones produced a most engaging performance. There was good balance between all the instruments in the piece, and the headphones took advantage of the chance to show off its ample bass.

On 24K Magic, the headphones again showed a great ability to get you moving with faster pieces. The bass beat is full with good weight, and the headphones pick out the vocals well, so you can really feel the sense of interaction between Bruno Mars and his backing singers.

This was reflected on our formal test tracks too, speaking to the great quality demonstrated across the entire frequency range. Hotel California by The Eagles stood out the most, as this piece really gives you a bit of everything. There’s stereo imaging in terms of the shakers to the right of you, the lead guitar is off to your left, and Don Henley’s vocals are just off center, plus you have the cheers of the crowd sitting all around the band. The Quad Driver handles all this with aplomb, so you can easily picture where everything is if you close your eyes.