I was sent the Fearless Barcelona by Linsoul because I won a contest, and in exchange I was asked to write a review.
The Fearless Barcelona is a bass heavy IEM that, when EQ’d, presents itself with lovely tonality, a spacial presentation (soundstage) that is expansive, and surprising detail retrieval.
Out of the box the Barcelona hits me with a sub bass and low-mid bass blob that sounds slow and undefined. It is like a cake with too much frosting. I find the vocal range to sound slightly veiled but not entirely unpleasing. It has an almost velvety quality to it. The vocals are present and forward enough and they have a quality like a soft blanket, kind of warm and enveloping but not polished. On a graph the high frequencies are on the “dark” spectrum and this attribute is accentuated by the elevated low frequencies.
Without EQ, The Barcelona misses the mark, mainly due to the heavy handed low frequency boost. I mostly auditioned this IEM with music, but interestingly I used them for an hour while watching “Wheel of Time” on Amazon and I found them to work really well with mainly dialog audio and sound effects.
With EQ (pretty much a low cut below 125hz and a high shelf above 6k) the Fearless Barcelona are a winner.
The build quality is amazing. Here’s what I love best about Fearless. The shells are very clear and blemish free, and the internal components are so neatly placed inside the shells. Fearless sets the bar high when it comes to build quality and these $120 IEM’s are no exception. Seriously the build quality is on par with my $3000 64 Audio a18T custom IEM’s.
The fit for me is glorious. I’ve owned many IEM’s, from cheap sets to sets costing thousands, and the biggest downfall I’ve found is fit. If a set sounds great but they don’t stay in place, or they cause pain, it doesn’t matter how good they sound. The Barcelona are small and ergonomically perfect for my ears.
The 8 braid cable is pretty. It’s reasonably supple and the chin slider stays in place. I tend to like thin and very flexible cables (the ones that look cheap) because I’m active and I don’t like the distraction of a substantial cable. But for a thick cable this one is reasonably unobtrusive and feels well built. I didn’t measure it for impedance so I can’t speak to it’s audio transmission effectiveness.
The packaging is nice. It’s the standard outer box and dense foam cutout sorta thing. They come with a nice faux leather carrying case and an assortment of tips. I haven’t tip rolled because the tips they came with fit me perfectly. Possibly some of the bass elevation could be alleviated with a different tip set.
