A $35 single dynamic-driver IEM whose measured response tracks the Harman in-ear target within about 2 dB from 20 Hz to 4 kHz on 39 rigs. Sources broadly agree its tonality is pleasant and well balanced, its soundstage average to intimate, its imaging soft rather than precise, and its isolation average for a vented shell. They split on nearly everything else. Bass reads as deep and controlled to half the sources and as thin or hollow to a third, a camp that repeatedly traces itself to a poor seal with the stock tips. Treble is smooth to most, dull to a few, and zingy or metallic to about a third, matching a measured 5–7 kHz dip followed by a narrow 8 kHz peak. Upper mids and male vocals, detail, dynamics, fit and build all draw real minorities, and a vocal group of reviewers says the budget field has moved past it even as owners keep calling it a bargain.
About this product
The original Kiwi Ears Cadenza, launched in late 2022: a single 10 mm beryllium-diaphragm dynamic driver in a 3D-printed medical-grade resin shell, sold in four swirled colourways (Prelude, Verse, Chorus, Solo) for $34.99 at Kiwi Ears and Linsoul and around $33 on Amazon. Still in production alongside its successor, the Kiwi Ears Cadenza II (a titanium-coated PET driver in a polycarbonate shell with an aluminium faceplate, $49.99), which measures about 2 dB leaner in the bass and 1.5–3 dB lower in the upper mids and treble on the same rigs. Not to be confused with Letshuoer's Cadenza 4 or Cadenza 12.
The Kiwi Ears Cadenza arrived in late 2022 from Kiwi Ears, the in-house IEM brand of the Chinese retailer Linsoul: one 10 mm beryllium-diaphragm dynamic driver in a small, swirled resin shell for $35. Within weeks it was one of the most recommended first 'proper' IEMs on Head-Fi and Reddit, and nearly four years on it is still sold, still recommended and still argued about, now alongside its own successor, the Cadenza II.
It is also one of the most-measured budget IEMs there is — more than forty independent rigs hold it — and they agree to within a decibel or two on its shape. That makes the arguments unusually easy to trace: most of them come down to how well it seals, and to a small dip-and-peak in the treble that some ears hear as smoothness and others as grain.
