I am an audiophile from sunny South Africa
These in ear monitors was send to me by EPZ as part of the Audio Geek Reviews South African tour. This review is totally my own opinion and I receive no compensation in any way from the company as my integrity and name are much more important than any financial gain. Dealing with the company was such a pleasure as they were kind enough to send two pairs of ear tips extra for each reviewer in the tour. If their aftersales service is as good as the service, they gave me then I can really rate them highly as a company not just for their products because service is just as important. The packaged took about two weeks to reach me and was delivered by courier to my door.
Unboxing
These IEM sell for R640 in my country and I have to say the packaging is a step up from the ultra-budget offerings with very small boxes. The Q1 Pro comes in a big thick black cardboard box and the lid is magnetic and flips over. You are then greeted by a beautiful piece of paper which covers the sponge containing the two IEM’S and reminds me of some very expensive Turkish delight sweets I use to buy for my mother on mother’s day. So I think that paper is a nice touch as it brought back fond memories. Once you remove the sponge containing the IEM’s and cable there is another little black box containing a velvet carrying pouch, one pair of ear tips in three sizes and your instructions off course. I am really happy about the packaging you get for the price and I really can not think of anything more they could have added for the price.
Specs
MODEL: EPZ Q1 PRO
IMPEDANCE: 32Ω
SENSITIVITY: 100dB
FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 20Hz - 20KHz
CABLE LENGTH: 1.2M
PIN TYPE: 0.78mm 2-PIN CONNECTOR
PLUG TYPE: 3.5mm, TYPE-C
DRIVER UNIT(S): 1 DYNAMIC DRIVER
Connectivity
When buying these, EPZ gives you the option of a normal 3.5mm cable or you can choose one ending in a USB-C termination with its own little Dac section. The unit I got featured a 3.5mm connection and it gave me many sources I could plug it into. I narrowed my sources down to My Astell & Kern AK70 MKii and like always one of The LG V series phones I own and for this EPZ I chose the V40 as the tuning by Meridian on that phone to me is awesome. I also connected it to my Oppo A78 to watch some Tik-Tok and YouTube videos on and to my PC for some gaming.
Look & Build
In the looks and build department I have to commend EPZ because not just is this a beautiful IEM and I have to confess aesthetics plays a very important part in my decision making when I look for an IEM. The faceplate has this blue marble look and the one IEM has this purple part in it which no matter how I tried to capture it with various phones I just could not do it justice. These things look way cooler in reality. The bottom part housing the drivers looks black but when you hold it up to the light it looks like red wine. The other awesome part is because EPC resin prints their own IEM’S they have the option of giving you a custom faceplate. How awesome is that to send them a cool design and they make these to your spec. Not a lot of companies offer this. This opens up another use for the Q1 Pro as a personalized gift. The cable is very soft and the only thing I can fault is that irritating cable organizer that gets stuck to everything that has fabric. Your pants, shirts anything fabric that thing gets stuck on. Luckily you can remove it. The ear tips provided are very decent. Also the ear hooks that hook at the back of your ears are not that stiff so don’t go to the gym with these.
Sound
The Q1 Pro is offered as a Harman target tuned set. I can describe the sound as a very safe tuning. I hooked these up to the LG V40 and went to my favorites Tidal folder. I always use that playlist as a reference because its songs from all genres I know very well and how they must sound. Male voices did not come through very strongly. I can use Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris - Real Live Road running, the track was Romeo & Juliet and what struck me was that Mark’s voice was a little bit in the back and the guitar was more prominent but not in a bad way. It was as if the guitar was isolated so that you could hear it more. Either I was to focused on the beautiful sound of the guitar to not note the vocals but I really think these have very good instrument separation. I could pick up no sibilance on anything I listened to and that is a huge plus for me. The bass to me was very midbass focused and I wondered if sub bass was even there until I watched some Tik-Tok videos and the sub bass revealed itself. I also think because I did not give the unit a lot of burn in the driver needed some playtime to get a bit loose and preform some sub bass. The midbass is very dynamic and punchy but not boomy at all. It is very well controlled. Have you ever listened to a pair of Monk Plus earbuds? These sound like Monks with a bit more bass to me. Very non fatiguing sound. I spend a lot of hours in a week listening to these and never once did I feel the need to take them off. What got me with these was when I fed them some 16 bit .WAV files from old cd’s I ribbed onto my pc through my M-Audio audio interface and man that sound was something else. Very neutral with nothing out of place. I tested out most genres and it did not suck with one of them so this is a great all-rounder. The treble to me did not have a lot of sparkle. It is just done well with nothing piercing your ears. I used these for some gaming as well and as a guy playing strategy games these did not work that well for gaming.
Conclusion
If I was stuck on an island with just a solar charger and my phone and memory card with my favorite music and these EPZ Q1 Pro, I would be happy. These have really excellent sound and I can recommend them to anyone who is looking for a nice pair of daily driver IEM’s which you can use for casual listening and all the other musical rituals we audiophiles preform.
I would also like to thank all my brothers at Audio Geek for working with the brands to make these tours possible and giving us audiophiles a taste of good portable audio in the comfort of our homes.
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