FIRST LOOK

The Final Audio A4000 IEM's come in a dark blue matte finish with a black wire, for a  clean and simple look. 

COMES WITH

- Silicon carrying case

- Ear tips

- Ear Hook type B

SPECS

The A4000's house a dynamic driver, with a mere 18-ohm impedance, making listening on mobile devices a primary option. I plugged straight into my phone for most of this. Still, to fully grasp what Final is offering with these IEMs, I spent some time running it through a iFi hip-dac as well. Now, let's talk sound. 

SOUNDSTAGE

Soundstage is nice and wide, for IEMs at this price point, it'd be hard to find better than this. The stereo field allowed everything to show face in the music. I’m used to a confined sound from these types of headphones, but the A4000’s hit the nail on the head with space. 

LOWS

Lacks true definition and punch, floats in and out of focus at times. However, the overall placement and balance were very good, and the songs were expressed accurately. I needed to use the iFi hip-dac’s XBass feature to give it a good push, but even when I didn't the music was wavy and enjoyable. 

MIDS

They can get milky, at times clashing with the lows, leading to a somewhat jumbled, on-top-of-each-other sound. This doesn’t get too distracting until you get into the busier music. At the point that it does get busy, vocals get taken out of focus in exchange for whatever else is playing. This won't be too too bothersome, but at some points it was definitely apparent. 

With less demanding music, the clarity is near flawless - listening to "Cadence and Cascade" by King Crimson brought me to a better place - but for songs that were not so soft and quiet in nature, like The Last Shadow Puppets' "The Bourne Identity", which features a greater amount of instrumentation, I found Alex Turner's vocals hard to make out. Other than that, I was pleasantly surprised by the definition it provided for the instruments. Especially if they had a little brightness in their sound profile, it cut through very well.

HIGHS

Probably the most enjoyable aspect of these headphones, as well as the most prevalent - the highs are crisp, at times shimmery. They cut through perfectly without giving you that ear-cutting brightness. That was not universal, and sometimes they did in fact sound a little sharp, but not to the point of pain, like some are well capable of. This was the yin to the milky mids’ yang, sometimes making up for what they were missing, even saving them from just complete sonic irrelevance. 

SUMMARY

The Final A4000’s are a force to be reckoned with in terms of soundstage, and are somewhat comparable to the higher-priced options in that regard. The only thing that these headphones were missing was a sense of balance between ranges. The highs were the star of the show. The lows and mids at times were the metaphorical trees in the back. Still, for this price point, you're not going to find anything close to the quality of sound these babies dished out. Final Audio did a great job with these affordable beasts. 

If you are new to the audio realm and would like to be introduced, these are a great pick for you. Even for the more experienced listeners, if you are looking for a higher quality headphone without the expense, I would recommend the Final A4000s. Especially if you have some sort of supplementary amp/DAC that allows you to manipulate the sound’s equalization - a nice bass boost will set you on the course to complete sonic satisfaction. In all, kudos to Final for giving us a great pair of headphones without hurting our wallets. 

Final A4000 is available on Audio46