Phonak PFE122: First Thoughts

When it comes to buying earphones to listen to music, I’ve never considered myself an audiophile — just some poor bastard afflicted by OCD.

In elementary school, I downloaded a song called 《爱就一个字》 from 商都信息港 at 33.6Kbps. It was only 3MB, 128Kbps if I recall correctly, and at the time I thought the sound quality was absolutely mind-blowing.

Then in high school I bought Sony’s “perfume bottle” player and downloaded albums from Ukoo.net. 192kbps VBR was already considered good quality back then. I couldn’t really tell the difference, but one time I downloaded a 128Kbps song, gave it a listen, and something felt off.

So I figured I’d buy a better pair of earphones. I saved up and got the Sennheiser MX500. Put them on and instantly felt I’d wasted my money:

“This is no different from my old 10-yuan earphones!”

I saw people online saying these had “good bass extension,” didn’t quite get what that meant, so I asked my classmate Lu Da. His answer:

“Ah, that? It’s just the sub-bass effect, man. When it hits it’s not boom-boom-boom, it’s more like there’s a bit of echo and springiness to it — pong pong pong.”

I sort of half-understood. Then one day one of the MX500’s drivers died, and I had to grab a stock earphone that came with a PDA. Maybe it was slightly better than the 10-yuan ones I’d used before. Put it on, turned on the music, and immediately something felt wrong.

“How does this sound so different from my MX500?”

And that’s how the tragedy began.

In college my music collection upgraded to 320Kbps. Earphones went from Edifier to the Sennheiser CX200. My player went from the perfume bottle to Sony’s “torpedo,” and later, once I started working, the torpedo became an S754. Then the high-capacity era arrived, lossless formats took off, so I picked up Sony’s F807 because it supported FLAC, and to do justice to lossless I bought the TF10 — and from there it was one pit after another, all the way to today.

Whenever people ask me, “Your earphones are this expensive, but I can’t hear what’s so good about them?”

I usually smile faintly and say, “It’s a kind of happiness.”

Even now I don’t really believe you can hear an instant difference in most things — unless the two earphones have completely different sound signatures, like the TF10 and the ER4P. And on the road to hearing differences in sound quality, the best method is: give yourself a good pair first. You might not hear it at first, but after listening to it for a while, go back and listen to your old cheap stuff, and you’ll find:

“Fuck, how did I ever listen to this?”

That’s how everyone falls into the pit. I’ve said I’m the same. And if you still can’t hear a difference even after all that, then you’re truly a blessed person. Add my deep-seated OCD — I can’t stand sound worse than what I had before — and I just sink deeper and deeper into this pit.

Fortunately, I haven’t fallen into the bottomless abyss of the mystical side of things, because I honestly can’t hear the difference when people swap cables. In my listening worldview, there are just some characteristics across the high, mid, and low ranges, plus whether I can hear more detail under high output power. All that nonsense about power supply changing the sound, storage media changing the sound, burn-in changing the sound — it’s all bullshit! Or maybe I just haven’t made it through the gates of the mystical arts. Like I said, I’m just a guy who buys earphones because OCD has him hostage.

In 2014 I also impulsively bought a bunch of earphones. Deep down I’ve always had this desire to chase something — the legendary “female-vocal poison.”

The female-vocal poison in my mind is that kind of sound: sweet female vocals pressed right up against your ear, sibilance not excessive, highs not piercing, and with a little bit of bass. Sounds a bit far-fetched, but I really did hear that sound on the Audio-Technica CKM55 — though the CKM55 later stopped working in one channel.

So, seeing the internet talk everywhere about earphones’ female-vocal poison properties, I set out on the road to find that sound that satisfied me. From the ER4P to the IE3, then to AKG, then the Audio-Technica IM03, and finally this — the Phonak PFE 122, which people claim can go head-to-head with the CK100.

A lot of people say the PFE 122 has great playability because you can swap the filters, and different filters give you different sound signatures. Gray is female-vocal poison, black is balanced, green is instrumental. For me, I was in it for the female-vocal poison, so I went straight for the default gray.

Put them on and gave them a listen. I felt… a bit pleasantly surprised, and a bit disappointed.

The surprise: the Phonak PFE 122’s female vocals are incredibly close to your ears! The vocals are very sweet, the highs are fairly transparent, and there’s not much sibilance.

The disappointment: the bass is crippled. Its springiness is even worse than the ER4P’s.

Actually, when I listen to the PFE 122 I always think of the ER4P. Both are made by companies that started out in hearing aids, so their earphones inevitably get compared. In terms of high-frequency transparency, the two are on the same level. In terms of vocals being close to the ear, the PFE 122 wins without question. But in terms of bass quality, the ER4P pulls ahead.

The ER4P is an earphone that’s fairly demanding of output power, while the PFE 122 has no such requirements. Under the PHA-1’s high gain, the ER4P can reveal more detail; the PFE 122 isn’t lacking in detail either, it’s just a bit quieter.

Put simply, the PFE 122 is indeed a female-vocal poison, but not as godly as the legends say. Word has it the king of female-vocal poison, the CK100 Pro, is basically impossible to find or buy now. Whatever’s on Taobao, who knows if it’s genuine, and the price alone scared me off.

On the road to chasing “female-vocal poison,” I’ve sacrificed a fair amount of money. Fortunately I’m a guy who lives for music — I spend 70% of every day listening to it — so I can handle having this many earphones. Maybe one day I’ll suddenly go deaf in both ears or something (laughs). In the end, the Phonak PFE 122’s performance leaves me barely satisfied. Sure, the bass is a bit crippled, but music with sweet female vocals mostly doesn’t have much sub-bass anyway, so whatever.

Worth mentioning: for a hearing-aid maker’s product, the Phonak PFE 122’s comfort is outrageously good! Compared to the Etymotic ER4P’s triple-flange deep insertion, the PFE 122 is so comfortable you can’t even feel it’s there! That comfort level makes it, in my opinion, the best earphone I’ve come across in recent years!

Anyway, the Phonak PFE 122 is out of production — every pair sold is one fewer left. Whether it’s worth buying just for female vocals, I think needs careful consideration, since after all it’s just an ordinary earphone with the midrange tweaked a little. I’d sooner recommend the ER4P, whose female vocals aren’t quite as close to the ear but which is more of an all-rounder. But considering the PFE 122’s comfortable fit, it still seems to have considerable value and a reason to buy.

So after spending ages comparing whether the PFE 122 or the ER4P was better suited for female-vocal poison, I put on the Q701 hooked up to my desktop PC at home, clicked on a few female-vocal tracks, and… everything ended.

Screw chasing female-vocal poison — just get full-size headphones.

In memory of all my earphone-related dicking around this year.