John Darko
Dynamic driver or balanced armature? ‘Yes’.
‘Yes’ was also the response I gave to Campfire Audio’s request to send me (yet) another pair of wired IEMs: this time, the new Bonneville, which is the flagship of the Portland company’s new Chromatic series. I took a pass on the violet version and opted for black in a universal fit. Custom fits in two ‘flavours’ are also available.
You can see from my photos that even though the earshells are black and chrome, the cable’s cuffs and collar remain violet. Black, white and violet. How very Berlin. Shipping with the Deluxe Edition (€1495) is three TimeStream cables with 3.5mm, 2.5mm and 4.4mm terminations.
I took the time to photograph the packaging as Campfire Audio always goes above and beyond in this department — the Bonneville is no exception. Gone is the (some would argue excessive) transformer lid and finger hook display of the flagship Solaris, Andromeda and Trifecta, replaced in the Bonneville by a more understated but no less stylish cardboard box. Inside that box, we find a violet cotton pouch with the two balanced-terminated cables, a large leather but darker-toned violet carry pouch containing the single-ended cable and the IEMs themselves plus a range of tips and near-obligatory Campfire pin and cleaning tool.
Each Bonneville earpiece houses one dynamic driver and three balanced armatures (BAs) for a hybrid design. The 1cm dynamic driver is a new Dual Magnetic model that, as the name suggests, doubles up on magnetic flux for “greater efficiency, superior transient response, and precision diaphragm movement”. That’s according to Campfire’s website.
The three BAs – one mid, two highs – come from Knowles. But this time out, we get a new “dual-diaphragm armature” model from the Illinois manufacturer that promises lower sensitivity and lower distortion but also a richer-sounding output. One of the qualitative features of all-BA IEMs, as I hear ’em, is a tendency to lean towards the – err – lean. That’s especially true when heard side-by-side with a dynamic design whose most obvious shortcoming could be overly generalised as a lack of incision.
Of course, this doesn’t take into account any voicing done by the IEM manufacturer. On this front, Campfire’s “Phase Harmony Engineering” divides total bandwidth between the drivers (nothing new there) with each driver’s sonic profile shaped by the geometry of its housing within the solid-body ‘engine block’ for a crossoverless design. According to Campfire, managing “driver-to-driver interaction is crucial to eliminating points of potential phase cancellation and creating the intangibles that don’t show on a frequency response curve; imaging, separation, resolution, and soundstage.”
However, the Bonneville IEMs can’t be reviewed in isolation. They need a source, a DAC and an amplifier. And that’s where we are headed next…
Further information: Campfire Audio
