Flare Audio E-PROTOTYPE Review: Best-in-Class Bass, Love-or-Hate Mids

Pick #3 of 4 in our Best Budget IEMs guide.

These earphones are unlike anything else you've heard or seen. They go to extremes - both positive and negative ones. They use proprietary in-house developed technologies that you can't find anywhere else.

Flare Audio E-PROTOTYPE... let's take a closer look.

Is It Comfortable? 3D-Printed, Strangely Shaped

Watch this part (0:18)

They come with a thin, rubbery cable that doesn't feel very premium, but at least it doesn't tangle easily, like some aftermarket IEM cables I have tried. It ends with a single-ended 3.5mm slim plastic connector. There is no way to use them balanced - and for the worse, the cable is non-detachable. It's just a cable, and what's good about it is that it's lightweight and seems durable, plus on the website they said that they stress-tested it (somehow). Enough about it.

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Let's move to the actual earpiece build quality, as it's interesting to say the least. They 3D-print it, and you may be like "What the hell, I don't want expensive, high-end IEMs to be 3D-printed!" - and that's fair. Flare Audio has a model that is both cheaper and fully made out of metal, if you care about it. But this is a prototype, a proof of concept made to show off what their technology is capable of and to support further research and development.

Moreover, as you can imagine, it's not printed with a standard cheap filament on a regular 3D printer. They use professional-grade equipment and materials to make them. The final result is a decently rigid-feeling capsule with a smooth texture and no roughness usually associated with 3D printing. As a bonus, they're very lightweight, unlike their full-metal brother. And, if it's important to you, they're not made in China - they produce them in their headquarters in the United Kingdom.

Their shape is the weirdest I have ever seen, and that's for a reason. They researched the internal shape of our ears and its effect on distortion. The effect of our ears on the frequency response is common knowledge at this point, but they wanted to go further, exploring the distortion produced by the human ear shape, and realized that our ears can distort the sound by as much as 20%. That's why they developed their "Mirror Image Sound™ Technology" - their shape is so weird to overcome the issues inside our ears. At least that's their explanation.

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Is it even comfortable though? I didn't experience any major comfort-related issues while using them, but due to their shape being somewhat unusual, it may vary from person to person. As my ears are internally slightly asymmetrical, I faced one problem - I had to position the left earpiece in a very specific range of depth and angle, otherwise the sound would be greatly attenuated, which is something I have yet to encounter with other in-ear monitors. Nevertheless, once I got the fit right, I could use them for extended periods without any significant discomfort.

What you get in the box is a pack of replacement tips in different sizes and a hard carrying case. It has some stealth "FLARE" branding and feels very solid - I would trust it to protect my portable audio gear. It should fit some tiny dongle beside your earphones. If you need something bigger, Flare Audio offers a large hard carrying case that is rectangular, feels even better than the tiny model due to its softer internal finish, and is very affordable. It should fit around 2 to 3 pairs of IEMs with no issue, and if you're lucky, a dongle or two tiny ones are also very likely to make it inside at the same time. It's just perfect for traveling.

Sound Quality (Tonality): Best-in-Class Bass, Odd Mids

They're tuned in a very, very specific way - almost in an odd way. You will either love it or hate it. I definitely would NOT recommend buying it as your only IEM with this kind of tuning. But as a complementary IEM, its tuning is unlike everything else I have ever heard.

As always, people's preferences vary, and to accommodate that, Flare Audio is offering a 100-day return window - which is just amazing to see. They're so sure of their products and they're not forcing customers to own them if they don't like them.

Let's start with the bass. The E-PROTOTYPEs have, in a way, THE best low-end of any IEM, or even headphones, I have ever heard. There's a lot of bass and it's keeping its integrity very well. The bass is extremely well layered, resolving, and so punchy, no matter the source I paired it with.

I think these earphones must have met the HIFIMAN HE-R9 at some point and took some inspiration from their duality and bipolarity, but they've taken it even further by pushing the extremes of both the positive and negative sides! Either way, the bass is definitely on the good side. If I were to pick one single thing that the Flare Audio E-PROTOTYPEs do well, way above their league, it would be the bass region. It hits hard, doesn't fall apart even despite its amount, and extends extraordinarily low, with some audible roll-off occurring in the 20-something Hz region.

The mids do not fit my preferences very well. They're tonally recessed yet peaky and unnatural. It makes the timbre take a huge hit in my opinion - although the instruments sound mostly engaging and fun.

Due to the treble region, I tend to find their tuning clockwise-tilted, with a slight V-shaped tendency. It often gets hidden by the bass - although it's not very boosted, when a song asks for it, it can pack an incredible amount of detail. They're kind of smooth-sounding, not necessarily due to their amount. Something else must be affecting them, because it's really unlike everything else I have ever heard.

Sound Quality (Technical Performance): Where It Flexes

Technical performance is where the E-PROTOTYPE flexes its muscles the most. I'd assume that its proprietary technology makes it like that.

Let's start with the sound separation - it's ideal. The instruments, vocals, background stuff - everything is exceptionally well separated and doesn't blend, pretty much no matter how busy or loud it gets.

Detail retrieval is at an astonishing level given the treble amount that we have. They are truly squeezing the most out of it, and I like it. These are some of the most resolving IEMs that don't get very sharp out of everything I've tried.

The soundstage is neither accurate nor wide in any direction, no matter what you do. It's pretty intimate, which is not a bad thing in itself - the vocals have the potential to sound as if someone is singing right next to your ear.

The dynamic range of this IEM is impeccable - it can hit and punch extremely hard. It tends to be rather a point of impact than a slam wall. It sounds very fast yet slow. Let me explain - the punch is there, but there's something that comes after the punch: a super long, detailed, and satisfying decay that is just impossible not to notice.

Timbre - if you have not noticed up to this point, it's not the biggest selling point of this product. Well... it's not a selling point at all. The E-PROTOTYPEs tend to make things sound off or slightly plasticky, likely because of the shell's material. It's not terrible, but if you're a timbre chaser, stay away from these.