The LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 was kindly provided free of charge in exchange for an honest review. I didn’t receive monetary or any other kind of compensation and I don’t use affiliate links. The price of the LETSHUOER Cadenza is $2,299 and you can order it directly from the LETSHUOER website.
LETSHUOER
LETSHUOER is a well known manufacturer of earphones that combine sound performance, build quality and competitive prices like the Letshuoer S12 PRO. Just in case that you are not familiar with the brand, you can read about their story here.
LETSHUOER Cadenza
The Cadenza 12 is LETSHUOER’s flagship in-ear monitor. A hybrid design with 12 drivers, a six-way electronic crossover and five acoustic bores. LETSHUOER informs us that their acoustic engineers spent countless hours experimenting with various driver combinations before coming up with the final solution. The main design goal was to let the drivers work perfectly in their respective frequency band. So in the end they decided for a configuration that uses a 10mm LSS Kevlar dome driver for the bass, Sonion composite mid-woofer drivers, Sonion composite mid-tweeter drivers, Knowles composite tweeter drivers and Sonion composite super tweeter drivers. The actual number of the drivers used per each frequency range is not disclosed to the public and is kept a well hidden secret.
All drivers are combined by means of a six-way electronic crossover put in place for precise performance. Each driver is chosen to mitigate the pitfall of timbre difference between drivers. Each set of drivers has a separate acoustic bore and hand-cut to length. This safeguard removes any possible time alignment and phase issue that may arise.
Build quality and fit
The LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 ear shells are made from pure titanium alloy which is low in density and high in strength at the same time. Thus the chassis is quite lightweight and also this characteristic of the material significantly lowers the chassis resonance, providing a much cleaner sound. The anatomical shape of the chassis is created based on experience and multiple iterations of thousands sets of ear shapes to make it as ergonomically designed as possible.
The Cadenza 12 is quite lightweight and compact sized for an earphone that houses 12 drivers per side together with the crossover. Actually it is one of the most comfortable sets I have ever tried, they fit like a glove and after a while you forget that you are wearing them. They don’t protrude outside the ear, they stay at place and offer excellent passive noise attenuation. A flagship wearing experience indeed.
The Cadenza 12 has a luxurious design that resembles that of a well crafted jewel rather than an earphone, gorgeous and beautiful looking yet minimalistic and elegant. Build quality is absolutely stellar, the surface is meticulously finished with a technique that doesn’t attract fingerprints or stains while the material is hard enough to withstand accidental scratches.
Cable
The modular stock cable utilizes 204 strands of 6N monocrystalline copper and silver in a hybrid weave construction. This balanced combination of metal characteristics allows for signal integrity by having an extremely low in-cable impedance. The cable comes with three, high quality, interchangeable plugs (4.4mm, 2.5mm and 3.5mm) that are securely attached by the means of a screw locking mechanism. The cable is extremely well made and durable but there is one caveat, it is quite stiff and heavy for portable use. The 2-pin interface is the older style with the exposed and not the newer one with the recessed sockets that offer better protection and longevity.
Accessories
The accessories and the unboxing experience are worthy of a flagship. Except for the cable you also get three types of silicone ear-tips in three sizes each (vocal, balanced, bass), a luxurious carrying case made with real leather and a cleaning cloth. The package also includes two bonuses. The first is a limited edition Cadenza copper plate which has engraved the LETSHUOER mascot playing the violin. The second is that you can convert the wooden package into a luxurious storage box with four equally divided spaces where you can store your gear.
Power requirements and associated gear
With 16Ω impedance and 110dB/mW of sensitivity, the Cadenza 12 is very easy to drive but also mildly sensitive to source noise. Equally sensitive is to source quality and has great scalability potential so it is advised to use only the best of your gear. For most of the time I have used the FiiO M15S and FiiO M17, the iBasso DX320 with the stock amplifier and the EarMen Angel among others. As per usual practice the Cadenza was left playing music for about 100 hours before listening evaluation and I spent more than one month of continuous use before submitting my impressions.
Listening impressions
Maturity is the first word that springs to mind after spending some time with the LETSHUOER Cadenza 12. This is not an earphone made to sound impressive out of the box by displaying astonishingly brilliant, but short lived, pyrotechnics. The Cadenza 12 is made to offer a long lasting listening experience where music is the leading actor and the earphones are just the means of communication. A flagship earphone that humbly acts a backstage role and is not some kind of a spoiled prima donna.
LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 favors a natural and utterly balanced tuning where no part of the frequency range gets artificiality emphasized or subdued. Bass, mids and highs are mixed in the exact needed quantities to offer the best possible tonal accuracy and timbre realism for the whole audible spectrum. All known instruments and human voices are reproduced with the most accurate and convincing tonality. The drivers and the crossover are perfectly aligned together to make for an extremely coherent sound signature without any audible time, phase or tonal shifts. The twelve drivers are so skilfully integrated that despite their large number they actually behave and sound as there are only one.
The bass varies from almost neutral to just slightly emphasized according to the ear-tips used. The Cadenza 12 responds well to ear-tips for fine tuning and the three included sets can help to achieve a more personalized sound signature. For the most part I used the vocal tips that offered the most balanced tonality by adding some extra mid-range presence and evening out the acoustic perception of the low end. The balanced ear-tips add a slightly stronger mid-bass and the bass ones enhance it even more. Differences are subtle but audible and you can make your Cadenza 12 sound from critical – reference to more bassy and fun oriented. In the second option the low end gets a little out of tune but it never sounds overpowering neither it bleeds into the mids while technicalities remain intact.
Speaking of technicalities, they are really impressive. Clarity, definition and transparency as long as resolution and layering are of the highest standards. Sub-bass extension is amazing but it never becomes the dominant force. The bass is super tight and controlled, authoritative, dynamic and physically impactful. The recovery time of the bass driver is instant so the Cadenza 12 is able to pass from silence to maximum loudness and vice versa at a blink of the eye without giving a single trace of echo. The texture is so weighty and visceral that it reminds more of a full sized headphone than an earphone.
One of the Cadenza’s stronger points is that during the transition from the bass driver to the mid-range and treble, that are handled by the balanced armature drivers, the intensity of the texture remains intact and the sound continues to bare the exact same fullness and viscerality as in the low-end. A virtue only akin to the best flagships, like the Cadenza 12, when we consider that almost all hybrid earphones tend to lose weight as the frequency rises. This is another reason why the Cadenza 12 reminds more of a full sized headphone rather than a hybrid IEM.
The mid-range exhibits equally impressive timbral realism and tonal balance with good presence, excellent note articulation and great resolution. The sound is full of musicality, it has an analogue but not overly warm feeling and blossoms with colorful and varied harmonies. Clarity, transparency and refinement are unquestionable but in the end what impresses more are the communicative nature of the mids, the emotional depth and the supreme engagement factor that form a strong bond of the listener with the music.
The overall treble response of the Cadenza 12 is rather smooth and polite, the higher frequencies are not tuned to sound impressive but rather to contribute to a well integrated and holistic listening experience. And this is a benefit to them because the lack of the extra boosting, together with the high quality of the drivers used, help them to be devoid of any fake timbre and artificiality. It might sound as if I am continuously repeating myself but the treble is also distinguished by its tonal accuracy and timbre realism. Smoothness and politeness doesn’t necessarily mean that the Cadenza 12 is devoid of treble extension or energy and luminosity while resolution and refinement are “sine qua non”.
The Cadenza 12 is not an analytical sounding earphone, it can uncover the most well hidden details and fine particles that are captured in the recording but they are not served as the first dish. It is up to the listener to decide whether he will concentrate his attention on them or let them pass in the background as a small part of the whole listening experience. Balanced armature drivers tend to decay faster than their dynamic counterparts but in the Cadenza 12 the decay speed is kept moderately fast and even for the whole frequency range so all kinds of instruments fade away in a rather convincing manner and true to what they should sound according to the recording venue.
One more reason why the LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 reminds more of a headphone lies in the recreation of the soundstage that has rarely been heard so immersive, grand and holographic from an IEM. Wide and expanded, but not in an artificial way, with a solid center image that reaches out of the head and excellent positioning accuracy not only in the horizontal axis but also in the depth.
The LETSHUOER Cadenza y is a true all rounder but it naturally shines with acoustic and demanding classical music where it can fully deploy and exhibit all its unique virtues.
I don’t own any other flagship earphones for comparison except the Meze Rai Penta which is really good and a favorite one but it is seriously outperformed by the LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 in every single point except maybe weight and size.
But it would be really interesting and rather controversial to say that the Cadenza 12 can be easily compared with headphones as good as the Focal Clear Mg or even the Meze Liric. Frequency response and tuning aside, the Cadenza 12 overall listening experience gets so close that it easily replaced them during hot summer days without making me miss anything.
In the end
The most important question that ought to be answered is if the LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 justifies the asking price when you can buy some of the finest full sized headphones for roughly the same amount of money. The answer is definitely yes. Not only because the Cadenza 12 is an utterly balanced and musical sounding earphone that communicates the music in the most natural manner but mostly because it really sounds like a high quality headphone. With the LETSHUOER Cadenza 12 you get a full sized listening experience from a lightweight and remarkably comfortable earphone and this is a great achievement on its own that justifies every last cent of the asking price.
Copyright – Petros Laskis 2023.
+ Balanced and natural tuning + Especially musical and engaging + Very realistic tonality and timbre + Dynamic and impactful bass + Immersive and holographic soundstage + Great technicalities + Resolving and refined + Full bodied texture throughout the whole frequency range + Excellent driver integration without phase shifts + Sound performance that reminds a full sized headphone + Great unboxing experience + High quality modular cable + Luxurious carrying case + Excellent build quality + Comfortable and relatively lightweight + Crafted like a jewel - Might be to safely tuned and unimpressive for some users - Highly demanding in source quality - The cable is too stiff and heavy for portable use
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