Moondrop Spaceship Review – Under The Milky Way
Pros — Build, appearance, technicalities incl. timbre, value.
Cons — Midrange bright for some.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The Moondrop Spaceship are a well-designed, well-built, brightish and clean sounding earphone with a great timbre. Rewarding for people who can stomach a bit of upper midrange.
INTRODUCTION
Moondrop are an upsurging earphone company from Chengdu, Sichuan, China, that keeps impressing the iem world with their line of innovative earphones. The $109 Starfield single DD model is one of the current favourites with experts alike in the mid-tier category [my review]. But Moondrop always appear to have a good sounding budget model in their offerings, last year the $30 Crescent [my review], and now the $20 Spaceship.
I put this right into the intro: the Starship is worth its money alone for its beautiful design, feel, and metal build. At a mere $20, we don’t even have to discuss its sonic capabilities. But we will.
SPECIFICATIONS
PHYSICAL THINGS AND USABILITY
The Moondrop Spaceship come with a nifty case even, and three pairs of eartips (S/M/L/). The cable is fixed.
The earpiece feature the shape of a hair dryer, they are very small and very comfortable in my ears. Isolation is ok. Build is all metal, including audio connector — and very good. Hard to believe that this is found in such a budget model. A very fine haptic.
No “upgrade” of any kind is necessary, as the largest eartips fit me well. The Spaceship is driven by my iPhone SE (integrated audio/Apple dongle = approx. same) well. As with every micro driver, they need a bit of juice.
TONALITY AND TECHNICALITIES
My tonal preference and testing practice
To keep this section short: this is a premium earphone with a slightly sloppy (that is slowish) bass and a weird 3 kHz peak to brighten the sound image up and introduce a bit of harshness to sensitive ears. I call it premium because the technalities and build are very good. Even the packaging is very appealing, although I don’t care about that, usually.
Yes, there is enough bass, although it is not as extended as some wished…which really does not matter in the mix. That hump at around 80 Hz makes the bass marginally boomy but never wooly or syrupy. The dose makes the poison at the low end: driver is not the fastest but bass is not overdone in quantity. Pass!
Midrange is NOT recessed, great tuning, but a weird peak at 3 kHz was introduced by the tuner(s). I assume this peak is meant to counter the bass hump and it works well in that it brightens up the sound, especially towards the lower end of the midrange. Midrange is neutral whereas the bass is warmish. Vocals are clear and crisp, and a tad pointy. Transition from warm bass to neutral midrange is a bit abrupt, something I had disliked in my review of the $180 Kanas Pro edition. BUT: this little faux pass is highly forgivable at this price.
Treble is also dosed just right and surprising well resolving. Cymbals are nicely differentiated. The treble can compete with much more expensive earphones. Well done!
Alls this yields a sound that is between neutral/bright and warm.
But it is the technicalities that are impressive: soundstage is wide and reasonably tall – I find the tallness of the stage problematic for so many single DD budget earphones. Depth of stage is also good — here the bass comes in handy. This results in good spatial cues. Note definition and detail resolution are great in the midrange and treble — and they lag a bit at the low end in comparison. Attack is really astonishing for such small drivers. These Spaceships have more life in them than, let’s say, the highly praised Pioneer CH3. And my favourite, timbre, that is the live of natural reproduction is more than just satisfying.
From a practical point of view, these microdrivers are best suited for refined music that requires good resolution: orchestras, jazz ensembles, folk bands, or ethnic beats. They are obviously less impressive when attempting to blow one’s ears off with more rustic tunes by, let’s say, Pearl Jam, AC/DC, the Sex Pistols, or Norwegian death metal — at full volume. But this is equally valid for any micro driver. In this respect, the “larger” Moondrop Crescent handle(d) these more “robust” sounds better.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The Moondrop Spaceship are totally underrated jewels. I am not known for my recommendations, in fact I detest reviewers doing that. On the other hand, I like cheap stuff of good quality and would like to give good advice. The Starfield are an earphone of excellent quality considering their offsale price. Seriously folks, if you are not overly sensitive to 2 kHz, run and get your own personal Spaceship. 20 bucks well spent in every respect. And get one for your wife/husband, too, before Moondrop terminates them – as happened to their Cresent.
Until next time…keep on listening!
You find an INDEX of all our earphone reviews HERE.
DISCLAIMER
I thank Moondrop in Chengdu for supplying the review unit upon my request.
Product Link: MOONDROP Official Store
Manufacturer’s Website: Moondrop Co.
Our generic standard disclaimer.
You find an INDEX of our most relevant technical articles HERE.
RELATED…
