Senfer UEs / NiceHCK Bro 2-in-1 Review – A Classic Revisited
Jürgen has already written a thorough review of the NiceHCK Bro, which you find HERE.
By Loomis T. Johnson
Senfer UEs/NiceHCK Bro—very refined quintessential ChiFi knockoff gets surprisingly close to the exponentially more expensive mainstream IEMs they imitate. Nicely built, easy to drive and ergonomic, with good isolation; I prefer their sleek fit and stock cable to that on the (real) UE900s. Like the UE900s, the UEs is balanced, with more prominent mids than the usual V-shaped fare. Some subbass is palpable, if not especially punchy or deep (these are not optimal for EDM or metal); midbass lacks some body but is well-controlled and sculpted. Mids, as stated, are forward and clean, while treble is sparkly, slightly bright and reasonably detailed (prone to very slight sibilance or splashiness at the extremes); note texture is comparatively lean overall. Soundstage has good width and height; imaging is particularly good; the position of each performer is very accurate and unlike many of these DIY hybrids, driver coherence is seamless. Compared to the UE900s, the UEs has a more adrenalized quality and is brighter and less resolving, particularly at the high-end, though the difference is not nearly as large as the price would suggest. Scary good value.
By Jürgen Kraus
After a couple of years with 3 to 6 BA driver-earphones, I have come back to treasure single DDs because of their natural timbre. These Senfers also have a very natural timbre but, to my surprise, feature 1 DD + 1 BA. When I put these into my ears after a long time, they first sounded somewhat flat and analog. But once my ears got used to their timbre, these simpletons just killed it. Have yet to find any in my large iem selection that reproduce voices and instruments as naturally as this earphone (or the NiceHCK Bro). A cello really sounded like a cello and the Queen of the Night out of Mozart’s Zauberflöte was standing right in my room – scary. Sure, the multi-drivers are technically more competent, e.g. they resolve better, but they cannot reproduce these instruments as authentically as this cheapo. Strangely enough, that enormous bass as shown in the frequency response does not appear huge at all to my ears, because it is focused and controlled, and extends like this into the sub-bass.
Compared to the newer $20 Knowledge Zenith models, the Senfer/Bro does not have these fatiguing 2-4 kHz peaks. Vocals sound therefore less accentuated and thinner but also less intrusive and more natural — the much more detailed and refined sounding ZSN becomes quickly fatiguing to me.
Loomis – with a grain of salt – tends to compare these to the $399 4 BA UE900s [errr…compare the names] in terms of detail resolution — whereas the UE900s wins on the bass focus. I want to add that the Senfer UEs has a much more natural timbre.
Paradoxically, the Senfer UEs/NiceHCK Bro come in a shape that appears to have become one of the standards in the ever expanding $100 to $200 Chifi category. The fact that this model has found mainly friends in poor, cheap, old, and grumpy people shows how hype does not affect…poor, cheap, old, and grumpy people.
To me, the Senfer UEs/NiceHCK have stood the test of time and will always remain a favourite.
Keep on listening!
EPILOGUE
Recommending these little Senfer rascals to a fellow Head-Fier got me banned from some functionality there forever (I was reported to admins by some creep of known identity). I purchased these about two years ago for $17 — but saw them lately for around $13 (in the NiceHCK Bro version).
Head-Fi continue to claim that Senfer is associated with Wooeasy/Yinyoo/Easy Earphones without presenting evidence — and they lash out against people mentioning Senfer. Wooeasy/Yinyoo/Easy Earphones are banned from Head-Fi for allegedly having rigged product reviews. Fact is that Senfer is Senfer is Senfer, an entirely independent company and unrelated to the aforementioned. Head-Fi have the house right, but they don’t have the right to manufacture and spread falsehoods, which constitutes libel. I appeal to Head-Fi’s basic decency and fairness to test their claims. As to rigging reviews: there are no sharp boundaries between real, sugarcoating, and fake. Some Head-Fi-tolerated “reviewers” are suspiciously closely associated with certain companies (some of which sponsor Head-Fi) while never or hardly ever finding any flaws on those companies’ products…in contrast to some independent external (only) reviewers.
“Loomis T. Johnson is a practicing attorney”…hmm, so I decided to not post on HF anymore, last was on the TWS thread 6mo ago, bc I dared to jump over to the KZ thread, and saw ‘slater’s sig line with something I didn’t understand ‘banned’ this or that, read some more from that link, then said to myself, hmm, why is there *nothing* about this anywhere I look, say in the ‘feedback’ forum.
Since I had been off HF & forums in general for about 5+yrs while dealing with multitude of stresses, like 2 v. long/excruciating/exhausting yrs of dealing with failed healthcare system in trying to save my parents lives, so they could celibrate 66yrs of marriage…I failed miserably, still suffer major PTSD(then my older bro had affair with illegal Filipino caregiver/both of them took over parents home/made false claims, had police pointing 4 handguns at me…but I digress), I foolishly started a thread to inquire.
hardware zone.sg forums also has a TWS thread, but I read their public(unlike HF) terms & conditions, almost as long as those of a credit card, written by attorneys for sure, so long, no one in their rt mind reads. Anyway, that thread on asking wtf where the posting guidelines, got deleted in the wk I was off HF, I came bck, said: wtf happend to my feedback thread? AlexClosis is this guy’s chosen Admn of HF> https://www.mylife.com/nazarius-mansilla/e501066460332
My post explained that if ‘Jude’ wanted to fix this issue, he certainly could; but that I”m not posting on HF when there is ZERO transparancy, and I dont’ even know the rules, seems it’s a ‘secret’ handshake/code for only HF regulars, which isn’t me.
Further, there we any number of so-called, violating the invisible terms posts, on the KZ thread & others on Chi-Fi. I just wanted to know what was what, for myself or any other noobs visiting the site…and instead they hide/they arbitrarily delete & say ‘we had to clean up this thread which did not comply with the ***posting guidelines***’…which if you spend 30min searching for the link to the posting guidelines comes up with an error for that link!, they send PM’s, they don’t care. They need to hire an attorney(*competent: don’t get me started w/incompentent/corrupt/morally bankrupt attorneys>then I’ll get to tears explaining how bad healtcare&shockingly lousy physicians treated my father to his death, after 1/2century career medicine was his life long love besides my mom, as 1 of the most respected old-school physicians in his lifelong hometown)
…and come up with some 1/2way decent rules, and not put the burden on newbies to try to figure out the secret codes of conduct??? /rant.
But I had a question about all these picks, if I have pretty decent hearing up to 12khz…old ears, but have one fault of about a dip of 10db loss rt ~8khz, will any of these sound deficient, harsh in low to mid treble simblance; but at the same time not lose something around my hearing loss @8khz, 10db isn’t huge, but for some reason Apple earbuds have a spike rt at that frequency??? There are some FR graphs where some of these hp/ep have a pretty substantial 10db drop or so rt @7-8khz..why?
I hear simblance for sure in this outstanding live version(but don’t care, it’s the best recording ever of this song), w/full orchestra, on ‘radar love’ bc the singer is basically eating the mic while belching out as loud as possible ‘no more SSSSpeeed’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZObv6QgRXc But other examples of simblance I’ve seen posted, don’t really bother me at all…is it all >12khz, young ears?
@Loomis, after I find a probate attorney that can evict my dangerous bro&Filipino, I might get access to SuperTramp:COTC MFSL-UHQR w/<~50 plays, bought new when I was a teenager for what I thought @the time was super expensive $50, compared to standard MFSL1/2sp master @$20…still had annoying pops/cracks, just fewer…I have no use for it now. Also prob 100+ super heavy 78rpm collection my father had stored of his LP's from the 40s, swing era, iirc.
I bought the UEs in 2016, it came right after my kz ATE-s. At the time their cost was $35. It was my second step to the hi-fi rabbit hole, and there is almost none info or reviews till this day on internet. Today I own a small collection on chi-fi but no matter what I try (tin t2, blon, v90, kb ear f1, many kz’s), what i listen to… When I come back to them, there’s always a smile in my face. Think you describe it all when you said they survived the test of time.
Thank you for bring it existence back to light