Axel Grell’s TWS1 IEM (Patreon)

Most of you will probably know Axel Grell former chief engineer at Sennheiser who was responsible for all the “classics” like HD580 precision, HD600, HD650… HD800 but also HD820 as well as Orpheus and HE-1 (Sennheiser’s 60000$ electrostatic headphone).

I just received a pre sample of the Grell audio TWS1 and am listening right now.

https://grellaudio.com

My expectations were quite high, given that Axel tuned some of the most acclaimed headphones in the audiophile world. The TWS1 is not bad although ANC and transparency mode alter the sound too much. It’s a nicely neutral tuning but lacks finesse to my ear. Especially treble doesn’t have this “quality” which would make the sound “transparent” for me, I was comparing back and forth with the Earfun and although the Earfun colors upper mids more it’s overall a far more enjoyable experience to me and sounds more sophisticated to me. The TWS1 is a bit rough with treble, it lacks this refinement I somehow wanted to get out of the Earfun when I started working on it. In the meantime I would even claim that smooth treble is the most important factor to make a headphone or IEM sound “transparent”, it can be colored with some bass boost or even some slight mids emphasis but if treble is not smooth, if there are some peaks, the overall sound will simply lack the last bit of “realism”. This is something I am missing from the Grell. Bass mids and upper mids are fine though if you listen without ANC or transparency mode.

I will shoot a public first impressions video these days and then I will of also prepare measurements and see if I can manage some valid sound samples as I need to return it next week, because there are still some bugs as the unit I have is not final yet, but I was just told that tuning won’t change anymore.

It’s definitely one of the better TWS IEMs out there but it’s not as great that I would feel forced to get one. I would probably even choose the WF-1000XM4 instead if I needed one.