This is Cardas’s second run at making an earphone (or as Cardas puts it with some justification, an ‘ear speaker’): the first being the ‘mostly excellent’ EM5813. The A8 is a very different prospect, however.

What it shares with its older brother is the ‘ear speaker’ concept. The single, full range driver is designed essentially like a tweeter in a conventional loudspeaker, replacing the pole piece in the driver with a second magnet to reduce eddy currents. There have been some developments in the intervening years too, and not just in the move from an 11mm to a 10.85mm diaphragm. Cardas refers to this new driver as an Ultra Linear, Contour Field, Dual Magnet driver system.

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