KZ ED9 Review – Return of the O.G.
More than anything else, the ancient (circa 2015), sub-$10 ED9 is the piece that led me down the Chifi rabbit hole. Having just received an blast from Aliexpress hawking these for a still-ridiculous $9.47, I dug mine out of the bottom of the pile for a fresh listen.
Sleek metal shells look and feel more substantial than many exponentially more expensive models; isolation is only average but fit and comfort are good. The ED9 is easy to drive with just a mobile but scales well with more power.
Uniquely for this price class, the ED9 sport replaceable “bass” and “reference” tuning nozzles. With the gold “bass” filter, the ED9 has a bass-enhanced gentle V-shape with impactful, deep subbass which is perfect in quantity and has good pitch definition but could stand to be quicker and tighter (amping helps considerably). The brass “reference” filter reduces the low end boominess and brings mids forward but sounds leaner and duller overall; I much prefer the gold. Soundstage in either formulation is of average width and height but imaging, esp. for the price, is uncanny—you feel like you’re in a small, well-designed auditorium.
Brightish reble it’s not hyper-detailed and can get a bit splashy at very loud volume but generally avoids harshness or sibilance. The ED9’s real selling point is its vinyl-like tonal quality; they reproduce drums and acoustic instruments in an extremely natural way and acoustic jazz is very live-sounding.
Compared to my current mega-cheap fave, the $20 TRN STM (which also sports interchangeable filters), the ED9 has significantly less high-end detail and more unruly bass, but sound considerably less colored, with a less metallic treble. The much-venerated, $30 Blon BL-03 has an even more “natural” timbre, tighter bass and more top-to-bottom coherence; the Blon are the more refined but lack the ED9’s low end impact and don’t rock as hard. KZ’s $40-50 hybrids like the ZS7 and esp. the ZSX have more expansive stages, more high-end information and better-tamed bass but sound somewhat digital/processed against the humbler ED9.
The amazing NiceHCK Bro/Senfer UES excepted, I’m hard-pressed to find a more recommendable cheapo, and ultimately the ED9 is tough to criticize.
