Oneodio Studio Max 1 REVIEW – Non-Critical Groove Ready

I am not writing these articles to help manufacturers promote their products, even less I’m expecting or even accepting compensation when I do. I’m writing exclusively to share my fun – and sometimes my disappointment – about gear that I happen to buy, borrow or somehow receive for audition.

Another crucial fact to note is that I have very sided and circumscribed musical tastes: I almost exclusively listen to jazz, and even more particularly to the strains of post bop, modal, hard bop and avantgarde which developed from the late ’50ies to the late ’70ies. In audio-related terms this implies that I mostly listen to musical situations featuring small or even very small groups playing acoustic instruments, on not big stages.

One of the first direct consequences of the above is that you should not expect me to provide broad information about how a certain product fares with many different musical genres. Oppositely, you should always keep in mind that – different gear treating digital and analog sound in different ways – my evaluations may not, in full or in part, be applicable to your preferred musical genre.

Another consequence is that I build my digital library by painstakingly cherry-pick editions offering the least possible compression and pumped loudness, and the most extended dynamic range. This alone, by the way, makes common music streaming services pretty much useless for me, as they offer almost exclusively the polar opposite. And, again by the way, quite a few of the editions in my library are monoaural.

Additionally: my library includes a significant number of unedited, very high sample rate re-digitisations of vinyl or open-reel tape editions, either dating back to the original day or more recently reissued under specialised labels e.g. Blue Note Tone Poet, Music Matters, Esoteric Jp, Analogue Productions, Impulse! Originals, and such. Oppositely, I could ever find an extremely small number of audible (for my preferences) SACD editions.

For my direct and conclusive experience, virtually none of the above is available on the most common streaming platforms, which makes their offering of high sampling material apriori pointless for my purposes. Quite simply, then, I don’t use streaming services as I find them not up to my requested quality.

My source gear is on its turn selected to grant very extended bandwidth, high reconstruction proweness, uncolored amping. Which in particularly means that TWS and any other form of lossless-based wireless gear is apriori off my selection panel.

And finally, my preferred drivers (ear or headphones) are first and foremost supposed to feature solid note-body timbre, and an as magically centered compromise between fine detail, articulated texturing and microdynamics as their designers can possibly achieve.

In terms of presentation, for IEMs I prefer one in the shape of a DF curve, with some very moderate extra pushup in the midbass. Extra sub-bass enhancement is totally optional, and solely welcome if seriously well controlled. Last octave treble is also welcome from whomever is really able to turn that into further spatial drawing upgrade, all others please abstain.