Introduction
Shozy is no stranger to the ChiFi market, having been around since the days KZ reigned as the default option in the budget market. Unlike KZ however, Shozy doesn't release new products every couple of weeks nor do they only dabble in the $50 or so market. I've only heard a couple Shozy IEMs in the past and unfortunately I can't say they were any good. The Shozy Ceres I have today is a newly released $180 IEM that features a 1 DD + 1 BA setup. These 1 DD + 1 BA setups have been around for quite some time so I'm curious to see if Shozy will bring anything new to the table.
The Shozy Ceres was provided to me by Linsoul in exchange of an honest review.
What's in the Box?
Inside the box is your typical set of accessories. A modest set of tips, a hexagonal fabric case, a cable, and the IEMs themselves. The cable is 2-pin with pre-molded earhooks and is what I would call a dirty yellow cable. I will say the ergonomics on it is quite nice. It's a really good cable. The shell is made up of resin and feature a blue faceplate with a yellow pattern on it. I don't particularly care for the looks of this IEM. It's quite a comfortable IEM at least.
Sound
The Good:
The Bad:
- The tuning is a bad mix of bassy, dark, and sibilant all at the same time.
- There's practically no upper mids to speak of while there's a massive peak in the mid treble that somehow manages to make vocals painfully sharp at times.
- Vocals are severely depressed and there's zero vocal dynamics. It's extremely sad when singers try to fully unleash their voice and belt with all of their being and the Ceres takes all that effort and flattens it out into nothingness.
- Instruments, especially guitars, sound they're missing a couple notes in a chord. The lowest note is played while the others are lost to the void. Needless to say, timbre is bad.
- Bass quality is rather poor; it sounds poofy and rounded with a off-focus more on the midbass.
- Treble is smothered except for the aforementioned large peak that offensively stabs you when you least expect it then disappears into the darkness that is the rest of this IEM.
- It costs $180.
Alright, jokes aside there are a few very minor "upsides" that prevent this IEM from being on the level of Shuoer Tape Pro in terms of awfulness.
- While female vocals are absolutely destroyed, male vocals can sound decent especially with a couple of hours of brain burn in, especially on slower, acoustic songs. In fact, I went grocery shopping with this thing and by the end of it I stopped caring about about how lo-fi it is. You'll still never get that upper mids presence you're waiting for but it's not like the Ceres somehow makes your music unintelligible. Brain burn in, it's a hell of a drug.
- The bass, believe it or not, isn't actually super bloated or muddy. It's obviously still not good but I've heard a lot worse when it comes to mud.
- Resolution is acceptable.
- Probably the biggest surprise to me is the staging of this IEM. It's falls in the above average range, especially when considering the rest of this IEM's performance. It is by far the biggest saving grace of the Ceres' sound. There's decent width and a little bit of depth that allows for good of instrument separation. It goes a very, very long way towards alleviating the sense of congestion you might expect from an IEM with this sort of frequency response. It gives instruments a sense of identity instead of being just a blur. This effect probably comes from the three large vent holes built into the shell.
Here's the frequency response graph of the Shozy Ceres. I'll let you come to your own conclusions.
Conclusion
The Shozy Ceres is not an IEM worth spending $180 on. That said, I don't utterly hate this IEM. Let's put it this way: I can still enjoy music with this, limited as it may be. When you listen to it, the first thing you hear is the lack of upper mids, giving it a dark, hazy feel. For some reason, I keep expecting that the vocals will somehow magically come to life at any second but it never does. The staging of this IEM seriously the only thing keeping this thing alive. Give it a simple upper mids boost via EQ and it becomes a lot more enjoyable. It fixes the tuning issue which helps the technical performance come through. Still, it's not something you'd buy for the sole purpose of EQing but if you already own one and want to improve it, any "Vocal" EQ preset should do the trick.
Written by Fc-Construct
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