Insanely-active headfi user, moedawg140’s objection to incessant reader demands to compare TOTL earphone against TOTL rivals, is spot on. A non-engineering review is written from opinion. No matter how assiduous, extended comparisons between earphone A and earphone B reveal nothing but personal bias; more colloquially, they reveal that we all hear different. Obsessing over and acquiescing to reader demands is a never-ending, soul-destroying campaign of self-flagellation and risk. Self flagellation: kowtowing to a single demand necessarily insinuates more of the same in the future. Risk: maintaining a fleet of TOTL earphones, amps, DACs, or DAPs, is expensive both to the wallet and to the attic. 

Achebe oversimplified things. Some things fall apart. Others compound into something exquisite. Baby bum-smooth Andromeda is as polished next to Jupiter as Jupiter is against a pre-production version of itself. It is my - perhaps self-serving - opinion that the two earphone manufacturers most violently busting through the limits of industrial manufacturing and branding ceilings are Campfire Audio and Noble Audio. 

Metal bolts. Metal fascias. Metal skeletons. Metal bonnets. Full metal jacket. Metal up yours, all the time. That, my friends, is Campfire Audio’s flagship earphone, Jupiter. In October I reviewed a pre-production model. From what I understood at the time, its cable, ear pieces, fit, and sound, were final. The body? By late summer, anyone’s guess was as good as mine.

Knocking back 200mm of chilled Glenfiddich didn't exactly help me catch the heavily-stylised C in the Campfire Audio logo. Still, to a pleasant inebriate, Ampfire Audio, even in its boorish, techy way, worked. But I've been straightened out. There's a C there. Which makes a lot more sense for a brand out of the flannel-wearing Oregonians.