Introduction

I feel fairly confident in saying most people reading this review probably have no idea who or what INTUAURA is, and I was in this same position a few months ago. INTUAURA is a new Chinese IEM brand that is barely three years old, although its founder has been in this industry for longer and has such a great reputation that his brand is already an OEM for others, including some that you may well have heard of. INTUAURA is his way of showcasing what can be done with pure analog tuning of a single dynamic driver, and then getting that extra bit on top with digital signal processing (DSP). I had heard of INTUAURA thanks to Linsoul suddenly stocking a new brand, and all of them seemed intriguing. There were no review samples available, and of course I had no direct contact with the brand either. Skip forward to late September at the Shenzhen International Audio Show, and INTUAURA's founder approaches me directly and invites me to come try out his IEMs. He was clearly confident of his offerings, and I went through four of them before giving my feedback, in addition to saying which one was my favorite. He offered a review sample on the spot, and only when I got back to the hotel did I realize this happened to also be the most expensive one in his current product lineup. Of course I felt bad, but he insisted I take it and do a review to help spread word on his brand. So here we are as promised to him, and thanks again to INTUAURA for providing a review sample to TechPowerUp!


We've seen DSP IEMs before, with the likes of the MOONDROP x Crinacle DUSK arguably being the most popular recent entry. INTUAURA, thanks to its own design and manufacturing factory cities, aims to bring DSP to the masses, but also uses it at the flagship levels—because why not take advantage of something at your disposal? DSP makes all the more sense with single-driver IEMs, especially those using dynamic drivers, given it's not easy to balance out tuning for the entire 20 Hz to 20 kHz frequency range while also maintaining a good sense of technical/subjective aspects such as bass impact and dynamism, soundstage and imaging, and detail retrieval. Today we put INTUAURA's current flagship, the Lakeview, to the test. It uses a custom dynamic driver made specifically for the set by a high-end driver supplier that has worked with the likes of Sennheiser and Bang & Olufsen, paired with two individual Type-C to 4.4 mm DAC/amp dongles that have EQ profiles built into them. This makes for the easiest implementation of DSP from a consumer point of view—no need to worry about buggy apps, far easier than setting up your own custom EQ profiles, and always available to you thanks to being stored on the dongles. They also double up to act as sources, allowing you to use the Lakeview with digital audio outputs from a phone or laptop on the go, while also providing the analog tuning from the IEM cable. There's a total of three available tonalities here to go through thus, so let's get this review started with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications