Product page: https://itsfitlab.com/fusion

MSRP: $950 (universal & custom)

Driver configuration: 1DD + 2BA + Magnetostatic tweeter

The Fusion is Itsfit’s newest rockstar, with almost unanimous acclaim from formal review sites and gaining a reputation as a “giant killer”. Now, going against the hivemind is never a pleasant task, but it’s far from my first rodeo anyways so this is just another Wednesday.

I’ll start with the positives to soften the inevitable blow. I had my doubts for the magnetostatic tweeter, but the Fusion has me pleasantly surprised. The treble is well extended but far from being peaky, and the quality of the treble’s transients is pretty much spot on with no weird ringing artifacts. The Fusion is able to present that last octave airiness without any difficulty but avoids sibilance very well. My only true critique of the treble would be an odd chasm just slightly past the upper midrange, which kills a lot of bite and texturing like I’ve mentioned with the R3.

Now, the bad.

The lower midrange is a tricky region to get right, especially when one wants to emphasise it, but there are instances where it can be done well. The Vision Ears VE8 for instance, renowned for its almost-magical tonality that presents rich notes without being overbearingly heavy, or perhaps IEMs like the Fearless S8 or Elysian’s Hades V2 and Terminator V2, that balance out a significant lower-midrange hump with an equally-significant upper-midrange hump.

The Fusion is an instance that I’d consider to be a poorly done lower midrange emphasis, in which the end result is a boxy sound that softens the impact of percussion instruments, adds unwanted huskiness to female vocals and introduces a general claustrophobic sensation to the stage. The Fusion’s midrange is very odd and unnatural to me, and I struggle to find any genres that it can specialise in given its fundamental tonal shortcomings.

That’s not implying that the upper midrange is free from criticism; there is an unevenness in the higher registers that can make particular notes too intense while others too subdued, but this problem pretty much takes a back seat to the aforementioned lower midrange tuning.

At a price closing in on the dreaded kilobuck range, the Fusion struggles to be an anything-killer. But, if there were to be a silver lining in the clouds, it’s that I at least have some renewed hope for that magnetostatic tweeter.