The journey of FiR Audio is a bit of a rocky one, spending much of its early life on the market embroiled in uncertainly and doubt over the tuning direction of its products.

In my own experience, I’ve heard about six M5s, four M4s, four M3s and two M2s, all with varying levels of differences between each unit of the same model. It’s only recently that FiR has finally confirmed the mass production of their universal models, which also means that their tunings have (hopefully) been truly finalised as well. And so, now I feel confident enough to talk about FiR’s IEMs given this “assurance” that whatever I’m about to say would apply to whatever the customer will get.

FiR Audio is brainchild of Bogdan Belonozhko; yep, that Belonozhko, of 64 Audio fame. Bogdan is the ex-CEO of 64 Audio, who left to create his own brand of IEMs that’s catered more to the audiophile crowd as opposed to 64 Audio’s musician/artist-focused marketing.

The FiR lineup is unique for one thing: the concept of “tubeless”, wherein the sound of the drivers are pumped directly into the shell itself rather than the traditional method of being piped through acoustic tubing. This is the same concept used in certain 64 Audio IEMs such as the universal-only tia Fourte and tia Trio (to a certain extent, the N8 as well), except this time FiR Audio accepts orders in custom form for its entire lineup.

With all these pedigrees right out the gate, expectations are high for FiR. Let’s see if they can meet them.

Special thanks to Project Perfection/Dita Audio for allowing me to audition the FiR lineup for review purposes.