We love to give practical buying advice on the latest gadgets here at TechRadar. But sometimes what we love even more is to indulge in the most high-end, cutting-edge, luxurious tech on the planet. That's what we bring you in these Money no Object columns – you can read the whole series here.
Reader, I already have two sets of Campfire Audio IEMs in my possession, (they're some of the best wired earbuds I've ever heard) but now the firm’s only gone and added to its revered lineup with the stunning new Grand Luna. And I must have them.
The Portland, Oregon-based maker of premium IEMs has just unveiled the all-new model, and it's the company’s first planar-balanced armature hybrid, combining a new iteration of a 14mm planar magnetic driver with two custom, precision-tuned balanced armatures. Oh, how I want to hear that.
But this is Campfire Audio, so of course the aesthetics are going to match the acoustic innovation. Here, that acoustic architecture is beautifully nestled into a vibrant (internally dyed red, externally transparent) 3D-printed shell. And because each Grand Luna earpiece gets a stainless-steel lid individually hand-finished in-house at Campfire’s Portland workshop (it's first flame treated and then brushed by hand, leaving a colorful, organic CA logo and a textured stainless-steel finish), no two units will ever be the same.
CA says the Grand Luna offer a unique capability in terms of high-frequency extension, reaching heights of 30kHz (the human ear can only hear up to 20kHz, but I maintain that you'll feel the extra headroom through the crisp leading edges of notes) and there's another first too: the debut of Campfire’s brand-new modular cable system.
Included in the box are three interchangeable terminations: 3.5mm single-ended, 4.4mm balanced, and a USB-C DAC module powered by the highly regarded Cirrus Logic Master HiFi CS43131 chip. And that means you can plug it into one of the best high-end portable players, a balanced amplifier, or directly into your smartphone or computer.
Grand Luna are keeping Campfire Audio weird and you love to see it
This is not my first rodeo around the Campfire – I'm lucky enough to be in possession of the Campfire Audio Solaris Stellar Horizon and the Alessandro Cortini Campfire Audio collab, Clara, which between them offer beautiful, nuanced, and crucially different listening experiences – but I've written odes to Campfire Audio's products, including the Trifecta, which I tried (and still remember vividly) at a notable trade show.
If the phrase 'Keep Portland Weird' ever had an audio ambassador or trailblazer, Campfire would be it: this is a company that doesn't like to follow the curve, and which will experiment with acoustic tuning just slightly (even reverently), in order to give its loyal fanbase something new. To me, that's as beautiful as the earpieces that, no matter their size or embellishments, always slip happily into my bijou ears.
The Grand Luna will be available from August 8, priced $1,399 / $1,399 (which is around AU$2,100, converting from the US price). See how I mentioned that pricing rather casually? I plan on doing so again, when broaching my decision to purchase them to the various other people in my life…
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