The image of a glacier is one of power and inevitability: a massive, majestic force moving through the ocean that cannot be stopped. DUNU’s new flagship IEM, Glacier, seems designed to capture the massive scale of an ice wall in the ocean in a form factor that can fit in your ears. At $1349, can Glacier live up to the majesty and power of its namesake?
Build and Design
Glacier’s package is worthy of a flagship IEM with a case, adapters, nice selection of eartips, and a modified version of DUNU’s HULK cable. The IEMs themselves exude class and style, with a liquid metal look to the stainless steel shell. The cable has modular tips and includes a 3.5mm, 2.5mm, and 4.4mm termination, and there’s also a 3.5mm to 6.3mm adapter in the package. Glacier is a 9-driver tribrid, featuring 1 DD, 4 BAs, and 4 EST.
The stainless steel shell looks and feels great and to hold, and while it makes the IEMs a bit heavy, I didn’t experience any fit or comfort issues with Glacier. The design is very ergonomic and provides a deep but comfortable fit. The cable is also suitably high quality, with a nice feel to the cloth wrap, and swapping terminations is simple and secure. The case included in the package has a unique design, but functions quite well. Put it all together and you have a top notch package and design, but does it produce a top notch sound?
Sound
Glacier is defined by a massive soundstage, and powerful, well-extended bass, that combine expertly with a good sense of detail in the presentation and balance in the sound signature. Glacier largely adheres to a Harman type tuning, with an added subbass boost and slightly smoother treble.
The bass has incredible depth, coaxing the sort of rumble you’d expect from Bone Conduction out of Glacier’s Dynamic Driver. Glacier’s bass seems to be focused on power first, but also brings excellent texture and a sense of tight resolution in the lows.
The midrange is clear and well-layered, and the vocals are a major highlight. Glacier’s handles the full range of vocal styles, from rap to opera, along with male and female pop and rock vocals. The timbre with instruments is highly natural, but there’s occasionally a slightly hollow sense to the midrange that can shift from feeling spacious to making certain recordings feel slightly empty.
The soundstage is incredibly impressive, among the best out there under $2000, particularly in terms of width. The stage doesn’t have the full depth and three-dimensionality of top-tier flagship IEMs like the Empire Ears Raven, but it stands above the competition at its price point. The imaging has great weight to it as well, providing a holographic sense to the voices and instruments, while maintaining cohesion and blending between elements of the sound.
“Ice Dance” from the Edward Scissorhaands Score demonstrates a number of the facets of Glacier’s imaging. Each instrument has a great sense of individual weight and separation: from the pluck of the harp to the physical sense in the bells’ ringing, there’s a sense that puts you at the conductor’s podium for the performance. The dynamics are also excellent, as the song builds from a sparse, wispy start to the full orchestra and choirs as it builds.
A lot of older mixes have unconventional elements that don’t always play well with IEMs. While some versions have “corrected” the band layout of The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced? listening to the original mix gives you vocals panned far off-center and imaging elements that aim to reproduce the wild sounds of Jimi performing live. “Wind Cries Mary” is the sort of song that sounds a little weird with some headphones, but Glacier does surprisingly well. The left-panned vocals feel weighty, but also a little dreamy as they float above the listener. The band has a massive sense of horizontal space spread across a huge stage, yet still feel cohesive and well blended. Each element hits right individually – from the punch of the kick drum to the timbre and texture of the guitar and bass. This is probably still a track that’s best enjoyed with speakers, but Glacier offers a surprisingly strong experience.
In IEM tunings, weight and impact are often opposed to detail and articulation, so bands like Polyphia that mix hard hitting beats and fast, complex guitar playing can often end up losing one end of the music or the other. In tracks like “Bad,” Glacier captures both the deep hard hitting bass and low rumble, along side of the deft articulation of the guitar lines, maintaining the separation of each element and the key characteristics of each, without losing anything in between.
Comparison: Campfire Audio Bonneville, Thieaudio Prestige LTD
The Campfire Audio Bonneville comes from the lineage of the original Solaris, and is known for having a natural timbre and good weight and body to the music, while Thieaudio Prestige LTD aims for a faster, more technical sound. How do these two compare with Glacier, and IEM that seems to strike a pretty good balance between these elements.
In terms of the build, design, and package, Glacier looks like the clear winner. Prestige LTD certainly has an attractive design, but as a standard resin IEM, it can easily get lost in a sea of similar designs. Prestige LTD’s package is also fairly basic – even though the modular cable is quite nice. Bonneville is a little more polarizing. While the deluxe edition includes a nice total package, the black version looks a bit plain, while the purple version is bound to be very polarizing.
In terms of sound, Bonneville has a little more “breath” in the highs and has stronger midbass punch, but more of the midrange feels scooped out than Glacier. Bonneville is warmer in character as well, offering an very lush, organic sound, but doesn’t provide the same sort of clear separation and definition as Glacier or Prestige LTD. Prestige LTD is largely on the other side, providing a spacious sound and crisp instrument presentation, but with less weight and body to the instruments. Neither can achieve the sort of low rumble that Glacier provides either.
Between these three IEMs, Glacier’s strength is in balance. It’s not as crisp and articulate as Prestige LTD and not as lush as Bonneville, but it captures a bit of each end of things. The subbass one place where Glacier stands out entirely. Neither Prestige LTD nor Bonneville can deliver the sort of low end rumble of Glacier.
The Bottom Line
From the snow white cable and liquidy smoothness to the shell, to its massive soundstage and deep, rumbling subbass, Glacier certainly lives up to its name. Its tuning expertly balances addictive crowd pleasing elements with great technical performance to provide us with an excellent flagship experience from DUNU.
