When In Manila and you are looking for the strongest ground-shaking bass monster in town, the new Accutone Taurus easily takes the champion slot for me! These are just huge bass monsters! Accutone is a fairly new brand here in the Philippines hailing from UK. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much from the brand since I have not much heard of them. Probably because either they just recently released a music line-up of products, or maybe because they just arrived the country. The Accutone Taurus has caught my attention though once I saw a picture of it online. They just really look very stylish and yet, not anywhere overdone. This is why I was so curious to get my hands on it and have a go at how they sound. And here I am, reviewing the Accutone Taurus, and I am overly surprised!
Pretty nifty packaging.
Build/Packaging: The Accutone Taurus comes in a very un-common packaging with a hard plastic rectangular box that displays the nicely designed Accutone Taurus at the transparent front. I like how the packaging is presented, they packaging is well thought about and is presented in a very elegant way. All the accessories that comes with the Accutone Taurus in hidden under the packaging upon removal of the Accutone Taurus. The package contains a leatherette carrying pouch, a Nokia phone adapter, a cable winder, 3 pairs of Silicon ear buds (S/M/L), and wow, they even come with a memory foam tip! The packaging is well above average.
I like how they have foam tips mixed into the package.
With the Accutone Taurus‘ build, they are made of plastic but they look and feel sturdy enough. My only concern is the cables and how they protrude from the driver housings. Although it is nice that the cable can swivel from the earphone to have a choice of straight down or over-the-ear sporting of the earphones. I am also not a fan of the mic/button controls and volume adjuster. The Accutone Taurus‘ mic/button control is plainly rectangular-shaped and having the grill for the microphone occupy half, and a simple button occupy the other half. The volume control is also not an eye catcher for me. Of course, you are open to your own opinion, but I just don’t fancy controlling the volume by twisting a huge pot. I also have some slight complains on the bass adjustment since you are blinded in adjusting it to 15 degrees. Basically, just the line of the bass adjustment being lined-up either horizontal for lowest bass setting, or vertical for maximum bass setting. On a side note, I liked the 3.5mm plug on these. They are made out of metal and are thin enough to fit through my very picky Vapor Pro iPhone case.
The bass adjustment screw is at the middle of those 2 vents.
Sound Quality: In all honesty, I never expected much about Accutone since I was unaware of the brand and new consumer products until I encountered the Accutone Taurus online. So I was very curious about the bass adjustment and overall sound, but I wasn’t expecting anything good at all. I tested it out of the box and bass was set to minimum. Of course, I was not impressed at all. It was overall sounding dark, recessed, muddy, veiled mids and highs. All I could see positive was the highs having pretty decent extension, slightly natural sound of notes and also the presence of a good soundstage. The bass was nothing that surprising at all. Then I decided to grab the bass adjustment tool and play around with the bass setting. At first I was having so much difficulty with adjusting the bass due to it having no lock at all, and giving you a blind guess to where the maximum setting is. So I unearthed the manual and found the instructions on how to adjust the setting and finally found the max bass setting to be the line of the screw to be set at the vertical position. So here goes trying the bass at max… and… wow… the bass on the Accutone Taurus is much more full bodied, impactful and deep than the two bass kings of in-ear earphones, the Fischer Audio Eterna and Hippo VB! I was surprised at how much the Accutone Taurus had this much bass power! The bass does bleed to the mid and high ranges, but it does not distort the highs and disrupts the mids much.
At this point, I was wishing that the highs and mids were much more less veiled because it was somehow killing the details. So I finally resorted to using the EQu application on my iPhone which lets you graph your own EQ. Using the EQ, I was able to remove up to 70% of the veil on both the mids and highs. The highs finally had good clarity and better extension, the mids were more pronounced and were more forward than before with the addition of the bass becoming less slow and becoming more tight and controlled while retaining the monstrous impact and depth that it had. It was such a big improvement alone! I noticed at how the Accutone Taurus was susceptible to Equalization and I finally gave the thought of testing the Accutone Taurus to the hisoundaudio RoCoo P hifi player which is a portable music player that was made for high fidelity listening.
Upon plugging the Accutone Taurus to the hisoundaudio RoCoo P, playing the same last song that I used to test on the iPhone, m-flo’s “Love Comes and Goes”, I noticed how the highs have attained sparkle and lost up to almost 90% of the veil that it had with the iPhone. The mids are even more pronounced forward that you can hear it clearly and detailed even with the bass having that awesome punch and depth. Comparing it to the Monster Turbine Pro Copper which are 7x the price of the Accutone Taurus, the Accutone Taurus have much more bass impact and depth and are much more dark at the highs and mid ranges but I think this is an advantage of the Taurus. Because listening to the Monster Turbine Pro Coppers, the highs and vocals become too thin sounding. R&B songs and other up-beat songs just sounded more boring and less captivating. Comparing the Accutone Taurus, also showed that it had more soundstage against the Monster Turbine Pro Copper. The Monster Turbine Pro Copper just suddenly sounded boring and thin. Oh and take note, the Monster Turbine Pro Copper that I used to test against the Accutone Taurus had a cable upgrade that brought out better highs on them, and yet, I can feel live tracks more lively, realistic and dance-able through the Accutone Taurus.
Pitting the Accutone Taurus against the Fischer Audio Eterna as well, made the Fischer Audio Eterna‘s highs fake sounding although the Fischer Audio Eterna‘s mids were a bit more thick and forward sounding. Nevertheless, the Accutone Taurus still had so much more bass power and much more soundstage than the the former bass king Fischer Audio Eterna. I felt that the up-beat songs were more enticing to dance to with the Accutone Taurus than the Fischer Audio Eterna. The Accutone Taurus just had more attitude and more of the party like feel. The Accutone Taurus‘ bass is just so powerful and ground shaking! The bass also does not disappear upon reducing the volume, unlike a lot of bass accentuated earphones.
Pairing the Accutone Taurus alone with an iPhone isn’t really going to give you full pleasure except for its bass. Although configuring the sound with the EQ or your own EQ through the EQu app from the Appstore does wonders. I suggest having a higher range dominant amplifier to the mix, or pairing the Accutone Taurus to a much better music player like the RoCoo P for example. The Accutone Taurus is just extremely surprising and is probably the audio surprise for the year for me so far.
The Accutone Taurus retails for P2950 and can be bought at some of the following locations:
- Astrovision
- Power Mac Center
- Rustan’s Department Store
And we are giving away 1 Accutone Taurus!!!
all you have to do to join:
“RT this and follow @WhenInManila and @accutone_php for a chance to win an Accutone Taurus earphone-https://bit.ly/OQ9g6f #WhenInManila”
Winner of the Accutone Taurus is: @teukchuloppar!
congratulations! one of our writters will contact you immediately
Accutone Taurus: Newest ground shaking bass monster in town
