ZIIGAAT CINNO REVIEW

>>I am brazilian and I speak portuguese, so forgive my english, I’ll use translation tools to help<<

INTRO:

New brand in the hobby! ZiiGaat. Different name, right? But everything is normal when it comes to Chinese audio brands, they love an acronym. For this first contact, I will evaluate the ZiiGaat Cinno.

The Cinno is a hybrid IEM with the following configuration: 1 dynamic driver for the bass, 2 balanced armatures for mids and upper-mids, and 2 balanced armatures for the treble. You know that I am a fan of hybrid IEMs, so, the expectation is very good.

The ZiiGaat Cinno was sent by LINSOUL, one of the main distributors of ZiiGaat products, as well as several other brands and audio products. More information on the links below.

For those who don’t know, LINSOUL is the same DD-Audio Store on AliExpress.

Price: $99 USD
Color: Black, Purple, Green
Cable: No Mic

LINSOUL store:

https://amzn.to/3Uo2RFT

https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DBJkrsD

https://s.click.aliexpress.com/e/_DeBuM9n

SPECIFICATIONS:

Hybrid: 1DD + 4BA per side
(1) 10mm Dynamic Driver (DD)
(4) Balanced Armature (BA)

– Frequency range: 20Hz – 20KkHz
– Sensitivity: 107dB (@1kHz/mW)
– Impedance: 32Ω
– THD: <0.5% (@1KHz)
– Rated power: 5mW
– Max power: 10mW
– Termination Plug: 3.5mm (straight design)
– Connectors: 2pin 0.78mm
– Cable size: 1.2m (detachable)
– Cable: Copper
– Shell: Plastic
– Earphone weight: 3.4g (one side)(without eartips)
– Cable weight: 20g
– Total weight (packaging, iems, etc): 100g
– Packaging size: 11.5cm [H] x 8.3cm [W] x 3cm [D]

UNBOXING:

Video made for Instagram Reels on @iemsandmusic

PHYSICAL ASPECTS:

Eartips. Only 3 pairs of silicone eartips came in sizes S/M/L. If you saw the unboxing video, you noticed that the kit is quite humble, for a $99 dollar IEM, I expected more. However, the eartips that came are of great quality, very soft, and thin too, which I like a lot, as I always prefer eartips of smaller thicknesses. I think there’s no need to get eartips from other brands, the ones that came in the kit do the job (subjective). The only observation I make is that I needed to use the size L to be able to have the perfect seal for my ears. This is a fundamental exercise with in-ear earphones, sometimes if the sound was strange, put on a larger eartip.

Construction. The Cinno is a very well-built earphone, despite being an IEM made entirely of plastic, the quality of the plastic used is very good, it even looks like resin earphones, but it’s possible to see that the earphone has two separate parts, typical of plastic earphones. The good thing is that they put a varnish on top and then the quality increases 200%, it practically becomes imperceptible the difference to a resin earphone. The very positive point is that with this the earphone weighs only 3.4g! I think it’s one of the lightest IEMs I’ve ever tested, and perhaps the lightest hybrid. It’s impressive how an earphone with this amount of drivers managed to reach this weight. The word comfort defines this earphone.

An interesting detail is that this was a very complicated earphone to take pictures of… I evaluated the black one, but looking in my hands, it looks like a dark gray, already in some images it looks like a dark blue. Anyway, just a small detail from the backstage of a reveiw. 😀

Cable. The cable is simple, practical and functional… And isn’t that how a cable should be? In my understanding, the company put a cable that doesn’t have so much appeal to the aesthetic side, but I think it hit the mark on the project, because it’s a cable that perfectly fulfills the desired role. It’s a very light cable, it doesn’t tangle easily, it doesn’t take memory (creases). There’s nothing to criticize, it just picks up a bit of microphonics, but the trivial same of all cables. It has a greenish tone (or is it bluish?), it was kind of hard to beat the hammer, maybe this wasn’t very well presented in the photos/video. About the chin slider, I found that the piece slips at times, so the efficiency was compromised.

The connectors are of the 2 pin 0.78mm type (the best type, in my opinion). To know which correct side to fit, you need to pay attention that at the bottom of the connectors appears a small colored ball, right side in red color, left side in blue color. The earhooks are the best possible, that is, without undulation, so there’s no risk of creating pressure point. Total comfort. \o/

The fit. The earphone has a more horizontal fit, which I liked a lot, the earphone fits well in the shells. I found it to be a discreet IEM, it doesn’t get big in the ear, that is, no protruding parts appear outside the ear. The stability of the earphone in the ear is excellent. The insertion I found average, and the isolation I found Ok.

The comfort is excellent, the high point of the Cinno’s construction is to be this super comfortable earphone, and comfort is something that I value a lot, because if the earphone has a top sound and a bad comfort, it’s no use, because you won’t be able to stay with the earphone for a long time. But if you have an earphone with a cool sound and excellent comfort, you spend hours with the earphone in your ear. The Cinno is an ultra light and very ergonomic earphone.

Accessories. Unfortunately, the Cinno didn’t come with any case to storage the earphone. As I said in the Kiwi Eras Melody, I think that the other earphones in this same price range all have some type of case, so it was ideal that both the Cinno and the Melody, came with a case. Now, beyond this issue, ZiiGaat has a proprietary case selling separately: AliExpress / Amazon US.

SOUND ASPECTS:

The life of ZiiGaat Cinno ($99 USD) is not easy when it has competitors like: Truthear Hexa ($79), FiiO JD7 ($79), Letshuoer DZ4 ($89), QoA Vesper2 ($79), Kiwi Melody ($89), and Simgot EM6L ($109). But we will see that Cinno does have its space among the IEMs mentioned.

If in the evaluation of Kiwi Ears Melody I said that among all these earphones, Melody was the only one that came with the proposal of V-Shape sound, now, ZiiGaat Cinno comes with the proposal of Mild-V-Shape (which would be something like a lighter V-Shape), that is, even if close to the sound of Melody, it still has its differences. In my humble opinion, Cinno manages to be better than Melody, especially in the treble region, where Cinno has less quantity.

Each of these earphones mentioned has a different sound, so, all are important. The only thing I would like to highlight is that Simgot EM6L is in a price range above $100 dollars, and I also believe that it is the best among these earphones that I mentioned earlier. So, putting EM6L on a shelf above, for my taste, I elect the ones I found most interesting (random order): FiiO JD7, Truthear Hexa, and ZiiGaat Cinno.

Bass:

Quantitative: I understand the bass of Cinno as moderate, and in some situations, from moderate to high. If you read there the part of the eartips, you saw that the sealing of the ear canal makes a good difference to achieve the bass with more quantity, that’s why I changed the size M to G. I’m already warning that Cinno isn’t a basshead earphone, but I like bass and I was satisfied with Cinno, I was able to listen to all genres that need an extra dose of bass. Cinno has good presence both in the sub-bass and in the mid-bass, it’s something that I found to be a good balance between the regions. The Truthear Hexa, for example, has more activity in the sub-bass than Cinno. I didn’t feel roll-off, the extension is good.

Qualitative: The bass of Cinno are clean, fast, controlled. They are bass that I would say have a characteristic of being “thinner”, that is, they don’t show off texture and physicality, and then for people who think that the bass of FiiO JD7 are more “loose”, the bass of Cinno can be a “correction”. I think they are bass that have a good definition, and are very versatile, they can adapt to various types of music or instruments. The impact is more contained, instead of being a massive punch. They aren’t boomy bass, they aren’t muffled, and they don’t invade the mids. Like, the beat on a drum you listen with quite precision the sound of the pedal touching the drum skin. Already a double bass you listen to a fingering with good speed and definition.

Mids:

Quantitative and qualitative: The mids of Cinno are “beans with rice” mids, that is, they are neither recessed, nor forward. Mids grade 7 to pass the year in school. The upper-mids have a well-adjusted quantity, they don’t sound aggressive, nor do they make the voices sound recessed. The Mild V-Shape sound I believe is like this, an earphone that brings the energy of the V-shape earphones, but without sounding too much “energetic”, without exceeding. The mids of Cinno have good definition, good transparency, and good clarity. The sound of the snare drum have a good detailing and without presenting harshness. Guitars demonstrate a well-balanced timbre, and to exemplify: some earphones give a warm and more textured sound, the riffs are very visceral/bodied, and other earphones leave the guitar with a more “crunchy” sound, the overdrive effect is very dry, so here with Cinno is a half term between these two situations.

Voices: The voices I found that were in a technical tie, that is, the performance is good for both types of voices – male/low and female/high. But then, the earphone is also not excellent for any of the two types, for example, if your music library has a lot of low timbre voices, Cinno will not extract all the potential of the texture that these types of voices have. The same goes for the voices of higher timbres.

Treble:

Quantitative: If I said that Cinno can have better treble than Melody’s, it’s precisely because Cinno has more moderate treble, that is, I found that the treble are lower than Melody’s. Maybe it was some interaction with the eartips, we can’t forget that evaluating in-ear earphones isn’t an exact science, what I can affirm is what I heard, and what I heard was what I mentioned above. Cinno’s treble are free from causing hearing fatigue, I recommend the earphone for those who want to avoid earphones with high treble (unless the person is very very sensitive to treble, then I think it would be better to go for a L-Shape/Dark IEMs). I didn’t feel decay roll-off, the extension is good.

Qualitative: Cinno’streble are versatile, have good definition, have good detailing, good ventilation, aren’t colored, aren’t fatiguing, I didn’t heard peaks. I would say that the earphone has an active sparkle, it neither sounds thin/crystalline, nor sounds lifeless. The treble aren’t strident, they aren’t sharp, they aren’t harsh, nor do they present sibilance. If I found that Melody didn’t do so well with the Metal genre because of the treble, here with Cinno the genre was approved. Hi-hats play at speed without sounding aggressive, drum cymbals sound well defined in presentations, fingering of acoustic guitars is coherent with the real.

Soundstage: I found Cinno’s soundstage good. In the V-Shape (or Mild V-Shape) sound, you have a lot of information being thrown at you all at once, and this inevitably decreases the sense of amplitude, the good thing is that in the case here of Cinno the earphone manages to have a well-resolved stage to play any type of sound, it isn’t the largest soundstage I have ever heard but the performance is good in the 3 dimensions (height, width, and depth).

Imaging: The instrumental separation is great, a very positive point of the earphone, here I really agree that it is Cinno and Hexa both have very high levels of excellent instrumental separation. If you put a quality recording you can extract all the potential that the earphone can deliver, it shows with good definition where each sound is coming from (remembering that the separation can also vary according to the recording and other processes during musical production).

Driver flex test: ZiiGaat Cinno has Dynamic Driver in its composition, so we have to check if it presents the sound of “driver flex”. In my tests here, the problem didn’t appear, approved.

Amplification: I used the DAC/AMP Dongle AUNE Yuki to do this review. The output used was 3.5mm SE. The dongle was set to High Gain mode. Volume at 20-30% of the Windows scale. ZiiGaat Cinno is an easy to push IEM, doesn’t require extraordinary amplification. It plays well with trivial sources, that is, smartphone, tablets, notebook computers, and etc. As always, for those who are starting in the hobby of earphones, I make the recommendation that the person look to improve the audio output of their device and acquire at least a nice dongle.

Music is subjective, so below is the list of some musical genres that I personally think that was better with this IEM. Remember that were only few genres and few artists tested. If I describe that one genre was better and the other don’t, it doesn’t mean that you can’t listen to your favorite music genre with this IEM and love it. So, here goes:

Better:

Hip Hop
Reggae
EDM
POP
Rock
Metal
Blues
MPB*
Bossa Nova*
Samba*

*Brazilian musical genres.

Not so much:

Classical
Jazz

PLAYLIST LINK: