Thieaudio Ghost

Customised and ‘Harmanized’

The Thieaudio Ghost was a headphone I was always curious about, some initial good reviews compared it favourable to the Sennheiser HD600, but those initial reviews were followed by ‘so-so’ reviews, but I thought when on sale in Linsoul for as low as $49.99 it might be an incredible bargain, especially for those who like ‘Pragmatic’ bargains.

So after snapping it up in recent sale, it is a ‘good’ bargain at that price but there were something I didn’t like about it, so I thought it might make a good basis for some customisation. This “review” will mainly focus on that journey in customising the Thieaudio Ghost for my own liking.

At the same time that I was curious about the Ghost, I noticed that “DIY Audio Heaven” had also bought it in the same sale. It is worth checking out that review especially when I get to discussion the distortion later.

So, before I made my purchase I did see some other measurements comparing the Ghost with the HD600 before I decided to purchase and while there are some similarities (as you will see later) it did look like it would need some EQ. So, at the same time that the Ghost was on sale, I also noticed that FiiO / Jade Audio had a new usb-c dongle with built-in PEQ also for sale on their Offical Aliexpress site initially for $10, so my initial plan became to ‘permanently’ tweak the Frequency response of the Ghost with one of these JA11 usb-c dongles so that I could move between devices during my typical workday on my iPhone or with my MacBook Pro using these as usb-c based “source” devices without needing to worry about different PEQ Applications on each device (no system-wide PEQ is available on IOS).

So the idea was to make the Ghost sound like the HD600 (but with a bass boost) and to do this I would use my own measurements (rather than rely on third party measurement) so I have a KB501X soft ear pinna and a 711 clone coupler - which is good, in my opinion, for ‘relative’ measurements (I have measured a bunch of my other headphones already with this gear e.g. my own HD600 so comparing different headphones that I have measured with the Ghost is a reasonable exercise (and certainly a fun exercise for a data / graph ’nerd’ like myself).

But let start this “journey” by getting into the unboxing experience with the Thieaudio Ghost:

Unboxing, comfort and build quality

So the Ghost arrives in a nice box which ultimately opens up to show the nice hard shell carrying case:

Opening the carrying case reveals the Ghost protected with some plastic:

The headphone cable is pretty basic with a very low quality wire (and ultimately I didn’t use it):

But the Headphone itself is not bad with a nice mixture of metal and plastic and definitely feels more premium than its sales price, and it has a good solid extension mechanism and it is pretty lightweight so good for long listening sessions:

But it doesn’t have the adjustability around the ear that I would have liked, and I also didn’t like comfort with the stock pads, though they do try to look a little like a HD600 pads:

So, but I did start to do some subjective listening, and it sounded ok but the midrange was nothing like I was hoping and while the bass had a similar quality the HD600, I felt it would definitely needed a good bit of EQ to get sounding correct.

So here was my first measurement comparing it to my HD600 and you can see why people would have initially said it was ‘similar’ to the HD600:

But as you can see the ear gain area is very recessed compared to the HD600 leading it to sound a bit ‘boring’ or muffled at least for me.

Maybe it was the lack of flexibility combined with the stock pads that meant I didn’t find them comfortable but one nice thing is you can remove the stock pads and replace them with very standard and cheap alternatives.

Removing the stock pads reveals the drivers:

Getting some alternative Earpads

So, a quick google revealed the appropriate size needed to replace the ear pads on the Ghost. I could now have bought expensive pads from Dekoni or similar company but given this whole experiment was to do this on the cheap I thought I would buy a few different pairs from Aliexpress at roughly $10 each, since these were very stock sizes there were lots of choices and ones that I didn’t use with the Ghost could be used in future experiments.

After trying various options on the Ghost I eventually felt the largest and thickest size worked best and compared to the stock pads it had both the flexibilty and comfort that I was looking for:

But I was in for a shock when I measured with this earpad on my rig:

This (and the other ’thick’ earpads) changed the frequency response dramatically:

So now I had a greatly boosted bass region and the midrange was even more recessed and even more distant from the HD600, zooming in a little more of the frequency response:

But I did like the comfort I was getting with this very thick pads:

For those interested I bought these earpads from this aliexpress store selecting the 120mm x 100mm size, though I bought a few of the other sizes also.

A ‘cheap’ Eris?

The measurement I got also reminded me of measurements I spotted of “Z Reviews” new Eris headphone:

Which if you follow his channel is known for its ‘fun’ bass response and for its comfort. I actually did listen to the Eris at a recent Canjam and I agree for those wanting lots of bass it is a fun listen and very comfortable headphone, but it not what I had planned to turn the Thieaudio Ghost into. So I effectively “made” a cheap Eris, but then of course I also bought FiiO JA11 to ‘Fix’ the tuning anyway, the only thing was to now look at what PEQ I would create to change the sound of my “Thieaudio Ghost ‘Custom’ Edition”.

Creating PEQ to convert to Harman

Some headphones will take well to PEQ and some will not, typically if you have lots of sharp “peaks” and “dips” it will be hard to EQ as those peaks will happen a different frequency on everyone’s head and the other thing is the distortion, with too much distortion you should only really add PEQ filters which reduce the SPL/volume.

Looking at the graph you will see mostly it would need 2 very wide filters one to reduce the bass considerable and one to increase midrange back to neutral response.

In the end, I came up with the following simple filters - actually just 4 of them, so I have some wiggle room in the treble:

Then remeasuring the Ghost + new Earpads + JA11 with PEQ:

So the reason I left one of the PEQ filters was to remove that 13K/14K peak but since this area can be very subjective and is badly measured on these KB501x - I think that area should be done manually to preference.

What about distortion?

So the distortion measurements with the original pads doesn’t look good:

If you checked the “Diy-audio heaven” review you will see a similar poor distortion.

But, since the pads increased the bass response and then my EQ was bringing that bass down to the Harman target levels the distortion measurement after PEQ was " slightly better" (still not ideal) but acceptable for listening up to 80 dbSPL should be a problem and even louder will be mostly fine:

For me this fun exercise was a success, e.g. for roughly $70 I have a reasonable well tuned and now very comfortable headphone and one I am happy to use on different devices during a typical workday. Because it is very cheap, I have actually left it in my shared office space (which I would trust with my $500 headphones) so overall this is now a nice headphone to listen to music all day while I work.

Rating

At the normal price the Thieaudio Ghost is probably not worth it but at the typical sale price of $49.99 they are good bargain and a solid base for a simple project like this, even though I would have preferred them to have less bass distortion, so I could play at even louder volumes but the end result of this little experiment was a very comfortable and good sounding headphone for roughtly $70 which in my rating system has to be worth 5 stars.

Though without EQ and without the custom earpads I would only rate these with 3 stars.

Conclusion

This was a fun nerdy exercise which thought me a few lessons about how the sound can change dramatically with different earpads. But the end result was very good, if you can buy these headphones in a future Linsoul sale, find the same earpads on Aliexpress and use the same or similar PEQ with the FiiO KA11 dongle will be a very comfortable headphone which is great for everyday usage.