Introduction

Custom Art is a Polish audio brand founded in 2012 that has since made a strong name for itself in the enthusiast in-ear monitors (IEMs) community, for both its universal-fit IEMs (UIEMs, which is the default these days) and custom-fit IEMs (CIEMs). We took a detailed look at its current flagship—the FIBAE 7 Unlimited—in CIEM form recently wherein I had mentioned how FIBAE stands for Flat Impedance Balanced Armature Earphone and was the world’s first such technology, allowing for flat impedance and phase in IEMs that use balanced armature drivers. This helps address the issue of output impedance affecting the tonality of sensitive all-BA IEMs in particular.

To no surprise then, the FIBAE technology was developed by Custom Art because many of its IEMs used only balanced armature drivers. These were soon accompanied by hybrid driver designs, such as the highly interesting AAW x Custom Art Project 4+2 using dynamic and balanced armature drivers, so it was only a matter of time before Custom Art dipped its feet into the ever-increasing tribrid IEM market in using three different driver types. The vast majority of tribrid IEMs come out of China and tend to use a combination of DD, BA, and EST (electrostatic tweeter) drivers, but Custom Art had something else up its sleeve with the new FIBAE 5 that uses planar magnetic drivers instead for the higher frequencies! Thanks to Custom Art for providing a UIEM sample of the FIBAE 5 to TechPowerUp and we begin our review with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications