Introduction

The summer of 2022 saw the debut of a new audio brand from China called Truthear. Normally this alone would not be anything special given the multitude of new brands that seem to pop up every month from there but something was different this time. Truthear had a relationship with other established brands, including MOONDROP, and it’s connection to the established distributor SHENZHENAUDIO also helped give it an edge from day one. Then came the part where its debut product was literally called Truthear x Crinacle ZERO given the collaboration with IEM influencer Crinacle, and this marketing machine did not have to work hard to get an instant success with its then-novel dual dynamic driver set that aimed to hit the Harman in-ear target at a highly reasonable cost. It won a recommendation from us accordingly and followed this up with the even more impressive HEXA as well as the 1-2 punch of HOLA and SHIO thereafter. Needless to say then that Truthear has earned some credit in the demanding IEM consumer market which was eagerly awaiting what is next from the brand.

A month had just passed since the launch of the ZERO and Crinacle had a teaser up on twitter about something he seemed really proud of. I then got a message from him about how his next collaboration product was going to address the issues I personally had with the ZERO and this started a slow and steady endeavor on his part to develop what became known as Project Red. It was secretly going around to trade shows to get feedback from people and underwent multiple revisions in the months since. A public demo at an audio show earlier this year seemingly confirmed this was going to be a different version of the Truthear ZERO itself, which is interesting in that the original product was already a collaboration with the very same person. We are now in an age of nested collaborations so I’ll let you work your way out of this. In the meantime, let’s just say that Project Red was finalized and is officially titled Truthear x Crinacle ZERO:RED. It clearly looks red too, as seen above, and this has been the most anticipated set of IEMs I can think of since I started reviewing them! So let’s not delay further and see if the hype is justified in our review today made possible by SHENZHENAUDIO providing a review sample to TechPowerUp, and we begin with a look at the product specifications in the table below.

Specifications