T20:
Excellent audio performance with accurate bass response and wonderful clarity in the highs.
RHA has gradually morphed from a boutique manufacturer of quality, budget earphones to a purveyor of much higher-end gear, and the new T20 represents the company's current top-of-the-line offering. Audiophiles keen on being able to tweak sound signature without involving digital signal processing or apps will be drawn to the T20's tuning filters—easily replaceable nozzles that emphasize focus on bass, reference, or treble. In this price range it would be nice to see a detachable cable, but with a plethora of accessories and excellent audio performance, there's not much to complain about with the T20. It earns our Editors' Choice award for high-end earphones.
Design
The stainless steel housings that hold the T20's "DualCoil" drivers—a type of driver RHA claims delivers more audio clarity and resolution—look high-end and handsome. Underneath each silicone eartip, the nozzle that extends toward the ear canal can be screwed off and removed—this is the tuning filter. The "reference" tuning filters are in place when the T20 is shipped, but can be swapped out with "treble" or "bass" filters.
A thick rubber cable descends from each earpiece, with a rigid, moldable section running a few inches from where the cable meets the housing you can sculpt the cable over the top of your ears and behind, and it stays in place quite well. The two cables join as one around mid-torso, terminating in a 3.5mm connection—a slider along the cable can be pulled upward if you'd rather have the cables combine closer to chin height. It's really too bad the cable isn't removable, however—considering it's likely to malfunction long before the drivers do, it would add significant value to a very expensive purchase.
It's also a tad surprising that earphones this expensive don't ship with a 1/4-inch headphone jack adapter for use with home audio gear, but those are cheap and easy enough to find. However, between the tuning filters and a whopping eight pairs of silicone eartips in various sizes and shapes, as well as two pairs of Comply foam eartips, there's little to complain about in the accessories department. The goodies don't stop there—you also get a classy zip-up protective pouch and a removable shirt-clip.
Performance
Going into this review, the big question was: How will the T20's sound signature differ from that of its (slightly) more affordable sibling, the RHA T10i? The T10i is a high-quality offering that also features tuning filters—but regardless of which filter you have in, the 10i packs some very boosted bass. The T20 delivers a more flat-response style sound signature that is more accurate—its default response, with the "reference" tuning filters in place, is balanced, clear, and neither bass-heavy nor brittle.
On tracks with powerful sub-bass levels, like The Knife's "Silent Shout," the T20 delivers accurate, powerful low-end. This isn't the sound of a wildly boosted bass response, it's the sound of accurately reproduced, very powerful bass in a mix. Putting the added bass filters in obviously increases the bass response, but without going over the top—it's like bass boosting for audiophiles, who really only want a small amount of added low-end.
Using the default reference tuning filters, Bill Callahan's "Drover" sounds fantastic. His voice gets plenty of high-mid treble edge to remain clear and crisp, despite being paired with a rich presence in the low-mids. The drums on this track can sound overly thunderous on earphones that boost the lows wildly, but through the T20, while we do get a strong sense of the drums' lower frequencies, everything sounds natural. This is one of the more balanced sound signatures we've heard lately—everything in every range gets more or less equal representation through the reference tuning filters.
On Jay-Z and Kanye West's "No Church in the Wild," the kick drum loop's attack is nice and crisp, with plenty of high-mid punch to allow the hits to slice through the multi-layered mix with ease. The vocals, which float above the track with ease, are never overly sibilant, but have plenty of bright, high-frequency presence. The sub-bass synth hits that punctuate the beat here are not as intense through the T20 as they are through heavily-bass boosted pairs, but they still sound plenty powerful. And, of course, if you wish, you can put in the bass filters for more thump.
Orchestral tracks, like the opening scene in John Adams' The Gospel According to the Other Mary, sound quite bright through the reference filters. I actually preferred the bass filters here—they added some extra depth that brought out the lower register instrumentation more without sacrificing clarity and brightness. So, you may have to do some swapping of filters here and there to get the sound and balance you prefer, but the process of changing the filters is very quick and simple.
If you're trying to decide between the T10i and the T20, the T20 is, in our opinion, the better option, but bass lovers will likely gravitate more to the T10i. For slightly less money, we also are big fans of the Westone W10. But most of the earphones we test tend to cost less than either of these models. The recently released Bowers & Wilkins C5 Series 2, for instance, is an excellent choice, as is the Yamaha EPH-M200. The RHA T20 is a worthy Editors' Choice for serious music lovers.
Read the full review at PCMag.com