The ICELAB brand may still be relatively unfamiliar to audiophiles in mainland China. It comes from Hong Kong and currently offers only a limited number of models. The one that has perhaps gained a bit more presence recently is their flagship, the Spectrum; earlier there was also a model I personally praised highly, called the Kaleidoscope. The Lumira is a hybrid-driver IEM they recently released, featuring one dynamic driver and two planar drivers, priced at 2,800 RMB. When I auditioned it at the Beijing exhibition, I felt its overall technical performance was very high, and over the past while I have dug deeper into its sonic personality. I found that although it is currently ICELAB’s least expensive model, it is actually the product that better fits a broadly defined all-rounder profile. That said, products positioned this way are becoming increasingly common; many brands have begun pursuing higher overall technical performance and broader stylistic adaptability in lower-priced products, while reserving highly distinctive aesthetic leanings for their own higher-priced offerings. Intense competition has become the norm. This Lumira inherits the brand’s strength in pop vocal tuning while presenting a sound texture with greater instrumental refinement.
Let’s briefly go over the unboxing.
The unboxing process is fairly straightforward. After opening the packaging, you are greeted by a large carrying case and a very generous set of accessories, including interchangeable metal faceplates in different colours and a small screwdriver for swapping them. The case itself also serves to secure the accessories, so after unboxing you can choose to remove the internal retaining foam, turning it into a spacious large carrying pouch that can hold several compact IEMs or dongle DACs at once, along with a generous array of accessories. The interchangeable metal faceplates are one of the Lumira’s selling points. The factory default is a 24K gold-plated gold faceplate, and black and white versions are also included in the box. You can choose to use the same colour on both earpieces or go for a mismatched pair; personally, I think the black-and-white pairing looks quite good.
Regarding product naming, the Lumira still belongs to ICELAB’s Light series, and the models within the series are conceptually linked. For example, the Kaleidoscope can be understood as a prism, the Lumira as incident white light, and the Spectrum as the refracted rainbow pattern. Accordingly, the Spectrum is positioned as the flagship, while the Lumira—as the initial incident light—is the brand’s entry-level model. Its driver configuration itself is not complicated: one full-range dynamic driver and two micro planar drivers. Based on a self-developed acoustic structure, it has a very complex internal cavity design, including a large-capacity front cavity, a quadruple rear cavity, a semi-open acoustic rear cavity, and dual horn acoustic gain. We often say that working with dynamic drivers is working with air; airflow control can sometimes determine the upper performance limit of a driver. But the Lumira’s dynamic diaphragm itself has a very complex design and sufficiently high baseline performance, while the planar drivers mainly play a supporting role. In terms of listening, the Lumira is also closer to the sound of a full-range single dynamic driver. Its diaphragm is a 10.3mm PET-based composite diaphragm paired with a metal dome, but its composite coating is applied through vacuum magnetron sputtering, uniformly sputtering chromium and titanium onto the diaphragm surface. The design goal is to pursue superior airiness and a natural treble texture, offering an advantage in timbre over a single coating. Its micro planar drivers are the balanced-armature-style planar units that have been widely used over the past year, rather than 6mm circular planar units. From a crossover perspective, this is closer to a traditional dynamic-plus-balanced-armature architecture; it has long since ceased to be something that requires testing for phase coherence.
ICELAB put considerable effort into the stock cable. They developed a brand-new upgrade cable with an independent shielding structure for the Lumira. The conductor is high-purity silver-plated copper, and the shielding efficiency is as high as 94%. The conductor section is 27AWG, while the silver-plated shielding layer is 22.7AWG. In addition, the earphone uses Taiwan-imported 7N monocrystalline copper internal wiring and vintage-grade Wonder Solder lead-free solder. Wonder Solder is arguably one of the four major solder brands in audiophile circles. Its characteristics are transparency, openness, and a good sense of airiness. Although I personally have no experience in researching solder and no hands-on ability in that regard, judging from the sonic characteristics the Lumira displays, it matches the properties of this solder very well.
At the exhibition, I once described the Lumira’s vocals as somewhat plain, but I can now largely retract that conclusion. Looking back at my photos from the show, the eartips I used during the audition were a rather firm pair with a black surface and orange bore—that is, not the one shown in the photo. In most cases, I would not recommend that model: the sound comes across as more forthright and harder-edged, and the vocals lack a touch of oily smoothness.The other version of white eartips included in the box, however, better matches the brand’s tuning goals. They are the XWB from the Hong Kong brand Nostalgia, retailing at as much as 65 RMB per pair. These eartips have many advantages: not only do they fit well and feel soft and skin-friendly, but they also sound more natural and delicate. They are especially flattering to vocals, bringing a lovely sweetness and smoothness without any significant colouration, and they come closer to the brand’s description of the Lumira’s sound as full of “vitality.”
If I am to explain clearly what kind of sound the Lumira has, I would first like to revisit two other products from the ICELAB brand. The first is the flagship Spectrum. I think it fits the profile of a pop-oriented “exciting” IEM very well: thick low frequencies, high density, and a slight sense of accumulated energy, yet it sounds highly engaging, with a strong sense of sonic surge—lush at first listen—while not being HUFI-leaning, and with plenty of treble penetration. I consider it a product rich in “sensory stimulation,” and many bestselling flagship models share a similar character, such as the Odin and Above the Stars. Sensory stimulation is the trait most likely to catch the ear and attract people in an audio product’s listening environment; it includes large dynamics, somewhat redundant density, ample bass quantity, more intimate vocals, and so on, with beautiful timbre coming only after that. Conversely, the Kaleidoscope is a model whose timbral beauty I consider excellent: its vocals are oily, smooth, clear, and sweet, yet its sonic framework is also very healthily expressed, with well-proportioned soundstage. It is very suitable for lyrical vocals and for delicate, silky-leaning small-scale chamber music. The Lumira takes a more compromise approach: it also expresses sensory stimulation, but in a more moderate way. On first listen, it has a reasonably engaging foundation, and it will quickly draw your attention to its natural, beautiful timbre. Alongside balanced energy, it also offers sufficiently high technical performance for its price.
Although the Lumira is a dynamic-driver-led product, it still presents the kind of very modern high density and excellent extension at both ends. Its bass has sufficiently deep sub-bass extension and clearly defined textural detail, but the overall quantity and impact in the fundamental-frequency region are not as “punchy” as the Spectrum. It places more emphasis on focused imaging rather than highlighting higher density, thicker decay, or delay, so this cheaper Lumira actually displays the kind of excellent bass—both deep and detailed—that better suits classical music. It sounds noticeably cleaner than the Spectrum, while its bass appeal for pop is kept to just the right degree: there is atmosphere, but it is absolutely not rich. I am genuinely very satisfied with its treble and soundstage, because its handling of the planar drivers’ integration is very natural, compensating for the traditional single-dynamic-driver shortcoming of insufficient treble density. Yet after filling in that density, its treble extension is ample while still sounding very light and airy; this sense of lightness is also one source of its treble liveliness. Earphones with well-executed treble often share another trait: the vertical (Y-axis) soundstage height is also handled very well, because that is inherently related to treble extension—but the Lumira’s lateral scale is already sufficiently good, and its depth also has a certain extensibility, so it is fully capable of reproducing classical and live recordings with a strong sense of presence. To put it another way, if you define it as a pop-oriented IEM, then its soundstage is somewhat “above standard.” Personally, however, I still would not recommend the Lumira for listening to symphonies: its detail, dynamics, and soundstage scale are all sufficient, but its midrange density is slightly weak (the midrange is, after all, the fundamental frequency of most instruments), so it is not as solid as similarly priced products with multiple balanced-armature drivers, which have a more densely built skeletal feel. I like using it for small-scale works or large-dynamic piano concertos, but for symphonies such as Mahler or Bruckner, the sound still comes across as a bit too refined, lacking sufficient “authority.”
When it comes to vocal expression, the Lumira is a rare product at its price that achieves a sufficiently high balance between male and female voices without relying on tonal colouration; it makes vocals sound good purely through the presentation of texture. This is a more sophisticated approach in the tuning process. To unpack that statement, you can understand it as follows: its vocals are not made pleasing through warm or cool colouration, nor through forced grain, nor through an imposed rich vocal foundation or drawn-out breath extension. The timbre itself is neutral and accurate, yet on a completely neutral foundation it makes vocals oily-smooth and clear-sweet, with moderate thickness and very healthy mouth size and imaging proportions. Whether you enjoy anime music, Cantopop and Mandopop ballads, or jazz and folk, it seems to fall entirely within the Lumira’s capabilities. The more vocal tracks I auditioned the Lumira with, the more I felt that this brand’s tuning craftsmanship is very deep. Its “poison” is released slowly rather than hitting you at first listen like the Spectrum; it is a vocal presentation that makes me very willing to listen over the long term and to use as my main IEM.
From the perspective of raw technical performance, the Lumira has no shortcomings that must be pointed out. Here I will mention a few areas where it might deter some listeners or fall short. First, its degree of openness is relatively high and its vents are fairly large, so its passive isolation is not particularly good. Second, although I define it as a pop-leaning IEM, in terms of bass quantity, if measured from the perspective of a traditional pop-oriented IEM, it is indeed rather restrained—because a good portion of pure pop fans do not necessarily need bass quality, and sensory stimulation may be the more important element. Its bass is indeed a bit lacking in the “thrill” factor. But pop-leaning itself is a very broad category, and quite a lot of pop music features extremely complex arrangements and very high-quality instrumental recordings, so impressions in this regard are genuinely a matter of personal perspective; users and brands’ design goals are inherently a two-way selection, and often there is only trade-off, not right or wrong. Although ICELAB currently has little brand power to support it in the mainland market, in terms of its attitude toward hardware R&D and its tuning craftsmanship, it has something of a hidden-gem brand about it. In terms of market scale, it is “small but beautiful,” yet every one of its products is tough to beat in terms of product strength.
Source: Li Ling Jia Qi
