Crinacle’s Daybreak Marks a New Dawn for CrinEar

For those who might have missed it, Crinacle, a prominent figure in the audio community, announced the launch of his own brand earlier this year. Called CrinEar, the brand aims to put Crinacle’s tuning philosophy and audio chops front and centre, following years of reviewing and collaborating with countless manufacturers across the industry.

The CrinEar Meta marked both the brand’s and Crinacle’s first solo outing, untethered from any existing brand. It wasn’t just the tuning, Crinacle now had full control over the design, hardware, and even the unboxing experience. The sales of the 249USD Meta was limited to just 999 units, a move that perhaps not everyone in the community was a fan of.

Still, criticism didn’t stop all 999 units from selling out in under an hour. If nothing else, it proved one thing: Crinacle remains a massive influence in the IEM and wider audio space. And typically, if something bears his name, you can expect it to punch well above its weight.

Enter the CrinEar Daybreak, a follow-up with a very different philosophy. While it has big shoes to fill, these are different shoes. Unlike the Meta, the Daybreak is CrinEar’s first full-production model, meaning there’s no unit cap and no race-to-cart frenzy.

While the driver configuration on the Meta was kept hush-hush, the Daybreak openly sports one dynamic driver (DD) for sub-bass, two balanced armatures (BAs) for mids, and two micro-planar tweeters for treble extension. Tuning is based on the IEF Preference 2025 target, Crinacle’s own refinement of the Population-Averaged Diffuse Field target, and was done using a Brüel & Kjær Type 5128 ear simulator, a lab-grade measurement rig that costs well over 20,000USD.

The CrinEar Daybreak is now available for 169.99USD (about RM738.00) via Crinacle’s own store, Hangout.Audio, as well as Amazon and AliExpress.