I bought a pair of these as I wanted some nice wireless ear/headphones for walking and traveling. I wanted an improvement over my cheap Beyerdynamic fold-up wired 'phones.
The CAs get universal praise in both reviews and forums. They are purportedly much nicer-sounding than the AirPods, and considering I thought the AirPods were fairly decent when I heard them, I was genuinely excited.
So imagine my disappointment when they turned up, I fired them up, and they sounded like absolute garbage.
My immediate thoughts were "where's the bass?", and "why is the midrange so painfully prolific?".
Much fiddling ensued, including trying all the included tips, and ordering a set of the large memory foam tips. These larger tips made a small difference to the bass response, but they still sound like utter crap, so they're going back.
I don't understand the praise. They seem to fit fine, which is more than I can say for most earphones that I have tried over the years, but I don't recall being overly impressed with any that I have owned in the past, including Shure and Etymotic models. They are comfortable to wear, and the soundstage is nice. But they genuinely sound lo-fi. They do not sound good with any genres of music that I have tried. I can't even turn them up to enjoyable listening levels without vocals being so ear-piercing.
So I think this settles it; I am expecting too much from earphones. After further deliberation on headphones, A set of Sennheiser PXC550-IIs are on their way. If they're crap, then I give up. I'm selling all my audio equipment and never listening to music ever again.