MyST Nail 2 headphones test

MyST Nail 2 armature headphones are made by a small American company(! by Mycroft. The model has a “younger brother” – MyST Nail 1 – it also has armature drivers, but with lower impedance – 60 ohms against 120, which makes them more suitable for use with most portable players.

The appearance of MyST Nail 2 is rather clumsy: the headphones have an aluminum case with visible traces of grinding. There are no inscriptions and logos indicating the brand and model name on them – there is only a fat black dot on the right earphone to distinguish it from the left.

The Nail 2 package is even more minimalistic than it looks. The headphones come in… a simple plastic bag, without any accessories. Even the earpieces are not included, you have to buy them separately. The manufacturer recommends to use silicone tips from Phonak Audeo headphones – we made our test listening with them.

Ergonomics

With the aforementioned medium sized attachments, the headphones can be planted quite deeply. However, can in this case is not mandatory. With a shallow fit, MyST Nail 2 gives almost the same sound as a deep fit. The advantage of deep seating is only a stronger isolation from outside noise.

Sound

The sound of MyST Nail 2 combines three things that are rarely found together in any other headphones.

First of all they, MyST Nail 2, are definitely ‘tasteful’. They have an unusual tonal balance: the amount of bass in them is quite excessive in the high frequencies, on the contrary, there is a strong decline, and in the midrange, there is a slight predominance of the lower part over the top.

This register ratio makes the MyST Nail 2 sound very specific. The “ginormous” bass gives it power, weightiness, and quite atypical for in-ear headphones scale. Decrease in high frequencies completely deprives it of annoying brightness, but at the same time makes it “muted. Perhaps some users will find it too calm, they will feel the lack of sharpness, sharp.

Secondly, the sound of MyST Nail 2 is natural. Yes, there is some dip in the upper part of the midrange, but it is not very big – so traditionally it has no negative effect on the sound quality, but just adds some volume to it. All voices and live instruments sound natural.

Thirdly and thirdly, the MyST Nail 2 has an amazing resolution. With a cursory listening you may not notice it – the headphones, as it was already said, are very “dim”, and some listeners may take their “dullness” for “turbidity” and lack of audibility.

But if you listen MyST Nail 2 more attentively you will discover a lot of small nuances in their sound. And to a smaller extent it will be different rustles, squeaks and other details of phonograms, that do not relate to music – and to a greater extent – room reverberations, overtones and fades of instruments, which significantly contribute to the formation of a realistic musical image.

And with the intelligibility of MyST Nail 2, in fact, have no problems. They don’t skimp on fast-paced percussion and can easily reproduce compositions with many instruments playing simultaneously, letting you hear every instrument in great detail.