Internal Structure of the SDK (Silver Dragon King)
Silver Dragon King is a 4-way, 7-driver tribrid IEM consisting of 1DD+4BA+2BC drivers. A 10mm beryllium dynamic driver covers the low range accompanied by two bone conductor drivers, with 2 Sonion BAs for the mids, and another 2 Sonion BAs for the highs. The SDK’s bone conductor drivers use air conduction technology to transmit a realistic and dynamic sound field, as well as the sound tubes for transmitting the bass are made of stainless tubes to produce their unique sound signature.
Beautifully made Silver-plated Earpieces
Panther applied a simplistic yet lush appearance for the Silver Dragon King. With an opaque black lacquer resin, jewelry-level craftsmanship is applied for the faceplates using 925 silver plating and 18k gold with each side of the faceplate engraved with logos of SDK and Panther Audio. The faceplates’ surface has that hand-hammered finish (although smooth to the touch) which differs from other silver-plated designs, as well as giving SDK a luxurious look despite the simple color combination.
The Stock Cable: Hello 3.5mm..?
While I appreciate SDK in various ways, if I have to mention the biggest downside of these is that Panther Audio has terminated their cable with a 3.5mm unbalanced plug. Panther sure has put efforts into the cable material itself as the wires are made of 8-braided, graphene, and silver-plated copper.
Well, some brands really don’t care about balanced output so they just throw in the most common thin, black stock cable and obviously terminate with a 3.5mm plug, though Panther sure did put efforts into their cables – yet the plug is… 3.5mm. Upon request, it would still be possible to ask for a 4.4mm cable termination, though not including the plug termination option as default is a let-down for me – so is my SDK came with a 3.5mm plug that I usually don’t use for flagship-tier IEMs.
Caution: The King demands you to pair with the right sources…
The SDK is quite source-dependent, as well as for cables and eartips. As for eartips, I’ve found the stock Simbio tips and EPro EP00 tips to work the best. The Simbio tips give the originally intended sound, meanwhile, the EPro EP00 tips give extra depth to the bass and mid, making the tone more pulled down and mature. The stock tips work the best if not just as good as EP00, though for the sake of making sure of finding your best matching preferences, I advise trying both tips. Other major eartips didn’t seem to work so well, or at least not as well as these two mentioned ones.
Alongside, the Silver Dragon King is also very responsive to what cables and source player you match it with. For the cables, I’ve found some decent copper or SPC cables to match better with SDK than its stock cable for producing a deeper and fuller low-mid response, despite Panther Audio’s efforts into their cable materials. The stock cable still gives a good performance, though if you have a quality cable, I suggest pairing it with SDK as there’s a good chance that it may sound better than the stock cable unfortunately. As for the source, the Silver Dragon King requires to be paired with a warm-sounding or neutral-warm player.
To recommend within my gears, I’m using Astell&Kern SP2000 Copper, Lotoo Paw Gold Touch, iBasso DX220 Max, and Cayin N8BB for a good match with SDK. Sharper, reference-sounding players such as Astell&Kern SE300 did not match well with SDK as the lower-ends get too light as well as the mid-range getting a tad thin to my taste. In all, the SDK is quite picky on what and how you pair these IEMs with, so keep that in mind. Though not too much to worry about, however. My impressions are written based on the stock cable and eartips, and although I’ve paired with a good-matching source (SP2000 CU) for the testing, most DAP and even MP3 worked well in terms of pairing. So as long as you steer away from pairing with sources that are well-known for sounding sharp or bright, the pairing would work just fine with SDK.
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