Coherent · Articulate · Attainable
Reference, re-engineered.
A single 10mm dynamic driver with a titanium-coated diaphragm, in a shell designed from scratch for this model. Helix is the most accessible instrument in the range: one driver, one shell, one fit.
IEM
A single gloss-black shell, drawn for this model rather than carried over from the range above, with the name engraved on the body and the Virtus mark on the faceplate. There is one finish and there is meant to be one: the less there is to hand-make, the further down the range this instrument can sit.
Most of the engineering in this range goes into making several drivers behave as one. Helix has only one, so that effort went elsewhere: into the diaphragm material, into a chamber cut for this driver alone, and into a shell that seals without impressions. The curve below is where it landed — measured on the same rig and plotted on the same scale as the Apex and the Vortex, so all three can be read against each other. It is a measurement, not a target curve. Drop a measurement export onto it for a second reference.
Helix runs a single 10mm dynamic driver with a titanium-coated diaphragm. A standard PET dome deforms under its own motion at high frequencies: the surface stops moving as one piece, and what should arrive as micro-detail arrives as hardness instead. The titanium layer raises the dome's rigidity enough to hold its shape at those velocities, which is what lets one driver resolve a band that would normally be handed to a dedicated tweeter.
Diaphragm Rigidity
The coating stabilises the diaphragm's high-frequency resonance rather than damping it away. A dome that holds its shape at speed resolves texture in the midrange and treble that the same driver in uncoated PET smears.
Custom Acoustic Chamber
The cavity is cut to the exact anatomy of this driver rather than adapted from a standard shell. Inside it, a quarter-spiral path carries the wavefront to the ear canal without the internal turbulence and shell reflections a straight cavity produces.
Custom-Shape Universal Fit
The shell was drawn for this model rather than carried over from the range above. Its body follows the contours of the ear closely enough to seat and seal the way a moulded shell does — up to 26 dB of passive isolation — without impressions, an appointment, or the cost that comes with them.
Drop your own measurement onto the chart to compare it with ours.Compare your own measurement with ours.
ARTA, REW, squig.link and plain CSV exports. Read in your browser — the file is never uploaded.
Both curves are levelled by their 200 Hz – 2 kHz average. Measurement rigs diverge above roughly 4 kHz, so read the treble as indicative.
The stabilised titanium dome translates into a midrange that is clear without being lit up. Vocals and acoustic instruments sit at the front with real weight and smooth texture, and the glare that usually arrives alongside that kind of clarity does not.
The same rigidity that resolves treble detail also lets the bass start and stop on time. Sub-bass has genuine presence and physical weight behind it, and because the driver is not fighting its own diaphragm, none of it bleeds upward into the lower mids.
A single driver radiates from one point and arrives at one time, so the stage holds together on its own. Complex passages separate under close attention and stay whole without it.
Every workshop runs into the same question eventually: how far down can the engineering go before it stops being the same engineering? Helix is our answer to it.
We modelled the chamber before we cut it, and what surprised us was how closely the prediction and the finished part agreed. That does not always happen. When it does, the rest of the time goes into listening rather than compensating — and what we heard was more transparent and more resolving than this position in the range would suggest, over a presentation that stays warm instead of turning clinical. That last part was never up for trade.
Helix is not a smaller Apex and it is not a cheaper Vortex. It is a single driver given the attention we would give an array, in a shell drawn specifically for it.
Driver Configuration
10mm Titanium-Coated Dynamic
Fit
Custom-Shape Universal
Connector
2-Pin
Impedance
18 ohm
Sensitivity
105 dB
Frequency Response
20 Hz – 20 kHz
Warranty
2 Years
Support
Lifetime
Every pair is registered to its owner. Defects and service covered for two years; questions, tuning advice, and care for as long as you own them.
Every message reaches the people building this — questions, custom enquiries, orders, or anything else. Write to us directly and we'll reply personally.
info@virtusaudio.comWe read every message and usually reply within a day.
