Hey, guys, sorry for breaking up the photography talk but I wanted to drop some quick impressions of the LetShuoer Mystic 8, their latest near-kilobuck release.
I am a big fan of all-BA IEMs… when they’re done right. - Now, I’m not trying to insinuate the M8s aren’t done right, in fact, I think for what type of signature the M8s are going for they’re done extremely well. I’m just not the right audience for such a presentation.
Right off the bat, I can go ahead and say I really enjoy the overall aesthetic of this set, the unboxing experience is very nice.
I’m not sure how I feel about the included gifts, the ring and the necklace, but regardless I think they’re a very nice touch. It’s much better than a Thieaudio set, for example, which is notorious for being space in terms of included accessories, to say the least.
The included cable is not my favorite, however. I don’t have any pics of it, but I’m sure you can find some online in abundance. I found it overly thin and quite tangly with annoying behavior. I never used it and just took it out of the very nice half-metal, half-rubber carrying case, (which I also don’t have any pics of… my bad), just to take a peak. I instantly put it back. The earpieces, however… are stunning. They feel extremely solid being made out of Precision CNC Titanium Alloy. They’re so smooth and comfortable with a little weight behind them… I really loved the feel and comfort of these. Not to mention, the design. I quite like it!
Onto sound… where do I begin? I’d say that the Mystic 8 is one of the best representations of an ultra-clean, monitor-style tuning I’ve been lucky enough to experience in my time in the hobby.
Vocals are angelic, with a crisp and sharp attack without being fatiguing at the right volume level. Vocals are extremely resolute with lovely separation between background instruments and other musical elements.
Songs like Anything You Like by Winten, Say It To My Face by Gloomie, Getting It On by SALES, Younger and Dumber by Indigo De Souza, & First Touch by Francis Delirium to name a few sound… pretty stunning when focusing solely on the vocals. Treble is also nicely extended and airy & right up my alley if I’m honest. The usual suspects here shine well - notably, Days by No Vacation is a voyage of auditory excellence… when focusing on the small ride cymbal taps and big crash cymbal blasts to the ear drum. It’s quite good… but where the M8s fall apart undoubtedly is in the bass department.
Man, this is where they fall completely flat in my humble opinion.
I reviewed the KZ ZA12 recently and for all intents and purposes that set can be considered a brighter leaning tune and I highlighted that in my review. Because of the tuning, I totally understand that my usual library wouldn’t be the right fit, so, I switched it up a bit and leaned more into ballads and vocal-centric music and it worked, for the most part. Please don’t misinterpret this as me comparing the M8s to the ZA12, no shot, the M8s are FAR and away more refined in every single way compared to the KZs. However… where is the tactility in the bass on the Mystic 8s?! Not only are they bass light in terms of tuning, but I just never got the sensation of tactility and speed in the bass department. The sub-bass felt limp, I mean almost completely non-existent, the mid-bass lacked any kind of depth or a whiff of authority.
What happened here?
Because of this, I have to categorize the M8s as a mighty fine set if you’re looking for a specialty set for your ballads and maybe classical library with superb technicalities; resolution, detail retrieval, imaging, instrument separation (not so much staging, my HRTF didn’t perceive the M8s as being particularly wide), but outside of that I’d probably look elsewhere.
I know this is a bit shorter than usual, but I hope I was able to drive the point home a bit!
Thanks for reading, take care, boys 
Then it’s a failure
