Earbuds Discussion Thread

Serratus looks like it’ll be showing up tomorrow, but my Blur 266 MX150 aPs v2 Retune 150Ω showed up this afternoon. I love new earbuds day! :metal::sunglasses:

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My Serratus has shipped!

EDIT: Apparently not for 5 days or so, waiting on a case…

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Intrigued I am and…

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Welcome to the club! I hope you enjoy them :slight_smile: I’m listening to the new The Crown soundtrack (season 5) using the Serratus + ifi ZEN stack. Wonderfully holographic and detailed!

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The Zen Can is great with buds in general. Click the XBass and bring up the bass, especially the sub bass. It’s basically my bud amplifier. I should get the iFi Go Blu for bud listening on the go with additional bass. The bass boost on the Zen Can is tastefully done, but not so on the Zen Dac. The Go Blu is suppose to be similar to the Zen Can in it’s boost.

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Have you tried them on a Hybrid-tube or OTL amp as they seem to need :zap: along with the Tantalus?

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I have not! But I am giving them 1.8 W already :slight_smile: I have yet to A/B with my sources so I don’t know if I can hear a difference between 0.24 vs 1.8 W. They sound good even on the 0.24W source though (Qudelix).

I wonder how they sound with tubes - @nymz have you tried this?

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I did not, only tried Delta sigma and Class A, no tuby tuby

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I just posted this in nymz review thread, but I’ll post here as well: Serratus are here. Time to see what all the fuss is about! :metal:

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I opted to skip the case so it would be sent out sooner. Until it comes I have no idea how much I may or may not need to completely rebalance how much is spent on source and IEMs out of total budget

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Ooooh exciting! Looking forward to your impressions!

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I’m spending a few days relaxing at my ranch and I brought my three latest earbud acquisitions with me for audio enjoyment. I’ll be trying the Serratus out for the first time in a little bit.

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Patiently awaiting your thoughts!

Taking my time with them, but I’ll post something later today for sure. Sound like a plan?

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No rush haha. Just very curious to get your take since you have a lot of really nice buds.

Wondering how the Serratus stack up to some of your fancier off-the-shelf buds (like the Simfonio Dragons, Ucotech, and Shozys for example) :sweat_smile:

I can answer that one right now. The Serratus hold their own against the other buds in my collection. Do I think they’re the best in my collection? No, but they’re very good and they’re clearly worth the price of admission, so to speak. They combine a lot of strengths into one earbud: good detail retrieval, good soundstage, very well balanced tuning, high level layering, wonderful timbre and tone, etc. They could easily represent someone’s one and only, endgame earbud purchase. They do many things on a high level and could keep even a demanding aficionado happy for a long time. They’ll be staying in my collection for sure and you’d be hard pressed to find an objectively better earbud for the money.

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Nice!

This begs the further question - if I have Serratus, is it worth chasing the metaphorical dragon further (and maybe literal dragon in the case of Simfonio Dragon 3)?

That very much depends on you. The Dragon 3 is an exceptional set, but I also think it’s a bit overpriced. It certainly isn’t twice as good as Serratus, but it is elite. Basically it comes down to this: How much better do you expect the Dragon 3 to be to justify the increased cost and if it doesn’t meet that expectation how much is that going to effect you?

Towards the higher end of buds a couple hundred dollar swing may only represent an objective increase in performance of something like 10-15%. As someone who owns the Dragon 3s, I’m happy I bought them and I listen to them frequently because they have some special sauce to me for sure, but I also know that you can find buds that are as good or better for less. I will place two caveats on that:

Number 1, that’s just my opinion and I know at least one person who views the Dragon 3 as the best bud out there and he has owned the 3+ as well as many other TOTL off the shelf and DIY buds which brings me to number 2. If the Dragon 3s are your perfect fit they may very well be the best out there because I haven’t heard another earbud that does what they do as well as they do it. They aren’t my perfect buds, but they are truly one of the best I have tried.

So yeah, all of that to say what I said at the beginning: Whether not that will be worth it is entirely up to you. How much is pursuing perfection worth to you and do you legitimately think the Dragon 3s represent that perfection or are at least a step closer to it? Those are really the two questions I’d recommend thinking about.

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Excellent points!

The age old question for everyone in this hobby haha. Does one stop entry level, hop to mid-fi, jump straight into the deep end with TOTL?

In my case, I’m trying to find one set to top off my collection and have been racking my brain on which one that should be - VE Sun Copper? Simfonio Dragon 3? Something entirely else that I haven’t heard of? There really are so many choices and it’s hard to make a decision lol.

In any case, this earbud journey has been more gentle on my wallet compared to when I did the same with IEMs earlier this year haha. I’m really itching to hear the best out there finally put a lid on my insatiable curiosity lol.

I feel you. Just a word of warning, I started the premium earbud journey with the intention of putting together a collection of three or four of the best sets out there. All I ended up doing was growing a penchant for very good earbuds instead. True, I have sold off more sets than I have kept, but there are just some amazing earbuds out there and it gets hard letting them go once you’ve heard them. The fact that they offer such a high price to performance ratio relative to other transducer mediums makes it easier to justify to. For all that, I don’t regret it for a second.

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