While I get it, since I am a huge Aful Explorer fan. I still think there should be a waiting period, and most HoF votes in sports have a 5 year wait, music uses 25 years from first recording. I am guessing it should be a year or two for IEMs, maybe?
Aful, ThieAudio, and Ziigaat had some bangers this year.
I am never sure about the long term impact of Simgot, which is why a waiting period is a good idea. The EA500 certainly merits some love, but it isn’t even in my top 5 under $100 right now.
Yeah, 1-2 years sounds about right. With the pace of releases, if something still stands out 1 year later, it’s done incredibly well.
Fully agree. IEM tech moves so quickly now that a model must still stand tall a year after its release to even be considered for Hall of Fame status.
Look at the Moondrop Starfield, for example. It was the hot item, the bees’ knees, upon its release. A year or two later, it was in the trash bin as an example of early, primitive Harman hugging.
Yeah that is the sad thing about it when I first got it since that IEM was special to me and got me into different tunings as well. Now I realized I am even more disappointed when I have found out that the Starfield 2 by Moondrop is not the same one as the original one and I was expecting an upgrade from it as well.
But yeah the tech nowadays moves too fast, and not all can aged like fine wine, for I do think those types are really rare nowadays.
Totally agree—tech moves so fast now, it’s tough for IEMs to stay iconic. It’s like every year there’s something new stealing the spotlight. The ones that age like fine wine are definitely rare gems and deserve all the love they get!
I consider the EJ07 one the most important sets in the hobby.
I am sure it wasn’t Moondrop’s plan, but the Aria had a much larger impact on the hobby.
I always think that ThieAudio Legacy 2 deserves a spot, despite the fact that I don’t think they hold up very well in today’s market. A good hybrid at $100 that released in an era when that was the price on decent DD tunings.
I also think the KZ ZS10 Pro might deserve a spot, purely for the number of new people it drew into the hobby. It was a $50 hybrid at a time when a passable single DD was $100.
True, that one and the older Xiaomi Piston 2 drew in a LOT of people into the hobby.
Legendary iems in my journey
You heard anything that is an upgrade for it?
The closest ive found to an upgrade is the Campfire Cascara Ive not tried the New OH10 though
If you enjoyed the bass off the oh10, give the CFA Clara a go! I plan on getting a go with it eventually but its already seeing a lot of amazing reception.
I still own the DK-3001. Back then it was everybody’s darling and a blind buy for $499 but I never really bonded with that set and for some reason preferred some much cheaper Chi-Fi sets and anything from my ever growing collection of single DDs.
You beat me to it even though lately I pick any of my 3 Simgots (OG 500, LM, EA1000) over the O2, even the OG500 (quad mod) at a third of the price. YMMV.
I literally don’t leave home without any of my 3 XR Etys (2/3/4), most of the time the ER4XR … love them to bits. The unsurpassed noise isolation has saved the rest of my sanity more often than I remember (e.g. long flights with crying kids/babies right next to me, yikes).
Still have mine, back then they’ve been my daily beaters for a while until I replaced them with the steampunk Revonext QT5, the tiny but mighty KZ ZSA and the …
Another daily beater (+ the infamous ZS6) before I went 100% single DDs … to this day.
No more $$$ on hy-tri-quad-clusterbrids for this old geezer. YMMV.
Recently I became acquainted with the now year plus old NiceNCK Himalaya. Lovely titanium single DD that simply does a lot very well, for me.
I own and love my Himalayas (w. modded Simgot nozzles) on a good chain, especially the great bass
quality, transparency and spatial reproduction but it took some extended rolling (xy modded Simgot nozzles, tips, sources, cables) to finally get them there. The OG nozzles must be a joke of sorts though, like those from some other mid-fi single DDs (Tanchjim Origin).
