The count is finished guys after more than 2 long days of hard work. Below the official basic level results with advanced analysis to come later (and if we have any data scientist that want to take those GDPR masked raw results into proper math-doing and I happy to share).
This is a long post, so be warned and grab yourself a nice cup of tea, because there are numbers ahead
HiFi Guides IEM of the year raw results
- Number of votes: 41 - I want to thank every single person that spend couple of minutes of their precious time for no direct benefit! I wanted to name each one of you in person, but I underestimated the final interest, so pardon me.
Maybe @Ohmboy has some data on number people that actively post in IEMs/other section so to see what is the voting frequency - Demographics - I am sorry to say, but at least 95% of us are male, so no parities definitely.
Most of us are in best age between 25 and 39 years (joke), but there are people from every single moment of life apart from <18. So quite mature population
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Most of us to my surprise are from Europe, I was completely sure we are minority knowing the best touring group is in North America. Come on EU guys, we need to gather up!
- How many IEMs do you have? - this is a forum of hoarders, with >75% having more sets than anyone would ever need realistically. Good for you!
- What is your favourite IEM driver configuration? - DD rules in short, but hybrids based on DD are significantly the most liked config. I think that question was very broad and some people connected this with the next one and answered about the config of the favourite set of theirs. My honest intention was about the general most liked config that you tend to find the most fun with. But the data is cool as it is presented
- What is your leave-the-hobby IEM? The one you would take on the deserted island with you. - surprisingly the answer that was most repeated was Subtonic Storm. Surprising as it is a set that is relatively rare, but probably it is as good as it can be. I guess this is the most favourite set of the forum.
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For reference it got 4/41 votes, so the votes were very distributed.
On podium to my surprise and happiness there was Softears Twilight with 3/41 votes and ex equo UM Mest series, Thieaudio Monarch series, FatFreq Maestro series, Mangird Tea series (!) and Sennheiser IE900 (!!). All of them with 2/41 votes. I guess having series as common vote was not fair, sorry. Would be better next year - What is your favourite release of the year? Releases dated at 2023. - I thought it would end up being some of the Simgot ones, but the winner is for heavy wallets as well - Thieaudio Monarch III.
It got 4/41 votes, so also extremely distributed voting. On the second place EA500 with 3/41 and on third Salnotes Zero II and Simgot EA1000 with 2/41. The rest got for 1 vote. I would make honourable mentions for 2 buds that made it to the list - Rikubuds Saber 3 of our local friend @Rikudou_Goku and TGXear Desolation Sound (which actually was mentioned in previous question as well!) - IEMs or Buds? (mark your preference on the scale) - no surprise, answers in a poll named IEM of the year were mostly distributed around IEMs being the preference of you guys. Still very interesting, I hope next year we would see some shift to the right, as it is really great area to be explored for IEM lovers
- What types of audio gear do you actively use? - BT headphones and BT speakers being surprsisingly low, but the most surprising is the fact that TWS is used by less than 50% of the people answering!
- What is your primary way of listening to the music? - I concur I thought DAPs are dying breed, but you keep the hobby going. I thought dongles would be dominant within IEM people.
- Where do you put the emphasize on more in the music you love? - I am voting this to be the stupidest question, but here are the answers - 1 are vocals, 5 are instrumentals. As a vocal lover I am a bit disappointed
Once again thank you guys. My plan is to repeat the poll next year to see what was changed and improve on some questions add a few and probably not to remove any, so to see the adjustments in answers. If you have any feedback any suggestions, any questions you would like to see answers for just let me know.
