I think Wade at Dankpods said it best “Good audio stays good”. If you look at other segments of tech, I think audio is the one that has progressed maybe the least. High end Headphones from the 70s seem to sound just as good as mid level cans from today. So, they’ve definitely gotten a lot more affordable, but I don’t think it’s as big of jump as say going from an old tube TV to a Flatscreen 85 inch 8k OLED.
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I agree but I think it’s more about driver/drivers and their implementation than something being obsolete… BA’s mostly rule the Chifi iem market because of being small, cheap and the number of “bragging rights” etc…a well tuned DD set can still be very enjoyable today, just look at most high end speakers they’re still predominantly DD’s…BA’s and EST’s are only used in IEM’s because of space and cost and not necessarily their replay quality 
BAs (and ESTs) are more expensive than DDs. DDs are the cheapest driver type out there.
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Yes true but try and fit and tune 3-4+ DD’s in an IEM…like I said it’s all about space and implementation.
a single DD is enough.
With BAs, you need a few of them.
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Luddite 
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You can’t have “luddite” without “dd”
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One of the most nimble and capable dynamic drivers I’m listening to right now is from Apple. I’m totally serious. If they can improve the resolution and some other small things, ChiFi will steal tech if it can 
.
And I agree that one DD is enough as long as it’s good quality.
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I’m starting to get sus regarding people describing sound/headstage.
I’m currently using two dongles daily, one is the Questyle M15 and the other one is Letshouer DT02 which came with my Kinda Lava launch bundle.
The retail price of the DT02 is $90. The M15 is $249 as most of you know.
Anyway, when I listen to both, the M15 is slightly more technical, cleaner and more powerful sounding. All the good stuff you could want.
Except one thing… its headstage is annoyingly narrow. In fact, the M15 induces an inescapable “sonic wall” effect where you can sense where the sound kind of arbitrarily stops expanding left and right. The M15 is analytical in nature and imparts this nature onto whatever IEM it is driving, effectively colouring and skewing the entire experience.
By contrast, the DT02 is noticeably wider, it does not have these “sonic walls” and is 85% as capable elsewhere, so for IEMs, it has the M15 beat as far as I am concerned.
For me, “sonic walls” ruin the experience with IEMs. I now only use the M15 to drive my active speakers where the “sonic wall” effect doesn’t matter.
So here is the main point of all this - when people talk about stage with IEMs whenever they are reviewing, I do not think most people take into account that the source can have a huge effect on stage in particular.
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Even if they do. I do think (hope) most reviewers are using the same source for all their tests.
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When I consider head/soundstage, I have one song that I use as a relative scale. The biggest stage I’ve heard on it (Width and height) is hearing a piano being played where the bass keys are being struck at what sounds like just below my left ear, the midrange keys being struck at what sounds like hovering just at/above my right eye, and the upper register keys sounding like they’re just above my right ear.
Every other IEM I’ve heard has existed inside that bubble, so I have a scale for it. Other than that, I don’t try to be grandiose about soundstage cause…yeah, no!
You just entirely ignore synergy there then, imo with anything decent you really want to try it on a range of sources to see how things change, from both higher end to entry level sources to actually get a more usable picture of how something drives/reacts and what it’s actually capable of. Reviews lacking that info, especially for higher end stuff, really aren’t as helpful as those that do have more information on pairing/synergy, as they offer a more complete picture of what something can actually do, vs those that don’t
It’s typically pretty clear when I see some reviews that use the same source for everything, it very clearly colors their results and perception of things more than others which explore that topic more. More relates to the higher end side of things though, for things like a blon it’s not going to matter much of course, but when you get up there, it starts to really matter a fair bit
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This depends on the style of the reviewer. What matters is consistency. If you know a reviewer reviews the same way every time (based on synergy, or based on controlling variables), then you can still learn what you need to from their reviews. If someone just changes criteria without telling the audience, that is far more damaging than having one style of review or another
For sure, but the whole point of trying different gear is to then document those changes and inform the audience of the differences, the whole part about giving more context. If you’re swapping all that around and then never mentioning it, I agree it’s pretty nonhelpful and just creates more inconsistency than anything. But by documenting and analyzing those results within a review it brings a greater level of insight than those without
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You have a very good point, and I agree with your sentiment. I will note that I had decided to try listening to my gear with the same tips/cable/source and what that does is tell you more about your listening habits relative to the gear. Particularly with tips, it is kinda a helpful tool to tell you more certainly when a tip doesn’t jive the best with an IEM.
Most reviewers dont have the time go through all that. Thus sticking with a single setup is optimal.
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Did you perform some test on source → affecting stage with DD/planar IEMs or hybrid/tribrid only?
Does anyone have any idea how the DAC/amp could affect the soundstage of all the things? Asking seriously
Optimal for pumping out reviews sure, but if you’re that focused on just putting out content to where you skip over things like that automatically, then I’d assume you’re making other sacrifices in quality/content of the review as well. Then again I’m someone who values more quality over quantity (at least in audio), and also aren’t really in a situation where making content about audio is my main goal or potential source of income so can’t really complain there without knowing what it’s like to do constant reviews
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I mean a transducer can only be as good as what it’s given. If you have a dac that can’t handle stage well, and an amp that can’t recreate what was given to it, you inherently aren’t going to get that great of a stage on the headphone/iem/speaker/whatever. For what you consider “good” is a different discussion though (although since it’s going to be brought up, imo measurements are independent from sound quality for most all source gear, to an extent)
I’d say the spatial side of things lies a lot in the time domain and lower level nuance, and if you have amps and dacs that don’t portray that well, shift how they present, and/or aren’t capable enough to reveal that information coherently, you will have differences in stage. Anecdotal (as most everything is in audio), but imo a lot of modern topping amps sound very spatially flat and dead to me, and with the amount of feedback they employ, that would make sense as to get the numbers they want, you inherently remove some of that lower level information with that high feedback design. You smooth over and clean the signal to where it looks pristine on paper, but in reality end up removing inherent lower level information to some extent to get there. Not to say all high feedback designs are inherently like this, I just observe this specifically with a lot of modern topping, and also thx stuff. But of course there’s exceptions to that too (like the benchmark hpa4 for example is able to have pretty great staging compared to the cheaper thx and topping despite both having a similar goal of a high feedback design that looks great on paper).
All depends. I’m not really informed enough to give a reason on why things truly work, but then again I don’t think most people are either because if it was an easily understood topic, this hobby would be very different from how it is now. All I can do is listen to stuff and try to guess why from my own experiences, although I’d rather focus on enjoying it instead lol
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Thanks for your comprehensive answer 
Just what do you mean by the lower level nuance?
Just hypothetically - if DAC effect on signal would change the time domain could not that be easily captured by ADC down the line and someone could present how the signal changes and where on particular example (like 0:10ms → 0:15ms)?
Don’t get me wrong that I have hidden agenda as I am known source scepticist for a very long time already, but I would honestly try to really got to hear a meaningful difference between 2 pcs of equipment I have in front of me. To be fair I only listen to low end stuff - M15, Q5k, DX3Pro+ and some Sony Linux based DAPs
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