I can’t blame you, the 5db bass drop from the UP might have been too much.
The best comparison is the Hola is a slightly better Aria. The bass hits a bit better, and the treble isn’t as harsh. It isn’t neutral, but it isn’t really V shaped either. The Hexa was too neutral for me, even if the details were great.
I’m gone like a week and a half and y’all bury me with 754 posts?!?! Slow the funk down! The thread will still be here tomorrow! 
J/K This thread was def poppin’ while I was checked out, though! 754 posts wasn’t a joke. Anyone got a TL;DR for me? 
JA, you missed the big vote. Out of every available form of audio transducer, this came out on top:
A circa-1980s Koss UR-40 with missing inner headband, latex ceiling paint all over the cable, and the left can falling out of its bracket. (Not easy to find, but I am entertaining offers.)
Wow, I would offer you like $4k or a direct trade for one of my DCAs, but I’d hate to low-ball you and deprive you of owning the pinnacle in audiophile transducers. I’ve heard that the latex ceiling paint on the cable really helps to flesh out the mids and give them better timbral accuracy.
If you don’t mind me asking, how is the single detached driver configuration working for you? I’ve never tried it, but I’ve heard that it expands the soundstage like crazy.
Okay, but seriously, I have to ask: why are you hanging on to these? Do you have a project in mind? Sentimental value? LOLs from funny forum posts? Enquiring minds (that can’t sleep despite it being 6 AM here 
) want to know.
Seems like a Quarks DSP with more bass and worse treble extension especially that 15K dropoff:
Probably a pass from me.
You know what? Honest truth, when I put the left can back in the bracket, these things sound about 10X better than you’d think! Still my beater phones for painting, because even back then Koss really knew what they were doing.
(Okay, Koss, not saying you have to send me some swag now, but I’m not NOT saying it either…)
Non-sequiter: just as you were heading out, you mentioned you have (or had) the Harmonicdyne Poseidon. While I know it’s not an IEM, it’s rare to see a fellow owner out in the wild. What do you think of them?
I have the Zeus and the Helios. I had the Poseidons briefly. I actually like each of these headphones from HD quite a bit. I like the Zeus and Helios better than the Poseidons if I’m being honest, but I would still own the poseidons if I hadn’t been offered a trade for the Aeon Open X that I couldn’t say no to.
I think the Poseidons and Zeus are significantly more refined than the Helios, but the Helios have this kinda funky fun energy to them that I find both enjoyable and endearing. The Zeus are the warmest of the bunch and they actually remind me of the HD650 a bit, but with deeper and more boosted bass, more sparkle in the treble, and a wider soundstage at the cost of some timbral accuracy, a small increase in fatigue over long sessions, and a decrease in scalability with tubes and higher end equipment.
The Poseidons have the most normal ir everage tuning if the three. It follows a more typically balanced kind of profile. There is less bass than the Zeus, but it is a touch more textured or articulate. The mid range is more linear and less warm whereas the Zeus shows a pretty obvious tilt towards the lower mids which explains the warmth that it carries. The treble on the Poseidons is significantly more energetic that the subdued version on the Zeus and, while I don’t find the overall quanitity bothersome, there are some tracks that expose some ringing or metallic sound in the treble that I’m speculating is probably cause by a peak somewhere that I’m sensitive to.
Overall, the Poseidons are a pretty good headphone IMO and I think they’re a bit underrated or at least overlooked since most folks that have them praise them. I’ve actually been surprised that they haven’t gained the kind of cult following that the Zeus seem to have. They’re definitely a good lookin’ pair of headphones, IMO, too.
The real question is how do you like your Poseidons?
I’m not surprised at all. As much as I kinda mocked them there, Koss puts out a lot of decent stuff, eapecially back in the day. I have seen the 4AAA going through a little bit of a revival in some vintage and modding circles. I also have a friend who DJs and he has an entire collection of 80’s and early 90’s Koss models, some of which he mods, that he swears by and I have to say that I have listened to a few that sound pretty decent.
All of that doesn’t even mention the ESP950/ESP95X which is actually a very good sounding electrostat set. The major problem for me with electrostats is the way the bass bas no body or articulation and sounds unnaturally weightless. Those Koss sets are some of the best of the not insanely expensive es headphones I have tried at overcoming that which makes them a crazy good deal if you’re looking to give electrostatic headphones a shot without spending an arm and a leg.
How do you use them to paint if the left cup isn’t attached?
Ah, I can still slide them in and they’ll stay put for most of a paintjob.
Looks like the UR-40 is still available, too! (But you’re right, the paint on the cable is essential to the timbre. And it has to be latex, not oil-based paint. Which goes without saying because just imagine how that would sound.)
You know Koss: “Never let a good design go to waste.” They’ll keep riding a working design into the grave and then some. They remind me a lot of gun companies in that sense, I mean some of them, like Winchester, have models that they’ve been producing for over a century that you can still find in gun stores today with very little change because they can be made and loaded cheaply and the still get the jobs done today that they got done when they were brand new. There’s a certain admirable quality to that kind of persistence, you know what I mean?
I might join you on praising the UP, bought mine today and it should arrive in a week.
I read that they require a bit more power to sound their technical best. With the Mojo 2 & RS2, I think I’m pretty set and ready for the UP’s.
How I feel about them is they are my favorite headphone because they do about 90% exactly the way I want, but that last 10% is what sent me to IEMs, and now buds.
I love that they are bassy but roll off the sub-bass so the mid-bass can shine. No surprise there. I find them to be bassy and warm, but also with a present midrange and without excessive mud. They are well-bodied. Their treble is very smooth and well-extended, to my ear. For a warm-leaning earphone you get good detail retrieval, imaging, and soundstage. The timbre and tonality hit home very well too.
Their flaw (and why I’d only recommend them if they go back on 50% off sale) is the upper-midrange. They have a cut right in front of the treble, to control sibilance, that they overdid. As an analogy, if they did a -7.0dB cut, they only needed -3-3.5dB. They’re missing a little too much energy and while I always enjoy them, now that I’ve heard better, I can’t unhear that.
Enter Ripples: Poseidon and Ripples sound VERY similar in tuning, except Ripples is well tuned in that upper-midrange. It does everything Poseidon does, with vastly improved resolution, top-tier dynamics, and better technicalities across the board.
But if I’m grabbing over-ears, I grab Poseidon.
What’s everyone’s favourite budget IEMs so far? Mine is the Tanchjim Ola, and Olina SE/Modded. Here’s to more bangers in 2023! 
Anyone had the chance to demo the IE200s yet? I think they’re already available to demo here in Toronto. Too bad there’s a snow storm going on 
Getting mine sometime next week - I’ll let you know 
According to Amazon then should be here tonight. Probably won’t get any time on them until tomorrow though
$25 for a bullet IEM? I’ll give that a shot for you
Someone had said that only the tips are good on the Final Audio E500 
. I don’t think it will be as good as DM, although DM seems quite overrated to me in all the hype surrounding it!
