I really like these kind of video’s. But the amount of times he talked about ‘with great skill’ or something similar kind of pulled me right out of it.
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I would say the video is expertly made with great skill as well 
I’m with you on the narration. I would have gone with text to explain the process so as not to take away from the video itself.
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I think I can safely say that my Defiants have taken over the Hexas in tems of usage, for this one has often been my daily driver alongside the Pilgrims and Volume S, in my opinion is really that good. Now then, I think it is that time again for me to find a replacement for the Hexa, like a successor for it if there is one and I don’t think I consider the Pure as such for it more like a sidegrade.
I think I need to look for more new releases, but if there is none that piques me, oh well, more waiting is usually the safer choice.
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Some of the songs i listened to with this IEM
- Let God Sort Em Out/Chandeliers - Clipse, Nas, Pusha T & Malice
- Numb - Portishead
- All My Life - Run The Jewels
- Wish You Would - Marian Hill
- Hey Jane - Tyler, The Creator
- The Chain - Fleetwood Mac
- Rich Spirit - Kendrick Lamar
- What’s that Ballast on Your Salad - Serengeti
- A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
- Devil’s Pie - D’Angelo
- culture jammer - R.A.P. Ferreira
- Angel - Massive Attack
- Chains & Whips - Clipse, Kendrick Lamar, Pusha T & Malice
- bellyache - Billie Eilish
- Red Sun - Anna von Hausswolff
- Whiplash - aespa
- wacced out murals - Kendrick Lamar
- M79 - Vampire Weekend
- puba - Serengeti
I’ve spent a couple weeks now with the ThieAudio Monarch MK4, a $1150 USD tribrid with dual 8mm DDs, six Sonion BAs, and two Sonion ESTs (4 way xover, 4 tubes). It has an impedance of 9 ohms and sensitivity of 100dB(/mW?) @ 1kHz. This set’s easy to recommend at this price point, and I can see it being a bit of a gate-keeper for the +$1k USD space, though it’s not for everyone.
Big thanks to HiFi Passion (DE) and the IEM Tour Group Europe for the opportunity to try these out!
The tuning is both safe and fun - natural, with nothing sticking out too much, while still bringing a little extra bass and treble sparkle to keep things interesting. For people who know they’re looking for a particular specialist tuning, this might come across as a bit boring, while for others it will be the all-arounder they’ve been looking for.
Even with the bass switch off, I found this set quite bassy! The midbass focus gives a nice weight to notes and instruments with good punch, though the tradeoff is a sense of speed compared to more subbass-focused tunings. Having the rumble switch (bass boost) option is fun - I find it adds a bit too much warmth to the mids for most listening, but for particular tracks it’s great to be able to switch it on or off without taking them out of your ears. It’s also a great option when background listening at lower volumes, where the extra bass is much appreciated.
Vocals sound clear and natural, with nice presence and bite. They’re not too soft or set back in the mix. The treble comes across as smooth and well extended without anything fatiguing. While it brings sparkle, I didn’t find it bright or treble-forward.
Compared to the Kiwi Ears Punch, the Monarch MK4 has a similar approach to the pinna gain that I like. With the rumble switch on, it reminds me a lot of the Punch: bassy, warm, with great mids/treble tuning and smooth treble extension. Compared to the Letshuoer EJ10, it’s more vocal forward and the bass is slower. I find the MMK4 closer to the Letshuoer EJ07 Kinda Lava but with slower bass that’s a bit boomy but fun. It doesn’t have the super holographic resolution of the EJ10 and razor sharp impactful bass, but the difference seems reasonable given the price gap (EJ10 is 2x the price).
The build quality feels premium with the CNC-machined aluminum shell. The shell is large but well contoured. It fit fine and sounded good with Moondrop Springtips, LSTips, and spiral dot FX10. My main ergonomic concern was the cable: it’s nice and flexible but the connectors were too long and made it hard to position them comfortably, leading to irritation. When I swapped to another cable with smaller angled connectors it was fine (very personal issue, YMMV).
This set strikes a nice balance with technical performance and an easy-to-like tuning. It’s an engaging all-rounder with good build quality some added flexibility with the bass switch. I think a lot of people will like this one.
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For those of us who use high res streaming to listen to music: I just read Spotify will be rolling out lossless as of today in all of its major markets. This is right up there with the release of Duke Nukem Forever (for those of us old enough to remember that one 
).
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Duke Nukem, haven’t heard that in a good long while.
Spotify has launched a lossless audio feature for its Premium subscribers, allowing streaming in high-resolution quality up to 24-bit/44.1 kHz - pretty low bar for ‘high-res’.
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That and Daikatana. But man, I hope the result is better than those two titles.
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It definitely doesn’t get the same rate as Apple Music, Qobuz etc. Personally, I don’t mind though because it’s at the very least as good as CD quality, which is what you get if you rip your CD collection. At present, I use Apple Music because it is the only lossless service that has literally 99.99% of what I listen to (Spotify is the sole service that has everything but lacked lossless up until today), the rest don’t even come close. As long as Spotify makes good on its promise to cover practically every song with lossless I’ll gladly ditch Apple (which is terrible on Android, which means every DAP ever).
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So true. For instance, most people I talk to feel Qobuz sounds better than Tidal, though both should be lossless. As long as they can combine lossless with no app shenanigans I’ll be happy 
PS glad to see some of the mainstays of the threads aren’t locked out, which is apparently a problem resulting from the purge of the bots.
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My question is if it REALLY is lossless and not just upscaled versions. I mean Spotify is really old now so is every track in their database uploaded as lossless from the start or not?
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It’s all marketing regardless. I’ve used Qobuz for the past 7-8 years and usually set it to either 320MP3 or CD-quality only. I’ve done numerous ABX tests and the differences are far less significant than speakers, IEMs or PEQ, like vastly. Not to mention 96kHz+. Save space and bandwidth my friends…do a few ABX tests and hear if you can tell a difference worth the cost.
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When I first started to look into the whole Spotify lossless saga I came across some posts where it was stated they have had their entire library available in lossless format for years already. It’s just (according to the story) that they never made use of it because Apple and Amazon spoiled it for them and have ever since been looking for ways to launch it and charge more. It surprised me that they aren’t offering it as an add-on (for a fee) but my guess is they’ll do so once people have had the time to listen to it. We’ll find out once it is available but, yeah, hope it’ll be more than upscaled files.
With you on that one for sure. I have set Apple Music to CD as well. And the track itself is definitely a factor as well. Depending on the composition etc. 320 is more than enough.
Yes of course 320kbps is already accoustically transparent and above that and its just pure guessing/placebo.
With Opus it is 128kbps as its MUCH more efficient.
That feels like a big waste of storage space for them….
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It might be that they prefer to convert the lossless / master files themselves to ensure compatibility with their software.
If the music files on their servers are stored as lossless (wav or flac) then im guessing they are using transcoding to convert whatever file the user is requesting to play. The transcode file would then be stored on their hdd or cache memory. I havent used Spofity but if this is how they do it then for extremely niche tracks that have never been played before would take slightly longer to start playing for the user than more popular tracks.
Transcoding would also mean that if a user cannot use a file in a certain codec they can easily change so it is using another type. So like if the user is detected to be on an iphone the codec will be AAC and if it is on android then perhaps opus.
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That sounds (no pun intended) entirely plausible. I have never had any issues with Spotify on Android and iOS. Apple Music, on the other hand, cumbersome as hell (in all likelihood because they favour their own codec over the more ‘universal’ ones). I already got a notification in the Spotify app on one of my DAPs that lossless is incoming after updating it, so I hope it will be days, not weeks. Really curious to see how it plays (pun intended) out. If I’m not mistaken, it won’t make a difference for the indicator lights used by the dongles, DAPs etc. seeing that Spotify is already displayed as CD quality (so we’ll let the ears decide).
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I am logged in on my iPad, but when I try to log in my phone it says something like: You can’t log in Erkil with this ip-address…. ??
It is a weird side effect of the bot prevention that has been applied yesterday. Do not log out or you may or may not be able to login on the ipad.
Hopefully zeos is working on it…
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