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You are too much cool for me, sorry! Now I have to go under all products that Iām not interested for and I have to write āNO THANK YOUā. So other people can see how much Iām cool.
I donāt find it that bad, but the build and cable were the only knocks for me on that set.
I enjoy the tuning, and it is the flattest pinna in my collection.
Great but they cost almost 1000 dollars. Also the armatures for the mids are not sonion or knowles.
Iām all for building your own from the ground up (If done and implemented well)ā¦Koenigsegg make their own engines, not everything needs to be a BMW/Mercedes or Sonion/Knowles to be a class leading, I applaud new thinking and tech 
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They used new armatures that have new tech compared to sonion/knowles? I doubt.
Aur audio is not building armatures in house, they paid someone other to do it.
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Edit in for context : I have no real idea or knowledge about drivers or the inside doings of AĆ¼R, except sometimes talking with AĆ¼R I am a customer like everyone else.
Abel is very critical about midrange sound, why he also prefer to use something different.
If he say he uses a custom BA itās to get the sound he want.
He did the same in the past with DDs also, custom orders after specs. Alot of testing and what is good enough or not, then bulk order what he has envisioned for his IEM model.
Thatās a reason why he also stopped to make the old Aure, the DDs changed and was not up to spec anymore.
The Aurora and Ascension he instead got his own drivers made/picked, then bought many.
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TBH the market is already oversaturated with Knowles and Sonion BA. Most people are tired of them, because everyone has 3-4 -5-6 ā¦ IEMs with these BAs for mids. Better something new IMO. 
if I wanted bellsing Iād get a KZ.
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I doubt they use bellsing, but if you want, buy a KZ. 
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Iāll add that in my humble opinion, the Ascension has had the best midrange I have heard, regardless of drivers used or price of the IEM. Tuning and preference obviously has a big role to play in forming this opinion, but the implementation was what I believe made it sound unique.
Because of how impressed I was with the Ascensionās sound, I will likely be getting Aehta (if not Symphonium Titan)
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The custom BA in question is an E-Audio RAB (they actually call it improvedā¦ (Too self-serving to comment on) and not custom) and mainly use Knowles & Sonion in their IEMs which makes this whole recent conversation on this thread ironically amusing and a little naive regarding the use of stock drivers, driver development and what a custom driver really is. Letās remember they were supposed to be using a custom DD in the Aure - the same one that they suddenly couldnāt obtain and so discontinued the product and decided to use custom order drivers (which is what they were supposed to have used in the first place) going forwardā¦ Same regarding the EST used in their new IEM - supposed to be EST65DA01 but you can see them using EST65DB01 in their construction process - these being a revision now taken off the market as it didnāt achieve what it set out to do ie raise the volume of an EST without throttling the other drivers to be comparable on SPL. They can be obtained for less than half the price.
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This is not to downplay what Aur are doing as I really enjoy their stuff and have a soft spot for boutique patronage. I also find the Neon Pro pushing the midrange value to performance boundary - sadly not heard the Ascension.
But just for my own naivity/sanity check - financial rationale will always trump marketing or insider knowledge that comes direct from a stakeholder yet is unverified. I approach everything from a skeptical outlook understanding that people outright lie or bend the truth not always out of malevolent intent but more so just to suit their purpose or cover something they are not fully content with - and I have encountered/advised more companies than I would like to own up to that do this.
Out of curiosity how many orders do Aur sell per model? As a boutique manufacturer with a single tuner and bedroomesque second job production facility - I would imagine it is quite low. As can be seen from their small run batches for order.
Further, do all models (Neon Pro, Alita, Ascension & Aurora) reuse similar drivers or is it completely different drivers for each? I believe the custom drivers seem to change per modelā¦
I am looking at this based on MOQ + paid advisory/design work + actual engineering knowledge + marketing differentiator that would all be required to even look at establishing a real custom driver and not just a custom being an existing driver with a filter attached and some back and forth. The fact that I believe Aur originally stated that the Ascension would have a Sonion BA for mid-highs alongside the E-Audio RAB handling mids (which are more seen as easier to implement drivers due to their size and tunings however they lose out on technicalities to other stock BA from Sonion & Knowles and are based off the Knowles RAB designs) shows that the intention initially may have been different. Couple this with the plethora of customs DDs on offer from sub $50 to midrange - highlight the looseness that is being associated with ācustom driversā and an unwillingness as @hawaiibadboy pointed out to indicate that these are actually cheaper drivers, more plentifully available due to barriers to entry commercial ties from Sonion & Knowles or are being sourced from illegitimate/reputationally problematic providers.
Just because something is custom also does not necessarily make it better - this is the same reasoning behind thinking that something is more healthy for you if it is labelled as natural. Itās a play on our willingness to want improvement. However such decisions are generally due to pricing or availability pressure compelling people to have to go down that route - just looking at BAs between Sonion & Knowles they have 30-40 different driver options, so hardly at a loss for tuning purposes.
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DDs are dirt cheap, period especially when compared to the price they are selling the finished product at. No matter if its ācustomā (different impedance or diaphragm generally)
The costly part is fullfilling the MOQ, cuz even if a single pair costs 2 usd, if you have to buy 1000 pairs at once, (2000 usd) that is not so cheap anymore.
BAs, are a LOT more expensive than DDs to begin with and with the 2 big brands, Sonion and Knowles, I highlyyyy doubt that they do anything custom for a small batch order (they got plenty of other companies that buy from them after all, they have priorities), that is, the total costs is gonna be tremendously high.
Which is why ācustomā drivers are pretty much ALWAYS gonna be from the cheaper rip-off companies like Bellsing (got sued for stealing Knowles knowledge, pun not intended lol) and LS/E-Audio.
So for boutique brands, going LS/E-Audio or Bellsing is always gonna be the more realistic way.
I meanā¦even Campfire Audio doesnt always use Knowles/Sonion and they (should be) are a lot bigger than boutique brands.
Then there is also the fact that tuning is what matters the most so if they themselves know how to tune stuff well, it doesnt really matter that much if they cheapen out with the drivers.
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Thatās right and you made a very good explanation, butā¦ I donāt think the problem is the price of Knowles and Soninon BA for mids. Here I think itās a question of a fine choice to match the requested tuning.
BTW Both Soninon and Knowles if not implemented well have a terrible, terrible timbreā¦ So far only the DTE900 of my IEMs has handled it well (somewhat well) 
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100% like you say tuning and implementation is the most important thing and why Aur, Sound Rhyme (I own the SR8) and 7th Acoustic have done so well in the mid to Kilobuck range seemingly out of nowhere.
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