That is an interesting take, but I agree that fit in sense of bud being secure in ear is the big problem.
On the other hand I myself realised that earbuds sound very different to IEMs and I would rather explore this world than try to find some holy grail in IEMs (where I suppose I would need to spend close to 1k $ to hear the huge improvement over either Tea, S12 and coming Olina).
And come on, it was 8$ set - it cannot have the technicalities of your MEST It probably still sounds better than most 15$ IEMs if not 30$ IEMs (there would be outlaws like CRA of course), don’t you think?
The small weekend personal problem with IEMs I have is all that I tried in order Pinnacle P2 → WF-1000XM3 → ZEX → Mele ->T800 → Tea → S12 sound incrementaly better/kind of different, but there was never huge leap up in direct improvement or sideways in the way making my music sound very different (I was trying to justify purchase of 4th set like Softear Volume for 1,5h of daily music listening in total). And with earbuds this side leap is easily achievable
Speaking of DIY/custom/boutique - have you tried any other blur earbuds (like 266r) other than ones in your ranking list?
There is one offer on 300ohm aps 266r on head fi for 120 EUR, but it looks like bud made of those shells for 3$ on AliExpress… And 300ohm earbud with no measurements?
Not sure tbh, the bud graphs are very much a meme. But I think about it later.
My plan is to buy a lot of different drivers, to try them out and see which ones have the most potential, then work more on tuning those.
There are a lot of ways to tune buds and honestly the possibilities feel endless, so I have to start from a solid ground before I do anything more complicated.
Hahaha I’m not comparing Qian to those sets! Qian has ridiculous resolving power for $8 fricking dollars… I’d wish I could love it more, but it’s just the fit that needs fixing. I’m pretty sure I’ll be using it a lot more once I get the pads, but I just don’t see the urge to get LBBS or any other buds in the future. Qian is perfect in it’s own purpose in my usage
My wife buys 5 packs of Glracd brand on Amazon for $12, given that she loses and/or puts them in the wash, I won’t argue. They don’t sound great, but for that price, they are impossible to beat, and it means we always have them for the grandkids.
I had a similar experience with a Fischer Amps FA 666 IEM that is even more expensive. It was the first and so far only unvented IEM I tried and it was a disaster. Extremly uncomfortable. It caused constant over- and underpressure depending on how I moved the IEM in my ear. The sound was not only terrible, but frequency response and technicalities seemed to change in accordance with insertion depth. However most other reviewers didn’t just not have any of those problems, but actually enjoyed them quite a bit.
It probably still sounds better than most 15$ IEMs if not 30$ IEMs (there would be outlaws like CRA of course), don’t you think?
