I am really annoyed at moondrop and xenns. Xenns has just about exactly the driver config I want to try, but had do the whole fancy looking faceplate that I don’t like… though they did it in all darker tones so I might be able to overlook it. And moondrop made the perfect style tribrid, but I really do prefer beryllium DD and I like BA in that transition between the mids to the treble just not in the upper treble.
1 Like
Good. You are probably getting them before me since Im going on vacation and live in Portugal, lol… Its too risky for me to order them with a 7 day process time before shipping and cant choose dhl or ill pay vat
1 Like
1 Like
Damn i am doing my very best to not buy the Mangird UP right now… I guess waiting for more than just one review is the right thing to do since my most expensive iem is the Mangird Tea and $700 is not a small investment…
3 Likes
Come to the dark side, we have cookies…
2 Likes
BTW… This is all VERY silly, but thank you all. I’m having fun. I hope you are too. 
1 Like
Seriously, i have put these in my shopping cart and then walked away 3 times today! LOL
1 Like
How is Apos? The variations seem to have an expected delivery date near mid august through amazon so I was looking at other places.
1 Like
I just bought the Topping D90SE and Moondrop Variations from Apos.
I bought all the items as if everything was in stock and would/should immediately ship. They took my order and money and then did not ship the D90SE or Variations with no information from Apos why they weren’t shipping. I had to contact them and ask them what was going on. With both products, they told me that they had a lot of orders and they had run out of stock and I would have no choice but wait until they were restocked before they could ship my orders. It usually took them days to reply to me.
I did get a reply concerning the Variations from a manager who said the situation was unacceptable that I was not told that they were out of stock when I placed my order and would have to wait for their next shipments. He upgraded my delivery time and gave my some money off for any future purchase.
I wish their website would show when their items are out of stock, but when I’ve gotten to speak to an individual, they’ve gone out of their way to make things right.
Good to know. It is always a little hard to find good online stores to trust. While I am willing to use a burner credit card number and buy some under $100 thing that peaks my interest from almost anywhere and I am pleasantly suppressed when it arrives how it was promised I do hold higher and higher standards as the price increases.
1 Like
I have never had any issue. I deal a lot with Linsoul and they have been very good to me.
As for Apos, the A90 & D90 are sitting right here in front of me, both from Apos and they are not inexpensive items at all.
How are you liking the topping stack? I have been really impressed by 2 different companies on my sub rig and I am not sure which way I might go when I replace my monoprice 788 eventually.
The topping D10s has really impressed me as a dac for the price it is since I mainly just got it to do digital to digital conversions. I also recently got the IEMagni used from the buy/sell thread and I am impressed by it quite a bit. So I am not sure which way I will go when I replace the mono.
OH my! I bow to the iem collector king
I wish I did this a long time ago, but I swerved off the path listening to advise from others that probably have completely different musical/listening values/library than I do. The A90 & D90 are technical monsters allowing me to be closer and hear more of my music than I have with any other gear I’ve owned.
“better” should mean something like being able to hear more detail not less right? Or have some tangible measurement of how it actually is “better” vs something else. But what do I know?
I understand “better” is subjective, but the audiophile community needs to do a much better job at defining what they consider “better” if they aren’t discussing technicalities of the gear that can actually be tested and measured. I know I’m going to be describing what “better” means to me and why I consider certain elements of music, gear and playback better or worse from now on.
People who listen to old or poorly recorded recordings should not be recommending gear they like that is technically poor to anyone who is looking for the best technical gear because they like how it makes their old music sound. It should be about technical specifications when someone is asking for advise on what is “better”. I’m chasing complete transparency of source gear with as much detail, clarity, dynamic range and soundstage as possible allowing me to hear what the musicians, mixing and mastering engineers originally intended. If I want to hear more bass or less treble, I’ll choose a different IEM or headphone. but the goal of source gear to me should be to send the music to your transducer as perfectly and precisely as possible.
3 Likes
Ordered CP100 plus. Thanks for the heads up!
2 Likes
I generally agree about transparency in the source gear. For DACs it is generally the main thing I look for after having the right connections for the setup. AMPs can be less transparent, but I tend to like/use more transparent ones more just because it means less switching out since my music tastes vary so wildly. I don’t really have a preferred genre of music and a band is amazing to me if I happen to own more then 2 or 3 tracks out of their entire library of songs.
I can fully understand though finding something that is not perfect in how it reproduces, but it perfectly matching the songs someone likes with the headphone or IEM they like and that might end up being even better. Heck there some songs that I flat out prefer to listen to on record through a 80s era Sony massive home entertainment center sized stack.
1 Like
There. You said it. You can prefer to hear music played on something that is technically bad/horrible in today’s standards, but if you prefer it, it is “better” to you.
BUT…
When someone is looking for gear recommendations from others that claim to have tons of experience and recommend something that is technically poor vs something else, just because they subjectively feel they prefer it, (just like your record player) that is very poor advise when “better” is not technically “better” at all. It is technically worse.
We need to know if better = technicalities or warm fuzzies when recommending gear.
There’s nothing wrong with either, but some individuals are looking for the warm fuzzy feelings and there are those of us that actually want better technicalities even if that means removing all the warmth from a recording and making the treble more sibilant if that’s what gets me to how it’s really actually supposed to sound. I don’t do not want source gear helping the audio to sound any way other than how it’s supposed to sound.
Some food for thought… If your source gear is coloring sound, you’ll never be able to accurately describe a headphone or IEM to anyone since you’re not starting with a neutral source. Your opinion will always be swayed in the direction of whatever your source gear is doing. To hell with amp/dac/headphone synergies if you’re actually trying to evaluate gear technically.