It is one of the single DD IEMs I am look at picking up. I have worked out my tribrid IEM pair. ThieAudio Oracle (@Resolution pair I bought from him) and the Moondrop Variations. Now I am looking to see where I stop my search for a Single DD IEM (BAs and me are not friends in the treble region)
From reviews, Moondrop Illumination and Dunu Zen seem to be quite good as well. Fiio FD5 seems to be pretty good, and if you’ve go the budget sennheiser ie 900 is the single dd endgame
The 900 is probably not for me with how it is tuned. The Illumination or Zen might be where I stop eventually , but I want to try out some of the intermediate ones before just getting those to see if there is something like the Oracle moment where for most things I just say this is it, this is enough.
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… Pro!
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And then there is also this mad man saying zen pro, and the other mad man saying Oxygen to me all the time.
Edit:
And he wasn’t wrong about the Oracle so unfortunately his mad ravings and memes do hold a not insignificant amount of sway now.
These are my suggestions. And all of this is from personal experience with a lot of IEMs. Actually, many more than are actually on this list… Learn from my mistakes. 
The IEM everyone should have - Blon BL03
Best Starter IEM - LZ A7. Find your preferred tuning.
TIER1 Best IEMs around $300 - Mangird Tea, Moondrop Blessing 2, TANCHJIM Oxygen
TIER2 Best IEMs around $500 - $700 - Safe tuned - Thieaudio Clairvoyance/Oracle, Xenns Up - Subbass tuned - Moondrop Variations, Thieaudio Monarch
TIER3 Endgame - Mest MKII
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Though there is nothing wrong with stopping at any of those tiers if it is good enough for you.
@Resolution the Oracle is either the bottom right or the middle one in that picture. The top left is the wrong design and the middle left is too dark a shade. Correct? Probably the middle one looking at the shade of blue and green. But darn they are close.
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Who is satisfied never going all the way?
It’s the one in the middle.
This guy 
Yea I got it. Honestly the UP (bottom left), variations (bottom middle), and Dunu EST112 (top right) are all easy to tell at a glance, but Thie really decided to make all of their tribrids really close in design.
That’s when they started writing their names on the shells. The MOnarch and Clairvoyance have no writing on them which I personally prefer. The Excalibur actually pissed me off because when I received it, it looked NOTHING like all the pictures on Linsoul.
They got lazy and made all the faceplates for the new tribrids the same, but because of the nature of the materials they use, they all look different, but you can’t tell an Oracle apart from an Excalibur just from the faceplates like you could the original tribrids.
Could have been worse. Could have been sent with a defective cable, defective IEM, in a completely differently designed box.
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It all worked out in the end and you seem to like the UP, so no need to be sad. Just careful of mangird.
I always thought it was kinda sad that there are game studios that I will never preorder from because they lost that initial purchase trust… now there are also physical product companies where maybe preordering might be an unsafe idea as well.
Drop has lost all of my trust and I will only buy a drop product used or from some other distributor other then drop.
I do love them. They are very unique and probably the most fun/relaxed set I own.
We learn from our mistakes. Because of the problems with the UP I experienced and the way I was treated with Linsoul to resolve it made me realize I had probably just been getting VERY lucky with all the business I had been giving to Linsoul. I was pretty care-free purchasing anything with them, but one bad experience has me re-thinking that relationship. It’s the reason I pulled the trigger on the Mest MKII. I wasn’t planning on buying it until I got burned by the UP. In the end, even though I was really upset, Linsoul did make everything right. So, I just gotta get over it and I’m just not as fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants with purchases from them. I have similar issues with Fiio they way they treated reviewers who didn’t hand out favorable reviews of the FH5s.
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This is just me, but I think you should start with the budget IEMs first since you can experiment with those without wasting a lot of money for your first time via buying tips and cables that can make those IEMs in those range better. Also it’s a bit of crapshoot since there are some budget IEMs out there that sounds like $500 and that is basically a steal if you hit that gold mine of budget IEMs, and we have to understand that it’s not always Higher Budget = Amazing Sounds, for sounds it’s much more complicated, but I am not saying that statement of higher budget equals amazing sounds is not true for there are a lot of out there still.
Good Starter IEMs IMO:
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Moondrop Aria: You really cannot go wrong with this one for the price, I mean come on? it’s a sub-$100 IEM but it’s so affordable for its price and value, that it is so good to get.
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BLON BL-03: Still one of the best out there to get! Just replace the cable and tips and you are gold with this one, for a bonus replace its stock filters with the mesh ones and to me it was an improvement when I did that mod.
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Moondrop Starfield: You don’t necessarily need this if you’re aiming for the Aria, but these ones are not bad as well for the price. My favorite IEM still, neutral sound signature, and very good for vocal-focused tracks since the mids from these are much more emphasized. Basically this, Aria if you want more Bass, Starfield if you want more mids, but both are similar sound-wise.
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Yes!!! Buy recommission headphones for $ 500 or a little more. Don’t give your money for cheap headphones, don’t make our mistakes! Good luck!!! Mооndrop Variations are good!
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How different is the Aria from the Starfield? Very noticeable?
From reviews, most people can not tell a difference and those who say they can actually prefer the Aria.
I’d suggest the Aria since it’s supposed to be the same new tech DD from the Variations set which is great.
I love mine a lot…
I guess that’s a question: if someone was new and didn’t really know their preferences, is there a pair or trio of budget IEMs that would all complement each other?
Like if this were headphones, it seems reasonable to recommend a newbie a 58X and a DT880 as a pair of sub-$200 headphones to learn whether they prefer a warmer sound or a brighter sound, etc., but I’m not sure what an IEM equivalent pairing would be.
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The LZ A7 would allow many tuning opportunities. Many more than just three IEMs.
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