I’d agree that I think the budget sub 100 perhaps up to 200 has seen the most improvement. At the time when they were taking off, it basically made a lot of the 300-600 ish options a hard sell in comparison. It’s interesting how rapidly it happened, and lately imo now that sub 200 range been flooded with marginal improvements/retunes or rehashes of the same stuff since it happened so rapidly but then just stopped lol. Only now have a lot of midrange offerings also had that improvement rush to sort of catch up and move past the level of the current budget offerings and make that price range more attractive/reasonable being worth what they cost. It hasn’t been constant improvements, but rather big periods of growth, then just being really stagnant lol.
I’m sort of glad that there’s less of a harman tuned rush, but there’s still too much graph worship for a lot of it for my personal tastes lol. There’s been some interesting offerings that actually work to offer a more worthwhile than on paper level of performance that have gotten popular which is nice to see. I do find it funny now that some are revisiting some of the older options that were pushed to the wayside in the past because of how they looked on paper, and now getting a bit of new hype.
That’s common through our hobby though … graphs and measurements, graphs and measurements…I on the other hand am not a engineer and these mean little to me, but to some folk these are more important than the actual replay enjoyment
Takes away the enjoyment aspect because the sound tends to suck on units overly focused on that lol, can be good, but most of the stuff targeting that demographic isn’t lol
But I guess from a design perspective it’s also a lack of art, a lot of it is just copious amounts of negative feedback and calling it a day, or making something match close enough with a fr target and calling it there as well
Things can sound good and measure really well, but that takes more effort and care for that to happen, and it’s the lesser traveled path lol. Typically measured performance isn’t focused on for some of the best sounding things I’ve heard, and typically overly measurement focused gear has tended to be very mediocre to potentially bad. But that’s just my experience, and there have always been exceptions
This is so true. There are lots of good IEMs under $100 today. That was a small group just a few years ago.
2019 was the point when the budget range started getting interesting ( Blon 03, Starfield and Legacy 2 ). Prior to that, the IEM market didn’t have many good options until about $300.
Harman gives and takes. It sounds good when executed correctly with decent drivers, but none of us want several identically tuned IEMs.
I laughed, because I am an engineer. and I like graphs. I tend to use them to avoid harsh sounding IEMs ( I don’t like stuff that is hot around 5k ), but they rarely tell the whole story. If they did, I should have been unhappy with the EA500, due to lack of sub-bass.
A recent “graphs lie story”, the Kailua isn’t as bass heavy to my ears as Olina SE, which is not what the graphs say. Meanwhile the tamer upper mids seem exactly like the graph shows. I like both of them, but not for the things on the graphs. These are both good examples of how good the under $100 bracket is.
Totally agree, the stuff that’s just harman tuned without care going into everything else is boring and dull, but some of the harman tuned iems that actually care about the intangibles can be pretty impressive. It’s still not my personal cup of tea, but can respect some of the more harman esque iems that deliver on the “everything else aside from basic tuning” range lol
I’m not an engineer, but I feel like I’ve seen engineers all too often fixate on measurements to guide their designs, trying to make something “theoretically perfect” and go strictly by the books, and the results tend to be average. Basically sort of think of it as the overconfident college graduate who thinks they’re an engineering genius, hot shit, can do no wrong, etc. Overly critical of designs that don’t match their worldview and don’t look what they considers perfect on paper. Not only limited to audio lol. The people who’ve made stuff that I’ve actually liked, when I’ve gotten the chance to talk to them personally, has always been quite interesting, since they tend to discuss how they went through that phase, realized that there’s a lot more to making a quality audio product, and how going off their own experience and listening capabilities has been a better guide for them to make a product they are more sonically satisfied with lol.
At this point I’m a bit convinced that measurements are somewhat independent of sound quality, sure they can tell you a little bit of information in isolation, and sure some of them are more helpful than others (personally feel that transducer measurements are more meaningful than source gear measurements), but really in the end they don’t tell you much, they aren’t useful enough to really use to decide if something is good or not, and don’t use them to replace listening (have the least respect for people who do this lol), but rather have listening take priority and use measurements to help describe what you heard, not let measurements determine what you heard lol. But that’s just my perspective on it. Heard too many things to really put much faith in measurements anymore as a major or sometimes even minor determining factor on how I feel about or get interested in gear lol
Probably sounds like I’m really against measurements for everything, but I’m really more against how some people tend to view and use measurements within the hobby as the final determining factor, making it a game of right vs wrong and trying to objectify a fundamentally subjective hobby lol. Just ends up resulting in some really misguided and bitter people imo, and some products that are equally disappointing to pander to them lol. If you live and die by objective data, you’re going to be much better off in a hobby that’s more suited toward that than this one lol
I have seen that too, and I have always wondered if younger me would have leaned more that way. I was a bit that way with car audio back in the 80s, but didn’t have the budget to experiment with lots of gear.
Absolutely.
As I have gotten older, I am more open minded and better at being good with people have their own opinions on things, even when I don’t agree. I don’t need to make myself and others unhappy due to a hobby that brings us together.
Couldn’t agree more here. I don’t typically hang out in the $50-$100ish range of flavor of the month chifi iems anymore, but I have hung onto the ibasso it00 since it was released, and occasionally when I get curious about some new hot thing around that price range, I’ll get it and compare it to the it00. Sure there may be some tuning differences, but I have yet to be blown away by technicalities compared to the it00, and the new thing always gets sold and the it00 remains.
Added a few IEMs I tried lately (and didn’t add some that I wasn’t really sold on lol), and changed some rankings a slight bit in that range.
Side note, never been impressed with anything thieaudio that I’ve tried, but a lot of people seem to love them so perhaps they just do something I really don’t appreciate lol
I have, and the one that I really liked out of the lineup with the tia trio, think that’s the most worthwhile out of their lineup. I do think the fourte is a bit higher technical level but a bit wonky in tuning and presentation and didn’t think it was good of a value, and the u12t is one of those it’s good at most things but I didn’t really love it at the same time, jack of all master of none and I personally felt the trio was more impressive while being almost as good of an all rounder. I started with the tia trio on my list, but I decided to replace it with the fir m5 after some thought, I think it goes for a similar ish sonic goal (perhaps a bit more balanced than the trio) while offering better technical performance for pretty much the same (or less used) price.
Good iems, sometimes a bit expensive due to them just holding their value better than others on the used market, I think the one to go for is the tia trio if you want one. I should note I’ve not heard the u18s, u6t, or the u4s
I have a U12T and the tuning plugs made it really interesting. I was surprised how much bass and all BA setup provides specially after a plug swap.
I’ll definitely have to check out the Fir one day but that’ll be a ways down the road.
Updated a bit, also the schiit mjolnir 3 is really good, like really good for the range, quite suprised they were able to pull this off for the money. Need to spend more time with it still, but damn it’s pretty enjoyable. Have some more first impressions on the Sonus forums
I saw you added the DT 990. I know you haven’t heard it yet but the 900 Pro X gives both 990 and 880 a run for their money in terms of neutrality, and should be at least on par when it comes to technicalities. For folks who love the Beyer peak there’s still the 700 Pro X
Listening to the Hemp right now, glad it made the list as I have a soft spot for it, as I haven’t heard anything more fun for rock music.
I’ve heard good things about it, more forgiving of source gear, more neutrally tuned, although I am a bit skeptical that they’ll have the same scaling potential as the 600 ohms, but I always forge the new 900 and 700 exist lol. I’ll have to give it a listen when I can, although being honest I somewhat lack some of the more appropriate setups to try them on for fair comparison lol. Also found it interesting how they skipped the 880 for a new model
It’s just a really fun headphone for the money, and imo that makes it standout for the range it sits in. Def was a different (but good) direction for grado compared to their stuff of the past that I’ve tried (and some present like the ps line), although I hear that the newer rs and gs grado might have gone more the direction of the hemp in sound which makes me curious about them lol
I heard that it’s actual price should’ve been 600$, but the price was lowered so as to not compete with the next higher priced model (rs1 or rs2). One of the few HPs I bought new (and don’t regret buying new, even though there are better bargains like sub 200 Nighthawks, Hifimans are also pretty good after the latest price drops)
