Speaking of which, you gave me an idea after your reply on the UM thread, why don’t you make a spreadsheet ranking of the IEMs you own @nymz ? Just a thought, although it depends if you’ve got time. You’ve got a great set of standards for ranking stuff
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I have a personal excel list. I can share it, but I always like to avoid drama in here, so I never did.
Im a special snowflake, I like what I like. People will see it as either good or shit. It is what it is. I can think about it tho 
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Well they are amazing and in the top of the foodchain, but they just didn’t connect to me. They didn’t feel 100% natural and not the best mids I’ve heard for my library. For others it will be 100% end game.
Keep in mind my experience with it was very short and i almost bought it twice, but then I fell in love for other stuff. Also I cant justify the price for it
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I say: fuck it… stir up that shit 
But seriously… while some people put probably to much value in ranking lists like Crinicale’s I guess most people here understand, that in the world of IEMs rankings/reviews are pretty subjective and a ranking list is a quickly digestible way to understand one single individual’s taste and one way to discover new IEMs. I am sure I don’t share your taste, but would still like to see your list 
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I will put up tomorrow/weekend
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So the long anticipated comparison between @nymz old Teas and my new set could finally be done since I received them few minutes ago.
Upon listening Adele - Hello on multiple replays, doing A/B, trying to find difference between both sets, I came to the conclusion…
BUY TEAS!!
Disclaimer: I’d advise to buy only from Linsoul as it seems that this new batch/revised QC is the right one. Other AliE sellers (there are 3 or 4 I think) might have old stock and bad batch. My set was bought during 11/11 on AliE from DD Audio
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Tchoo tchoo hype train is back
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So what you are basically saying is that ther is no difference? Such a relief!
Customs in the national post office in Poland are probably close friends of those in Portugal, as my set is in my city (like 0,5km from me) for more than 1,5weeks with no sign of moving. And duty is to be paid for sure, so my cheap mind lost again - if ordered from Linsoul directly via DHL I would have them 3 weeks ago for the same cost in the end…
But damn, this waiting made me eyeing the option of buying another set: DUNU EST 112 for 330$, new MEST for 740$ (here waiting for opinion of PopinTeddy) or AAW x Custom Art 4+2 for 375
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Yes, I A/B multiple times, using same tips, same volume and couldn’t hear any differences between both sets.
Yeah customs are shit these days…especially after all these new EU changes that happened in July, I think things were processed much quicker before.
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If this is true, an order follows! The tea party continues! The show must be forever… 
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Funny that you mentioned me, because I just got the MEST a couple hours ago and was ready to give my impressions comparing to Variations and Tea here. So here we go:
Upon immediate A/B/Cing with MEST (stock silicon tips), Variations (Spinfit CP155), Tea (Azla Sedna Earfit regular), here are my first impressions:
- Power requirement: Variations > MEST > Tea
- Weight (IEM alone): Variations >> MEST = Tea
- Clarity: MEST >>> Variations > Tea (Veilness: Tea > Variations >>> MEST)
- Sub-bass: Variations >> MEST ≧ Tea
- Mids: MEST > Tea > Variations
- Highs: MEST >>> Variations ≧ Tea
- Male Vocals (Billy Joel): MEST ≧ Tea > Variations (in background)
- Female Vocals (miwa): MEST (sharp) = Tea (natural) > Variations (in background)
- Naturalness: Tea > MEST > Variations
- Sound stage: Variations (auditorium) >> Tea (excellent front-back stage) > MEST (near)
- Imaging (Yosi Horikawa): MEST >> Variations ≧ Tea
- Technicality/separation: Variations >> MEST > Tea
- Coherency: MEST > Tea > Variations
- Lower slam/punch: Variations > MEST ≧ Tea
- Upper slam/punch: MEST > Tea ≧ Variations
- Detail Retrieval: MEST >> Variations > Tea
Sound Signatures (by personal enjoyment rank):
- MEST: W-shaped / clarity beast / fun / coherent through all frequencies / sometimes peaky treble / upgraded Tea
- Tea: Neutral W-shaped / fun / warm (compared to MEST and Variations)
- Variations: L-shaped / sub bass monster / technical / mid-scoop vocal loss
Test Tracks:
Boogie Wheel - Superwoman
Billy Joel - Just the Way You Are
miwa - ヒカリへ (THE FIRST TAKE)
Yosi Horikawa - Bubbles
Camo & Krooked - Loving You Is Easy
Running off iFi Zen DAC v2.
To be honest, I think the three of these IEMs form a great trinity of endgame IEMs. The MEST is like a massive treble upgrade of Tea, and both tunings are headed the same direction. Variations’ tuning is the outlier here, but Variations is a monster in terms of frequency and instrument separation, although sacrificing the vocals a tad bit. Also, the sub-bass is unbeatable among the three. If Tea is the base for the other two, MEST adds more and more towards the upper frequencies to achieve the complete package, whereas Variations stretches all frequencies apart and adds a clean and punchy sub-bass that’ll rock your brain.
I’d still recommend that everyone should at least try Variations once to get the taste of that sweet, sweet technicality and sub-bass BOOM BOOM BAP. But my ears are more for the Tea cult tuning, so the Variations might be going soon. Yet in the one month + that I’ve spent with the Variations, I had great joy over its uniqueness. If it weren’t for the EQ for my personal taste, it would have sat on the same throne with Tea as Thanos and Lady Death. Now MEST is the single king there, with Tea as the queen at its side. MEST and Tea are of the same bloodline, Variations is the beast from the East.
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where do you get a MEST for 740?
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This is a trick, there is a polish retailer Audeos having MEST OG currently on sale for 4500 PLN (basically 1150$). But this is price including VAT, I am having my own company as well, so I could buy it for the price without VAT + reduce the taxes for this investment from my income and I end up with 740$ net.
This is fully legal as I need equipment to communicate with my clients, only thing missing is cable with in-line mic and I am fully set.
The thing is that buying on company is different than buying personally from customer protection point of view and reselling that further is not an option, so that is why I hesitate. That and also because it is 700+ freaking dollars for a pair of headphones…
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Two things that sound surprising from your short impressions - soundstage in MEST being the smallest, where I normally heard it is full of air 4D like soundstage. Hmm, but it does not necessarily mean it is wide…
2nd is that from your description it does not seem like MEST is so WOW above the rest, but more like a little step up and sideways from the other. The law of diminishing returns?
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Yes, I think it’s safe to buy it now. I truly hope that those hot, bright sounding Teas are now history.
One thing I forgot to mention in my first post… @nymz set has silver vent mesh while my has black mesh but it doesn’t seem to affect anything.
I have now thrown against my pair few songs that I usually listen and can confirm again that they weren’t hot or sibilant on any of them.
This song in particular I use for sibilance as her voice can pierce on brighter sets
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I’m not sure if I’m remembering right, but it seems that MEST MKII might have a bigger stage. Diminishing returns is definitely something worth considering, but in terms of MEST, I wouldn’t say that, at least for the price that I got. Can’t say much about 1K+ IEMs cos I don’t have any experience in that realm instead of the current MEST.
But if you want me to price-rank MEST against Variations according to my ears, honestly I’d say $300-350 more than Variations seem like a reasonable value. +$400 would be a stretch for me. If there’s anything that getting the MEST taught me, is that I won’t be needing anything priced above $700. Content with what I have atm.
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So daily update: I still hate fedex. I bought toping nx7 and Hiby R5 Sabre this morning. Igor sent me back my Teas. Im getting Yuan Li on monday. Im exhausted, thank god for friday.
I need a deep session of jams with my rsv and some sleep time.
EDIT: Oh, forgot I also got ifi Hip-Dac on a bargain local deal, so that’s also coming next week.
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Fixed that for you.
Fedex in UK is one of the worst, they don’t smash parcels, but they outsource their packages to their child brand TNT, then the tracking just keep getting delayed and delayed, saying that it will arrive today, then a sorry at night “will deliver tomorrow,” then another missed delivery the next day, so on so forth. And both the TNT and Fedex site don’t properly work.
Hermes UK is still the worst of UK couriers tho. According to their company policy, if the parcel is meant to be delivered by night, the postman have to make it or delayed parcel mean they get a fine the next day, resulting in a lot of cases that the postman just marks it as "Delivered’ that night but not really. Either they take the parcel home and deliver it the next day, or they just throw it in a random building or flat near the address… My friend and I just had 4 of these occurrences this month alone.
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Guess thats why they are called TNT. 
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