yeah that is the big con for the more exotic drivers right now.
(havent heard the sonion ESTs, but the magnetostats and piezo are similar in that.)
Although I like these exotic drivers because they sound so unique, if i just want a natural sound I stick to single DD or a hybrid (DD+BA) at most.
Personally for me ba + DD is where it’s at, but I have a few more strange driver configs that I do really like, like the hyla sarda (or ce5) or the obravo eamt-1c
Recently for an iem I was impressed with that had electrit drivers was the ice labs reference iem
Makes sense. This also makes QC that much more important. If the product isn’t being checked for coherency, certain customers may end up with products that are produced with the design properly integrated. But if there are drivers that are varying in speed and they aren’t caught in QC, other customers will end up with a product that is not meeting the designs standards?
Not sure how much a bad QC will affect only the speed. I would think that if there was something really wrong with the QC, the entire sound would be messed up.
damn that price 
I wait 1 or 2 years for EST´s to be cheaper before I try them. My limit for a single iem is around 300 usd right now.
Very good to know! I have yet to hear an est and have been wondering what the hype is about. The est must give some advantages over BAs though right? That’s why so many are being developed? They just need to do a better job implementing them?
Yeah I haven’t really liked many of the more budget iems with est drivers. Honestly though I don’t have much midrange iem experience lol, I mainly was only used to the older iems and then the wave of new iems hit and I mainly just decided to go to the top lol
I think that EST´s can reproduce more details than BA´s BUT if you have too much treble it is going to sound unnatural and maybe peaky.
So I think that when EST/piezo are lower in quantity (on grahps) compared to BA´s they will be roughly the same level of quantity (perceived).
They are quicker and more resolving than most ba for the most part, but they don’t have as good impact and timbre, also can sound unnatural and also have some compression issues at times, so if that can be worked around, then they are def worth pursuing imo (it’s getting there)
That is one of the reason I am waiting for manufacturers to be better at tuning EST iems. (also for the price).
So… From this conversation, I’m guessing there’s really no way to measure the actual speed of an IEM? It’s just our perceived opinion of it? 
Forgot, but you also asked about the SLOWEST iems.
I think it has to be the VE Bonus IE. in my collection, but honestly if the bass is that slow I just wont bother analysing the sound. So there might be a slower one.
I mean you could do CSD and impulse but in reality the final test comes down to the ear
Yes, I believe that the speed isnt something you can measure.
I guess you CAN intepret a lower bass quantity (on a graph) iem as being faster. But there might be iems with a lot of bass quantity that is faster so you cant say for sure.
(and driver type generalisation also works I guess, It goes something like this DD < BA < Planar < EST/Piezo/magnetostat)
Sounds about right if you had to generalize things, although I don’t know if I would rate piezo as quick as est or mag
yeah, but as with other things. this is of course just an generalisation of the stuff I have heard.
And I have only heard 2 planars, 3 piezo and 1 magnetostats. While I have a ton of DD´s…
So not very statistically accurate. So do take it with a massive grain of salt.
I havent heard EST´s so of course I cant say anything about it.
I just put those 3 together because they are the most similar to each other.
So it comes down to the ear and experience of the listener to be able to tell if a certain IEM is fast or not.
Yes, the ear is the “examiner” and the experience (how many iems you listened to) is the “grading system”
Ha ha! Sounds ridiculous but it is what it is. I guess all this means we’re all way too into this stuff and we’re probably in the category of .001% of people on the planet who actually care about any of this. 
We probably should just shut up, go and enjoy some music and not think so much.
