IMO, FH3s lack the vocal rise, and OH10s show off more sub-bass than the AKG. As much as the AKG graph like that, they lack the bass impact. But going to higher quality stuff certain gains in imaging, detail, soundstage, ect… Maybe OH1s would be a better fit tonality wise? 
Touch less bass, still that vocal shelf. I haven’t heard them, tho.
I’d also throw in filter-modded Blon 03s. Less bass bloat, more vocal and high rise to scratch that vocal region.
One of the reasons why I don’t upgrade too high. I think less-expensive gear has that right balance of quality without approaching the “monitoring every crummy detail” aspect.
And also why I’m on the side of single DD IEMs. BAs can throw out so much sharply defined detail that they can ruin the listening experience for me. Single DDs can smooth~ things over and engage with me far more.
I’m with you on this one. Love the coherent sound from a quality, technically capable single DD. Granted I haven’t tried a higher end BA so maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about. Lol
On the other hand, I also find myself enjoying the quirks of older recordings. When I can hear the differences in recording and mastering styles it makes the music more immersive and it feels more like a time capsule. I’m not trying to advocate for the “just as the artist intended” argument, but I tend to connect with the music more when I hear the differences in how it was produced even if that includes the imperfections.
Agree, ba iems for me just always have something lacking compared to dd iems. Whether it is timbre, bass texture or just a comfort thing since most of them don’t have vents.
I learned how much source gear matters. Growing up outside of audio one only thinks about speakers and headphones because we don’t even know what a dac or amp is. But every single time I upgraded amp or dac it’s been a religious experience. From the 4xx with the liquid spark. To using Nighthawks with the xduoo xd-05 plus to using a lcd 2 prefazor with a Liquid Platinum and to using all of my gear with the bifrost dac. They have been the biggest jumps on audio for me.
Something I learned: sometimes shitty is fun. It doesn’t matter how actively fuked my car speakers are (all of my cars have mega fucked speakers from the 80s), my most enjoyable music is still always on road trips just belting out middleschool toons in the middle of Central CA stuck behind a semi with my windows down sweating and gagging as i drive past the slaughter houses at 100 F cause i don’t have functioning ac all while a 3rd gen dodge caravan with every seat filled and the rear wiper dangling limply in the the wind passes me at 105
I think there is a point where car speakers are total garbage, tho. 
When I was in Japan, many kei cars have terrible stereo systems. Dash-only, mono speakers with terrible output. Pretty much sound like $0.40 earbuds. For long road trips, I always brought a bluetooth speaker.
My best car setup is roughly on the level of 2006 skullcandies
The biggest thing I’ve learned, or changed is to focus on enjoying the music rather than focusing on enjoying (or analysing) the headphones. The headphones enable the music, not the other way round.
Great post, I read somewhere that “some use the music to listen to their gear” I definitely use my gear to listen to the music 
I’ve learned that people connect $2000 cables to $0.10 voice coils to improve the sound.
My personal big discovery is: I HAVE TO LISTEN THE MUSIC, NOT HOW THE DEVICE PLAYS THE MUSIC.
At the beginning I was so shocked about new gear, that I started to overanalize and starting to change what I am listening. It’s like stop watching you prefered movies and TV shows and start to watch beautiful BBC documentaries, just because you enjoy how beautiful they look on your new TV…
However, over time, I have to come back and I try not to spend my efforts catching the last detail on a Movie or TV show. I don’t bother to get the absolutely perfect detail, resolution, clarity, contrast, color, and so on… There are minimums that have to be attained to enjoy a Movie. I think that now I couldn’t watch the Godfather on a VHS tape… However, I consider that neither TV’s or the support (Bluray, streaming…) are the bottleneck to enjoy the movie. Image and sound quality is limited because of the recording techniques.
Same happens with music. I started to realize that the most important piece of a good equipment are the speakers, headphones, iems… but when you have a minimum, then the big difference is the recording. How was recorded and post-production corrections. On electronic music some sounds pretty flat and boring, and some sounds rich and wonderful. The limit is not my gear, it’s how it was recorded.
So, once I have that minimum achieved (on TV and on sound) I don’t have the need to chase the dragon…
Now, I am not looking for “better” or “worse”, I am trying to find something closer to my preferences (in my case, bassy, warm and medium-dark, with as much detail as possible with that configuration).
At the beginning I was so shocked about new gear, that I started to overanalize and starting to change what I am listening. It’s like stop watching you prefered movies and TV shows and atart to watch beautiful BBC documentaries, just because you enjoy how beautiful they look on your new TV…
Same experience here. Spent a lot of time seeking out recordings that would highlight the performance of the audio equipment. Steely Dan are good, but there’s only so much Steely Dan one man can listen to.
best thing to do is get the highest quality recordings of the music you are familiar with and hear it again for the first time. there is a reason it’s a cliche to say ‘I have listened to this song thousands of times and I’m hearing new things’ when someone gets their first taste of quality equipment.
Different music players absolutely can sound different.
(Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Audirvana, Roon, Amarra Luxe etc.)
EQ can’t fix what the driver can’t produce, but it can tune down what’s hot and a tweak in certain frequency have “butterfly effect” on the perception of overall sound
Watching/reading review is like looking at graph, you need to know what and how to interpret the reviewer saying because their 10/amazing can be a 7/average good or 12/too much. Follow and listen to someone who have similar taste to your sound signature preference.
Curiosity kills the wallet, frequency response doesn’t tell the whole story, end game is state of mind.
There’s a specialized gear for every specific mood, as much subjective neutral/balance is the goal for every audiophile (jack of all trade) but for each genre there’s optimum sound that won’t be produced by perfect neutral, can only be achieved by skewed freq response (subjectively too). Perfect gear exist if you only listen to one and only one very specific genre of music.
I really wish I knew about Headfi and Hifi Guides and all the other parts of the community. I remember being probably 14, 15 years old back in 2010 saving up to buy the Beats in ears - Thinking for sure if I spend $150, i’ll for sure have a next level audio experience. Those basically fell apart on me within 6 months, terrible build and quite frankly, probably didn’t sound that great objectively. That experience just killed any interest I had in the hobby. Then, getting back into it a few years later and reading about Vsonic VSD3 and VSD5 it rekindled my interest and those were great. Now, 6 years later, I’m back into it and I guess I got back in at the perfect time because the hobby has never been more exciting.
Plus, I’m a part of this fantastic small community with you guys and I’ve never had this much fun with the hobby. All that time and money wasted back in the day…. Man I think about that sometimes and kick my self in the ass.
it’s all part of the journey dom, and if you learned something from an experience, never regret it. money is only a tool, nothing more 