Was the fiio f5 for me. They were/still basically unheard of. Good little set that eventually led to tin t2+s(horrible) and blon bl03s. The blons became the daily for a while until I got fh3s and the rest is history.
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I have the Jade EA1s and EA3s basically fiios little brother brand, I heard the FH5 is discontinued…curious how did they sound???
Haven’t heard of BASN before - are they good?
I was a mostly a modest priced headphone guy for a long time ( a decade of working in open offices ), but after I moved to California my office was the dining room, extra bedrooms aren’t cheap in LA. I quickly learned that closed backs are too warm here.
After a bit of research in May of 2021, I tried the KZ ZS10 Pro, and still use it occasionally. The ZS10 Pro has a peak around 5k that I don’t like, and could stand a bit better bass extension. The hunt for the right IEM led me here, and to a pretty fun hobby.
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Find that out myself too!!
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Sometimes learning what you don’t like is more important than learning what you do like, and if nothing else, my first few IEMs each taught me a lesson. This is true not only for IEMs, but also work, significant others, and nearly everything else in life.
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My first IEM was BLON-03, based on reviews. I didn’t really care for them too much. I didn’t realize how well IEMs can perform until I tried out Hyla Sarda on a whim. From there, I went towards 64 Audio and Rhapsodio.
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look what i just found in my down stairs pantry, my first “audiophile” iems that i bought as an infant that made me dislike iems until recently 
10 12 years ago these were the ONLY budget option around 100$ if you wanted something iem style ( not in ear buds or regular buds style). The rest were either sony, philips, sennies, beyer, audio technikca or bass by dre but all of them were buds style.
Btw just tried them and they still work after 11 years, not sure if i can say the same thing in the future for chifi iems 
you might ask how it sounds, then look at this graph. mud+ crippling darkness.
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Nah, around that time you had the Xiaomi Piston 2 that were all the hype. That might be the first really hyped chifi iem actually. (20 usd iirc.)
no they were the norm back in 2016 2017, i had 50+ of them for youtube and bus but they all failed after 2 month of usage. nobody knew xiaomi even existed back in 2011 2012.
^^^ Upgrade
That’s why ChiFi took the world by storm!
I still have my AONIC4 and TBH Olina kills it straight up.
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First IEM was Final E2000, mub+darkness also.
First IEMs with cable over the ear were the Tin T2 (hated it) and the Blon BL-05S, which was 
Piston 2 was in 2014, that one had a similar hype like those older KZs.
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Yes, they released a ton of models under the Piston name thanks to the hype that the second one got. (lovely chocolate smell. )
And also a lot under the successor “hybrid” name (after piston 3, they made “hybrids”, dont remember if it was literally a hybrid driver or just a name though).
They also bought 1More and started releasing some newer Pistons model under that brand.
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That is exactly how it sounds when I wore them, it was dark and mud. That was the time when I was a fledgeling to this hobby and didn’t know any better. Still though despite the sounds being all like that, the sound isolation was impressive for the time.
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M[quote=“Soven, post:1, topic:33695, full:true”]
My first IEM was the TinT2. I was just blindly bought it off of Amazon and I was a little impressed by the sound then I found out about Dacs then Amps then DacAmp combos/dongles…Then I purchased the Moondrop Arias and it got me serious in the hobby, fortunately is was the new version that I later found out. The Arias really gave the IEM music experience I never thought was possible combined with my DacAmp dongles and Tidal Master subscription. Then of course of got curios to what else was out there and down this rabbit hole I went lol.
currently at the moment I only use Dekoni bullet foam eartips but I want to learn more about eartips from spinfits and kbear, find out what is my size and buy some to try them out.
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My first iem was the klipsch image S4 II
I still have it and it’s still functional, but it isn’t to my taste anymore.
I didn’t really used them much, though. I got serious in the hobby after having tried the tin t2 (didn’t like) and the blon 03. They got me into buying a cable and some tips besides it. Since then, it is escalation: cables, iems, sources (dongle and desktop), my wallet seems to be connected to a growing void.
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