Did anyone ever try said Xonar essence STX directly with klipsch image X-10 IEM's ? Years ago I've plugged the klipsch into a meier audio amp and they sounded utterly horrible as in extremely muffled, boomy and whatnot out of some mysterious reason. Since the STX also has some kind of beefier amp I thought I'd double check if someone ever tried this combo.
If not I guess I'll just pull the trigger and take chances. If bad comes to worse I could return it withing 14 days anyway.
 

Well.. I did it and ordered the STX. At first I thought just the low end was pretty much emphasized but they totally don't work well with the STX. Right now I'm comparing the X-10 with some Sony MDR-V500 from a friend and the X-10 are muffled, veiled and boomy in comparison. Normally they're really bright and detailed with a slight tendency for sibilance.
It's probably identical to the results with the Meier Audio amp back a few years ago. Seems these IEM's flat out reject more powerful amplification and sound horrible when force-fed with too much power.
So... gotta wrap my head around the situation. Part of me wants to keep the STX, other part of me doesn't want to go on a new headphone crusade, wallet is mad anyway

Most likey they dont like the JRcs thats in the I/Vs, try changing it to another op-amp.

Yeah that might work out somehow plus I wanted to dig into that topic anyway. Is there anything you could suggest?

You can give some OPA2111KP a shot as well as OPA2107AP, both are dual channel op-amps so you only need to put in one for each I/V socket. the OPA2107AP are like a cheap ver of the OPa627/827.

Thanks for getting me started. I'll read about the whole thing a bit for a while I guess. Can't hurt to try and know what I'm actually doing there