To my ears, this particular DSP dongle makes this IEM sounds more Harman than the stock, neutering its advantages (bass and warmer sound). And it has a faint waterfall hiss as well. And it’s insanely loud at 9/100 volume level.

This IEM shines with this setup and album. The DSP dongle is frankly unnecessary, at least IMHO.

I’m not aware that the dongle of Splendor 2 has EQ baked in 🤔 interesting. I should measure with and without it. I do hear the tonal balance and shape of the stage a bit different, but I attributed to the weaker amp that fail to drive the bass properly. We will see. i also kinda disagree that...

Single DD IEMs tend to respond well to extra Vrms, in my experience. Balanced output provides that. On the other hand, stubbornly low sensitivity IEMs like those from Singaporean boutiques can be so current limited that additional voltage from balanced does not seem to help. It’s still a...

I think Chinese factory actually bluetack the drivers to the coupler just to check if they make sound according to the plan before selling 😂 Edit: @Surf Monkey to be fair, MacBook becomes much much better after Ive left. My new M1 Pro macbook can run bigger LLM model fully on GPU, on battery...

Ouch, that’s bad. Have you tried FiiO FF3? The OG one, not the revision. I bought it because I spent the whole morning at my local hifi store and unbox many of their demo units, so I figure I should grab something before leaving. Those flathead buds blew my mind 😂 thus began the obsession with...

That’s flathead earbuds. Measurements of those are mostly for 💩 and giggle. If you press the earpieces harder against the concha you have more bass. Release it just a touch and you have no bass. Moondrop’s graph is likely correct since they use a HATS with ears.

It’s like Lee ran out of budget when reaching the cable after making the earpieces and designing the box 😂 So it seems the Pilgrim OG has 1BA mid and 2BA highs, 3 way crossover. The Pilgrim Noir has 2BA mid and 1 undampened Knowles supertweeter right in the nozzle, 4 way crossover. It seems...

Or, you can save the money 😂 I don’t see the point of either when you already have the himalaya. How expensive is the Splendor II nowadays? It seems to fit your description.

What I learned lately is that us “audiophile” do not like high fidelity that much 😂 class A, NOS, dark IEMs. We always try to cut down that “high res” info that modern gear is capable of producing.

I think it depends on the DAC. The RS6 sounds different, the DX300 sound different, most of my FiiO sounds the same, the R8II sound the same. On DX300, you can circle between filters without looking at the screen. I did that multiple times and almost always land on the D2 (still have no idea...

In theory. In practice, I hear a noticeable difference between the stock cable and a very thin cable from Dr Juggles that my friend gave me. After testing this and that, I’m back to the stock cable 😂 comfortable, stealthy, and wide compatibility (3.5mm jack) Afaik, LID ensures that the...

@Bosk did some masterworks modding a Chifi tube amp in the past. Unfortunately I have never had a chance to test that giant box before he disassembled it. I’m not touching amp modding. With my luck, it would explode in my face 😂

Same energy 😂 how does it sound? i have to live vicariously through you with this one.