Thanks for the answer! Yes the disparity in people who can compare make the choosing really difficult. I knew about Innerfidelity's TOTL comparison but totally forgot about the entry level one, I'm gonna re-read that right away! Thanks again.

For my buying decisions, when I can't try the stuff IRL, I usually try to get all the data by myself and choose my stuff from said data. But with CIEMs, As I may go directly for a top of the line product, and since I can't grab a hold of how certain products sound like, I feel like I'll have to...

You might want to look into "dolby headphones", witch simulate 7 speakers spatialisation through the 2 speakers of your headphones. This could help locating the origin of noise around you better. From a gaming console you'll need a device that can make dolby headphone from a spdif/toslink or...