I haven't tried ER2SE but Monarch sounds thinner than ER2XR, and also much brighter.

The thing about Banbeucmas' ears is they're pretty small and flat with kinda short canal. So in fact, Z1R doesn't fully sit on his concha (just the smaller part near the nozzle), the whole thing gets held in place by his canal - it seems. So you can call his "blessed virgin ears".

If someone wanna try out his EQ on MacOS, I suggest checking out https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq#osx for PEQ on Mac. If you go with AUNBandEq then you may need a calculator to convert between Q-factor and Width, which can be found here...

Tork EQ for Blessing 2 makes it S+ tonality level. (Don't @ me though)

I'm using 0,1 with Azla Sedna (Light)

Yeah as ClieOS said, I'm just comparing the specs listed on the products' sites - not about the SQ. It took me a while for looking them up too, so I thought it may be easier to write them down here for the one who needs. And I'm sorry if it's misinterpreting to you, I'll edit the post ;).

Yes it does. From the specs on https://www.qudelix.com/ It's better than ES100, Shanling UP4 - in terms of bit rate & sampling rate (not actual sound quality) but slightly worse than Fiio BTR5. But to be frank, 24/96 is enough for me.

I don't like the fact that he talks about "unproven claims" as if they're facts in that video. And also, he didn't do his research clear, as I said million times before: If it's a rebrand, it's more likely to be the newer, available Elk version because of the switches & housing. Claiming L9 is...

ErkH shares a graph of the Elk version here too https://www.head-fi.org/threads/the-discovery-thread.586909/page-3143#post-15594800. Note that L9 comes with Copper cable and JQ 8+1 comes with Silver one, and also different measuring gears, so of course it may look a bit different. I don't think...

So, to clear out the confusion. There're 2 active JQ lineups 8+1 [8BA+1DD]. There're many versions of this one: Pro, Elk,... The latest version is Elk (2020) - which is being sold on their Taobao page. Hua Jiang / Ingenuity [2EST+6BA+1DD]. I thought there's only 1 version for this one, but...

Thanks for clarifying, I can't read Chinese so I thought JQ Hua Jiang (https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=606730284250) is actually called 8+1 too. My bad :D Sorry, I don't know how to get it in other countries... I live in Vietnam - which is super close to China, and there're lots of proxies...

I'm actually interested in getting that one too (directly from Taobao, since it's easier that way). But I guess I'd wait for more reviews.

Not really though, the new JQ 8+1 (which is called JQ Hua Jiang on Linsoul site) is the 2 EST + 6 BA + 1 DD one, which is definitely different than L9.

Thanks for your help! You can still connect to BTR5 from an iPhone via Bluetooth normally. My post was about wired connection from iPhone - which maybe seems impossible (or at least not consistently work) at the moment.

Do you mean that it doesn't even work with iOS using Camera Kit + Charging off?