First of all, why did i buy the Moondrop Blesing 2 Dusk? Because it was hyped and i looked at the graph. I've seen that is its frequency response is very close to other IEMs i love like the IER-Z1R (compare the graphs of those two, very similar. Not the same, but very close).
I did not expect the Dusk to sound like the IER-Z1R and of course not that i'd be able to beat it. But i did expect some similarities.
Now how to begin, why is the Dusk so complicated (according to me).
If i would do a blind test with you and give you the IER-M9 (5BA) and the Dusk. You would say the IER-M9 is an Hybrid and the Dusk is an all BA Setup. That is where the issue begins. There are all-BA IEM that sound more like a hybrid than the Dusk which is an actual hybrid.
The Bass is there, but very thin, soft and cold. It never hits hard, you don't really feel it unless its loud. And this is one of the biggest issues i had with the Dusk. The Bass is less controlled and detailed than an BA bass, but it sounds like an BA bass.
It combines the disadvantages of an BA with the disadvantages of an DD but is lacking the advantages of any of them. Most likely this is due to the Sound Pipe but i don't know what exactly went wrong here. I tried several earpieces including foam but non of them fixed the issue for me.
The mids are totally boring. They are nowhere close to the FiiO FA9 and of course not IER-M9. They also sound very cold, thin and lifeless.
The highs are way to lively. They are razor sharp, i never heard such sharp highs in any IEM ever before. You thought the IER-Z1R sounds cold and does have hot treble? Well, try the Dusk, it will cut your eardrum in pieces.
I first thought its just me but i then passed the IEM to my girlfriend (who is not an audiophile) and to my cousin (also not an audipihile) and they all agreed, the treble hurts. My cousin said after 5 songs that he literally is feeling pain in his ear and he does have to stop listening to it.
But depending on what listening you’re using to or what DAP you’re using, it might not be bad for you. It was for me because… now the biggest issue: Expectations.
Because this is an Hybrid with an DD Bass, i had the expectation that it will have warm, thick and slammy bass because that is what BA (mostly, not all, there are exceptions like the IER-M9) normally can’t do.
Because it used the Knowles SWFK (i know from the FiiO FA9), i thought i knew what to expect from the treble, but i was profen wrong.
Even though the frequency response is very similar to the IER-Z1R (again, I did not expect the Dusk to sound close to the Z1R, just similar to a certain extend), it sounds totally different. Its a night and day difference. The IER-Z1R and the Dusk have absolutely nothing in common.
And yes I do know that frequency response graphs are only there in addition to listening to earphones and that they don’t tell the whole story. But in the case of the Dusk, they tell nothing.
And due to the weird tuning, layering and soundstage is all over the place. When you listen to a drumkit, the Hi-Hat plays right next to your ear with pretty much no distance. The Bass Drum plays in like 1m distance and the rest of the drumkit plays in 5m distance to you. It just gets ripped apart.
The clapping of people is separated from their screams and so on. Everything is just all over the place. Its like this IEM was tuned using graphs and computers and math but nobody ever really listened to a piece of music with it. It is completely incapable of carrying any emotion. Nothing ever sounds nice or beautiful. If you listen to three acoustic guitars from different brands, all you really hear is the sound of metal strings. The character and the body of the guitar gets totally lost. And if you use different strings on the same guitar, they’ll all sound the same.
I listened to Tastuya Maruyama and the nail attack (an technique where you hit the strings with your nails, but don’t play it. It just makes an snaredrum like sound if you know what I mean) was just louder than everything else. In some songs he uses that a bit extensive and its impossible to listen to these songs. Absolutely unpleasing experience.
WATER AND SUMMER from Tatsuya Maruyama is another example. With the XBA-Z5, IER-M9, IER-Z1R and the FiiO FA9, I can just listen to this song normally. But with the Dusk, oh my god it just hurts. Such an beautiful song destroyed by the IEM. The sharp tiks hurt all the time, the bass totally gets lost and is playing uncontrolled in the nowhere.
The Song 21 from SAPPORO & TOKYO… just outch. Again, Soundstage and Layering is all over the place. The volume peaks are just insane. Everytime he hits the strings its like double the volume and the guitar again, has no body whatsoever. The Warm body of the guitar is somewhere 20m away from you in the nothing, all you hear is the sound when his nails are picking the strings (but not a warm, impactfull plucking, just a cold scratching of nails on metal strings) and when he hits the strings with the flat hand.
Pretty much the whole album (which is recorded rather cold) is unlistenable with the Dusk.
And don’t get me started on music with more than one instrument. I tried listening to ReoNa, but I stopped trying. The more instruments you add to the mix, you multiply the above mentioned issues.
The disappointment got bigger because the fit is remarkable. It fit me so well, It almost disappeared. The design was amazing (I even got the engraved version). I would have never sent it back if the sound would have been different. Thats the only issue I had with this IEM.
At this price point I think there are much better In-Ear on the market. They may not reveal the same amount of detail or provide the same level of analytics, but they make your music sound good. You have to decide for yourself whats more important to you.
The support from Moondrop was, by the way, exceptional. They did an awesome job in helping me to get the IEM fast and they also supported me when sending it back. Im so sad that im not into its sound signature, otherweise it would have been an 10/10 overall experience easily.
But some listeners like this bass porrige, as I see