"Brooko goes savage."
 
No, Brooko stays honest.
Nothing here to see except an over hyped set that should make some folks embarrassed.
 
 
Great review as always.
For the 70%+  non members that after a month will be a majority of this reviews readers via search engine....I thank you on their behalf.

Kudos for giving a rational review of these.  It seems we have 2 possible explanations: 
1.  The QT5 just uniformly suck, and the hyper-glowing, giant-killer reviews are flat-out lies. 
2.  The QT5 are being manufactured in different factories, or by different teams within one factory, and some of them suck and some of them are hyper-good giant killers.  
A very simple resolution to this mystery would be someone`s QT5 testing out with a radically different graph to the (ridiculously bad) ones encountered so far.  I`m staying tuned .  . . 

This hurt to read, as I just exchanged a defective pair of FLC8S for these, based almost entirely on the reviews Brooks alluded to above. Sadly, if mine sound like crap I will never get a refund for the additional DHL shipping costs I paid in order to receive them in a reasonable time frame.

Ouch

Brooko, Your results are VERY similar to what I heard from Bhazard's pair that I had on loan from him. Although the Vocals in his pair were probably the best Part of the presentation. What They DIDN'T have, (Mid-wise), was DETAIL. In: Ai Takekawa's "Beyond the Moon", ( One of the Songs I use to test IEMs with), there is a very pronounced echo on her voice so that when the Lyric stops there are 3-5 repeats of the last word. I basically could not hear these. If I strained Hard I could maybe make out 1 repeat. I have $15 KZ IEMs that faithfully reproduce this Echo. muddy, wet blanket sound and extreme Darkness?  Yep.... That is what I heard.

It's interesting that there are such polarizing reviews (and impressions) on this unit. I'm inclined to suspect like @Dopaminer that there are different batches, but until we can find one that doesn't measure like Paul's that ends up being unsubstantiated. It's weird though - even with the same outrageous signature, there's those who love it and those who hate it. I know we hear things differently, but this is a bit extreme.
 
And I shake my head at everyone like @Hawaiibadboy who jumps on the reverse-hype train to call these "overhyped" without thinking about how this polarization could have happened in the first place. Think, for once.

Youza, I thought I was missing out on a great earphone. Turns out that it's not so much. These had a lot of hype behind them. While I will say that these things are a glaring example that driver count has nothing to do with sound, the explosion of Chinese hybrid earphones is becoming more and more of a risk/reward experience. I've heard some really fantastic budget hybrids recently coming from China, but they all fall short to the Sirius both in terms of build and sound quality. Great review Paul, this one was eye opening.

Wow. I was ready to buy these. Thanks for making me avoid a dreadful purchase. 

Sounds like a doozy to me.  Informative, in an unfortunate sense.  Refreshing read though, and detailed as always.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for your honesty. I really become dismayed when I read reviews that sound so positive only to find the opposite to be true. I'm guessing some of these "review" sites become little more than compensated commercials for lesser known products.  What a shame....and thank goodness for websites like this, and reviewers like @Brooko .

@avitron142 I'm guessing the people writing positive reviews weren't hearing the iem's sound, especially considering that TwinAC heard Bhazard's pair and said it sounded similar to the measurements.  They were hearing the claim of 5 drivers.  Expectation bias is huge.

@avitron142 - Avi.  I think HBB's comment is perfectly OK.  These have been over-hyped.  Even on the design features alone they would never have been 5 star. Hopefully ZhiYin now get some more feedback so that they can correct what they've done wrong.  And until I see some other measurements showing there are tuning discrepancies - everything I've seen so far points to consistency with the units.  And in that case - we should be questioning reviewers.  

Whoa! 
 
Good job, @Brooko ! 
 
I love the fact that your reviews stay true to the sound! 

Avi - that is where you and I differ I guess.  My reviews encompass all aspects. If a $250 IEM with a poor nozzle design (fit/comfort) and sub-par cable meets a 5 star designation for you I guess that is your call.  I hope you get a chance to listen to these.

Thank you for this, Paul! Another little birdie (not me) got ripped apart for giving these a negative review.

There is a major publication bias on Head-Fi. Would this review be published if it were FiiO or Trinity Audio that produced a stinker? I hope so.

I've seen reviewers say they would send feedback to the manufacturer and not publish the review if it was negative like this.

This has all been a great learning curve , who would have thought 6 months ago that joining Head fi forums would be so engaging! Firstly I would like to apologize to those I may have influenced to purchase the QT5s only to be dissapointed with the SQ. It's encouraging to read in the QT5 thread that there are still others also as happy about their purchase but this is not a small chunk of change here and for 300US there should be at least the same consistency with customer satisfaction as we see the SW3. My enthusiasm shared in regards to the QT5s has always been genuine and I believed they were the best IEM China has on offer currently.. Again I sincerely apologize if I mislead anyone base off my ignorance and lack of experience. I choose to take this experience as a valueble lesson .

@glassmonkey - thats a really valid question - and I want to answer it as honestly as I can.  If it was FiiO, or Trinity, or DUNU, or any of the guys I deal with regularly - I would definitely give them feedback before I wrote and posted. And I would give them the chance to correct the faults.  And to their credit they would. But if they chose to release a product that I thought was flawed, and I thought people were possibly being misled - yes I would post.
 
There is only once in recent times I haven't - and that was with Campfire's Jupiter.  I posted my impressions in the tour thread, and spent quite a bit of time speaking one-on-one with Ken.  I wanted to make sure first that it wasn't the tour unit.  Turns out it wasn't - and most people seemed to like them.  I made my views known in the thread, and chose not to review the Jupiter. I don't feel as though I've compromised my principles doing it - I posted my genuine thoughts publicly, and simply agreed to disagree on the tuning.  It wasn't the same situation we have here though (at least in my eyes its not).  Willing to listen to alternate views on that though.  If you think I'm not being consistent, I'd rather know - and correct it for the future.

Scott - you have nothing to apologise for.  We are all learning - and I think people will recognise that/.  i'm more interested to see how you feel about them when you get them back.  Drop me a PM when you get that first listen again

@Brooko did you try to twist/unplug the cable?
 
It is written pretty much over the whole ZhiYin QT5 thread [1].
 
Otherwise, it's quite confusing to read these completely different impression - some people praising them as the flagship, and you (who generally gives pretty positive reviews) are bashing them..
 
It's quite odd..
 
 
 
 
 
 
[1] http://www.head-fi.org/t/808607/zhiyin-qt5-4ba-1dd-impressions-thread/555#post_12643071

If you read the review again you might note that the testing was actually with the X7 and AM3 module - with an ALO Tinsel cable in balanced mode. So I had the cable on and off multiple times. From what I have seen of the thread there have been a lot of questionable claims (the cable claims being one of them). In my brief experience it changed nothing.