[xicex]

What are the best Kanen earphones?

I know the MD-52s are supposed to be good.

I ordered 4 Kanen earphones

For that $ I could've gotten SM PL-30s or MeElec M9s but I was curious O.o

 

[Sayajin]

I would say stick to MD-52.
I don't know any better from them, the few other earbuds and iem I've tried was crap and so only what I paid for.

But yeah your money could have been spend on better things. SoundMAGIC having much better build quality mostly whatever you choose and those MeElec M9 would probably have been better choose as well.

 

[ljokerl]

The KM-948 sound pretty good. I wouldn't be disappointed at all if I'd spent $5-6 on them. The only other set I've owned are the MD-51 and they were/are crap. The current-gen Kanen earphones are a pretty big step up in build quality and packaging from those of the MD-51/MD-52 generation.

 

[robjrock]

I thought the km92 outdid the md52, but the md52 was more balanced, but grainy with very poor build quality. Km92 had lots of bass, recessed, coloured but pleasant mids and an okay treble response. They're no Ksc75 that's for sure.
Km948 sounds very promising, I'm tempted to give em a try as a cheap backup pair.

Remember $5 earphones are always gonna sound like $5 earphones. But some are definitely better than others.

 

[Hal Rockwell]

I recently purchased 10 different models of Kanen IEM's to find out which ones sound good and which are not.
 
From the listening tests I conducted, I can say that those are the models that sounded bad:
KM-948
KM-802V
KM-902
KM-901
KM-90
KM-805
I'm not going to write about each one and describe its flaws cause all of the had the same problems: lack of bass and muffled sound as if not listening to the source of the sound but the returns from the IEM's inner walls.
 
Those are the Kenen models that sounded good:
KM-928 - a slightly worse sounding version of KM-92 wooden IEM's
KM-92 - wooden IEM't that sound good. Though I couldn't get a good seal with them, in a quiet listening environment they sounded quite good to me.
KM-903 - good sounding IEM's with a decent seal.
EC-5 - the best Kanen model I tested. It has a very good seal.
 
I have to mention that the successful Kanen models, though sound good, are not flat or anything like that. They all have emphasized bass.