K.O. in the first round.
Blessing had no chance. In my opinion, the Solaris is in a different league.
Much more precision in the entire spectrum. More control in the lows.
Much more resolution in the highs.
Ridiculous that Crinacle has both rated A at technical grade.
This is not a criticism of your comments, which I enjoyed (I own and love the Solaris 2020!), just a more general opinion on Crinacle and some of the strong opinions he seems to engender.
Personally, I'm not hugely familiar with the minutiae of
@crinacle and his website, but he's one of the reviewers out there that I respect a lot and whenever I've used his site, I've found it to be a very helpful resource and I greatly appreciate his approach.
He may not always give the ratings I would give (better or worse) to certain IEMs, but that's totally to be expected, and I find his graphs invaluable - as a tool to be used alongside impressions, reviews, tech specs and my own demo'ing where possible.
What you also have there is a metric tonne of reviews with a consistent thread of likes/dislikes and preferences.
As long as a reviewer's preferences and biases are known - to some extent or other, we all have them - then we can glean valuable insights from a person's reviewing.
As an analogy, I like milk-based coffees with sugar, but I've trained as a barista and am still able to identify different beans/processing methods/origins etc even with sugar and milk in the coffee; it's as if my mind can just mentally 'filter out' the added qualities and find the essential character underneath.
So if I read a review from someone who I know hates forward upper mids ('M'...entioning no names, hehe) and they give a pretty objective but overall negative review to an IEM, I can still filter through that known preference and get a pretty good idea about whether I might love the IEM or not, and importantly, without getting unnecessarily hung up on whether that person ultimately gave that IEM as glowing a review as another IEM (or what grade I personally would give to the IEM).
Regarding the 'A' rating of Blessing 2 and Solaris in the technical department, I am not familiar with the Blessing 2, but a quick search seems to suggest it's around a $1000 cheaper than the Solaris; in this case, would it not be safe to assume Crinacle was talking about relative value here?
Personally, I'd give the EE Odin, the UM MEST and the iBasso IT03 all top marks for technical performance, but that score in each case would be taking into account the price of the IEM. This categorically does not mean that the IT03 performs as well as the Odin, as I hope will be obvious
And of course I will usually make it clear in the review that I'm referring to the quality relative to the price etc.
Anyway, just some thoughts. I've been listening to the Solaris 2020 with a Nayparm hardware-modded Sony ZX300 this morning and it's been a stunningly musical and engaging session (mostly rock, pop, hip-hop and acoustic in this one).
I'm continually surprised and delighted by the unique sound signature of the Solaris 2020