[rtimmel]

It seems that in the last 10 years or so, Asian manufacturers have come to dominate the SB $100 IEM market. US/European manufacturers for the most part, have kept the $1000+ market. But how do they compare in the middle market - the $100 to $1000 space?

For example, I was thinking about buying the Campfire Holocene's ($375 at Drop). According to their website these are the least expensive iem's that Campfire now sells. There are Chi-Fi alternatives that come to mind, for example one of Moondrop's Blessings, but there seems to very little review comparisons between the two markets. Holocene reviews tend to discuss how the fit into the Campfire sound signatures, and a few will discuss outher US brands, but no crossover with the Chi-Fi offerings.

I would appreciate hearing you guy's thoughts.

 

[baskingshark]

It seems that in the last 10 years or so, Asian manufacturers have come to dominate the SB $100 IEM market. US/European manufacturers for the most part, have kept the $1000+ market. But how do they compare in the middle market - the $100 to $1000 space?

For example, I was thinking about buying the Campfire Holocene's ($375 at Drop). According to their website these are the least expensive iem's that Campfire now sells. There are Chi-Fi alternatives that come to mind, for example one of Moondrop's Blessings, but there seems to very little review comparisons between the two markets. Holocene reviews tend to discuss how the fit into the Campfire sound signatures, and a few will discuss outher US brands, but no crossover with the Chi-Fi offerings.

I would appreciate hearing you guy's thoughts.

Just my 2 cents.

In the IEM world (note: not headphone market but IEMs), CHIFI has overtaken the western and boutique brands in the budget and midFI segments, providing superior price-to-performance ratio. They may have QC issues, but CHIFI are generally much cheaper cause of economies of scale, cheaper labour/parts, and perhaps they do not spend so much on marketing and licensing? Some CHIFI IEMs like from DUNU and QDC have also muscled in to the TOTL market and are considered TOTL in their own right.

But anyways, from budget (<$100 USD) -> MidFI ($100 - $500ish?) -> TOTL (> $1K), generally you get diminishing returns as you move up the ladder, maybe 10 - 20% improvement in each rung, but you might pay exponentially more to hit the next bracket. The $500 - 1K band is a bit of an orphan child with not many releases at that price range (hard to call it midFI, but just top up a bit more and you get a legit TOTL model).

So in the near $500 range, there are some nice CHIFI like the Moondrop Variations, Mangrid IEMs eg that are quite resolving and are just perhaps slightly weaker than true TOTL, but you get diminishing returns going to TOTL, so some folks don't mind losing that 20% or so for better value, but some audiophiles wanna chase that last few %. YMMV.