I've had a couple days of quality time with the Minis to take them in more, and a chance to A/B them a bit with some of my existing iems.
They come with a whole page of silly stickers, very quirky and fun, also visible is the 'fatbox' case that they ship in, quite sturdy.
Inside in addition to the quite pretty IEMs, there is a desiccant mount/cable management system that works quite well and I could imagine would be particularly nice more humid climates. They're not visible, but in addition to the cleaning tool, they also throw in a free pair of filtered ear plugs, very cool.
The sound... wow these sure leave an impression.
The acoustic chamber / lowpass employed here creates a 20+ dB boost of bass sub 200 Hz, it really is the closes thing to a subwoofer I've experienced in either IEMs or headphones.
I was a bit worried about some of the extra treble energy in the measurements, but as is often the case things sound totally different than they look. The extra airy boost goes a long way in keeping the music coherent, sweet and engaging despite the elephants at the low end - a very impressive feat given the amplitude here!
I've had a lot of trouble pulling myself away from electronic music on these, but I can say that some heavy metal is also deeply satisfying. When there's not much sub content in the music, the left over tuning is competent but not at a level of engagement that the whole package brings. I have also been listening heavily to my Monarch 2s, and while I'd obviously give the low end nod to the Maestros, the tuning elsewhere I'd give to the tribrids so far.
Interestingly, there's no mesh/filter on the nozzle, just this impressive looking insert:
No idea if it will affect longevity, but it might be evidence of some of the acoustic guide technology Fatfreq is fielding here? I haven't popped the filters up in many of my IEMs (at least on purpose lol), so no idea how typical something like this is...
[Edit] It has been confirmed that current version of Maestro Mini ships with a filter for protection, so no more worries there!