I'm looking for my first pair of IEMs and I'm completely lost. There is so much choice that I don't even know where to start. As I specified, my budget is from 50$ to 150$, preferably around the 100$ mark.
I'm looking for headphones with a nice midrange. I heard that the Moondrop Arias were a good pair of IEMs for this price but that the bass is a bit overemphasized and that the midrange is receded.
The source will be my phone, as I'm looking for some headphones to use at work.
My friend has BLON BL-03 and I find the bass on those headphones to be too much.
TinHiFi P1 - stellar midrange but no bass at all
TRI Starsea - tuning switches allow you to change the sound, and I find that in balanced mode the midrange is really good
IMR EDP - you can only get it used now, but it has really good mids and a ton of tuning options with interchangeable nozzles and filters
SFR MT300 - it currently goes for more than twice the price I paid for it (on Aliexpress), but it's a very good IEM if you can get it cheaply (it shines with balanced connection)
Would you perhaps know if I can run the TRI Starsea with my phone? I saw on some reviews that it is picky about the source and I'm wondering if that will be an issue.
Would you perhaps know if I can run the TRI Starsea with my phone? I saw on some reviews that it is picky about the source and I'm wondering if that will be an issue.
It works just fine with my Mi 9T Pro and sounds damn good, so I suppose it should be perfectly fine. Of course, I can't speak for all phones out there.
I'm looking for my first pair of IEMs and I'm completely lost. There is so much choice that I don't even know where to start. As I specified, my budget is from 50$ to 150$, preferably around the 100$ mark.
I'm looking for headphones with a nice midrange. I heard that the Moondrop Arias were a good pair of IEMs for this price but that the bass is a bit overemphasized and that the midrange is receded.
The source will be my phone, as I'm looking for some headphones to use at work.
My friend has BLON BL-03 and I find the bass on those headphones to be too much.
I have both the Aria and the BLON BL03/MINI, and I think you might want to reconsider the Aria. They have noticeably less bass than the BLON, and are quite a nice all round performer. While they cannot match the technical ability of IEMs in higher tiers, they are very good for the price. I'm using Final E tips on them, and they are so comfortable I can forget they are there all day on zoom calls with music mixed in the background.
I have both the Aria and the BLON BL03/MINI, and I think you might want to reconsider the Aria. They have noticeably less bass than the BLON, and are quite a nice all round performer. While they cannot match the technical ability of IEMs in higher tiers, they are very good for the price. I'm using Final E tips on them, and they are so comfortable I can forget they are there all day on zoom calls with music mixed in the background.
I think the TRI Starsea are a better fit for me as I'm a fan of ATH AD headphones which are mid-centric. As far as I can discern, the Starsea has a better midrange than the Aria, even if it's lacking some of the sub-bass.
Would you perhaps know if I can run the TRI Starsea with my phone? I saw on some reviews that it is picky about the source and I'm wondering if that will be an issue.
So based on this "rules of eights", it is advised that the headphone/IEM impedance be divided by 8, and that is the maximum source output impedance that should be paired. Ie if you have a 32 ohm IEM, if this is divided by 8, then ideally a maximum 4 ohm output impedance for the source is the highest that you should be accepting for output impedance, so as not to affect sound quality. This is just a guide of course, exceptions exist and as usual YMMV.
For the Starsea, the reported output impedance is 9.5 ohms (not sure which tuning config this is measured on), so 9.5 divided by 8 means a 1.1875 ohm (let's round this down to 1 ohm) is the max source output impedance you should accept.
So this article states: " “…if an amplifier's output impedance is significantly more than an eighth of the headphone’s impedance, the frequency response and sound of the headphone can change. This results in bigger mismatches and creates more variation from the headphone’s default sound signature. The way that a headphone responds to an amplifier with output impedance higher than one eighth of the headphone can be entirely erratic – different headphones will respond in different ways, but generally the results will be negative.” – RHA Audio "
If you aren't sure about your phone's output impedance, a cheap way to fix that is to get some cheap $20 - 30 USD dongle DAC/AMP. Something like the Tempotec Sonata HD Pro can be connected to the phone and bypass your phone DAC chip. The aforementioned Tempotec Sonata HD Pro has very low output impedance and it works very well with the Starsea.
Yeah, I have the AD2000 and the AD900X, both headphones with beautiful vocals. Probably gonna go with Starsea, just gotta check the impedance of my phone.
I wasn't to find any info on the output impedance of my phone. I really don't want to get a dongle as I find them annoying. Would you perhaps know how impedance the typical phone has and if a slight mismatch would even be noticeable?
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