So, I've had the Moondrop Variations for about a month now and had a lot of time to listen to them as well as gather my thoughts. tl;dr: These are one of the best IEMs you can find and a benchmark below 1000$.
For those who don't know, the Moondrop Variations is a lot Tribrid IEM with a current price tag of 520$. They incorporate a single 10mm LCP Diaphragm Dynamic Driver (DD), two Sonion Electrostatic Drivers (EST) and two Softears Customised Balanced Armature Drivers (BA).
I found the cube shaped Packaging to be quite nice. The included cable with interchangeable termination is good although can get a bit tangly at times. You get the usual Moondrop silicon ear tips as well as Foam ear tips. I did not use either though because I have SpinFit CP155. These were already a perfect fit for the Blessing 2 and the same can be said for the Variations. They just fit on the nozzle and make the IEM both easy to insert into my ears as well as super comfy to wear for me.
The IEM itself are very well built. The resin body with smoked look and metal faceplate looks great and has a nice weight to it without being heavy. The IEMs weight 9g per side, so 16g in total.
The first thing I noticed when putting them on and listening to music was how crystal clear and transparent these sound. The Variations are the definition of a neutral with bass boost tuning. The Bass is elevated primarily into the sub bass and extends all the way to 20hz. This is one of the reasons why the Variations sound so clean to me: there is zero Bass bleed into the mids, which leads to vocals just sounding extraordinary. The Bass is impactful, tight and well controlled. When the music calls for it the DD will produce rumbling, detailed bass that's just so much fun to listen to. The "Hardwired" EP by mitch murder for example is a bliss to listen on with these. Especially "Hardwired" and "Reconnaissance" show what the Dynamic Driver of the Variations is capable of. Bass hits deep, sharp and has a textured body to it while always sounding controlled and never overwhelming anything else. "We Could Get More Machinegun Psystyle! - And More Genre Switches" by Camellia shows the Variations handling vastly different subgenres of Electronic music flawlessly. Especially the Speed and Decay of the DD is made apparent by the Speedcore kicks or DnB parts.
The Mids continue where the Bass left of: Excellency. Both male and female vocals sound crystal clear and fill the room, being brought into the centre of attention when a song wants them to. This is where I need to mention the Variations imaging capabilities which are simply impressive. The Variations provides a Deep and Wide Stage that's above average in height and knows how to put it to good use. Different instruments are easy to distinct and pinpoint in space. Within those aspects the Variations puts Vocals on a podium and makes them the centre of the song, almost as if the real vocalist is there. I can best describe this podium as then being moved to where the vocalist is in relation to the other instruments as well as more in front or far back given how prominent they are supposed to be.
With the separation and imaging comes great resolution. Macrodetails are resolved beautifully and make the Variations sound very natural and organic. Within all of these qualities the Variations retains coherency between the different parts of the frequency spectrum, which solves one of the biggest gripes I had with the Blessing 2, be it OG or Dusk. The MTV live performance of "Hotel California" by the Eagles lets the Variations demonstrate all of it's mentioned qualities and makes for an immersive listening experience.
Now while the mids and vocals in general are close to perfection on the Variations, male vocals sometimes lack the slightest bit of body and weight, making them just a hair less full sounding than they should be. This is nitpicking on a high level, mind you. Female Vocals however take all of the mentioned qualities and crank them up to 11. I cannot make this clear enough: Female vocals are a bliss to listen to on the Variations. Crystal clear, airy, detailed and with a resolution very few IEMs could ever hope to achieve. Going even further I need to talk about an entirely different kind of headphone: the open back Sennheiser HD600. Even 24 years after their initial release they are still a benchmark in open back headphones and widely beloved. It speaks for itself that they are still being manufactured and sold to this day. Their biggest quality by far is their incredible midrange, with slight rolled off bass and smooth, but not any less detailed treble resulting in a very musical and enjoyable, non fatiguing listening experience. I have heard a lot of headphones, many much more expensive than the HD600, and almost none of them made vocals sound as great and beautiful like the HD600.
Which leads me back to the Variations. They sound to me as if Moondrop was able to fit the HD600 inside of a small IEM shell, swap the rolled off bass for one of the cleanest and best executed bass responses I have ever heard, and improve on the Treble, giving it much more energy, air and sparkle while still not being fatiguing. Or: the Variations are IEM HD600 on steroids. The HD600 are one of my favourite headphones that I own, and I could not be any more happy how much the Variations remind me of them and improve on their shortcomings. On "NEUROMANCER" by RIM the female vocalist absolutely shines in an experimental-induced track.
I have already touched on it, but at this point you should not be surprised: the Treble on the Variations is excellent as well. It sounds quite airy and energetic with a sparkle that I would almost describe as "brilliance". The two EST Drivers are implemented very well and round off the Variations into one tonally and technically coherent package.
The Variations improves on the Blessing 2 (OG or Dusk) in pretty much every single aspect. It is the technical and tonally superior IEM in my opinion. More detailed and resolving, with a bigger stage, even better separation and most importantly much, much better coherency. The Blessing 2 sometimes sounded a bit "smeared" over, especially on busy tracks where the Variations just keeps on going and retains a much clearer sound image. The lack of mid bass elevation also leads to the Variations being the much more reference-like IEM compared to the Dusk.
Compared to the Aria it shouldn't come as a surprise that the Variations outperforms it by a significant margin. Still, the Aria is one of my daily drivers when I go out and want to listen to music, and it's warmer tonality is a great complement to the Variations neutral tuning. The Variations truly is an excellently tuned neutral reference that is never boring thanks to it's bass boost, stellar mids and sparkly treble.
I'm just really happy with the Variations. It gets my highest recommendation and has set the bar in the sub 1000$ price range incredibly high. I'd say it's the benchmark for anything near it's price point, both in tonality and technicalities.
(This was my first real "review", so input and constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!)
