I ordered the
Moondrop Variations on the last AliExpress sale and they arrived only two days ago but I already can tell I'm nothing short of impressed!
My first impressions so far have been:
Compared to the
Blessing 2 Dusk (my now second most expensive IEM), the Variations just destroys it. I've seen reviews saying that if you had the Dusk the improvement would be minor while others said it would be significant, so I honestly wasn't expecting much upgrade in technicalities (just sound signature) but wow. These are already so good and I say this with very little use.
So far I have used them to listen to a few
K-Pop tracks released this year on my playlists and a few older tracks. In every song, without exception, I'm listening to either new stuff of getting a better presentation. Of course, the 'better' here is completely subjective since they do present female vocals very forward but this is how I like it.
I also trying them for
gaming, in particular the last 5 or 6 hours of
A Plague Tale Requiem. For those that may not know, the game has a very good sound, with open areas, great dialogue and fantastic moving soundtrack. For comparison, I did play a good part of it with the Dusk and it was already great as it gave a sense good of openness, much better than any other thing I did try, that was of course until I got the Variations. I can't comment on imaging as this is not the game to test it but as far as soundstage goes in no more than 5 minutes I could see a clear upgrade, and not just that 5% to 10%, something that clearly makes you open your mouth in disbelief.
In short, I'm liking the Variations so much that I honestly can say that if anything happen to them one day, I will not even look into something different, I'll just get them again. Basically with them, for me, there is no more upgrade for me, only side grades. I do plan to get something on this tier of quality but with a different sound signature in the future but I could honestly stay a decade with them and never think about getting another IEM.