Hmmm, some nice '
food for thought' posts in this conversation that
@Lépine started up.
My last contribution in this thread has been 3 years ago:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/rank-the-iems-youve-heard.454855/page-128#post-14768944
and of course many IEMs have been launched since then.
This thread has always been about our personal
preferences (while we also all hear things differently) in the first place. And that's what makes it so much fun and interesting at the same time.
Last year I took a break from HF, but I still kept listening to music a lot during that period. Now, based on my ranking you would expect that I would have listened mainly with my EE Phantom (tone) & Zeus XR (technicalities) over that period. But strangely enough the
Warbler Prelude was most of the time my '
weapon of in-ear choice' during that year. I can't say that it's my best IEM, but I simply enjoyed it the most.
Now as we're talking about prices. One of the reasons that I took a long break was that I got frustrated by prices going totally wild (imho) on IEMs at some point. Almost hitting the $10K mark... Seriously? I guess not many of us will and can spend that much dough on a tiny piece of audio in-ear jewelry.
Some weeks ago I received a review sample (
ES ONYX) that has an amazing price / performance ratio imo, but if I would include it in my ranking now, I wouldn't pick its affordable price as a factor myself. However based on its layering in the lows and beautiful holographic sound, it would end up above many, much more expensive IEMs, purely based on that signature characteristics.
All IEMs have their own weaknesses and strengths. What about lows, mids, treble, resolution, soundstage, instrument separation, imaging, timbre/tone, etc. There's just no such thing as the perfect (doing everything right) IEM I guess.
Oh, and although all people hear differently, some people might hear a bit more differently than others
Have a good day ya' all and of course happy listening!