Well the IER-M9 is used by PA Engineers for monitoring and live mixing. But it is a stage monitor and you want/need more bass then in am Studio Monitor for that.Fair enough, I can see where you're coming from. It's just that based on my own messing around, I find that ief neutral is good enough as a reference point based on what I hear. Not perfect, but good enough to me. Obviously there has been a lot of debates over the years regarding what makes a perfect "neutral speaker" reference target (which I don't wish to get too much into lol). But I'll still argue that the sony m9 is waaay too warm to be considered uncoloured/neutral/transparent. Warm-neutral makes sense, but I still find the sony m9 to be warmer than something like the VE7, which is by itself already neutral-warmish.
It's actually not_ that_ warm imho. I mean, most music is warm. People like warm sounds and so most of the music that exists is mixed/mastered warm.
If something is recorded colder (like the album Sapporo and Tokyo from Tatsuya Maruyama), it sounds cold.
So the IER-M9 doesn't make cold music sound warm. It does have a bit stronger bass, that is true, bit without a bleed into the mids.
I don't think the VE7 is warm. The VE7 is extremely neutral and used by lots of professionals for monitoring and mixing due to that.
For me personally, the VE7 and FA9 are pretty much the definition of neutral. As neutral as it gets