[o0genesis0o]

How is the monarch mk2 bass quality compared to mest? Put aside everything, i know mmk2 will sounded more natural to unnatural steroid mest (i keep the mest because of the details and layering imaging, and pass my bass quality requirements which is very picky, with clean bass shelf, then safe pinna gain, and extended upper treble with great technicalities).

I also eager to try Prestige since the pinna gain level is more to my preferences rather than prone to shouty mmk2 (yes like you said, jpop tends to mix mids area a little bit forward and my main genre is jpop)

I have never heard Mest, unfortunately. You can search for an Aussie store chain called Addicted to Audio. That’s my local hifi store and I have listened to most of their stuffs. If an item is not there, I unlikely to have heard it.

To my ears, monarch II is very straightforward IEM without any tricks or deception. It’s flat, it’s straight forward, it has reasonable level of mid-bass and nice subbass. I was not too fond of the bass quality. At the same time, it’s engaging, more than its more expensive V16 sibling, IMHO. I’m still considering whether I should get the monarch as a constant reminder of a “reference” IEM, the benchmark upon which others are compared. My Andromeda loses that position more and more as I listen to more IEMs and grow more nitpicky.

 

[AmericanSpirit]

I am very much with you.

For me it was always below $150 for IEM. Perfectly sufficient.
After seeing a lot of threads with bragging and trashing all these "TOTLs" as KZ, I feel no point being there. Then two or three different IEMs for different genres/preferences are much more cost-efficient than a single one.
The music is much more important, and a lot of good old classical music recordings are way more limited than transducers.

As for this $9.3k, it was close to the amount we happily spent comissioning a new violin with a local luthier

Or happy round family cruise vacation trip with all delicious foods and experiences included that $9.3k could offer. Simply it’s imbalanced for majority of the audiences.

Ah yes, but believe me. There are anomalies always.

One of a Korean online game I managed, had a customer who constantly spent $30kUSD PER MONTH, to stay on the top player ranking. I was tempted to dig in the identity of the customer, but the job ethics prevented that to materialize

The customer continuously paid $30-50k usd per month for at least 2 year. And the money was legitimate one, not a fraud. One individual could spend $400-500k USD per year alone just for the fame and “virtual” and intangible goods. So when compared to that, spending $10k one-time for a tangible item makes a lot more sense.

After shutting servers down, those $1M fun spending has nothing left, it’s all gone. Wow.

 

[r31ya]

Truthear’s waifu has consistency, entry-level = youngest, Zero = low teen, Hexa = high-teen

Trivia:
Shio = Japanese 汐 = Tide
Hola (not sure why spanish) | 赫 = very uncommon words, a brightness mainly caused by flames .


Now they may really gonna make big boob ones for HEXA successor


Waifus aside, interesting offers, Truthear’s entry-level IEM may collide with Moondrop’s Jiu!

Big Booba sound to fight with Ikko-OH10~

 

[WAON303]

Forbidden fruit: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004950698363.html

Zenfer tribrid model.

 

[AmericanSpirit]

Forbidden fruit: https://aliexpress.com/item/1005004950698363.html

Zenfer tribrid model.

FLAT !

 

[WAON303]

FLAT !

I was confused when I saw flat on the IEM illustration.

But the description says Planar/DD/BA IEM

 

[baskingshark]

Spent some time last night at MusicTeck and almost pulled the trigger on a couple open box items, but instead stood my ground since my IEM's shipped from Linsoul. The costs for these "endgame" IEM's are simply out of control. $6,000 for the Triallelalala or whatever it's called. That's a sizeable down payment on a house or a vehicle. The Odin and Jewel aren't too far off the asking price of the Traiallalala. It must be good to be single? Hope you save up enough for this luxury item?!

Haha be shocked!

Oriolus actually increased the offering to $1234200 JPY for fun. $9.3k USD at today rate for Trailiiiiiiii. 4EST+8BA.


It is a company bond that comes with IEM, you invest in the house tuning and willing to support the craftsmen. A luxury hobby for sure

I bet Thieaudio’s Prestige could hit near that with 4EST+4BA+1DD 5way crossover though.

TRN finds your lack of faith disturbing:

TRN GOLDEN EARS for a very affordable $25000 USD. And a very generous $2 off coupon to clip!

Imagine Golden Bellsings to give eargasms for eternity?

I do wish that I can audition those crazy high-end IEMs to see what the fuss is about. I admire those who are financially successful (or irresponsible?) enough to add all of the birds, jewels, obravo, storm, etc. to their collection to pair with their A&K SP3000.

My kilobuck hunt last year left me sober and cynical about super expensive IEMs. They are good, but not god-like good, car-deposit good. The kilobuck gets more uncompelling with every new mid-fi release. For example, with FH15 and G5, connected to my phone via LDAC, I can hear the mouth sound of the narrator in a YouTube video (trek trendy). What more details do you want / can you hear

The Sony Z1R might worth the price, though. I haven’t heard any IEM with that kind of presentation.

I'm not sure if the others will agree, but I feel that diminishing returns in the TOTL bracket are really bad. Ballpark, maybe you get 10 - 20% improvement from MidFI IEMs, but pay 10x more.

But that's the nature of this hobby, the last 10 - 20% is the one that will cost a kidney, and once someone has heard TOTL, it is sometimes quite hard to unhear that 10 - 20% and step down a bracket?

Music is always top for me. Yes, I have spent way more than I should on gear. Yes I am sure there is a set somewhere (looking at you Z1R) which would make me want to sell a kidney, but music comes top for me as well. I do not hear a transducer, I hear an orchestra, a group, musical instruments, voices, even folks clapping in a well thought through musical composition takes me elsewhere!

TBH even TOTL IEMs have weaknesses. The Z1R for example, is an endgame for bass lovers, but the mids are recessed (not for vocal lovers), and the fit/comfort is atrocious. I tried tip rolling many times to no avail, couldn't sit the Z1R in the ears - no point having the most heavenly sound if one cannot tolerate the fit for more than a few minutes?

 

[AmericanSpirit]

TRN finds your lack of faith disturbing:



TRN GOLDEN EARS for a very affordable $25000 USD. And a very generous $2 off coupon to clip!

Imagine Golden Bellsings to give eargasms for eternity?




I'm not sure if the others will agree, but I feel that diminishing returns in the TOTL bracket are really bad. Ballpark, maybe you get 10 - 20% improvement from MidFI IEMs, but pay 10x more.

But that's the nature of this hobby, the last 10 - 20% is the one that will cost a kidney, and once someone has heard TOTL, it is sometimes quite hard to unhear that 10 - 20% and step down a bracket?



TBH even TOTL IEMs have weaknesses. The Z1R for example, is an endgame for bass lovers, but the mids are recessed (not for vocal lovers), and the fit/comfort is atrocious. I tried tip rolling many times to no avail, couldn't sit the Z1R in the ears - no point having the most heavenly sound if one cannot tolerate the fit for more than a few minutes?

It’s funny that even if you purchased that $25k TRN VX, it will come by somewhat sloppy aliexpress standard shipping wow!

 

[AmericanSpirit]

kiiBooM Evoke (2BA+1LCP), KZ ZNA, KioBoom Allure reviewed by IEM store manager youtube( eng cc available)


The play list contains 1,210 IEM review videos, pretty consistent review.

And KiiBoom Evoke seems very decent from his review.

And glad to see
“Includes paid Promotion” disclaimer.

Yes that’s what it should be.

 

[BigGearHunter]

kiiBooM Evoke (2BA+1LCP), KZ ZNA, KioBoom Allure reviewed by IEM store manager youtube( eng cc available)


The play list contains 1,210 IEM review videos, pretty consistent review.

And KiiBoom Evoke seems very decent from his review.

And glad to see
“Includes paid Promotion” disclaimer.

Yes that’s what it should be.

Thanks for opening my eyes to this channel, he seems pretty even keeled for a reviewer. Definitely not like the hype monkeys we usually see roam this community.

 

[chinmie]

Music is always top for me. Yes, I have spent way more than I should on gear. Yes I am sure there is a set somewhere (looking at you Z1R) which would make me want to sell a kidney, but music comes top for me as well. I do not hear a transducer, I hear an orchestra, a group, musical instruments, voices, even folks clapping in a well thought through musical composition takes me elsewhere!

Yes, "best sounding" is a sliding scale, depending on the situation. I found that the ears (and mind) of the wearer are always changing throughout the days.. Aaand, they sometimes would get bored, no matter how great sounding/ expensive one's earphones/headphones they currently using.

For instance, i just found an old TRN neckband bluetooth in my drawer... I forgot i still even have this thing. It only plays SBC, but it sounds good and have low noise floor. Paired with my Salnotes Zero, I've been enjoying them for this past few days that i didn't feel the need to reach for my other (and more expensive) collection. I bet this scenario also happens to most of us

I definitely not discouraging people to buy higher priced earphones. If you have the budget to spend without making your daily life harder, I'd say go for it. There will come the time where we find that "special sounding earphones" that we just have to own

 

[lgcubana]

But that's the nature of this hobby, the last 10 - 20% is the one that will cost a kidney, and once someone has heard TOTL, it is sometimes quite hard to unhear that 10 - 20% and step down a bracket

1,000%

I’ve got my second personal TOTL (original Kinera Nanna) coming my way next week and I’m already contemplating becoming a first time seller, in the Classifieds. Because the reality is there are now sets that I’ll just never listen to again.

 

[DynamicEars]

Not sure if MEST uses same driver as MEST MKII, but MEST MKII’s dynamic driver is a class or two superior to Monarch OG’s.
Thieaudio mentioned they updated the dynamic driver for Prestige, if Monarch MKII uses same latest gen DD, like the one you can find in Allure/Elixir, maybe it will get close. But still MEST MKII’s dynamic driver’s bass is the best dynamic bass DD I’ve ever tried, a full bodied and natural bass well defined.

Thanks for chime in automatically since I was actually asking you as well but forgot to tag
I think the DD is the same, thats why the DD in Mest is qualified and I give quite high 8.5 / 10 mark (Bass only mark out of 10 : Hana 2021 5.5, fiio fd5 5.5 , Moondrop S8 6.5, IER M9 7.5, Kato 7, Z1R 9.5 for reference) it dig deep, great texture and slam and tuned with great clean shelf, not bleeding at all on 100-300hz and agile.
I got pretty good offer of Monarch MK2 so many times, was thinking to swap my Mest since a lot people said MMK2 is better than Mest mk I or even II but some people I know said bass quality is different, and that can be deal breaker for me, and the pinna gain. I hear unnaturalness in Mest, too sparkly on high notes edges, but can't away from the layering and precise imaging of Mest, their chop layering is the one of the best (9.5/10 in my mark, slight hair above M9, and yes above the 9/10 Z1R) combined with the soundstage depth made 3D staging very amusing, again even not natural.
For Overall presentation as a package Z1R is still better, lucky I can get great better fit now with spinfit W1.

I have never heard Mest, unfortunately. You can search for an Aussie store chain called Addicted to Audio. That’s my local hifi store and I have listened to most of their stuffs. If an item is not there, I unlikely to have heard it.

To my ears, monarch II is very straightforward IEM without any tricks or deception. It’s flat, it’s straight forward, it has reasonable level of mid-bass and nice subbass. I was not too fond of the bass quality. At the same time, it’s engaging, more than its more expensive V16 sibling, IMHO. I’m still considering whether I should get the monarch as a constant reminder of a “reference” IEM, the benchmark upon which others are compared. My Andromeda loses that position more and more as I listen to more IEMs and grow more nitpicky.

Yes MMK2 definitely 1 of the best IEM you can get currently, and the price also considered very value.
You should try Mest for its layering and imaging.

Btw I didn't buy lot of IEM last year since I feel like I reach my Endgame state and stuck there, pursuing shadow of truly perfect IEM will never end, when we touch TOTL, its just matter of preference, which one is closer to your taste, like example, we cant have the Z1R bass with MMK2 mids, with mest layering, but with coherences of single DD, with fit of M9 etc.
But the budget segment is always interesting war field, was on the fence of Hexa of course, but seeing the graph of Hakugei Sea-Elf made me want to jump in again, great tuning for below 100 bucks, wonder if the graph is reliable. The cable thrown can be easily best cable you can get for budget segment, remember the faaeal hibiscus that people get for the sake of the cable?
Is it double stacked LCP driver on Sea-Elf? cant find detailed information aside from DD is LCP, 10mm?

 

[Surf Monkey]

It’s funny that even if you purchased that $25k TRN VX, it will come by somewhat sloppy aliexpress standard shipping wow!

But… but… TWO DOLLAS OFF!!

 

[Alror]

It’s funny that even if you purchased that $25k TRN VX, it will come by somewhat sloppy aliexpress standard shipping wow!

Even then I promise you the seller would cut corners on the shipment and submit a fake tracking number on the shipping deadline...