Dorado arrived today thanks to
@Rockwell75 ... I sent him my initial impressions but I'll share them here too..
"Alright... I got home and quickly opened them and tried about 1 min of a song on the ZX507.. Hania Rani playing her modern classical piano and when the bass came in I thought, oh oh.. I don't think I'm going to like these so much.. The piano sounded good but the bass was a bit wooly.. But 1 minute of a song with a bass that's pretty wooly on most of everything isn't enough... Took my daughter to her violin lesson, got home and had supper.....
So I just spent the better part of the last 40 mins listening with the M8... These are the strangest iems I've ever heard and they are completely seductive, and I mean seductive.. song after song, I couldn't stop listening. There's not only little things I had never heard before, not even with the Elysium, but there is a romance to the mids that is both full and warm but with an odd ring of clarity that kind of baffles me. I keep hearing this warmth and expect bleed or occlusion but there's also a crystal clarity coming through... The really deep bass is about the only weakness for me because the Bravado2 is cleaner and has a bit more extension but I should have my Bravado2 back tomorrow to confirm. It's just a little less defined and looser than I remember on some songs. I'll do a song by song analysis at some point.
I kept trying different songs and vocals are so delicately sweet, like honey.
Dire Straits' "Your Latest Trick" is pretty close to as good as I've ever heard the song with some details I've never noticed before.. I imagine they are there with the Elysium but they just come through because of the Dorado tuning.. gorgeous
I finished off with "The Maker" by Daniel Lanois as I compared the Elysium and the 3DT with that song and commented how good it sounded with the 3DT.. The fretless bass is weirdly in my head and pans a bit left to right.. not the best but Daniel's voice is as good as I've heard it. It's an intimate stage with some good spatial cues but some sounds are really up close like in this song.. The high hats though sound just perfect..
I decided to try the 3dt just to refresh my reference... it sounded well, not so good... Seriously, the romance is gone, the stage is back and seemingly unengaging and his voice is kind of thin and lifeless in comparison.
What a strange strange iem.. If an iem could embody the female principle it's the Dorado 2020.
I wondered if I could make a choice between the Dorado and the Bravado but they are so different.
I'll have to compare tomorrow against the Bravado2. The Bravado2 does (from memory) have "better" bass in terms of tightness and cleanliness but I think in comparison, the rest of the tuning is going to be vanilla, safe and missing that lure of the succubus."
When asked about what I meant by the female principle I wrote:
"
I think by female principle I am referencing a sense of the duality as in the relationship between Captain Kirk and the Green Woman dancing for him. teehee...
It's the Shakti, the action, to Shiva, the existence of being...
If the U12t is the baseline of existence, it is still unmoved.. The Dorado is the movement, the meaning behind the form, the idea put into action.. It's like a Tibetan Thangka. The U12t is the painting, the form of the art, the Dorado is how the form, which of itself is made of pigments on canvas or skin, is given meaning and movement in the ideas and feelings ..
The Captain Kirk/Green Woman is the more physical expression, in the seductive dance of procreation..
Maybe that's reading too much into it all but I've never had an iem give me these thoughts about it.. ha ha.."
-- I'll listen more this evening and get acclimated over the next couple days then try a bit of a write up with reference to a few specific songs. At the moment these aren't the combination of reference and beauty that the Elysium has but the Dorado's are just so alluring in some mysterious way that I haven't really reacted to in the same way with any iem.. I did try a Rolf Lislevand baroque album with lutes and other plucked instruments and they brought something very different than I have ever heard but it was not at all like the purity of the Elysium..