Hi, fellow Mangird fans... A quick, and very subjective update.
So, I spent quite some time over the last couple days doing some A-B comparisons between the Tea and the Monarch. The biggest difference is, without question, the treble. The Monarch has both more and what's there is higher quality. When listening to very busy tracks like the last minute of Opeth's "Eternal Rains May Come" a lot of the percussion strike/decay and space around the instruments, while present with the Tea, is simply not as present and obvious as with the Monarch. I feel like sometimes I have to "search" with my ears to find treble data with the Tea, while with the Monarch it is just all there effortlessly - like it's not even trying. Honestly, I haven't experienced anything like it. It has all the treble I could want (and my daily driver is a Beyer T1.2, so I love treble probably more than most), but with such precision and naturalness. I never get any fatigue or harshness. Ever. It's truly remarkable.
The mids are about the same. HOWEVER, since the treble on the Tea is diminished (not just in volume, but in detail) compared to the Monarch, the mids on the Tea are more noticeable. So the experience of listening with the Tea gives more emphasis to the vocalist. When switching back and forth between the two, listening to rather simple acoustic tracks with a vocalist and piano, I found the quality and texture of the mids to be equivalent between the two. But this is really the Tea's home turf. It's MEANT to deliver the goods on the mids, and it sure does. When listening to the Monarch I don't feel like I'm trading the luscious mids of the Tea for more detail in the treble. But they're not as "front and center" as with the Tea.
The bass, on further listening, is also more different than I initially thought. I think what's happening is this: because the Monarch reserves the dynamic driver for only the deepest frequencies, it doesn't really get as engaged as much as with the Tea. For example, you can clearly hear the mechanical action of the harpsichord on Gelnn Gould's performance of Handel's "Suite 1 in A Major, IV. Gigue." On the Tea (and on IEM's like the BQEYZ Spring and CCA CA16) the dynamic driver gets to deliver that part of the frequency range. You get a nice, almost tactile sensation of the mechanism as the performer strikes the keys. This is pure conjecture for what I'm hearing, but on the Monarch, I don't think those sounds are quite deep enough, and so they wind up being handled by the 4 BA woofers. All the detail is there, but not the "feel" of the instrument. It's like the UE Triple.fi10. BA Speed, yes. DD Authority, no. It sounds ultra-clean, almost like using a scientific instrument to examine the recordings. But it's not as satisfying as the hybrids that let the dynamic driver play along. It's a compromise, and one that I like for the most part - let the speed and precision of the BA woofers do everything until you need the sub skull massage. But it's still a compromise. For some of the Aphex Twin tracks being shared in this thread, the Monarch is the obvious choice, since it digs deeper and can hammer the eardrum if you want it to. It's not polite - but it is perfectly clear and tight. It's like having highly resolving stand-mount speakers crossed over at 70hz with a set of very large sealed subs being driven by a few thousand watts of class-D amplification exercising an iron grip on the massive driver.
To my ears, the Tea has a smoothed out, slightly rolled-off treble. It's also physically lighter than the Monarch and, for my ears, more comfortable for long periods of time. The Monarch is very large and I don't even try to put them all the way inside my concha. They just sit flush with the intertragic notch with the top half hanging out - it's weird but I do the same thing with the Tea, the only thing is that with the Tea there's less hanging outside the ear. I probably will still be using the Tea for very long sessions since they kinda "disappear" in my ears after a few minutes and the smoothed treble makes them easy to listen to when just enjoying the music and not doing critical listening. But the Monarch is clearly a better set of earphones. More detail, better treble, better/deeper sub-bass, and the mids are just as good.
I think I still agree with what I said earlier in the thread - if you like what the Tea is doing: sub-bass emphasis, beautiful mids, somewhat lean sound - then you'll probably like the Monarch. Even more sub-bass, mids just as good, slightly leaner sound. I think the real dividing line will be over the treble. It's very different between the two, but I see them as being members of the same overall family.
I have a Amazon HD subscription, so if you want me to compare particular tracks, just let me know.
