Pardon me bringing this thread up again, but I have impressions of both the IEMs being mentioned here, which I would like to share and perhaps, would be useful to whoever that may be making similar decisions or gaining further insights between the two.
First off, I own the mentor and have been using it for quite some time, I pair it with my current DAP, the Sony ZX2 and do not use any DAC/AMP in between. For someone who owns the mentor, allow me to make a simple comparison to the K10 Universal Aluminium which I had the chance to listened to.
When I first received the K10, I realize just how small my mentors are, the mentors, to my estimate is around 2/3 the size of the K10, despite both being universal and with 10 drivers each. I have relatively small ears so K10 does protrude out quite a bit for me, but may be perfectly fine for others.
The most obvious difference I heard, is the overall presentation of the music, for the K10, its a very mid centric IEM, similar to Shure SE846. The mids or rather, vocals are more forward and covers a bigger area when compared to the mentor, whereas mentor has a more laid back vocal, but both, sounds warm to me, just a matter of frequency placements and importance difference. Because the K10 have a larger and more forward mids, the perceived soundstage suffers a little, it feels less expansive compared to the mentor. Similarly due to the expansive mids, the details are just a tad less obvious on the K10. Bass wise, mentor has harder hitting bass and is stronger, whereas the K10 sounds quite neutral but is equally separated between mid and low end bass. Volume wise, my zx2 drives the K10 a notch lower for even volume on the same song.
My verdict is that the K10s are very mid centric iems, and going by today's songs, I can see very well why its well received by the community. Between mentor and K10, I do not think there's a better iem between the two, but a matter of different taste/ sound signature.
