i bought one of these back in the days due to popularity thus wanting to listen for myself what it really got.
i kind of knew what to expect but still it disappointed me. i realized the only reason these get as popular is because of the hype generated from guys like crinacle.
back to the iem, this iem fell so flat compared to a pair of KXXS i owned at the time, which is a product from the same company utilizing single dd. in terms of details & bass presentation (to name a few aspects i think worth mentioning)... i would choose KXXS any day of the week, any week of the month, any month of the year, any year of my life, any life between reincarnation (except there is no such thing as reincarnation) & so on......
that's why i sold it the next day. i didn't buy it just to do so. i really wanted to like it, but it is what it is. it is not bad at all, but KXXS is just that much better, to a point that listen to B2 is unbearable as B2 offers nothing special & KXXS feels like a direct upgrade. wouldn't make sense at all to have the B2 sitting besides the KXXS any longer, so that was the end of my encounter with the B2.
before this, i didn't think either BA or DD is superior than one another. i thought there is no superiority & just product dependent. if the product is good, then the product is good & that's it. the sole & unique merit of BA has always been the isolation it brings & this is so useful for such a portable device that often being used outdoor. in this way, it is superior than DD, no doubt.
but after this, i looked more into this matter. and i found out, on ASR in fact, that the distortion of the BA drivers inside those so-called high-end BA iem is actually quite high, let alone a bunch of them in the same iem unit. also, that a good DD can actually achieve better distortion.
so time went by, moondrop released a model they officially call it their flagship - the Illumination. i was shocked by the stunningly low distortion measurement provided by the company. i was hesitant to fully believe that, but bought it anyway. omg. turns out the measurement is the only explanation to its unbelievable performance which i have no intention to get into as i don't want to derail the topic more than need be.
so the funny thing is, that crinacle guy doesn't regard the Illumination highly. he left the following almost laughable quote before went on to complain the iem for lack of details. "But the smoothness of its notes is also an indication of another shortcoming: its definition and resolving ability." what detail is this guy talking about? before the rise of moondrop, i owned my fair share of so-called high-end, expensive iem & i've never ever heard as much detail as i've from the Illumination.
i tend to believe he wasn't making thing up, so this guy must be perceiving distortion as details if he really listens & thinks that. by saying this, i'm entering pure speculation territory which is not good, but this would be the only explanation if we assume that he is not a complete fraud.
see? the thing is, if you read some of his review, you would know that, this guy got serious misbelief of "single dd standing no chance against (properly implemented) multi-driver BA" as evident once again by this exact case.
this guy somehow gained so much trust from normies just for his FR measurements, excessive trust i would argue. the tonality part, he got FR measurements to back that up, which should be respected as that is basically objective data for us to judge by ourselves. but that's just that, that's all. that doesn't automatically add weight to everything (& anything else) he says. calling his own imagination "Technicalities" is questionable, but i have no right to go against that as he is completely free to do so.
don't get me wrong. crinacle is amazing & i don't hate the guy. we all should be thankful or where else do we get such large amount of FR measurement data? people overrating his opinion way too much is not his fault. what we can learn from the fact that people blindly believe in the bs he said is that, for normies, anything is better than nothing, even if it's bs. if i were him & this is the only thing i can do to be able to put food on the table & provide for my family (try read an article on his site using smartphone, between every paragraph, there is an ads, which makes half of the screen ads all the time, i get the need to put some ads, to be able to eat, but you think 3-5 a page would be reasonable. that many? then you know how it is), i would do exactly the same too even i know what i said is bs, but since i don't think he knows, so absolutely no blame here.
it's just that as a matter of fact, he is clearly doing things that he isn't qualified to do, no wonder he doesn't exactly know what he is doing, how he should do it. he is not amir, his site is not like ASR. on ASR, there is no ads. donation only, & the donation is for buying device to measure, maintaining the site, etc, clearly no personal gain, you can see the sincerity in it. place like this, people like amir, wouldn't even care to feed you bs. but for a money-hungry ads-all-around site like crinacle's, you got to be careful what you wish for, because if what you want is bs, you for sure is gonna get it, for this guy is not into audio science at all, you may even call him an audio religious guy that measures FR, that's all he is. just check out his ridiculous articles. you can also read his illogical nonsense about how distortion measurement is useless lol. he even reminded people not to take his word as the absolute truth, but that is exactly what many people seem to do, so not his fault. it's the people that overrated him & the demand of bs put him where he is.
back to the iem again, i never tried B2D for obvious reasons. btw, hybrid iem is really just marketing gimmick without real benefit as you got the relatively high distortion of BA & lack of isolation of DD all at the same time. people fooled by audio religion guys like crinacle is gonna say 'BA bAsS TiMBrE nOt gOod' or sth along these bs lines, and then go like 'all hail hybrid', but if you use ear to listen instead of imagination, you would know that's nonsense. that's just BA with bad FR. you encounter that & some 'reputable' (lol) guys want to make you believe a made-up reason like 'TiMBrE', you may actually just believe that if you aren't thinking logically enough. for example, the bass of some full BA iem like the moondrop S8 or softears RSV is just fine. (of course, once again that crinacle guy would disagree. 'bA TiMBrE') but S8 suffers the same uncomfortable fit as B2, as many people in this thread have already mentioned. nozzle too big. if you want BA for isolation, i would suggest you get one that is decent-tuned, & as cheap as possible, like maybe audioscene dt600 (with a 50-70ohm impedance adapater, which is necessary for it to be listenable, otherwise it's just a bad-tuned garbage). it's nothing impressive, but it fits comfortably, & it's very cheap. it does its job which is to offer the only thing a BA iem can offer over a DD one: near-perfect isolation. (but for that, why not moondrop quarks? which is a DD that achieved BA-level of isolation & it's even far cheaper & still sounds decent)
in scenario that isolation isn't needed, there's no reason to go for BA, as nothing really beats the value of a pair of moondrop kato. (as per my listening, which holds no value, but i get peace of mind knowing that crinacle's opinion holds no more actual value than mine, except maybe some imaginative value inside his fanboy's head
, and i at least got distortion measurement from the company beside my listening experience to back me up & crinacle got none except his words lol) kato is almost as good as the Illumination for 1/4 the price. it may even be just as good, i really can't tell if i'm imagining Illumination being better just because it is the more expensive one, or not. seriously when i listen from the kato, i wouldn't even think of the need to swap it for the Illumination. maybe it's the far better isolation it offers over the Illumination making it feels nice in some situation involved mild domestic noise. it essentially makes my pair of Illumination obsolete.
all in all, no wonder looking at moondrop's production line, the BA models feel like afterthought just to fulfill the market's need to make money to support the company running, the DD ones, on the other hand, you can feel the passion & a diffierent level of focus/attention to details, because they know better, about the hard limit of BA in terms of the fidelity it can produce, that's why. i think i said enough. i will see myself out.
(this is a re-post, as never have i thought i would be censored, with no explanation given, for calling out someone in the community for their non-objective, non-scientific practice & just giving opinions as is. maybe someone abused the report function, idk. just so unbelievably sad.)