With all due respect, in the below $100 or even below 50$ or $20 bracket there are so many options and also the risk is so low of buying one. Aren´t we here for high fidelity and the utmost possible? Now that for example the $200 Topping Dx3Pro + delivers SOTA performance what headphone amplification and digital to analog conversion are concerned, which is an incredible achievement, I would like to know where we stand with IEMs in that respect.
The Samsung Buds+ have almost identical tuning. Personally, I think it's too much V-shaped sound. And the bass doesn't sound natural to me. But you know, different people have different tastes
Crinacle checks Frequency responses of many many IEMs and Headphones but not the other aspects that are so detailed here in ASR.Chu comes to the rescue, reviewed by Crinnacle.
Moondrop Chu
New Moondrop Chu IEM has excellent tonality, metal body and costs only 20 usd (or 22 usd with mic, as I bought). Crin rated it very highly.
There are a lot of options, many of which are rubbish. The Chu is not, it's actually remarkably good. It would be very good if it was priced at $100. There isn't a direct correlation between price and sound quality in this hobby. I'd be very interested in a test on the Chu, don't think it can't be high fidelity just because it's $20.
How come? That sounds quite hard to believe to me. Almost identical FR and the sound differs widely? That begs an explanation.
The major issue with the Buds+ is the treble timbre, and you can see significant variation there in the graph. There's also more wobblyness in the upper mids and lower treble on the Buds+, in the 2.5-8kHz region. Whether that fully explains it, I don't know. I doubt it does, as the Buds+ is not very wobbly there and I have other IEMs that are at least if not more wobbly in that region that I don't find sound off in the same way. I know in that region, I do tend to find stuff that is very jagged offputting. There are usually three peaks around 2.5kHz-3, 5-6kHz, 8kHz. The last being coupler resonance, I think the other two are IEM cavity resonance? On IEMs that have this (and many do) the second one is typically double the first, so if the first is 2.5 second will be 5, if the first is 3, second will be 6. Crinacle aims for 8kHz for the coupler resonance, so that is set by the person doing the measurement. You see this triple peak pattern on a lot of IEMs, what varies is the size of the peaks, small wobbling doesn't seem so offensive but if they are large (example here: KZ ZSN Pro X) I think that may be what I find "shouty" or "harsh" in that region.
Yes, to a certain extent it is true that there is no proportional relashionship beweeten price and high fidelity, not cross brand and often not even inner-brand. But the Chu is $20, it sound good, maybe even very good. You even get the new spring tips. Buy it, no risk. I am still much more interested in how quite expensive and highly acclaimed IEMS perform. If it is as with DACS, I have seen measurements of $10,000 to $17,000 gear (Chord Dave and dCS Bartok) that really let me rest assured that it would be an absurd waste of money buying one over a $100-$500 Sota device available. How is the situation with IEMs?
So what does the FR tell then??? I strongly think Olive/Toole beg to differ. Maybe there may be differences in imaging, layering, soundstage, transients and the like, but overall sound characteristics ought to be the same.
I think the problem with IEMs is that you wear them differently (insertion depth) from model to model en the differences vary from person to person and have bigger effects on the FR at the eardrum than with OE headphones.
All things being equal (insertion depth, tips etc.) I see no reason why they should sound differently. You don´t think so. Any argument besides pure assertion? Are we again at the "DAC sound" level of discussion?
I think he clearly says that when all things are equal they sound the same. (Starfield vs Aria: very similar in construction and measured FR) But very different IEMs (construction wise) can sound quite different in a human ear even when they measure the same in a measuring coupler. This is because both situations are very different.
Sure, I know with IEMs (and to a lesser extend headphones) there are many more uncertainities involved as between to DACS, individual fit, reproducibility of measurements, different measurement rigs, HRTF and so on, but still there is no room for two IEM with a very similar FR to sound vastly different.
If they have a similar FR they will have a broadly similar tonality. If you want to consider that to be "not sounding vastly different", then sure, they won't sound "vastly" different in that sense. You can group headphones or IEMs by FR and categorize them as "Harman neutral", "V shaped", etc.
If two IEMS have identical FR at a given volume, that just means they'll sound identical when playing static tones, just like two displays with identical color accuracy will look identical when displaying static images. FR doesn't contain any information about how accurately and precisely these frequencies change in volume during music playback.
Ok granted, what I said before, if IEM 1 has much faster transients than IEM 2 with otherwise identical FR, there would be a difference in the dynamical rendering, but the overall sound characteristics would remain the same. And in the example discussed above, I doubt that there is such a huge dynamical difference resulting in large audible differences, i.e. Moondrop S8 and Variations should sound very much a like, the Galaxy Buds+ might be a bit more sluggish and thus not that resolving.
