Drop + Campfire Darkstar

My favorite universal tips at the moment are TRI Clarion. They seem to do the best job of the ones I tried of balancing the FR and not futzing with the sound.

 

You or @Merrick should post a thread about the DX340. As much as I think Android DAPs are dumb, some users might want to spend that much on a DAP for AMP card being swappable and battery replacement.

 

Anyone have a Solaris Stellar Horizon to lend @Merrick ?

Nobody talks about that model much. It kind of seems like an Andromeda Emerald Sea type of situation where there are just too many Solaris / Andromeda variants and the two new ones are way more expensive.

 

I have been talking to Brian at CFA about arranging a visit to their HQ to demo some units as I am local to them. I was mainly focused on Clara and Trifecta but Solaris SH would be good to request from them as well, and Fathom now that I think about it.

 

I had a 'duh' moment about not including the Clara. Yes, the full jewel pack would be rad to hear all at the same setting.

Bug them about a full-size headphone.

 

Full size headphone with full size dual magnet biocellulose drivers?

 

I ended up grabbing a pair of these when they went on sale again, partly because I have a job where I need to be in an office again but mostly just out of curiosity because I've never had a chance to hear iems above the 100~ dollar price range (which means I don't have any good iem reference points to compare to). I've only been using these with a dc07 pro that I grabbed during the bloom sale because I don't have any desktop amps that are good for these, they're too sensitive for the stuff I have and have too much hiss for me - I agree that you probably just want to find the cleanest source possible.

On the sound, I pretty much agree with most of what's already been said, great sounding IEM overall and seems to get along with pretty much everything I try with it - definitely not the most sterotypically "hifi" kind of sound but an enjoyable one nonetheless, I can use these for quite a while without getting any fatigue or feeling tired of them. I agree they are pretty forgiving of bad recordings as far as harshness (as in really harsh treble jpop songs don't hurt my ears), but definitely still revealing enough to let you know something was recorded or mastered like crap (as in not as forgiving of DIY punk EPs that were being recorded in some guys garage). I think they're still more forgiving of the latter than a lot of other things I've heard, enough so that it doesn't bother me and I can still listen to material like that with them, but they're not as forgiving as my hd6xx for example. Drums and guitars sound great, female vocals sound great, I think male vocals are great most of the time, but I do hear male vocals being slightly recessed sometimes and it can sound a little weird with songs where the vocals were already a bit low in the mix especially if the song was bass heavy since there's that bit of a boost there, I think this just depends on the pitch of the person's voice and I only noticed it on some specific songs - the first verse of constant elevation by gravediggaz was an example of this for me, but again it's not really something that felt present enough to be a big deal either.

Stock cable is "fine", it's not microphonic or anything like some other stock cables I've had but +1 that the ear hooks aren't great, so I'll probably be replacing that in the near future. I agree that the stock foam tips make the low end sound like crap, the stock silicone tips didn't really work for me and just don't stay in my ears so I had to try a couple different tips before I found something that sounded and fit right. I was using the spinfit w1 before, but I think the clarions that merrick suggested do sound a bit more even and I've since switched over to using those. Overall pretty happy with them, thanks for the recommendation on both these and the clarions.