Asteria

64's U18t or the 7th acoustics Asteria, those are the best with good gear, as they should be for their price points. Enjoy.

As someone who heard and owned all different price buckets I would roughly categorize IEMs in: 1) Budget (<= $99) 2) Mid-Fi (<= $1000) 2) Hi-Fi (<= $2000) 3) Summit-Fi (> $2000) The jump in sound quality apart from pure tuning differences between Budget and Mid-Fi is roughly 10% maximum. You definitely hear more texture and quality in the bass and treble is a bit more refined with a touch more clarity and less fatiguing and spiky. It's not something which you immediately notice in an A/B test. It's more something that you notice in longer listening sessions. The Jump in Hi-Fi bucket is even less noticeable. I would roughly say 5%. Some say that this 5% is where the magic is and when you love music and listen all-day long to music, this 5% might have a compounding effect long-term when you know what I mean. I judge no one who spends a lot of money into hi-fi music gear because of this effect. For Summit-Fi the jump is maybe another 5% at best. Take the 7th Acoustics Asteria for example which costs 3700$ or something like that. There are 77 units worldwide produced and of course this thing is hand-crafted and extremley carefully tuned. Some don't really know what it means to tune an IEM. It's not like sitting in front of a display and using some sliders like EQ/PEQ because there is no DSP, it's an analog device in the end. In the summit-fi space it's much more excellent precision engineering (acoustic design, tubes, damping etc) of the IEM itself to archive this final 5% in sound quality. I compare it with the craftsmanship of boutique music instruments like a violine. The most expensive violine you can buy is the "The Messiah Antonio Stradivari" which would cost you eye watering 20 million USD. But you could also buy a normal factory produced violine for just $100. The difference in "sound quality" might be 10% and a normal person would not notice a big difference. Seriously, the "diminishing returns" of IEMs is a joke compared to the diminishing returns of music instruments. So-called audiophiles seek perfection. And this perfection is not a 10X improvement. It's hidden inside the final 5% and the compounding effects it can have when you listen to a lot of music.