MagicOne

I really like the MagicOne as a vocal focused IEM.

Yeah I went through an unhealthy amount of P7 videos yesterday and like almost all of them absolutely glazed it. At worst, they just said that it wasn't to their tastes. I've heard and liked the Aful Magicone before and they seem to be pretty close. Also played with autoeq on squiglink to eq my TE Nova to the P7 and I think Id like them based on that. Slightly bassy warm neutral with just enough treble to sound detailed and airy.

You might just need smaller iems, the smallest I have are the kiwi ears cadenza and the aful magicone

I have a few IEMs that I rotate depending on my mood or the music I'm listening to at the moment. When I want to focus more on the details at the top of the spectrum or listen to my favorite movies soundtracks, I reach for the KE Aether, when I want something with strings, I reach for the Aful MagicOne, for EDM, I prefer the KE Etude, but when I just want music for fun, I grab the QKZ x HBB.

There's quite a broad range. For example: * Aful MagicOne - pretty, but not overdone * Ikko OH10 - good looking, nature-based & reserved * 7Hz Timeless, Timeless AE, Simgot EA500 - minimalist * Tin C2, Dunu Titan S (black/red version), Truthear Hexa/Pure - industrial There's a whole load in the middle that are just random swirly colours which has become the default low-effort design. Something like the Thieaudio Legacy 2 does that well IMO because its just one colour with a bit of texture, not all the colours, all at once. If you want a plain black cable, look at the KBear ST12. There's lots of options out there. I notice the stock cables often don't match the IEMs very well, and intentionally or not, this most likely helps sell a lot of aftermarket cables.

Overrated: * Truthear Zero / Zero Red: The nozzles are huge and the sound is just OK for the price. They were a big deal at the time for target adherence (although the "full Harman" Zero actually has terrible Harman compliance), but that's more of a technical curiosity than actually good. Fortunately there are much better options these days, so the hype has died down a lot. * Truthear Hexa: Bass is anaemic, treble is peaky and the nozzle is also huge, though not quite as bad as the Zero. * Simgot EW300: The worst Simgot I've heard for coherency, although it does have the safest tuning as long as you don't get the killer treble peak around 11kHz (that's solvable with eartips, its other issues aren't). * GK Kunten. I mean it's *OK* for the price, but it's literally just a slightly downgraded and more expensive [ZVX Pro](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eQc95TR0Ls), which in turn is almost identical to about half a dozen other KZ IEMs. All of which have the same driver as the Zenith too. The hype around this one is insane. A very successful astroturfing campaign though, so I guess well done for fucking up the sub with a tsunami of spam, and congrats to everyone who fell for it (including me, because I bought one too out of curiosity). Underrated: * Moondrop LAN (the OG one): A very good bright-neutral IEM for its price, overshadowed by the Chu 2 costing half as much, and the 7Hz Zero having nearly the same tuning (but much lower build quality, comfort and less refined treble). * Dunu Titan S: it's like the Hexa if it were better in every way and also cheaper. Actually these were a very highly regarded IEM at launch but I believe the hype machine moved on to the bassier Moondrop Aria and they got a bit forgotten about. Still a very good IEM though. Unclear if they're still in production or not, but everyone seems to agree the S2 isn't tuned as well. * Ikko OH300: Just one of my favourite IEMs with a fun but mostly natural-sounding warm v-shape tuning and incredibly holographic imaging. Nobody else ever talks about them. * TRN Shell: One of the few TRN IEMs that's actually good. It's like the EW300 but better in ever possible way aside from having a more pronounced v-shape tuning (personally I like it though, especially after some tip-rolling). It's also only $40 (on frequent sale) and comes with an insane set of accessories for the price. * Aful MagicOne: It's not an all-rounder IEM, it's not for everyone, and it's probably overpriced at RRP. But it's a very unique IEM in every way and nothing else sounds quite like it. I only paid about $60 for mine on sale and it's absolutely one of the best things I've bought.

I would argue it's overrated, despite not being rated much at all. I paid ~$30 for mine on sale and still feel like it was overpriced. I much prefer the Cadenza or KBear KB01.

There aren't any open-back IEMs. Well, there are *some*, but they're much rarer than a lot of people think they are, because people confuse vented faceplates for open-backs, but they're not the same thing. The long discontinued Audeze LCDi4 is one open-back IEM. The only one I know of in current production is the Moondrop Illustrious (roughly $900 to save you googling it). There are quite a lot of IEMs with a vented faceplate design, but this has almost no real effect over just a normal vented IEM, because the driver itself is fully enclosed and sealed into place. It has a small rear vent to let some air through, but it's much smaller than the vents in the faceplate. So those are mostly just for aesthetics and don't normally affect the sound, nor the passive isolation. There does seem to be a new driver on the market that's turned up in a few IEMs, but the only one I can think of right now is the Fosi iM4. So that does have a bit more venting than a standard driver so it's maybe comparable to a semi-open headphone like the Beyerdynamic DT880. Which is to say still closer to a closed-back than an open-back. I haven't tried that one myself, but apparently it doesn't give much sense of openness or change the isolation much compared to other IEMs. But it's a step up to "small effect" from "no effect". If you want something that you can actually hear your surroundings with then you should look at [flatheads](/r/FlatheadEarbuds/) instead. Or maybe something like bone conduction headphones (e.g., Shokz), but those sound pretty crap for music, so they're really only good for podcasts and audiobooks. There's also "air conduction" (really just a speaker somewhere near, but not actually in, your ear), typically in the form of "clip-ons", but those don't sound much better than bone conduction and usually have no bass. I believe some of the newer Shokz models are a hybrid of both bone conduction and air conduction, but I'm not sure if they're any good as I don't care about them enough to have looked into it further (I'm happy enough with my older Shokz that I mostly use for calls, but don't use them for music).

The Defiant like all Myer Audio IEMs has quite bad venting. I don't know if you notice air pressure build up with yours, but it's something about 25% of people have issues with. It has no front venting and some sort of internal bypass tube that isn't very reliable, so it's much closer to a fully unvented IEM like most all-BA sets. In fact some unvented IEMs like the Aful MagicOne actually do have a tiny vent - that one is so small I initially didn't even notice it was there, and it's at the end of a long acoustic maze (resonance chamber) so it's much less effective than a normal vent. For all intents and purposes, it's unvented. But once you get up to the size of a normal, fully working vent, nothing beyond that makes much more difference. Since you mention the Kunten I actually compared the Kunten to the EDC Pro, which has the same shell except that the EDC Pro has a solid faceplate instead of a vented one. There is zero difference in how much sound comes through. There's also exactly the same amount of sound leakage if I set them both at the same volume and the hold one with the nozzle covered and just listen to the sound that leaks out. If there is a difference, it's so small it's impossible to tell. But yes, there will be some differences between different IEMs in terms of how much passive isolation there is. Etymotics are the most isolating with up to 42dB of attenuation. Most manufacturers don't publish attenuation figures and most people don't measure it either. Only rtings used to measure it, but they didn't test a lot of IEMs and they recently paywalled all those figures, so you can't see them anymore anyway. Unless you're comparing with something like an Etymotic, switching tips is going to make a bigger difference than switching IEMs. Something like Tang Sancai probably lets more sound through, but it's not something I usually care about, so I haven't directly compared to find what's the most or least isolating. An unvented IEM if all else is equal will be more isolating than a vented one. After that the overall fit makes a bit of a difference too, and things like the shell being metal or plastic probably also makes a difference - but without measurements it would be mostly guesswork to know how much. And like I say for the most part the differences between any two IEMs are pretty small. Whereas the difference between the worst isolating IEM and any flathead is pretty big, because flatheads don't create a seal.