Apple - Pro (2nd generation)

AirPods Pro for me, mainly for the convenience. The thing is that because I wear glasses, I don’t really like the feel of over-the-ear headphones pressing the frame of the spectacles against my ears. https://www.khadas.com/tea I did try using the Khadas Tea, together with a cheap pair of IEMs (aria moondrop), but honestly, I couldn’t really hear the difference in Apple Music, and the presence of the headphone cable annoyed me more than I thought it would. I found it amusing to pay for what was essentially a very expensive headphone dongle, but it is what it is. 🤣

AirPod pro.

It’s weird isn’t it. I got the EW300s a few weeks ago and I immediately wanted to upgrade and read through a ton of posts here.  I think it’s because years and years ago I had the original wired apple earbuds, then I got M-Audio IE10s and was blown away by the clarity. Then I got shure se215s, then I got into KZ buds like a decade ago, then shure 425s and finally AirPods Pro. I’ve had those for like 6 years or whatever and when I got the simgots recently I remembered just how much detail music could have. And the fact that they are less than a third of what my shures cost made me think well if $80 gets me this good of sound, what does $300 get me??  I love the imaging and separation of the EW300s and I really want even more

In the same price range, in order of sound quality, Denon Perl Pro (with AAT) Technics AZ80, and Sennheiser Momentum TW 4 (with Sound Personalization). In order of ANC/transparency performance, the MTW4, Perl Pro, AZ80. Because of app and feature set, I daily drive the MTW4, but without question the Denon’s are the better sounding set and the one I reach for if I’m just consuming media. My only gripe with the Perl Pros is the tips, which are too shallow for my tastes; I run them with the Divinus Velvets (if you change tips you’ll want to also rerun AAT). There are sets that are better from a pure sound quality perspective, like the Gemini II, but they’re not priced competitively and need some further revisions to codec, BT and application/feature set support before they’re ready for prime time. The Geminis reminded me a lot of the Levinson 5909, a phenomenal sounding set held back by the hardware and software included. Unfortunately, the APP2s are extremely difficult to beat from a pure value perspective (if you’re an iOS user). I still use them often during travel when I need the best ANC possible, but fit and other issues hold them back from being in my top 5. That, and Apple really needs to consider its prosumer customer base and provide access to some form of parametric EQ (something they’re unlikely to ever implement, sadly).