Hydro

i'd look at cca hydro v shape set, big punchy bass but still remains clean and is very technical due to the drivers (8ba + 2dd) and their implementaion. mids are more open and present with detailed and extended treble shells are abit on the chonkier side though so if you have smaller ears or prefer a smaller iem i'd probably pass

The CCA Hydro is a very good iem, and very underrated. Comes with mic or without, and even with a HQ cable for 10$ more. It fits within the 200$-250$ segment for less than half the price.

I'm very impressed with the CCA Hydro iem's. I've bought 3 sets of iems during the summer sales. Whereas the hydro is the cheapest of the 3 sets I've bought (others are juzear 61t and kiwi ears punch). Still the hydro sounds like a very good competitor against sets wich are around the 200$ segment.

cca hydro has a rly nice upgrade cable for a few bucks more. i wouldn't call the build very cheap it's good for the price, just the connector is something to be careful with.

edc pro, zenith, cca rhapsody/trio, zs10 pro 2 and cca hydro are all competitive.

separation a bit harder since headphones have wider stage and iirc sundara had good separation, but detail for sure, my cca hydro and truthear nova i had have more detail than both sundara and lcd-2c. kima 2 I've heard is good it looks a bit warm, maybe not detail focused, but should still be fine. if you want detail i would get something like nova, hydro, em6l, defiant, maybe ziigaat crescent, xenns tea pro for higher end and still bassy.

CCA Hydro has a very engaging tuning for hip-hop, rly good bass punch, pleasant tonality.

If you have larger ears, I would go with CCA Hydro. They’re great, and can be adjusted to fit your preference using physical switches on the IEMs to change the sound profile.

At that price, as24, am16, or cca hydro. Autoeq towards a neutral target like ve7, mh334sr, or anything similar from canalworks, westone or shure. I recommend multi ba only sets as they tend to be low distortion and handle eq very well in my experience.

I have the CCA Hydro, and it's an absolute banger to get a taste of what a $500 hybrid sounds like for $100... Doesn't beat it or match it, but it's damn good value and makes me question why everyone else is charging 5x more. They ARE better, but definitely not 5x better.

There's so many! Ones I can personally recommend: Planars- Artti T10 - my first "holy shit, IEMs are great" best $50 I ever spent. KZ PRX is a good, even cheaper alternative. TRN Shell- Great value everything, even the accessories are great. CCA Hydro- A taste of what a $500+ hybrid can be. 2DDs, 8BAs. KZ Decet- 5 DDs. Very bassy boy- it should be a muddy mess, but it's so impressive for the price and super fun. Kiwi Ears Etude- It sounds great, but also vibrates. It's weird. It's gloriously unique, some may hate it, but I love it. Apevoix Grit- Bone conduction, can be subtle, but on the right tracks (especially live recordings) it's awesome. Punch Audio Martilo - Only had it for a few hours. so far on most tracks it's an excellent, comfortable all rounder, but put on bassy songs and it shows what it can do. Similar to the Decet, but more details. You have to decide if that's worth 4x the price though. Instead of one $100, it may be worth buying 2 pairs eg the T10 and the Decet- Planars sound very different to 5DDs, it's fun to swap. I always hoped I'd be able to just have 1 IEM that did everything, but it turns out I really love swapping between them.

Had the same question as you. The choices are overwhelming and everyone is has different taste. I went with CCA Hydras because it was a name that kept coming up and I wanted something with a little more bass than just a BA only IEM.