Astral

definitely the astrals

Get the kiwiears astrals for like 270 on Amazon if you want something good for gaming. You don’t really get much better than that.

I didnt get mine for that sadly but I'm pretty sure you can find them for around 250 if you try

Moondrop Lan, Crinear Daybreak and recently got kiwi ears astral, they all great

I’ve had it with the Meze alba, s12 pro 2024, kiwi ears astral and now monarch mk4! Great feeling

OP... don't get rid of your Astral. Someone else mentioned it already...but it's a lack.of reference that has you second guessing. EQ (parametric EQ) is a good tool. It can help you fine tune the sound of the IEM to your liking. But...the IEM should sound good to you out of the box. HD550...hmmm... just go for the legend. Save for the HD600. I wrote down my experiences and things I learned as a beginner [Posted here](https://www.reddit.com/r/iems/s/u2D7CWFQw9) Go and find all the reviews you can on the Astral. Listen to the terminologies and try to associate what you hear from the Astral. Then pick up a budget set or two (if you want to learn) watch those reviews from the same reviewer. See if you can hear what they are hearing...and establish a frame of reference. Hope that makes sense. Outside of that...you picked a really good IEM. Stick with it. HD

honestly only issue with this model is that the Daybreak exists... it sounds great but daybreak kinda ruins its value proposition. however I think kiwi ears can circumvent this by updating the latter batches with better eartips and better case. its a great IEM; kiwi ears's magnum opus.