ET142

simgot et142 is certainly up there, known to be a beast for resolution + techs a brighter signature (like et142) tends to have the effect of pushing up the perceived detail and resolution. whether or not you can handle or prefer that brightness though is a different story but it does have a more engaging sound while still being able to keep vocals present for resolution though you won't be disappointed with any of the planers you listed, those are all excellent choices. t10's are pretty much clones of s12 in a plastic shell so if you want something like what you had then those are there

Kiwi Ears Canta (around 100usd) Punch Audio Martilo (300ish usd) AFUL P5+2...have a mini planar in there...(a little over 200usd) Simgot ET142 .... planar with pzt driver (around 200) I have all those...and I love em. That's my regular rotation

I like BOTH the Divine and Diablo tuning. They are DIFFERENT. Those cables are certainly not my cup of tea. They were immediately replaced as soon as I unboxed the sets. I also have the ET142...the versatility (nozzle tuning) of that set puts it in a different spot compared to ALL the others. I have others "older" planar and planar hybrids. The only one that doesn't hold up (to me) is the F1Pro.... especially when compared to the Divine. The issues (for me) of the F1 Pro can be managed with EQ and tip rolling.

I think some folks (me included) get surprised with the quality and amount of bass a planar IEM can bring. Typically people hear planar and they associate the shimmery almost metallic treble. Add-in the fact that most planars are often associated with open back cans...which steers people toward open and bright (thank you HiFiMAN) Truth is planar drivers are EXTREMELY versatile. They take EQ like a champ! I have one planar only set and several planar hybrids. The F1 Pro (NiceNCK) can give me the rumble if I put on a nice bass shelf. The ET142 (Simgot) is a hybrid planar that can get plenty warm with a nozzle change AND a attenuation foam insert. Not quite Explorer level warmth...but warm nonetheless. Am excited to get my hands on the pair of 7Hz x Crinacle collabs that just came out. They both seem right in my sweet spot for the music I listen to

God no. If you want simgot you need to spend more to get to the level of Aether. Et142 will be on par but they cost more

It's a game changing planar. It's a real shame that so many reviews of the non-final version went up. I think it took a lot of wind out of the sails. Technically it might not be a massive step up from the other $100-$200 planars. But the *Versatility* that it offers is something no other planar can really offer. It competes with the kilobuck planars at a fraction of the price, and the only real downsides as you mentioned are the weight of the IEMs and the cable, and the fact that most people don't wanna swap nozzles. Happy you're loving it. I love mine.

There isn't one exactly (it's sort of the holy grail of IEMs), but the Truthear Pure has a lot of similarities although without EQ it's much bassier - and not just HD650+sub-bass. Also I believe the SoftEars Volume S has a lot of similarities as well (with more comfortable shells), but I haven't heard that one yet. For HD600+sub-bass, I describe the Thieaudio Legacy 2 that way a lot - it's a bit more vocal-forward where it's right on the edge of being a bit shouty, but not quite over the line. Otherwise very neutral, exactly like the HD600 (the 650 is warmer and more relaxed - and IMO more neutral than the 600, although that may be a controversial thing to say). It's more neutral than the Pure without EQ I would say, but the Pure is a better IEM if you EQ it, because the L2 treble doesn't extend past about 14kHz (which is fine for general music listening since there's normally very little information that high anyway, but it's not great for monitoring etc.). Apparently the SeeAudio Yume (the original version) is tuned a lot like the Legacy 2 and maybe even a bit better, but I haven't heard that one myself and I'm not sure if they still sell it. The CrinEar Reference may be worth a look too, but "neutral" in IEMs doesn't really exist because of HRTF differences between people, so it's debatable if the Reference really is a reference like the HD650 is or not. Reviews of it are a bit mixed, but reviews of the Pure are very mixed as well. Both are tuned to JM-1, but the Reference hits the target a bit better. If you want to understand that and why it is/isn't neutral, see [Joel's video about](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZoKPtzjdtQ). Funnily enough more or less within the same week of the Reference coming out, the Headphone Show has stopped using JM-1 as their reference target because of research they've been doing lately (albeit the changes are small). So I don't expect the Reference will have anything like the longevity of the HD650, as too many people find it sounds not-quite-neutral. There's actually no evidence that JM-1 sounds perceptually neutral to anyone (it's based on mathematical model) - whereas the HD600/650 tunings were based on actual listening tests (and over-ears don't have the same problems of bypassing the pinna). A lot of people describe the Daybreak as very neutral even though it's technically U-shaped, and seems to be more enjoyable to listen to, to more people. I haven't heard the Reference yet, but IMO the Pure has a fairly enjoyable stock tuning, so it's probably more like the HD650, in that the HD650 is a very enjoyable headphone to listen to, even if it's not perfect. So it's unclear if the price difference is worth it, even if you're looking for a neutral reference, since the best way to achieve that is with EQ anyway. Bit if you want the general "vibe" of the HD650 the Pure is probably the one you want. The biggest downside of the Pure for me was comfort, but it's much better than the Hexa (which IMO is extremely overrated) so depending on your ears you may have no issues with it. It's no cheaper to buy anywhere other than Amazon though, so it makes sense to make use of their free returns policy. The Prisma Lumen is also tuned like this and seems to sound more perceptually correct to more people than the Reference, but it's in a whole other price bracket at around $1300.

I watched about 8 or 9 reviews back to back, as they all released at once due to the embargo. As a result they all blend together a bit, so I'm not going to be able to point you at specific ones, as there's a good chance I might misattribute something. If you pay close attention though, a lot of them call out minor issues, especially with the treble, which Precog just calls out more explicitly. In fact I'll probably go back and re-watch most of them later, with Precog's review in mind (and I'd recommend others start with his review *because* it's more explicit about what he doesn't like). Super Review said similar things, in different words. If you watch/read enough reviews, you start reading between the lines a bit more, as there's always a stronger positive bias in reviews (unless it's Dracomies). The reviews are overall positive, but the conclusions are mostly some variant of "this is very good for what it's trying to achieve, but it's not for me". Which if reviewers were more honest about just giving their own impressions than trying to guess what other people will think, would likely push the overall scores down a bit further. The big exception to that is Resolve who seems to genuinely really like it more than any other IEM. But Resolve is a bit of an outlier when it comes to IEM reviews, because he always gets length-mode issues. I don't mean that reviews were mixed in the sense that there were loads of outright negative ones - just that there are enough flaws that I don't see the Reference holding up as a benchmark IEM in 12-24 months' time, let alone 30-ish years like the HD6x0 series has. I'll be curious to see what people do think of the Reference in 12 months after the hype dies down, and when there are inevitably a lot more things on the market aiming for JM-1 without the excessive bass that a lot of the early new meta IEMs (like the KE4) had, which makes them sound veiled. And don't get me wrong, I agree with their overall sentiment that it's something that should exist and is almost certainly going to be good for the IEM market in general. I haven't heard it, so I can't comment on whether it's something I personally would buy or like, but as a *reference* I'd probably just pick up the Pure and EQ it. Especially given the Reference shells are apparently quite large, so it likely doesn't address the comfort issues the Pure has (and it hasn't knocked the Volume S off the top of my want-to-try list). I can be a bit more scientific when it comes to mixed reviews of the Pure, because they came out over a longer period and I kept a [running tally](/r/iems/comments/1lmledy/first_truthear_pure_review_is_out/) of them at the time. Having now heard the Pure myself, I can see where the "mud" accusations come from, although I'd personally call it a mild bass bleed rather than mud, and it's quite easy to fix with EQ. And it seems the adjustments the Reference needs are likely in the treble (hard) whereas the Pure mostly just needs a slight reduction around 200Hz (easy). Also the thing that worries me a bit about the Reference from a purely objective standpoint is that the treble seems to fall off a cliff at around 16kHz. I can hear up to about 17.5kHz so while I don't need extension all the way to 20kHz, for critical tasks I would want at least 18kHz without roll-off. This is actually the main reason I want to find a good upgrade from the Legacy 2, which stops at 14kHz (and no the Hexa isn't it). On that metric the Daybreak actually does a bit better. And the roll-off is so steep on the Reference that it probably can't be EQ'd back up, whereas the Daybreak can always be EQ'd down. Even the HD650 which is not known for its treble extension, doesn't start to roll off until about 18kHz, especially with fresh pads. > there are a ton of HD650/600 haters Yes, but also no. There are serious criticisms like the lack of bass extension and the issues with pad wear. Some people legitimately prefer other things, mostly for those reasons. And for certain tasks like mixing, a planar+EQ is going to outperform them. Then there are some deeply unserious criticisms that are mostly not in good faith, mostly from the same kind of people who say power cables affect sound quality. Outside of that, it's very clearly a benchmark headphone and recognised as such by the vast majority of people. The situation with IEMs bypassing the pinna is very different. It's not clear if there will ever be an HD650 of IEMs, unless it's something that's specifically designed to be easy to EQ, and EQ is accepted as part of the equation. In many ways the Dusk tried to do that, but it was let down by a very poor quality DAC implementation in the cable, and the stock tuning was different enough from the default DSP that it's not much good for use with analogue gear. I also think the Dusk was trying to use DSP to *fix* the analogue tuning, as opposed to aiming for a neutral baseline tuning with DSP purely for HRTF correction. Speaking of analogue gear, it's likely that the Reference *is* the most neutral IEM on the market currently if EQ isn't an option (or maybe the Lumen). Although it's also likely that if you have the opportunity to listen to a bunch of different things, that something might match your own HRTF a bit better through random chance, and hence end up sounding more neutral. JM-1 is just an average, so in theory it's going to sound too bright to 50% and too dark to the other 50%. There's not a lot that can be done about that, but it's worth keeping in mind that there's actually no evidence JM-1 sounds perceptually neutral to anyone. And the history of ergonomics research suggests that averages do not work. The HD6x0 wasn't tuned to a DF target in the same way that IEMs are currently tuned, it was tuned to "loudness diffuse field" which is based on [actual listener tests](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TE1AIbetvDs). It would be interesting if someone tried to apply that methodology to tuning an IEM, and if the result ends up sounding more neutral to more people, or if it just results in a wide spread that ends up back at JM-1 anyway, once you try to average the results - I suspect it would need iterative testing to avoid that. Harman IE, for all the issues people have with it, was actually based on listener preference research. The Harman MoA 2025 target looks quite different to JM-1 and actually if you compare the complaints people have about the Reference with that target, it looks like it might address them. I don't know much about that target though (I don't have an AES membership and haven't read all the research, so I'm not 100% sure what it's based on). And I don't think anything is actually tuned to it, yet. But that's another possible *new new meta*, that might end up being closer to true neutral, for more people.

> Actually I'm kinda hoping once all is said n done with the reference we start to see companies attempt IEMs with preference bounds in mind and create something more diverse. Yes actually it would be nice if someone tried to use tuning nozzles or switches in a less gimmicky way, so they maybe represent 2 or 3 HRTF targets, instead of one. But give us one tuning per IEM, don't use a switch for "normal" vs "basshead" - just pick one flavour per IEM and design everything else around that. And much of the rest of the future of IEM design should be about reducing ear canal resonances that aren't part of the unblocked HRTF. The interesting thing about tuning nozzles is that almost all of them affect the eargain region & treble where HRTF effects are present, but in almost 100% of cases that I can think of, reviewers universally prefer the same one and the rest are just junk, rather that falling into clusters of preference based on their HRTFs. The only exception I can think of is the Simgot ET142, where they simply provide multiple tunings that are all potentially good (for the same listener). I find that interesting because it shows that while we *know* HRTF effects 100% definitely affect preferences, they don't affect preferences for tuning nozzles in the way they are designed currently. Presumably this is because one follows a somewhat HRTF-like curve and the rest of the IEM is tuned around that one, while the others just add random frequencies well outside anyone's preference bounds. > a single target is just not ideal for listener preferences. While this is almost certainly true, what's missing is a solution. One thing that would be interesting is instead of a single median HRTF like JM-1, come up with clustered averages instead, so the result is 2 or 3 different targets which could then be used as the targets for tuning-switch modes. The result is then a lot more like a height adjustment on a chair than giving everyone PEQ and telling them to just build their own chair from scratch.