MEST Indigo

Oriolus Isabellae. U4s. UM mest mkii indigo (and UM DSiii as gateway drug). Hope 3 not too much.

I wouldnt say any of the Trailli nor MEST have a neutral tuning…they got really bloated bass

It really is. I’ve gone through about 15 IEMs over the past year and got completely caught up in the hobby, trying models from $400 to $2000. The MEST is still my favorite of them all. It’s crazy how, even five years after its release, it still sounds better than many newer and more expensive IEMs. Definitely a great deal for $900.

Tried a bunch and I like the stock tips - xlastic crystals. I do sometimes use wide bore divinus velvets

The glacier, mainly cause it's more comfortable than the mest and sounds just as good.

For music, I demoed and recently purchased a UM x MT Pentara. If you like engaging IEMs it’s hard for me suggest others and anything else feels “boring”, it does everything well and provides a unique experience that I couldn’t match. Diminishing returns if you find good sets is 1k+, it almost all preference after that point for music and it’s rare to find bad sets. Much has to do with your preferred genres and finding good synergy. For most folk in the hobby there is absolutely great sets that can be had for music ~$500 that I would have stopped at without going to CanJam. For gaming, I would say the finishing returns a lot sooner. You don’t want anything that is going to cover up valuable information. I would say $80-$100 sets that are commonly recommended would be better than splurging for a Tea Pro/Volume S which are commonly recommended. More unique sets have a tendency to mess with the perception of distance and direction more than I had originally believed. In regards to recommendations, it’s expensive to get bass you can “feel”. Lot of folks recommend the Punch Audio Martilo and the Kiwi Ears x HBB Punch come to mind as good bass sets to explore.

If that is in your budget I would recommend having separate sets. For me at least, I love bone conduction and couldn’t enjoy music without it anymore if I am using IEMs. But the MEST and the Pentara have tuning that not be great for gaming. For example, the beginning of the song Thriller the foot steps are very unnatural on the Pentara because of the obscenely large soundstage it feels like it is far too many steps to pan that distance. These tunings can be awesome for music but bad for positional awareness. For gaming, in my opinion you want something with a quick attack/decay on bass region and enough treble to get cues needed through the chaos. The Tea Pros for example have a very slow bass compared to something like the Top Pro (just keep the example easy). The are pretty similar from a volume perspective but the Top Pro has less bleed so it feels more resolving across the whole audible range. This has trade offs between sets that you can find a preference for as well (everything is subjective isn’t it). Mids on the Top Pro are a little too forward so distance feels off to some extent. The Tea Pros bass is too pervasive and washes out important detail in chaos. I am personally still trying to find my perfect gaming set, finding something with a W curve and tight bass response will be my ideal candidate. A few posters mentioned Astral and that is one on my to try list. I mostly play Hunt:Showdown where it is basically an audio simulator game. All of my experience is catering specifically to game with almost 100% audio reliance, so everything is information.

I think you will probably need something a little bigger than the Protocol Max for over the ears. I have a FiiO K7 for my desk since it has easy access to 6.5 mm for headphones and a 4.4 out for IEMs and plenty of power for headphone as well. Your list is a good start, Supermix4 was a little spicy in the table region for me and didnt have the punchy bass I was looking for. The three sets on my list to try are the Kiwi Eas Astral, Ziigaat Arete II, and Tea Pro SE. Arete is a collab with and ex CS pro who does gaming IEM reviews (FreshReviews). Basses purely on graphs, I think the Arete II is not designed with music in mind at all. Which is why it so closely aligns to my theorized ideal graph tuning. Bass bleed would be the only thing I would be concerned on but I’m sure that was considered.

On your IEM journey, this is the place to rest, after all they do say: MEST is best Still one of the best kilobuck sets out there even if its a bit older now.

Nice observation I too am having buyers remorse after trying something like the Thieaudio Origin Aful Cantor Dawn X UM MESTs when my Hidizs MP145 and 7hz Timeless can have similar performance at only under $300 wtf. Also I remember listening to my old Sony IER Z1R and am impressed by the timbre and bass