Mangird Tea2 (Gen 2 / V2)

My U4S is a no-brainer, but I’m gonna specifically call out my Tea 2s for the killer soundstage and imaging. They’re immersive and enveloping and idk what I’ll do if anything happens to em now that they’re discontinued. That’s the unfortunate thing about chifi, with how the market constantly pushes forward, who the hell knows about long-term support once models get pushed out of their lineup

Out of what I own, I have the Xenns Tea 2s and love them. These days out of stuff I don’t own, it’d probably be a toss-up between the Tea Pro, Dusk, Mega 7 if you pushed the budget a bit, and maybe something like the Astrals. Note that I haven’t heard any of these other sets, they’re just what I’ve been curious about in passing and would consider picking up if I were to get anything new.

Honestly what matters the most is your familiarity with the IEMs/cans you’re using moreso than the tuning, although having particularly dramatic tunings can absolutely affect your mixing. Like in my case, using my DT770 Pro LEs on a few tracks definitely had me mixing my cymbals/hats way too low since I was overcompensating for the huge treble spike. All that being said, I pretty much exclusively use my Xenns Tea 2s for my music production, not sure what all would come closest to them since they’re discontinued but the Yu9 Que looks damn close going off of the FR graphs. Then I usually go back through on my U4S for the fun listen-through to make sure everything bumps and is separated out properly in the mix.

If you are willing to spend roughly 300 then I would try the the aful p7. I've heard that they're great for bass and are vshaped. I was torn between them and the mangird teas but I ended up getting the latter cause I found a decent deal on aliexpress. I may even pick up the p7s one day still since I hear lot of great things about them. They are roughly 330 cad on Amazon but if you look on aliexpress then you could prob catch a pair for 300 then you slap a coupon that you find from reddit coupon megathreads and that'll shave the price down to 270. Aliexpress usually doesn't tax you either so you'll also be saving another 70-100 dollars from sales taxes depending on your province. I would have paid 180 in sales tax alone if I got the tea pros off Amazon lmao

There is a set available on eBay in the states right now. They are truly wonderful. They were ahead of their time. They take EQ like a boss too. Wide bore tips are the way to go with this set. You don’t want anything in the way. It’s worth the price. I will never let mine go. I’ve been considering a second set just as a backup just incase. I am a huge fan of the original Mangird Tea as well. That was a special iem, also ahead of its time if you ask me.

Xenns mangird top pro