I’m deleting my reply. On reflection, I don’t feel the need to justify myself or defend purchases.
The post above came across as aggressive and accusatory, even if it wasn’t necessarily intended that way. Rather than call it out, originally I instead liked it and responded positively and politely out of a desire to keep the conversation affable and pleasant. That may not have been the right approach. So my reply now instead is simply, “cool. good for you.”
You completely misinterpreted my post. But…ok.
Fair enough, thank you for clarifying.
After reading your posts, I didn’t see anything that looked even a little aggressive or accusatory; seemed like a bit of humor, that’s all. But the same stimulus can evoke different responses from different people, I guess; it’s all good…
I didnt see any issues with the original posts either. People have different values and priorities of their time and hobbies and expendable income. I spend too much on audio and coffee gear, and stuff for our cats.
Anyway, I hope the ranking list helps and the idea of the value rating, as well as the graph, was to help those see what is available at different price tiers. The Moondrop Aria is a really really good choice at $79 @senorx12562 . I prefer it over A LOT of other gears on the my list even ranked higher to be honest.
But as usual, this is just my list and based on my preferences. If you read any of my reviews or forum comments, you’ll probably quickly see what I like and don’t like. 
Ya, you’re pretty fortunate to live in NYC area! There’s a lot of stores there that have actual gear in store to check out! I am hoping to go to CanJam NYC, but we’ll see. I made a last minute decision not to go to SoCal, so probably will do the same when February rolls around.
Please discuss your coffee gear in the Off Topic. At my office, I have frequent consultations with Ms. Breville (she is high maintenance) and Mr. Keurig (much lower class but easy going). I find that I can get the best from Mr. Keurig by using 2 iFill single-use “pods or whatever they are” filled with Kuaui pea berry dark roast that I have ground slightly coarser than espresso but finer than drip. 6 oz water, so 2 tries to fill my 12 oz mug.
I thought it was pretty irresistible for the $68.00 it was on sale for, since I happened to have 70 uncommitted $. Like a sign from god.
Be careful about drawing conclusions from point differences in human-based rating scales like this. The score differences need not be linear, and humans can experience perceptual tiers.
While I’m a big proponent of systematic observations and fully supportive of @antdroid’s methods (as I created some early visualizations in this thread), 2 points need not correspond to a difference that matters to you. OR, it may reflect a huge, earth shaking difference. Your personal meaningful gap may be 1 point or 5 points too. Some may hear everything between 10-12 as about the same, or everything from 10-14 as about the same. Specific individuals may hear a leap in performance above 12 or 14.
To generalize about price/performance one needs normative data (i.e., similar scores from a much larger number of raters) plus personal calibration relative to benchmark products.
Well, here’s how it came across to me. I posted about being interested in highly recommended but pricey IEMS. I then receive a direct reply in wihch senorx12562 draws a contrast between my post and his own preference (the upper left. vs. right quadrant comment). He reinforces that opposition by writing “myself” and then refers to himself as poor, potentially suggesting, because of the contrast he’s drawing, that I’m rich. He also makes a comment about not being able to justify the price of a decent motorcycle for IEMs. In a subsequent post, he then refers to “us poor people,” which, in the context of his previous post, I took to imply that I’m rich and spending unjustifiable amounts of money on IEMs. I resented the implication but, as my earlier response noted, I tried to acknowledge that the original post wasn’t “necessarily intended that way.”
I initially felt the need to justify my purchases (not least because, at best, I’m lower middle class in terms of income and wealth). On reflection, I thought that it wasn’t right that I should feel the need to do so, especially on a forum like this. So, I changed the post and decided to call out what I thought were aggressive and accusatory responses. I accept that I misread the messages when told that I “completely misinterpreted” senorx1562’s “post. But…ok.”
Still, it doesn’t seem to occur to senorx12562 that his post might have come across as a dig at me. “But… ok.”
My reply was actually supposed to be tongue in cheek in regards to the Timeless being a true “giant killer”.
I agree with you and that is why I hate assigning a score to an IEM (or headphones) and refrain from doing so (except where it is obligatory).
My intent was to make light of my circumstances while staying positive. I was trying to laugh at myself and invite others to laugh with me, not point a finger at you. I dgaf what you buy or for how much. None of my business at all. But you brought it up, and my post was intended to point out the contrast in our approaches. The reason it was posted as a direct response to you is because it was just that. But I cannot for the life of me come up with anything about my post that was aggressive or accusatory or a “dig” at you, and neither was it intended as such. The comment about a motorcycle was merely me speaking truth. If I had 2-5k of discretionary income, I would buy a decent used m/c, not a pair of iems (or any other piece of audio gear ftm). And the “but…ok” comment is merely the least confrontational way I could find of saying “You are entitled to your opinion about my post, but I’m not going to defend myself, as I did nothing wrong, and don’t want to argue with you.” But you couldn’t let it be, so here I am. Any need felt by you to justify your purchase decisions came not from my post, but from you and you alone. Cheers.
Self-effacing humor doesn’t always get across to everybody (I know - I have the same problem myself sometimes with people not quite getting me) - but I recognized that right away. 
Have a great holiday!!
I don’t like scoring too but enough people asked so I did it anyway. I ended up normalizing it all using statistical means in the end. So for those who understand a normal distribution… The middle 68.2% or in my case 70% represents stuff that is all kind of the same via 1 sigma (1 standard deviation) away from the average. The stuff outside that is the not average stuff. In this case, that’s below 6 or above 14. (10 ± 4)
That said, aria is quite good at it’s price. And sois the hype train that is the Timeless.
**edited a little bit to make sense due to phone auto-correct
Thank you for the reply and for explaining your point of view. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to force you to defend yourself; my intention had been to explain the reasons why I took your posts as I did (the wrong way), and I am grateful to you for explaining what you intended to say. Thank you. I see your posts for what they are now, and I now get the humor (a bit too late, I realize).
I’m sorry for misunderstanding your posts, for getting the wrong end of the stick, and for reacting as strongly as I did. Please accept my apologies. If your motorcycle rides bring you to NJ or the NYC metro area, I’d be happy to apologize in person and buy you a beer.
And to everyone reading this, please accept my apologies for derailing Antdroid’s great thread. I’m really grateful for all his pointers to the many great IEMs out there.
No worries mate. All good, and I’ll extend the same offer if you are ever in flyover country, specifically the Ozarks. Cheers and Happy Holidays to all.
No I have not. I didn’t receive a unit to review because they are overwhelmed with orders I guess. I may get one in the future, but spent too much money lately on gear. Hoping to sell more stuff soon, so I dont feel bad about buying more stuff I don’t need. 
I’ll probably be sending this Monarch MKII down to you when I complete my review
