Hello and happy summer! And since it IS summer, the windows are open here and the fans all over the house are roaring away. This makes listening with my beloved Arya Stealth headphones… problematic. I pretty sure I need an iem (for true passive isolation)… the headphones or iems I have listened to with ANC make too many sacrifices in sound quality to my ears. These days, I listen to 80% classical, 20% rock, so I am looking for something that does well with classical genres. My budget tops at $400. Comfort would also be important as I listen for hours at a time. These would be used at home and perhaps once or twice a year for travel.
So… is there a comfortable iem that sounds close to the open, balanced sound of the Arya Stealth? I like the Arya a LOT, and would be looking for something as close to that as possible.
All ideas and comments welcomed. Thanks in advance!
I had the Arya Organics for a while, and I enjoyed them. I have several iems but seem to grab the Mega5-EST most of the time. I think it’s the 7th anniversary version and not the original version.
In the IEM product segment, if you check, more money does not assure you’ll get better sonic quality.
From your request, it would seem that the following criteria would be important to your use case.
IEM from a quality, well known brand.
Planar Magnetic IEM
Closed Back IEM (it’s important to add this, cos IEMs also come in closed and open variants)
Durable
Comfort.
In my experience, three factors are, besides the IEM itself, very important to the end result. These are :
The eartips you use. While many IEMs come with a variety of tips, there are no assurances that the stock tips will deliver the best performance. Over time, I have come to prefer the foam eartips from Sonicfoam, and the SF1 model in particular, which provides the right inner bore size, for a wonderful balance of detail and balance across the frequency spectrum. Eartips determine a most important aspect of the IEM experience, the quality of seal at the ear canal. Foam tips, I have found to be far superior to all the silicone eartips, I have used. The Sonicfoam SF1 range comes in S,M,L, so you may need a bit of trial and error to buy the two sizes, that most likely fit your ears, such as S and M, or M and L. Each of these sets (S, M, or L) costs about $15 which adds about $30 to your expenditure, but its well worth it. Money well spent to get the most from your IEM.
Sonicfoam foam tips are available from amazon.com, amazon.co.uk, and a few other amazon country stores.
Each set has 10 pairs of eartips, so this is excellent value for money.
The stock cable that is delivered with some IEMs, degrades the sound. This is my personal experience. So I would strongly suggest you also get a replacement cable, such as the CVJ VS 400 - which is an all copper cable (i.e the conductor in the cable). It’s available for about $6 to $12 on AliExpress, depending on what variant of the cable you choose, and you will need to choose what eartip connectors you need, on the cable, to match your chosen IEM. It has a modular option, which allows you to buy in a single package the cable with three headphone interchangeable plugs, 3.5mm single ended, 2.5mm balanced, 4.4mm balanced.
This cable sounds fantastic, and has been the cable in my collection, that allows the audio to come through with clarity, and no obvious filtering of the high or low frequencies, which I hear on some other cables. I know cables are not supposed to sound different, but please take it from me, they do sound different, for reasons too many to discuss here.
A headphone output with low - really low output impedance, ideally below 0.2 Ohms. This is important for IEMs, cos some of them have input impedances as low as 8 Ohms, and are best paired with a headphone output with really low output impedance.
I would suggest you consider one of the Letshouer planar magnetic IEMs.
S12 Pro- Balanced High and low frequencies.
S12 - Original (this is now discounted appreciably), but may be too bright for some
S12 Ultra - the most recent incarnation, supposedly the most refined
S15 - more bass, larger shell, probably the most natural sounding.
All of these are close backed, planar magnetic IEMs, within your budget. While they come with excellent cables and a good selection of eartips, I strongly suggest you also get the non stock eartips, and the cable I had suggested, to take the sonic excellent that bit further.
