Ohh man, are you in for a treat! The EE LX and the MEST complement each other so very well. I mean they are very different and so delicious in very unique ways. They are both my current favorites.
Also, welcome to the hobby! 
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Thanks for your welcoming, you and me are correct! EELX and the MEST do sound different but they both are so musical with tons of micro and macro dynamics and subtle instruments details that can easily be heard with no effort on my part, I love the BASS lines on both. Double bass lines on best of Sade is awesome.
The tonality, texture and fullness reminds of live performance. To think that I just received these both this week and they both need to run in some more for perhaps better improvement is rewarding. I need to focus on only one for know then the rest I have on hand.
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I feel this is true for both of the IEMs you just acquired - but in different venues. Youāre set for quite some time unless you like the chase (which might not be the best thing). Youāre absolutely right. Take one at a time and get to know the sonic signature and then try the other. That way you will have double the appreciation. 
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Ive been listening to both EELX and The MEST giving each a few hours of play time. I listen to all sorts of music I be like all over the place life is short Iām going all out. The double bass on the best of Sade is perfect as both iem have powerful bass slam with control. I am using my prefer aftermarket cables from Effect and PW because Iāve always been a big cable guy even on my big 2 channel rig I wire everything thing up to my liking. I have lots more hours to put in so Iām just going to be patient. I have four more iem that Iām getting to know, TiaTrio two weeks after CanJam NYC and Tux5 I got at the event and darn it Vega and AndroV2. Oh I almost forgot- last night I listen to Curtis mayfield, pusher-man on Tidal Master section via M11PRO with Eros I+ and MEST and I was freaking out laughing at 3am.
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I got my balanced 4.4mm pentacon cable for these in yesterdayā¦and yeah buddy! I think the extra oomph is helping these āgo to 11ā lol seems like details are crisp, sharper timbre, less warmā¦interestingā¦or it could just me being sensitive to these aspects after listening to the Ananda for most of the week 
Also, yes, itās a purple/violet cable #purplelove!
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Iāve had the MEST tour unit for a few days now. And man, Iām impressed. I was skeptical, but definitely curious. Unique Melody puts out some of the most unique iems out there and not all really sound great but man this one is really making me want to open up my walletā¦
Resolution sounds top notch. Imaging is excellent. Itās soundstage isnāt necessarily wide but it projects everything very well, and surprises me all at the same time. My only nitpick is that there is an emphasis in the treble region around 6-7K that may bother some. This is not a neutral IEM though itās well balanced, with a slight emphasis there but man, technical ability of this IEM is in the realms of the best out there thus far.
Full review is almost done. Will need to take some photos and clean it up a bit. Then think about how much my wallet loves me or hates me.
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YESā¦come to the MEST-SIDE!!! we have bone conducting drivers!!! 
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The MEST impresses me every single time I put them on. It makes me ask if other manufacturers are overpricing their IEMs or Unique Melody just picked a bad time to launch the MEST and was forced to severely cut the priceā¦Iāve the Tia FourtĆ© and the MEST manages to put a pretty good fight at 1/3 of the cost. If I didnāt know MESTās retail price and someone told me that they cost $2k, I would probably complain about the cable and plasticky build but not on the sound performance. For less than $1.2k, I think that UM hit a home run and set a new standard. Fit might be the main issue for some users as theyāre on the bulky side.
Great find @Torq! Thanks again.
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Since no one, afaik, has published any measurements on this, hereās a couple before I post my full review:
UM MEST vs 64 Audio U12t with the m20 module (silver)
UM MEST vs 64 Audio U12t with m15 module (gray)
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If I wind up ordering an IEM just out of curiosity āfor something to doā this will probably be it.
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If thereās ever an ad campaign this classic needs to be part of it:
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Unique Melodyās brand name has always been what Iād call appropriate. Theyāve always never been shy of thinking well outside the box and coming up with very unique in-ear monitor ideas, from crazy design choices, to using unique drivers, such as the planar driver in the ME1, which I own, and to using additive manufacturing to produce a crazy web of titanium for a custom IEM shell.
UMās latest model, the MEST, is yet another product that shows they arenāt afraid of trying something fresh and new. This IEM is features 4 separate driver technologies in a single unit. The IEM includes a single dynamic driver, 4 balance armatures, 2 electrostatic tweeters, and a bone conductor driver. Yes, I am not making that up. They added bone conduction to this foray.
Let me just quickly thank Unique Melody themselves for allowing me to participate in this MEST tour. I was able to listen to this IEM for a weekās time before shipping it to the next user on the Head-Fi Loaner tour.
Now back to this interesting setup. Iāve only tried a few bone conducting earphones in the past with my experience primarily around the Aftershokz. This popular bone conducting earphone seems to be pretty popular with the bicycle commuter crowd, as everyone Iāve met that owns them is bicyclist of some sort. They earphones themselves do work, and whatever voodoo it does actually produces music in my head, and thatās pretty rad. They arenāt really great for audiophiles though, as you do lose quite a bit of resolution and some technical performance, and my experience equates them to somewhat mediocre to poor audio performance, but it still produces music that is listenable and not terrible.
I was most interested in how UM was going to implement this driver, while at the same time pack in the others as well. The EST drivers for example, have been rather poorly used in most all IEMs that have featured them outside of a few very niche products that cost well over $3K USD (The Vision Ears Elysium and Elysian Audio Annihilator). What surprised me while reading the promotion pieces on the bone conductor driver was that UM targets this driver to handle the upper mid-range and lower treble duties, which wasnāt at all what I was expecting. But remembering how Aftershokz sound, it does make some sense.
Accessories
Before I get too deep into the whole sound thing, I do want to quickly mention the package the UM MEST comes with. The small package box was a lot smaller than my previous UM IEM packaging, which was a large wooden box ā this time Unique Melody ships in a smaller cardboard box thatās sleek and elegant. Inside, the IEM comes with a leather blue and black zippered case that looks quite attractive and neatly has the UM branding on it, though looks far from distasteful. Included is a braided cable that does feel a little thick, but I didnāt find it too heavy in actual usage. The cable is terminated in 2.5mm balanced, but also came with 4.4mm and 3.5mm attachments, which may be exclusive for this tour unit. I believe users will get to choose the termination of their choice if ordered.
Sound
When I first popped on the Unique Melody MEST, my first thoughts were that it sounded slightly W-shaped with a raised low end and some sort of peak in the lower treble, although it sounded semi-neutral, but colored in some ways. Generally, I found the signature unique, and fits somewhere between a balanced U-shape and a more fun V-shaped sound.
One thing to point out is that I found the MEST to be highly tip dependent on first tests. With certain tips, perhaps something to do with seal, I found that the MEST was very bright and lacked low end bass, while with other tips, the bass can actually be rather overwhelming.
After listening to it for a few days now, I think the MEST to be a unique yet very fun and well-resolving IEM. Itās hard to really pin point exactly how it truly sounds because it sounds very unique.
The bass has a lot of textures, though can come off sometimes smeared and overdone. Itās definitely more elevated, but focuses on subbass lift, with a bass curve that is quite similar to 64 Audioās U12t in both measurements and in actual listening. When I listened to various songs, say GoGo Penguinās Version 2.0ās record, I can find the double bass guitarās power to be a tad overbearing and drowning out some of the other parts of the song at times on the U12t and at times on the MEST. That said the MEST has a nice bass line with good slammy nature and impact that I sometimes do miss when using multi-BA sets.
The resolution of the MEST is actually fantastic. I am surprised at how much details come out of songs and perhaps the lift at 6KHz brings out a bit more of the harmonics in certain instruments in specific tracks, but I always feel like I am hearing more things that I normally would in most IEMs, outside of my very best. I think it can compete in the realms of the best Iāve tried, as Iāve been playing it side by side with the qdc Anole VX this week and I think it can trade blows well, while to me, sounding a little more accurate at the same time.
Another thing I found nice and perhaps strange is the imaging and the soundstage. There were many times where I felt like the MEST was intimate and closed-in with instruments feeling very forward, yet the imaging and separation didnāt feel lacking at all. In my typical bluegrass tunes, I was able to hear each instrument across a small band across my head with no problem despite feeling less wide AT TIMES. Then some other instrument, say a drum will hit, and itāll feel like itās totally coming from the farthest part of my left ear, and Iām left puzzled. Is this IEM closed-in and intimate, or does it have good width? Itās weird, but I enjoy this game.
In similar vein, depending on the music genre and what instruments are playing, I found depth to vary just as much as width. This all goes back to an interesting experience listening to the MEST and really makes the presentation of songs I am familiar with stand out in almost a different light, and itās not necessarily a bad thing.
Perhaps this is another one of those holographic soundstage types ā the kind of staging and imaging that I felt when I listened to the Campfire Solaris, with music coming in more of a half-spherical illusion in front of you, rather than one that is just left to right and forward and back. One song where I find this quite noticeable is Tingvall Trioās Vulkanen, a nu-jazz treat where at the beginning the piano sounds like its coming in your head, but the drums and cymbals are off to either side of you, while the bowād strings are doing their thing straight in front of you, so much that I thought it was coming out of my speakers at first.
Where I do find the MEST may affect some, and may not others, is how it approaches the upper-mid range and the lower treble regions. The upper mid-range has a nice rise, but then it plateaus just prior to another sharp rise up in the lower treble range which makes some of that exciting detail come forward, and is typical of a V-Shape-style sound signature. I think the treble rise hovers at the warning track, where just a little more could be rather fatiguing and potentially could cause people ringing and maybe sibilance depending on sensitivity. For me, I find this rise just below my threshold. I never found it sibilant nor too harsh. I think it does accentuate certain things a bit more than they should, though not to the point where I find timbre to be totally off either. I think UM strikes a nice balance here.
Final Thoughts
Listening to so many different genres, I feel like the MEST works pretty well as an all-arounder IEM. Just remember that the IEM itself isnāt what I would call neutral, it has got its own flavor with an emphasis in the lower treble region, as well as a bass lift. That said, itās got some addictiveness to it that I was a bit shocked to really enjoy.
While I donāt know how much the bone conduction driver actually contributes to the overall sound, if any, at least in a universal form-factor, I still think the mid-range is really solid and this is a good overall IEM that I am now happy to recommend at least trying out. It has some qualities that make it look like a solid deal to a bargain at itās asking price of $1399, since its resolution is very good, itās got excellent imaging and one of the rare multi-driver IEM setups that I donāt find has any major flaws.
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Great content Antmanā¦I am definitely curious about the MEST but based on all the impressions I have read my spidey sense has me wondering if it might be a little bright for me.
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The rise is similar to VX, if that helps. It may sound a tad sharper than VX though.
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Thatās the sense I get. My ONLY real issue with the VX not related to my inherent preference for DD bass is that I found the lower treble/upper mids regionā¦not sibilant but definitely a little too vivid and fatiguing at times for me.
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Figures that just as Iām about to go and put in an order for a pair of these, 1) the price goes up and 2) theyāre unavailable anyway. sigh
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Yea. It does help my wallet in this case.
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