Looks good for the money. But I get a feeling it's not actually competing with the things people are claiming it is. I do prefer the minimalist look. The all black cable is a nice change but more foam tips please. Also do they sell filters for these? I've ended up having to deal with that mess sfrom other brainds.
Yeah, thanks for the recommendations. It's not so much a critique of the Top pricing as it just seems that performance wise, hybrids really start to dominate at $500 price. But, with evolution of IEM market in the last few years, maybe in 2023 we'll see the price drop.
As you mentioned JQ 4U Pro, do you plan a detailed review?
I wouldn't say that hybrids really start to dominate at $500. There's a few things going on here with that.
The largest is that there is chifi and then there is hifi and these are not the same. While chifi has gone full out driver war and hybrids that's largely within chifi. Go to hifi and this is just not the case. The top brands and performers are a mix of multiple balance at low counts, single BA, or even single dynamics (these can hit 1500 bucks). These aren't no name brands either it's Shure, Westone, Sony, Sennheiser, JVC, Campfire etc. When it comes down to performance and quality the chifi brands really do not stack up. That's fine! As neither side of this is really competing with each other. If you go to amazon and Schenzen audio you are mostly going to get bombarded with chifi products all sporting more and more drivers up and down the price stack. But if you go to a really dedicated Western or Japanese hifi dealer you're not going to see it. In rare cases you will see brands that made it over the hurdle like Hifiman or Moondrop and managed to get the thumbs up from the hifi side of things but their prices for these things are going up and up for multi driver configurations with each generation while staying low with single drivers.
It's also worth pointing out that when you get into hybrid or large driver counts form hifi companies their products easily cost 10x the price of the chifi. The chifi obvious is copying the type of art, shape of the shell, plates, materials, and even driver counts but they simply do not compete with either. So when people say "x chifi product punches above it's weight" they do not mean in any way shape or form that it's taking on hifi companies. What that means is compared to other chifi units costing as much or more, often even from the same company, it's punching above it's weight.
Also the brutal chifi hybrid fights all see to kick off right around the three hundred buck mark.
My prediction is that chifi prices are going to go up up and up! Which is good for them and how market competition should work. The bad stuff competes to the bottom of the barrel and they good stuff competes to make more and more expensive stuff to make sure their brand keeps it's good name, perception of value, and raises it's perception of quality in the market. So we are getting a lot of dirt cheap stuff and innovation in the low end, and the desired companies and desired configurations are doing the right thing and raises prices and making more and more costly units.
