basically the guy (obviously an audio noob, if you will) heard about Sony's new Walkman DAP and he went on a rant about how useless it was

Welcome to the IEM community.

That's so funny man, I'm in the exact same spot. I finally figured out that I'm not in my car enough anymore to warrant spending money on a system I never listen to. I started with the Aria's and continued down the rabbit hole. I was just showing my wife different watch cases the other night.

All of their non late 2022 products are utter garbage in terms or protection. It took them 12 years to fix their fundamental design failure. Time will tell if they actually fixed the issue or it was worded just to save face.

Just forget about the impedance with IEMs, its always very low. The sensitivity is the more important factor that determines how loud they play. A high impedance headphone can be easier to power than a low impedance pair if the sensitivity is high enough, your earphones are very sensitive so they require very little power to get loud, a pair with lower sensitivity requires more power, you regulate the power with the volume control which will need to be adjusted with each IEM to achieve the same level of loudness. A typical IEM has sensitivity about 105db/mw, an IEM with unusually low sensitivity like the Final E5000 has sensitivity of 93db/mw, the numbers may not seem like a big difference but it is substantial, one will play loud on anything, the other generally requires some external amplification.

The impedance of most IEMs makes very little difference to the loudness but, if you are getting a lot of unwanted noise with a very sensitive IEM you can use an impedance adapter which should tame it, I use an 80ohm adapter with one of mine, you need to really boost the impedance to get a substantial difference.

The first line of the Tao Te Ching, depending on your translation of choice, is essentially:

>The Tao which can be conceived of by a finite mind is not the infinite and eternal Tao.

Or, more simply:

>The Tao that can be named is not the eternal Tao.

And on account of a poorly made offhanded joke I tried to tell in another thread I was reminded of those audiophiles who are always chasing the truest possible sound for their music. They're looking for the flattest possible headphones, the highest possible bit rates, the lowest levels of interference, they're looking for a kind of purity that neither their equipment nor their ears will ever live up to.

Quite literally, the audio that can be played back on man made headphones and DACs, listened to by people's ears in lived in homes, will never be the truest or the cleanest or the purest audio, just like an eighty or ninety year lifetime will never be enough to conceive of an infinite universe.

(This isn't to say there's anything wrong with chasing the dragon or trying to get closer to perfection, you just have to realize that you can get close to perfection, but you'll never get the whole way there.)

From an audiophile perspective the metaphor is strained, this isn't much more than a shitpost in that regard, but trust me that from a Taoist perspective I've probably embarrassed the fuck out of them, too.
As Lao Tzu once said:

>Those who know, don't speak,
>those who speak don't know.

And boy do I have a lot to say on the matter!

Yeah these are treble heavy and sibbilant as well, so definitely don't get them if this bothers you.

I think you will like the radiance, stellia, and the noire. The noire is amazing for $900 and is on par with the radiance. I like the noire bass more.

I trust Crin, very happy to find he thinks my buds 2 pro are the best earbuds around. I concur

I think hbomberguy has a video explaining it on YouTube, a bit old though

Games differ a lot more than iems. There's a lot more to review. Less shillery at play

This one hurt a little..

I believe they recently updated their Heresy with DC protection, along with a price update.

Not sure if you got one of those, or how one would tell.

My Heresy blew up a pair of IEMs. It was just gone, probably because of how thin the voice coil wires are.

I would agree, 50 to 100 USD seems to be the sweet spot for CHiFi IEMs. There's a lot of great stuff in that range. If you can't afford that, the 7Hz Zero and Wan'er are decent, especially with EQ, and are around 20 USD.

Here's the thing, though - enjoyment of life is complex, and enjoying the journey of looking for better things (A.K.A. Adventure) is sometimes even better than actually finding the better things you had set out to find.

If anything, I'd argue that those of us passively absorbing/experiencing content are getting less enjoyment out of life than those of us that are constantly sailing the high seas, looking for better treasure, constantly challenging outselves, trying new things, and never being satisfied with any one thing.

The expedition for better is the enjoyment.

As far as tonality goes, I agree, but I can get that information just from looking at the graphs. The technicality scores sometimes seem completely random to me.

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This submission has automatically been removed due to the following rule:

>Rule 2: Ask purchase and shopping questions in the Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk > > Requests for product opinions, comparisons, and general purchase advice must be made in the dedicated Shopping, Setup, and Technical Help Desk instead of a new post.

Portable audio related purchase advice may also be asked in r/HeadphoneAdvice but please familiarize yourself with their rules first.

What questions are considered purchase advice?

• A request for product suggestions, comparison requests, or opinion requests fall under the purchase advice rule. These can often be found by searching first.

• Any suggestion or comparison request pertaining to headphones, IEMs, DACs, amps, or other accessories should be directed to the purchase help thread or r/headphoneadvice.

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Why does this rule even exist?

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• A more detailed explanation about this rule can be found here.

I'm certain that my post wasn’t asking for product opinions or purchase advice!

• Thanks for reading the above and making it this far.

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The westone w40 is definitely gonna be in the top 10. Musicians love em

Wise man

Not everyone has ability to listen that much iem if any tbf. So its very useful. Once you listen to couple of pairst then you can compare and list become even more useful

EQ them. They sound shockingly veiled once you hear them with EQ. There's lots more detail to be had for free.

Sorry I didn’t specify it’s being plugged into the headphone jack on the front of my PC. So your comment is irrelevant thanks anyways.

u/thaeyo reminded me that I probably should update y'all about this Schiit. So here we go!

Schiit did require an order #, thankfully my Amazon one worked just fine. All in all it started off good, the CSR I talked with made sure to notate that my headphones were damaged and that, if at all possible, I would like to exchange my Heresy for a Heretic since I was afraid of this happening again. They tested and found my Heresy to be malfunctioning (wonder what gave them that impression) and gave me.... Another Heresy, as you can see pictured above. Really annoying but I secretly expected no less. After receiving it back and seeing I was given a Heresy, I contacted Schiit's customer service again to ask if there was any way I can exchange this and was told, quote 'I'm sorry but we do not have a trade in/buy back program'. Aka, if you bought a Heresy and it blew up due to our poor design - that's on you. Not gonna lie, I'm still a little pissed about that.

My headphones leave me a little bewildered. Despite noting it in my RMA comment and even having their CSR note it too, I am uncertain if they actually did anything for my headphones. The only acknowledgement of my headphones is a little note that states what was received in the box and what was sent back. There is nothing else said about them. Before I sent them off, I noted that there was a channel imbalance and radio interference in the right ear cup. I will admit that the channel imbalance may have been my hearing, it took far longer than I would have thought to recover from what happened. I do have partial hearing loss in my right ear, however either through healing or compensation it has gotten much much better than it was. So the channel imbalance may have been my hearing. However what I do know for certain is that there is still radio interference in the right ear cup. I attempted to fix this by adding ferrite cores onto the cord but that did nothing, so it's the internal wiring itself that is no longer shielded. As such, I've sent it off to AKG for repair. I'm hoping they can do something but at this point I'm no longer holding my breath. I'm probably going to have buy another pair of K553's.

So in summary, Schiit is Shit. I'm severely disappointed in their handling of the matter and will probably never buy any of their products again. They refused to do anything but the bare minimum and apparently don't care about their customers. Furthermore, I now have an amp that I am not going to use. I would sell it to re-coup some of my money but I don't want the same thing happening to someone else.

Also, anyone have any idea's on a good amp to buy in the sub-$200 price range? Not a fan of the Atom's design but at this point it may not be as nice looking as the Heresy but at least my hearing is safe!!

Thanks to all the people who were concerned for my hearing btw!! Doing much better now, high frequency noise is still hit or miss in my right ear but thank God everything is no longer dramatically shifted to the left anymore!

Stay safe everyone!

>So my question is what am I missing,

Hearing...you're missing some hearing if the Zero is barely loud enough at max volume from your phone. You don't need an amp; you need to train your ears and brain to appreciate music at a safer volume.