It’s actually quite possible that your ear could be clogged. I’d advise you to get it looked at by an appropriate doctor, it might just be earwax buildup.

It sure looks awesome, and it’s very well-built. I did not listen to it long (I’d rather spend my time with pleasant headphones), but I did not enjoy it.

The soundstage is good for a closed back, but it sounds tonally extremely wrong. The HD 800 sounds like you’re in a live concert hall, the 820 sounds like a slightly smaller concert hall, but the singer is singing from a backstage toilet and has sinusitis.

Absolute nonsense. On the software side of things: the only job the OS has is decoding and pushing the digital audio towards the DAC (external or internal, doesn’t really matter). This is not a bottleneck on modern devices, and ignoring some fringe edge cases, it will end up being bit-perfect.

I’m quite confident all of that "optimization" software mentioned falls into one of three cases:

1. Does absolutely nothing (except cost money)
2. Waste CPU cycles
3. Attempts to actually do something and will put your systems reliability in danger

In fact, I can’t even find the last two programs mentioned, and TrustedInstaller is a windows builtin.

Nightfall in Middle-Earth for me :)

A Night at the Opera is great too, though. Both of these albums really sound like a kind of Opera, with how well-connected the songs are.

It’s only very very slight and I’d still call the Hexa a 9.5/10 for neutral tonality, it still sounds natural for me, but there is something there. However, multiple people have told me that they can’t hear it, so I assume that this will subjectively vary from person to person, maybe it’s ear canal resonance related.

So, the Truthear Hexa is this months hyped IEM apparently, and after being relatively impressed by the TE Zero and listening to the rather enthusiastic review by Super*Review, I decided to grab it. Quick disclaimer: I only own "budget" (< 100€) IEMs right now, since I don't use IEMs all that often and commonly have fit issues with larger IEMs. Until now, the Titan S has been my favorite, sporting a bright-neutral tuning.

First, the fit and build: box and accessoires are basically the same as on the Zero, which is completely fine, but nothing exceptional. The IEM earpieces themselves are rather sleek, slightly translucent from the ear side, but feel overall well made and are quite light. They also have a somewhat thick and quite long nozzle, which made me slightly worried about the fit (the Zero was pretty close to not fitting me properly). However, thanks to the long nozzle, they protrude from the ear canal significantly, and I had no issues using them. I use the included tips (medium size, small bore), since in contrast to on the Zero, they provide a secure fit this time.

Most important however is the sound. And well, I have no hesitation to call them neutral. They sound very clean, with very clear mids and a small subbass boost that provides proper impact to make drums sound good. There is absolutely no bass bloat or mud found here, making even fast songs sound clear and not congested. Imaging and soundstage are IEM-typical. However, there is one thing of note and criticism: similar to the Zero (though less prominent and without the harsh vocals), there is what I'd consider a slight, noticeable treble peak somewhere. Cymbals can have just a hint of added sharpness that makes them stand out in the mix a bit. It reminds me slightly of the treble peak on my DT 1990 (I assume it is at a similar frequency), though it is far, far less prominent here and does not cause actual issues. It does make them lean towards a metallic timbre though, but not enough to make the sound unnatural. That kind of thing seems to be very subjective, so YMMV.

Overall, I can confidently recommend those to everyone who is interested in a neutral, clean sound within this price range. If what you are looking for is an energetic, or fun, or relaxing sound however, they are not for you. The Titan S has some added sparkle and energy, but still provides similarly clean bass and mids, while the Aria has a more relaxing, bassy-and-fun sound at the cost of lacking the clarity and natural sound.

Oh wow, I didn’t think shipping would be that expensive, sorry. I still think the official case is probably your best bet, if you can find it for a reasonable price.

What kind of budget are you looking for? The beyerdynamic hard case (non-pro version) is ~$25 on thomann (and in stock, apparently). If you want to find something cheaper, I’d recommend looking on eBay (since there are a lot of Chinese sellers of headphone accessories), but even there, I’m not seeing anything significantly cheaper right now (though it may be different in your country).

I’m a bit sceptical.

I’m not an audio expert by any means, but there’s more to human-to-human sound differences than just the reflections within the ear canal. There’s a lot of work by the brain involved and the whole area of psychoacoustics. Even if what they’re proposing would work from a technical point of view, that does not mean it’s going to sound any good. It for sure is interesting though.

It is looking pretty good, especially with the EQ focus, and might even beat the other earbuds on the market in sound quality if Moondrop did it well. However, I’d be very worried about the build quality, especially since this is more complex electronic-wise than their wired offerings, which aren’t exactly known for reliability.

If you love mids, you should get a Sennheiser headphone! Especially the HD820, it reproduces voices extremely well and will give you a natural, excellent sound experience.

Only speaking about the 560s here (since I avoid Hifiman):

I expected your points to be much more controversial than they ended up being. I generally like the 560s and think it’s a good starter headphone, but I cannot disagree with any of your observations. Generally, I think the 600 series is very much a step up from there at a still reasonable price point. The only things some people claim are better on the 560s are soundstage (which is only slightly larger) and bass response (which doesn’t actually sound better either) while the 600 series beats them in all other points.

Interesting shoutout to the old planars at the end there! I’ve recently been interested in vintage headphones a bit and you’ve just made me start browsing eBay again…

That makes sense, since Beats are not good headphones.

You have to sell them for 1k a piece and claim they are a cleaner power source and make the transients sharper and clearer or something.

It’s definitely noticeable: badly recorded or mastered songs are going to sound bad, no matter the quality, and some headphones can make that quite noticeable.

Use Spotify Premium on the highest possible settings. The difference between that and uncompressed files is probably undetectable for 99.9% of humans.