TRUTHEAR - PURE

The explorer is a good choice but if you want to keep the separation and clear delineation between sounds the truthear pure might be better for u

if you want neutrality under 100$ the hexa are the way to go pure is nice too, though it is much warmer with more relaxed treble versus hexa so thats there if you want it. hexa having more clarity and abit of brightness in the treble but both still considered neutral

if you're familiar with openbacks at all the hexa's would be sort of like the more clinical hd560s and the pure would sort of be something like the warmer hd6xx. both generally considered neutral but with slightly differing but still noticeable characteristics. if we were to more finely categorize each of their tuning hexa would be neutral-bright leaning as in slightly more boosted treble and pure would be warm-neutral, more boost in the lower mids and generally darker treble

I won both the Hexa and the Pure. I love the Pure a bit more than the Hexa. Why? The bass performance really fits my ears. it's not too much, it's not less, it's just the right amount for me. The treble is also more pleasing for me. It's so perfect for my ears, the only thing that I don't like is they made the shell a bit big, but it fits my ears and its confortable just like the Hexa.

I own the Hexa and now own a Pure. The Hexa is bright sounding. More detailed, wide soundstage, balanced, and fast bass performance. It's a smooth but lean sounding set. I love both sets, I've been using my Pure with the W1, and it still doesn't disappoint.

I suggest going for the Truthear Pure instead. The Hexa is tuned neutral and has less bass than what you might used to.

Tanchjim Bunny under 50usd Truthear Pure or Hexa (depends on preferred tilt) under 100usd.

Depends on what you consider neutral, I would say the truthear Hexa or Truthear Pure are currently the closest iems to that, which is a tilted DF.

Alright so everybody here has an opinion, most of them based on "trust me bro". There is a bunch of ~20usd iems, all of them having very similar tuning (tuning is ALL that matters in the sound of earphones/headphones). A lot of them, because they are cheap, come with bad cables that break over time (cables are usually the nost fragile thing on this stuff). Thus I would recommend the Truthear Gate, it comes with a cable that is far better than even cables that vome with iems costing 5x the price. Under 100usd, I would recommend the the Truthear Pure. It is tuned to be what we call neutral now (jm1 and -1db/Oct. Tilt), leaning a bit warm. KZ is... questionable. Some praise it for its price to performance, others hate it. What we are certain about is that they do not sound *objecitevly* correct, not even close to it sometimes. On top of that, they got questionable QC... and marketing practices (paying reviewers, silent revisions for the worse...) 7hz Salnotes Zero:2 - is a good option with a solid tuning, but many find it uncomfortable. Edit: The moondrop chu2 is also a solid option, but I would still go for the Gate.

Many peolle here are saying it will be an improvement. It will be, but mainly with music. Airpods, or the wired earpods are already decent enough (also improvements in this hobby are exaggerated because people are perfectionists). Because you spend long hours with things in your ears, Id rather go for something thats more comfortable. If you want them for a quiet enviroment Id check out the legendary koss porta pros, or the koss kph30i. These are excellent cheap headphones. For iems, around 20$ I would choose the Truthear because of its excellent cable, under 100$ it would be the truthear pure as they are well tuned. I wouldnt buy a more expensive iem as your first.

The Truthear Pure is absolutely that. Its very neutral yet warm signature is also a great base for EQing which is what you want to do if you want good sound for cheap. On the other hand the Ew300 is a bad base for EQing.

Speakers are made to be flat for a reason, I dont know why iems shpuld be different in that regard... Pure is the way to go.

Having an iem with a bad signature all across the board like the ew300 is worse than having a (maybe) relatively bass light neutral iem (Hexa/Pure) - it is very easy to EQ in a tasteful bass boost, OP has a dongle dac/amp with PEQ as well so thats not a problem. Hexa was my first iem, I loved it.

Probably the truthear pure/hexa, pure is a bit warmer sounding than hexa (has more lower mids, less highs). If I were to buy and endgame iem, it would be the Truthear Pure with EQ.

damn near every iem or headphone is able to be pushed I believe 14db higher or lower without issues in terms of eq without pushing a driver to far (we are talking about how they respond to frequencies, not total volume) any modern driver in an iem thats not snakeoil can be retuned to sound like damn near any other iem, the only difference being how clear they are, ill give an example, I had salnotes zeros to test out modern iems, and I had hifiman editions, in terms of tone, they were near identical when I eq'ed them, but the hifi man was just so much clearer it wasn't close. then based off a feeling I got blessing 2's the hifi man had issues where bass would bleed into treble causing a wobble, for reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b-FEaGJG8Y is what I used to push bass into worst case scenarios, on blessing 2's, that wobble isn't there, this is an absolute worst case scenario but you can hear bass screwing with other frequencies in other songs/games/music, its just not as in your face with that song, megadrive flawless is a good example of song but its very hard to hear. personally, I would go with truthear pure, just because I know how much stuff costs even at volume prices, and that kz should be impossible to make if they aren't skimping.

ok, im just going to write everything I know down, take what you want from it. there are really 3 levels of iems at this point 20~$ 7hz zero 2's 80~$ TRUTHEAR Pure and 170$ crinear daybreak sound wise, 20$ is if you have an extreme budget, replaceable cable and damn good tuning makes the zero2 the best low budget the pure is the replacement for the hexa, it was effectively a baby blessing 2, and the fact its comparable at all to a 320$ iem that was considered an iem that destroyed the high end speaks volumes on how good they are and the daybreak is coming off the back of moondrop dusks, which are ok if you plug them into anything with a 3.5 and no eq, but the moment you eq them you need to look above the 1500$ mark to have anything that's better, the only black mark on the dusk was the need for the dps cable if you couldn't eq it through other means (I use a quilidex that regulates volume and eq across everything I attach it to) this saw the hype 4 and other iems in this price range more or less having a leg up at non eq quality, daybreak more or less takes the best of the dusk, gets the tuning to work without a dsp/eq and drops the price in half. each one of these is a step up in quality that makes the lower end one seem like crap. each one of these... are relatively flat maybe slight v shaped, so you may loose something in the bass, if you can eq the base a nudge higher with however you hook them up, you get 'fun' levels of bass, not bass cannons, I personally for my preference boost the 0-70hz range by about 4db and roll it off so that boost is only slightly there into the in the 100-150 range, any base that low demands to be loud and imposing, but I also love bass, I just don't like the over done turn everything else to mud that bass focused iems/headphones tend to do. these days what you get for very little is shocking I just looked up what you are most likely looking at/have, I assume you are going from se215 to an se425 or an aonic 3-5 so lets start out with the 425 its a dd and ba combo, not horrible but at 200-300$ (with shipping) price, you can do far better aonic 3 is a single ba, no body does this for audio anymore for a reason, single ba sucks and requires deep insertion into the ear to get the best sound, as in the deeper they go the better they sound, etymotic's are called ear dildos for a reason. aonic 4 has a dynamic driver and single ba, this is touching modern good but at a 320$ price point you are touching top class sound area of price, and these are not top class aonic 5 uses 3 balanced armatures, 2 for working as subwoofers, 1 for tweeters, this is not exactly a good design, ba's kinda suck for bass, its why almost everything uses a dynamic driver and a ba combination. GRANTED the shures are small, and if size is the only thing you care about it is what it is. seemingly their claim to iems is just from a durability standpoint, and that they were likely among the first ones to do it and have a professional music business. personally I would buy truthear pures, 1 dynamic drivers 3 ba, and see if they are good, along with whatever shure you want if you need to get it on a black friday or cyber monday sale, and return the one that you like less, just looking at what shure offers in terms of iems... they are not the iem to get at almost any price point, every single iem they sell is a step up in quality from the one that came before, yes, but we are in a world of rapid innovation and a race to the bottom in terms of prices, shure is demanding a name brand price hike while others do not. hell its entirely possible that the zero:2's will be a direct replacement for what you have if you want to save money

I didn't realize how big the nozzles were on the Hexa until I was fitting tips on. They just looked odd. I got them in my ears (no fit issues, yay genetics) then I looked up the size. I was quite surprised! Interesting tuning (per Axel's measurements) I'm not so sure about the Pure. I'm past the point of just picking the "next best thing" I don't find the Hexa boring...in fact, it's refreshing among all the various "shaped" IEMs. The neutral (w/a slight bass boost) definitely struck the right balance for me.

yeah...seems Truthear steered completely away from the Hexa DNA. Sometimes, listening to the community isn't always the best choice. I remember so many reviews while talking up about the Hexa will still say "some might call this set boring" That bit gets echoed by everyone... I'm sure I've done it myself. TBH, with a little EQ...the Hexa can be exciting. I'm not excited about the Pure...and I think Axel's take is going to be the first of many "meh" reviews.

I like them but I also have the same issues as you Truthear essentially did 2 things with hexa to make pure; actually one thing; they've tilted the whole fr but this is related to 2 aspects; every frequency below 500hz is boosted; I LOVE this approach, but everything above the 2 k was also reduced, that I dont love. Hexa had the perfect upper treble for me, pure is too relaxed.

Pure's a good pick, especially since you want neutral but with a bit more body. Bass is also more present compared to the Hexa. Haven't heard of magicone myself, but graph suggestes the treble may be a bit spicy? Explorer is also pretty good when I listened to them, though I went with the Pure between the two for my warm-leaning set. I'd probably wait a bit to see what the Moondrop LAN II brings, since apparently there's going to be 2 versions (reference and pop). If you found the Hexa to be thin, the Zero Blue:2 is probably not for you (I have and enjoy it, but it's not really what I'd call neutral and the mids are pretty thin). One more set that I would recommend is the Juzear Defiant. It's not neutral, but it's fun and balanced. From my main 4 sets (Juzear Defiant, Truthear Pure, Hexa, Zero Blue 2), it's the set that's easiest to recommend to someone that doesn't know their preference (though my favorite is still the Pure/Hexa).

I have both, but I'm not sure how I can help without knowing more of what type of sound you prefer (since they are VERY different). The specs aren't really as important as that. I can give some goods and bads of each one, but at the end it will depend on your sound preferences. Zero Blue 2: +Really nice sub bass rumble, and comes with a bass adapter to further boost the bass thump +Overall sound "feels" more spacious, because of the thinner mids and brighter treble +Has a mic variant that comes with both a mic and non-mic cable -Vocals can sound a bit thin and shouty -VERY source dependent (don't plug it straight to your PC, a cheap dongle like the Jcally JM6 Pro is good enough) -Treble can be sharp depending on your tolerances and eartip choice (included foam eartips or aftermarket deep-insert silicone eartips may be preferred to balance it) Pure: +Balanced warm-neutral tuning that's very nice to listen to for long periods +Natural sounding vocals and bass +Very safe treble while still being detailed -Sense of space is more intimate because of the warm-leaning tuning -May be "boring" because the bass and treble isn't overemphasized Between these two, I'd choose the zero blue 2 if you lean into competitive FPS gaming or aim for the bass. Otherwise, I find the Pure to be a safer choice for music. There are also a bunch of other options in the price range though, which may be better suited for you (again, depending on your preferences)

With Mic? Can you explain the mic connected to the earbud combo or standalone IEM's? Standalone IEMs, my vote is Truth Ear.