Joined in 2023 
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might be my small ear canals) - I do love my FDX1s and agree with the others they are a fair bit better on technicalities, but MDPlus-like tonality with DD timbre is just too good to pass up. Every year, at least a dozen IEM’s go through the same cycle; they’re released, pick up traction, get positive reviews, sell like hotcakes, and then finally vanish from the public eye in a barely visible puff of smoke. These offer the ultimate convenience, but we believe that if you care about an immersive listening experience and audio quality, these are not for you!
They can scale well to a powerful source and totally do justice as an on-stage monitoring IEM, especially for drummers and bassists. Listeners who opt for the triple-flange pieces should pull up on the top of each ear while twisting the earbud into place until outside noise is blocked out. gixxerwimp mentioned that these appear to have a W-shaped profile and I really think that's the best way to describe it; per my ears midrange has a thinner skew and the bass sounds drier than what I consider to be "proper", not to mention there's some needling around the mid/upper treble. For reference, my Andromedas fit perfectly in my ear, but in some positions, will rub on the back of my inner ear.Imaging would follow the same ranking as soundstage, with the exception that the Ety would be similar to the Blessing 2 in quality of the imaging. But since there are multiple competing standards of neutrality in the IEM world, I think we should talk a little bit about targets.
Their sound signature is excellent, every detail is crystal clear and with the noise isolation, the bass response is great. The ER20XR seems more subdued, compared to the more lively and exciting FDX1, however they do pack a pretty impressive dynamic punch when needed.That is the reason for the “hump” in the frequency response graph, which assures the eardrums perceive a perfectly flat frequency response for all frequencies. I settled on red 2200Ohm and I have no complains, lower mids have a bit more substance, and I do not hear anything different in other areas.
To achieve that, we need to account for the resonance inside the average ear canal, since IEMs bypass the outer ear structure. cable still is removable/detachable (MMCX) and as such can easily be replaced should it ever malfunction. Just try a pair of ER2SE’s or ER2XR’s (we’ll leave the voicing choice to you) and see if you don’t agree.From the lower midrange on up, the two models sound more or less identical, so that bass output is the real differentiator between the two. Either way based on them and previous experiences with Ety's BA designs I was a bit pessimistic about the overall profile being to my liking but I was pleasantly surprised, really: out of the Galaxy S9+ simply running them with Bit and Bandwidth Upscaling mode through the baked-in UHQ upscaler makes them perfectly listenable, no EQ necessary. These earphones are perfectly in tune with the newest innovations in music players that support a 3. This could just be the ER2XR having elevated bass so it affected just the lower mids slightly, but I found them to be similar enough that I think they can both be classified as the same.
Not saying this is necessarily true of Etymōtic by the way since I've not get gotten to play with their filters, just armchair supposing based on what meager time I've spent playing with modding headphones. Some bright female voice recordings could sound a bit shouty but that is the only negative that I really found in these. It is a really even sound frequency response without sharp peaks, with a neutral bass, open detailed midrange and a smooth treble. While the ER2SE is a great entry into the Etymotic product sphere, the ER4SR takes things that extra step, giving everything a slightly more refined and airier sound.Please note that the following impressions are based on using them with the Shure eartips with insertion of a normal depth – somewhere between deep and shallow. The audio quality exhibited by these earphones/IEMs is a beautiful mix of musicality, technical brilliance and high precision. Unless you’re using an iPhone with the AirPods Pro or some proprietary Apple headset, you’re bound to run into connection issues. But IEMs are much more finicky and user dependent so YMMV, but I think it is still important to reference.
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