Gold Planar GL12
This is my first significant pair of IEMs. I reviewed this with my two roommates one of which uses exclusively IEMs so we can have the most honest and informed review we can provide. Our go-to's are the "Meze 99 Noir", "Final E2000s", "Beyer Dynamic DT990" all of which differ from each other significantly.
Now that that's out of the way. I received this for free, however if I were to buy them, the price for headphones weigh heavily on what I ultimately decide to go with. For the price of $198.00 USD, We do not think this is worth it.
They look beautiful and feel great. Easily the best we've seen, on those two fields. With IEMs that have the over the ear wire we generally are bothered by feeling them all the time but these just melted into us, delightful. They come with a beautiful wood case, which first presents the IEMs but do not provide a good way to store them or their extra pieces. After taking out the initial foam it stores them just okay, a bit small when the wires are attached.
The sound profile was our biggest disappointment. Overall underwhelming, bass felt non existent, high was lacking and flat, and the middle just felt muddy. Nothing particularly stood out, it just felt uninteresting and flat. I don't normally listen to music very loudly but these were particularly quiet. Upon increasing the volume we started to have issues with cracking and popping on the high end (Note: We do not have an amp. We have been using the Audio outputs from our computers, which we use with our other gear). I like to be completely immersed in the music being able to hear it from all sides, left, right, front, back, top, and bottom. These felt very clearly like a flat plane of front left and front right and did not attempt to envelop me. They seemed to perform better the louder I turned them. They got to a point where I was happy with how they sounded, besides the popping, but it was painfully loud by that point.
I've said a lot of bad things about these. I don't think they're terrible, but for $200 (what I paid for my 99 Noir's) they just aren't close to the quality, I would expect them to be. I'd feel comfortable paying $70-$100.
Bottom Line. They look good, They feel good, but They don't sound good. My roommate said "This is what the industry would describe as 'No Bueno'". Edit: Sorry there's no picture embeded I don't know Markdown - link - https://imgur.com/a/7CWbbZb
