If you've never tried balanced headphones, you should. They sound great, but have the disadvantage of not being able to respond over a wide enough frequency range to fully cover the entire audio spectrum with a single device - that's why you see so many 2-, 3- and 4-strip structures of amplification. IEM class. 161s wisely try to cover mid-bass and mid-treble frequencies well, and unlike 151s, they can be used with a turntable without bass boost or an amp (although they get better with an amp). ' The highs are over the top - yes, these aren't the best IEMs for matte cymbals, but matte cymbals sound musical. Yes, very high roll-off results in a less defined soundstage than some other IEMs, but the soundstage is still well defined and believable. Simply better than anything I've tried for less than $100. I recently tried the HiFiMan RE-400s, budget $100 IEMs, and found them to be vastly inferior to the 161. Overall, the 161 sounds the closest to any sub-$100 IEMs I've tried to the same music played through a decent stereo. The downside is the wires - as others have said, the wires are flimsy. There's no way I would use them for sports or travel - being careful enough not to damage them at the table is a problem. But for home or office use, they handle music very well for sub-$100 IEMs.
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