I wanted the lively/fun sounding headphones and focal utopia was exactly that. Try a demo if you can!

“…maybe you can squeeze even more performance out of them”

Is that extra performance audible? most blind testing says no

And then you have people saying use EQ to match cheap iem $30 against $650 iem. Sure. This hobby is subjective.

But imagine using the cheap iem when riding a bike and then claiming it’s a match against higher IEM. At that point, it’s just impossible to make a fair judgement as you claim that there is much wind noise and you can’t focus on the music.

You tuned a shitty sounding IEM to sound decent. That’s it

Get a bang for the buck DAC like Gustard X18. I had many DACs ranging low to mid from Topping D90LE, RME Adi-2, and SMSL. X18 was the best one of them all. It was hard to differentiate between Topping and RME. But I was able to tell X18 sounded the best. It had noticeably bigger sound stage.

Amps didn’t particularly improve the sound for me past $1k-1.5k USD. Some amps give you a thicker body while some give you leaner sound. It’s just preference at that point.