Alright, so you’ve been spoilt by the title already but hear me out.

I don’t have any personal vendetta against Sennheiser (or any other brand for that matter), though it may seem that way when companies keep churning out mediocre and/or disappointing products. I myself have owned many Sennheiser products both in the past and in the current present, and have had lukewarm opinions towards their flagship IE800 series. Though, I still maintain that it doesn’t quite belong in the category of “one of the best DD IEMs in the world”.

The Momentum On-Ear was arguably an inferior version of their acclaimed HD25-1 II (which I’ve owned in the past); the Momentum In-Ear was just an average piece of gear in a vast sea of sub-$100 IEMs; the Momentum True Wireless was just a slightly modified version of the In-Ear except in a much more overpriced package… and god, don’t even get me started on the HD820.

It seems that when an audiophile company such as Sennheiser breaks into the mainstream, a lot of odd tuning decisions start to break the surface mostly in the pursuit of appealing to the lowest common denominator. So when Sennheiser announced their new lineup of IEMs in the form of the IE40, IE400 and IE500 (all with the added suffix of Pro because I guess that’s what mainstream companies do), I think “skeptical” would be a justified initial reaction from my end. I went in with low expectations, probably contrary to most other people in my position.

Let us start from the bottom rung.

(I forgot to take pictures so in lieu of eyecandy, I’ll just plaster the graphs so the article doesn’t look so dreary.)