Well well, sometimes you clearly do not get what you pay for.
FiiO has always been very hit or miss though. Some of their DAC/AMPs knock it out of the park but some of their IEMs make you wonder who spiked the coffee that day.
It doesn't help them that the sub 500 IEM market is extremely competitive and has a few rockstars that not only hit it out of the park, they achieve orbit. There are two god slayers in this range that are legendary by now. The Moondrop Blessing 2 as a listening IEM, and the Etymotic ER4 as a reference IEM. Nothing else comes close to either of those and they both clobber products that cost well over a grand. They are also constantly discounted and sold at every store that is even remotely respectable. It's the same situation with the Sennheiser HD280 PRO and Sony MDR7506 on the over ear mastering/DJ market. Non stop 5 star reviews, sell below MSRP and then turn around and curb stomp units costing 1k despite being buyable for under 200 any day of the week and usually at 100.
FWIW I've yet to use Moondrops customer service but I've been cycling through ER4 and HD280s since the 90s and cross shipping the units when I (or the cat) broke them. You can clock in for the ER4 at 150 and clock in the 280 at 100 (this is beyond a steal, just buy it and don't ask, thank me later). Shure is similar in their support though it's hard to recommend them because they are very much a pro market and their plastic casing (use resin you dipshits) does crack. However, the 215, 535, and 846 punch well above their weight and you can't go wrong. I have a pair of grados and good lord this another giant killer, but, and this is a huge one, that direct accurate going after Etymotic with an open backed build is going to hurt.
Since this is a gamer site the HD280 was considered a wall hack back in Quake 2 because it was so stupidly accurate and percise you could hear assholes where they were. From another standpoint the Etymotic ER4 is used by the sound engineers of a little known band that goes by U2. The fact that you can buy both and clock in at under 300 for an IEM set and an over ears is the best value in audio now. And this are both 30 year+ products! They are sworn by from the people actually making sound. A buddy of mine works for Pixar and Disney and he's still rocking the 280s and ER4. It's an ugly sound in that you will hear all the faults in what you are listening too, but for sub 500 and even sub 5k you aren't going to get better.
