A set of IEMs for $3000 is absolutely not for everyone. It's a very large sum of money that is better spent improving your quality of life in more tangible ways. If you need to use $3000 for, say, a mortgage payment or car repairs, make sure you are simply window shopping in this review. At the same time, this 5-year old set can be had for significantly less than $3000 if you haggle with dealers or just get a B-stock or used model for under $2000. While there are others that clearly sell for much more—Unique Melody just listed a $8000 set—the general gist is that this is still a point at which you buy IEMs to indulge yourself. You have gone with $700–1500 sets, already invested in the best music players and source, secured FLAC files locally or via a lossless streaming service, and just want to get something better than what you already have because that's what makes us human.

It is that subset of people the 64 Audio U18t markets itself for, but I do wish it would receive an official price cut given tough external competition as well as internal updates to the product lineup from the likes of the newer U18s that seems to be tuned better and comes with an even better cable. Still, if you read my entire review, you would have noticed that I had pointed out pricing for the individual accessories as and when they came up, which alone came to over $600 for the ear tips, case, cable, and Apex modules. Then there are the whopping 18 drivers, all hand-assembled and sorted, which make for an extremely consistent tuning and world-class technicalities. The Apex modules are a real revelation, so much so that another brand has taken up making similar, functionally identical modules. Then there is tia, which alone has made me want a hybrid set that employs a world-class dynamic driver for the lows and mids and a tia driver for the highs. If only there was a world where DUNU 's ECLIPSƎ driver in the ZEN PRO was matched with this tia driver!

As it stands, I can't help but award 64 Audio our Innovation award for both the Apex and tia technologies. As previously discussed, there is quite a lot to like with the U18t even outside of that, but it's a set for very specific applications since there are other sets that do better for the money elsewhere. That the U18t still manages to be in the conversation at all despite being geriatric in the rapidly aging world of IEMs is a testament to it as well. The general standards are just higher than ever before to where recommending it for a general purchase is easier said than done.