IEM collabs seem to be a double-edged sword in 2024. There is increasingly growing fatigue and concern over reviewers working with IEM brands to put out products that, even in the best of times, might have a conflict-of-interest cloud hanging over the IEMs. The Mirai is the subject of one such collaboration venture which really involves not just the reviewer—Precogvision—but also the retailer that funds the review platform he contributes on. This is why the Mirai is sold exclusively by north American retailer headphones.com, albeit it ships internationally should you be in the market for one. The retail availability of the Mirai is a bigger factor to consider here than any conflicts of interest as far as regular customers go, especially since this doesn't remotely feel like someone trying to milk the IEM market while it's hot. In fact, knowing that the Mirai took over two years to develop and could have come out earlier with a less satisfying yet potentially more versatile tuning suggests heavily that everyone who went into this collab process did so knowing it wasn't going to provide retirement funds by the time it sold out. The $1000 IEM market is also extremely tiny in the first place—you will note most IEM collabs tend to cost <$150—so I think it would be fair to say the DUNU x Precogvision Mirai is a passion project that unfortunately happens to cost more than what most interested people might be able to afford.

At the same time, I also see this as one of the very few IEMs in the market that put a lot of thought behind how and why IEMs sound and what can be done to progress the listening experience with IEMs. Perhaps this is where the collaboration bore fruit balancing both the experiences from an established Asian brand and a team of reviewers in the west armed with a $50k+ device that can measure frequency response of IEMs more accurately than ever before. In that regard, the Mirai is able to sound like far more expensive IEMs in some places and this can be handy for those who know what they like in music and also that the Mirai would work for them. Easier said than done, especially in the absence of readily available demo units, but for now you will have to rely on reviews such as this one and see if you want to commit to one. Headphones.com having a 365-day return policy does make this more viable though!

If you were to completely discard the collaboration part and purely consider the Mirai as just another set of IEMs in the $1000 price range then things get simpler. It is absolutely a worthy set for this asking price but with the caveat of being more suited for some music genres over others. It costs too much to be bought for general media consumption and gaming so think about its strengths and weaknesses, especially with the potential question mark about how it can sound better or worse to you than it did for me depending on the fit and insertion depth. I also think the Mirai is better seen as an add-on to an existing IEM collection (master of some trades) rather than for someone looking for a single all-rounder which is likely to cost more if it has the same technical prowess as the Mirai or compromise elsewhere if it costs the same. I don't necessarily agree with the "Balanced tuning is no longer the luxury it used to be" caption on the product page given you can get well-tuned and balanced sets for ~$20 these days, but I do agree that the Mirai (未来, Japanese for future) was appropriately named. By going for a deliberately colored tonality in favor of minimal distortion, clean mids, excellent resolution, precise imaging, and engaging sound on either end of the frequency range as well as adopting new knowledge about acoustic science and engineering, it is a welcome glimpse into the future of IEMs to come.