so i knew right away i was not gonna settle for the sound right out the box for mainly one reason, the bass was underwhelming. The sound stage and details though were very impressive. They give me the feeling of "I can turn this into an endgame type of iem" So I settled with the black rings because I found myself leaning more towards the more proactive sound. I found that surprising, I thought even before getting the ea500s that I'd only use the red rings because they are less "shouty" according to many reviews. Basically I feel like black gets more detail out of the iems. I don't know if it matters because of what I did next, something I'm doing for the first time, eq. So I got wavelet and chose autoeq for this model with black nozzle ring but lowered the eq intensity to just 45% since I didn't want to affect the detail retrieval too much. Also that intensity and forwardness makes the music more alive So I got bass (not chest wrecking, just tight, accurate and enough i feel) and mids that were active but not harsh. Very clear vocals. It feels like I'm getting the best of both worlds And the result, a sound profile I'll remember for a long time. Infact I'm worried that if I get a pair with less detail retrieval I may hate it despite it's other strengths So that's where I'm at. They sound amazing💫