I bought monarch mk3 a few weeks ago - my first step into the audiophile world. It has been praised by many with just a few recommendations for improvements, concerning either its size, which nevertheless heavily depends on users' ears and so is rather a subjective matter, or the musicality, less so and a subjective matter too. I unfortunately have very tight ear canals, it seems, so I struggle with these iems a little and will probably need to try tips smaller than the standard small size. But most people have no problem with that, that's what I had read prior to getting the monarchs, so it is a bit bad luck on my side. Regarding the music side, of course, this is my own opinion, an opinion of an average person, not a professional studio sound master, or an expert on audio equipment, I, for instance, don't have many other audio equipment to compare it to, so what I write might perhaps be taken with some tolerance. What I usually read is that the product gives you clear sound with lots of details and great bass, wide soundstage, some even talk about some holographic experience, some say the mk3 might be one of the best or the best in the world, and that they don't see how anything else could sound even better in this category. I will be just a tiny little bit more reserved avoiding being too ecstatic. Firstly, we are not in the category of top professional external earphones or some justifiedly high-end audio setup sitting appropriately in a room, creating true holography. Being in the category of in-ear monitors, one has to ask the question what we can possibly achieve in such a product category. I can say mk3 is quite an achievement musically, above average, no doubt about that. It really does give us an open sound, close to being neutral in tonality, but this will also depend on the dac/amp used, it has plenty of details, it has a very good bass indeed, mids and treble too, in summary open and detailed. The sound lingers in the air long enough to be regarded as coming from a physically existing instrument (hopefully not simulated by a computer), fading away with greater continuity than what many other earbuds offer, the sound stage is wide (more wide than deep), but I am not sure I would talk about some holography. I don't hear it that way, but frankly I don't see how this could be properly done with an in-ear listening device, but may be that's possible too in theory. What I would also add is that, although many people don't hear treble the least bit as punchy, I do hear it, but I can assume this can be solved with a music player that has an equalizer, and it will probably also depend to some extent on how the original recording was done. In any case, an undisputed and unsurprising fact is that the mk3 performance will depend a lot on the sound source. It needs a dac and a high-res sound source to show its potential. And I say here that when the source is higher high-res., the mk3 is pretty incredible it terms of all the things you can hear with them. It then competes with professional external earphones. If the source is average, what can you do with it? No one can, no product can, the rest are math-based predictions, but the info is not there, as simple as that, so major miracle will not manifest itself. This means that while CD quality is good enough, and not bad at all, it will be played well, but since it is not a high-res. source, your audiophile jaw will not drop, not even with mk3.
Overall, I definitely recommend mk3, it is always possible to improve things, true, e.g. musically I would just by default reduced a touch the treble intensity, but other then that, it is a serious engineering achievement. P.S. for the nozzle size, I am taking one star off.
