Honestly, I think a lot of the advancements aren’t going to be in the way of headphones themselves, but how manufacturers and the community test, measure, and discuss headphones.

Headphones.com, LMG, Crinacle and others are getting or already have B&K5128s and I feel like the increased resolution as well as accuracy of the new system is going to be a massive boon to understanding differences between headphones as well as things we’ve had trouble unpacking from FR in the realm of what we call technicalities.

Past that, I don’t know. IEMs are gonna continue optimizing at super low prices until they literally can’t anymore, that’s all I know for sure.

Hopefully Sennheiser releases something great soon because headphones in general—but specifically dynamic drivers—aren’t getting the love they deserve; the market as a whole has really stagnated and I think a lot of us still consider HD800 the biggest single technical leap forward in the modern hobby. I think for many of us, we’re looking for the greatest headphone company of all time to make something to beat HD800 while being well-built and not crazy expensive (looking at you Focal and Hifiman).