Band: opinion spread · Dot: weighted average
Strong agreement that the balance is the point: near-neutral with a mild warm tilt, nothing overemphasised, timbre that sounds natural. Most call it warm-neutral, a fifth simply neutral, a few mildly U-shaped, and a handful of r/iems owners call it neutral-bright. Everyone likes the balance; they disagree on what to call it.
“Balanced is the word that springs to mind upon listening to the Kima 2 for the first time”
Ichos Reviews (Petros Laskis)
“Tonally, the KIMA 2 bestows a pleasant warm neutral tuning.”
baskingshark, Head-Fi
“call it a bright leaning IEM if anything”
OmenchoEater, r/iems
Measured
Across 19 IEC-711-class rigs, normalised at 500 Hz against the Harman IE 2019 target, the median runs 4.3 dB under the target at 20–60 Hz, 2.3 dB under it at 2–4 kHz and 3.3–3.7 dB under it from 4 to 10 kHz, with 200–500 Hz 1.6 dB above it. That is a midrange-weighted curve with less bass and less treble than Harman. Against the original Kima on the same rigs it has 1.5–2.7 dB less energy at 1–4 kHz on four of five; against the Kima Classic it has 3.8–6.0 dB less sub-bass and less upper midrange on all five.
vs. listeners — On a coupler the curve resembles brighter-sounding sets such as the Tanchjim Origin, and r/iems' community ranking labelled it neutral-bright. Most owners hear it as warm-neutral. Dracomies, an owner, argued that the two 'sound miles apart', and ApolloMoonLandings and SushiiFi both say the bass hits harder than the graph suggests.