The Supreme MK3 is the third iteration of the Supreme IEM by Hong Kong brand Rhapsodio. I will admit that I hadn't heard too much about this brand nor their product line before receiving this Watercooler's Tour Unit this week. It has, however, received a lot of praise from the community, and so I was interested in hearing how it sounds. Since my time with this unit is very limited, the following is just a brief set of impressions from my short time with the product.
The Supreme is extremely, to say the least, scary looking. It is not only crazy large, has very deep nozzles, but also is heavy! It weighs in at 55 grams without tips or cables. To compare that to my other very large and metal-IEM, the Subtonic Storm -- that is the same weight as the Storm, with tips and the entire weight of the attached cables I use with it.
With that said, the Supreme MK3 is still comfortable to wear as it fits my ear anatomy very well. Because of the weight, though, it does tend to slowly fall out of alignment and then cause a bit of pain, so I do have to re-adjust it sometimes. Part of this has to do with the purple upgraded cable that I am using with the set.
Together with the gold-plated metal shells, the purple cable makes the Supreme really stand out with cool looks and a color-theme that I love, as an alumi of the University of Washington, which sports the same color pairing.
Since this is a tour unit, I do not have other accessories with it.
Sound Impressions
Rhapsodio's tuning of the Supreme MK3 is quite interesting. To me, it is a bit wonky. It has fairly low levels of bass, but that bass extends further into the lower mids, and then totally dips, making the mid-range very, very recessed in practice. There is also an elevated, and spiky trebly response that does make certain music very lean sounding, although I wouldn't call it piercingly bright. For me, this works with some genres and definitely does not for others in my music collection.
When I first put the Supreme on, I had been listening to Of Monsters and Men, a rock band from Iceland who have a lot of catchy rock tracks with both male and female vocals. I was quite displeased with what I was hearing. There was a very strange low-end sound coming that just hovers around when I didn't expect it to, and the treble range sounded strained and very unnatural. On top of that, the vocals were incredibly distant, and sounded like they were behind a massive veil or wall. It was like listening to AM Radio at times.
I listened to a few more rock tracks and had generally the same feelings here. I spent most of the past few weeks listening with the Sony IER-Z1R, which I felt sounded more natural and realistic for this genre.
After that, I swapped over to some jazz orchesteral music with the latest EST30 recording, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the swedish jazz trio, Esborn Svennson Trio, with an orchestra backing. This really allowed the Supreme to shine quite a bit more. It felt more natural with an instrumental background of strings, piano, and wood instruments, and felt more like I was in a small venue in this case.
Despite the heavy graph response in the upper treble range, I did not find this sharp or distracting. Cymbals and strings were all fairly tame and perhaps with this extra upper treble zing, it helps with the good imaging I was hearing.
I wouldn't call the Supreme MK3 a large sound-staged IEM, but it was above average, with good depth and resonance effect. Overall, I would say the resolution was good, but not the best I've heard.
The Supreme does a lot of good things with the technicalities in general, but it's the tonal balance that I did not find great for a lot of rock music I listen to -- although with the instrumental music I did listen to it with, I found it worked very well.
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