Moondrop x Crinacle DUSK IEM Review: A New Standard
The original Moondrop Blessing 2: DUSK came about before we began reviewing audio gear in earnest, but it’s no stretch to say that it has attained legendary status in the audio community. Whether you’re an audiophile or gamer, it was one of the most frequent recommendations and absolutely trend-setting for the era of influencer collaborations we find ourselves in today. Its successor has been a long time coming but the wait is finally over.
No longer part of the Blessing line-up, the Moondrop x Crinacle DUSK manages to fill the big shoes of its predecessor. With a combination of three driver types (dynamic, balanced armature, and planar magnetic) and a USB Type-C DSP cable, it’s one of the best tuned and most versatile sets you can find for its asking price of $359.
Specifications
Current Price: $359 (Amazon, Shenzen Audio)
Moondrop x Crinacle DUSK — First Impressions and Key Features
The Moondrop DUSK has been one of the most requested IEMs of the last several years. The original, a retune of the popular Moondrop Blessing 2, was exceptionally popular. Tuned by IEM expert, Crinacle, creator of the world’s largest publicly accessible database of IEM measurements and one of the biggest influencers in the business, it offered an exquisite balance of bass, technical performance, and detail, setting a new standard for the price.
The Blessing 3 came out nearly a year ago and a DUSK version seemed destined to come. But we had to wait.
As Crinacle explains in his launch video, this had to do with the pursuit of perfection — or as close to it as he could come. During the design process, he meticulously curated the frequency response but couldn’t remove a nagging peak at 6 kHz. This, as it turned out, was a result of the Knowles balanced armature drivers being used and so they were swapped to planar magnetic micro-tweeters. But, with a different driver arrangement and shifting from a hybrid (two driver type) to tribrid (three driver type) design, it was no longer
