Heard the Abyss and the odd tonality a few have mentioned jumped out for me. It was hooked up to a monoblock, would that have been part of the issue (a poor match)?

The R10 was tonally a lot better for the acoustic and choral sort of music I was listening to.

Yeah, that's what I heard. Glad to hear it's not how the Abyss has to sound.

The Woo Monoblock did come with a hardcover picture book full of pretty pictures of the Monoblock, so there's that in its favor. Not at all a good pairing with the Abyss, though. Terrible, really.

You're right, I like my iems to have extra sub-bass for my commute and a little warmth can be nice.

However, I do like neutral iems/headphones in quiet listening settings. For example, I did like the UERM loaner that I sent back smelling like eucalyptus--sorry Anax! Better than a cilantro smell, I guess?

 The UERM has a fairly nice timbre (let me know if this is like saying something is musical). I mean I hear voices, cymbals, string instruments with whatever subtle sound elements that go into them sounding realistic to me. An earphone can be warm and rich or thin and accurate and still have the timbre sound more or less right within the context of that particular tuning or it can sound wonky. You described what I heard with the Abyss--I'm trying to make sense of that as maybe the 2nd order distortion as well as FR dips/rises? Without that I'm sure I could live with the tuning.

Thanks again for taking the time to explain some of the causes.

So do any pirates still use the Abyss or is the love affair over for most of you?

I'm using a Marvmodded™ Abyss and really enjoying it lately. It doesn't get as much listening time as my speakers or HD800s, but it's one heck of a headphone out of the Ragnarok.