[varren]

hm, most "high quality" earbuds nowadays come with detachable cables and i have 3 200$+ earbuds with mmcx. 2 chi-fi and 1 sony, all of them work for 3-5 years of active use. Yes mmcx chords could break from time to time, but top notch chords cost like 5-10$ on aliexpress nowadays. anyway i'm probably a little bit biased here, because after you get several dissent pairs you start to think what kind of music you what to play today and what kind of headphones signature you should use for this music, because to be honest there is a huge difference. And yeah i was exactly like you, buying the cheapest possible earbuds 5 years ago and i had like 10+ of thous cheap sony/philips/sennheisers. They all break in a couple of mounts-year. Usually it is a chord or just some driver problems.

[Nullabillity]

My in-ears usually break in a month or two due to wax issues. I'm not sure how a detachable cable would help with that.

[gatesphere]

Modern hi-range IEMs come with a cleaning tool. Use it to clean the wax out, and they'll keep trucking. :)

[omnimus]

Which chi-fi earbuds fromi aliexpress you recomend?

[punchclockhero]

I'm a KZ fan. Most models have detachable cables with several replacement options, including Bluetooth. My current main is ZS6, very neutral, but the angular metal body can be quite uncomfortable. Before that I had ZST which was way more comfortable and had more bass, although the instrument separation wasn't as good. Still the best $20 I've ever spent on music.

[varren]

heh, i'm not really a headphone guru o something, just listened 8-10 decent iem in my life and nothing from 1k+ price range) All i know is that if you never had something more expensive then 10$ then pretty much any chi fi of 50-100$ will sound good. I have LZ-a4, BGVP - DM6 and pinnacle p1 (not mine, but can use them). All of them have their good and bad sides and it really depends on the dac you are going to use. Because LZ-a4 sound terrific on fiio q1mk2(the cheapest dac i have) with some electronic music. BGVP - DM6 are the best on LG-v30 and have the best clarity overall (The Weeknd songs sound with much greater complexity and sometimes i can feel that there is a way to even separate the Daft Punk part out of Starboy. Don't know if i like it, but it is definitely a completely new experience). And Pinnacle sound noticeably better on any old rock (Fleetwood mac) or something like Norah Jones, Ellioth Smith when you don't want clarity because the record is imperfect and you actually want to here the "velvet" sound.

So i mean that i can't really tell what will work for you. This channel can help, he has some decent reviews https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIw1An1OUp4XIv_h6si2etQ/vid...

I had couple KZ back in 2016-17 and they were pretty much the same as 15-30$ sennheisers, wasn't impressed, but the headphones industry is changing way too fast, so even today i would have to make a market research myself for a new pair if i wanted another sound signature.

Btw my first kinda decent pair was Sony Xba-C10 (got them for 25$ on sale) and it was my 1-st single armature driver iem and i still think that they can play classical solo piano music (like Chopin or Debussy) equally well as any of my 100-200$ headphones (even better then Pinnacle). Yes they have 0 bass and you can't play any modern music on them.

[jsmith99]

The Timaudio T2 is well regarded and has a neutral response. There are loads of reviews online.