Personally, I would say that all the problems raised about the dream so far in its peaky treble but lacks extension, is due to a lack of power and burn in for the cable. Right now, the dream is, forgive the hyperbole,. but at least to my limited exposure, the singular most revealing iem money can buy. This, even compared to flagships like the Tia forte, the Zeus 14 or R, the U18, Noble Katana or enccore, KSE1500, flamenco and so on.
However, out of the box and with less than 400-500 hours of burn in, the dream will sound a little peaky and lack bass extension. This, is I feel one of the main issues plaguing early impressions or shop demos of the dream. I can say this with a fair amount of certainty, since I leave my dream to burn in 24/7 on a dedicated burn in rig that I use to run gear in, and I only listen to it every few days or so, while I use my Flamenco or empire stuff for daily use. I dare say that, right now, having owned this unit since March, probably no one else has a production unit with this much burn in time, which is why impressions of its performance seems to vary from person to person.
I think that the best way to describe the dream, would be akin to looking out of a very clear window and being able to perceive your surrounding with acute precision. Because everything is very detailed, the strength in its tonality lies not in its weight, but in its texturing. Imagine not only being able to easily tell the colours apart, but also being able to spot the different shading of each colour within the primary colour that it is located in.
That, is exactly how I would describe the dream's selling point; its focus on texturing (the layers) between each note and its coherency within its staging. The bass for instance, will lose in sheer quantity to the Tia, but the Tia forte is a tier lower in its bass texture. The same goes for the Vega. The Vega manages to balance amazing bass quantity with a respectable degree of texturing, but its still short of the dream. That said, with the dream gives in the mids and trebles sets itself way ahead of the Vega. That said, the dream is not exactly a reference signature, with it being slightly coloured. But, its sheer technicality makes it a very good 'detail retrieval' iem. I know that while this is the dream's stellar point, some may find this fatiguing and a turn off.
However, despite the lavish praise I can heap on the dream, I too can think of several reasons why one should NOT buy the dream. If you intend to use it on a low powered player (e.g. 380, RW or Musashi modded or not), or want a smooth relaxing signature, or lack the patience to monitor the burn in process to prevent damage to the diaphragm, then this is NOT the IEM for you. It is, unfortunately, not an iem that performs at its best without some effort put into it.
For that, I would suggest using BA iems instead with standard parts that dont require too much burn in (large caps for instance), and at that the fewer drivers the better too. Those, will usually sound good out-of-box, but I suspect will start to meet its limitation and fall behind once the competitors have had some time to run in.
Edit: oh, and I forgot, its only in universal form, so it lacks the comfort and immersiveness of a full sealing custom.
