www.headphonereviews.org

[commando]

Headphone reviews is a site inspired by head-fi, made by a headphones nut to help the head-fi and global headphone community. The aim is to have a lot of high level information in one place, as opposed to the detailed information head-fi, which is great but sometimes hard to find. Also we hope to develop a general consensus of which headphones are generally regarded as the best outright cans, as well as the best value. In-depth reviews are much better off here on head-fi: headphonereviews.org will never have it's own discussion forums.

I hope to have many reviews for each headphone, so we can finally work out which headphones are generally preferred, especially when comparing two or three specific headphones. I consider the scores that people assign to each aspect of a headphone (bass extension, detail, value, etc) to be the most valuable information on the site.

Any other headphone nuts are encouraged to register and send in their reviews, and help create the authorative headphone reviews site on the Internet The site was partly inspired by the horrible advice given on cnet and zdnet, which made some of the worst recommendations i've seen.

A few stats (because i'm a nerd as well as a headphone geek): in the first 3 weeks of full operation the site has had 60,000 hits from 30 countries, 2 search engines have found us (google and yahoo), and the most viewed headphones are the A900 and the CD3000. In the database we have 114 headphones, 53 users, and 102 reviews The top headphones are rather expensive models, but i'll be adding an option to rank headphones the top 10 headphones by value instead of by overall ranking soon.

If you have a website, link to us!

<a href="http://www.headphonereviews.org">Headphone Reviews</a>

Admin will be a little slow approving users and responding to emails over xmas, everyone needs a break

Can people please treat this thread as an announcement, not a discussion thread, otherwise it'll just get huge. Suggestions or comments are welcome on the contact form, otherwise please use this thread.

[apnk]

Originally Posted by commando

make this thread sticky

I 2nd

[NightStalker]

Congrats on completing it mate, I remember you being pretty dedicated when we were chattin. Good to see you prove the doubtful people wrong

Well done, and thanks
-Jake

[commando]

Wahoo, we got sticky! (er - that sounds kinda wrong) Many thanks to Jude, who works very hard to keep head-fi going for everyone, and needs to get more sleep

[ixeo]

i may be picky, but i suggest putting a warning of some sort somewhere on your site stating the dangers of headphones, i.e. turning them on too loud, sticking IEMs too deep etc. least that will cover your behind legally in case the crap hits the fan.

[philodox]

You need to offer some sort of weight for headphones that have more reviews. Look at the top 10. The Sennheiser HD555 has a higher score than the HD650 and the HD600 and a lot of other headphones that are obviously much superior.

I also think that the scores need to be better defined. There are open headphones that are getting rated with better isolation than my k271s. No matter what you think of how the k271s sounds, this is obviouslty not accurate.

[Eagle_Driver]

Originally Posted by philodox

You need to offer some sort of weight for headphones that have more reviews. Look at the top 10. The Sennheiser HD555 has a higher score than the HD650 and the HD600 and a lot of other headphones that are obviously much superior.

I also think that the scores need to be better defined. There are open headphones that are getting rated with better isolation than my k271s. No matter what you think of how the k271s sounds, this is obviouslty not accurate.

That is getting to be a problem. Obviously, I was the one who rated that HD555.

And different ears will skew the results even further: There will always be some people who much prefer a technically inferior headphone to one of the top-rank headphones. Thus, let's just restrict future registrants to those who have owned or extensively heard nearly every single one of the headphones in the database. That way, it will be a much fairer comparison.

[cosmopragma]

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver

Thus, let's just restrict future registrants to those who have owned or extensively heard nearly every single one of the headphones in the database. That way, it will be a much fairer comparison.

Pfffhhhh, look at my congested profile.
How many headphones am I supposed to own in order to qualify for membership?

[Eagle_Driver]

Originally Posted by cosmopragma

Pfffhhhh, look at my congested profile.
How many headphones am I supposed to own in order to qualify for membership?

Actually, I should have made it clearer. I should have said that future registrants must have owned or extensively heard at least one of the ultra-expensive, ultra-high-end electrostatic headphones, such as the Orpheus or the Stax OmegaII.

This obviously will reject new registrants whose headphone listening experience is no higher than mass-market dynamic headphones.

[cosmopragma]

Originally Posted by Eagle_Driver

Actually, I should have made it clearer. I should have said that future registrants must have owned or extensively heard at least one of the ultra-expensive, ultra-high-end electrostatic headphones, such as the Orpheus or the Stax OmegaII.

This obviously will reject new registrants whose headphone listening experience is no higher than mass-market dynamic headphones.

I'm out.
I'm an ordinary Lambda listener, and my brief Orpheus experience does'nt count by your standards.Crap like RS1 and K1000 isn't even worth to mention.

Edit: Grammar

[commando]

Originally Posted by ixeo

i may be picky, but i suggest putting a warning of some sort somewhere on your site stating the dangers of headphones, i.e. turning them on too loud, sticking IEMs too deep etc. least that will cover your behind legally in case the crap hits the fan.

Good idea, i'll do it some time.

Originally Posted by philodox

You need to offer some sort of weight for headphones that have more reviews. Look at the top 10. The Sennheiser HD555 has a higher score than the HD650 and the HD600 and a lot of other headphones that are obviously much superior.

I noticed that yesterday and sent an email to the reviewer, who turns out to be eagle_driver. I asked him to reconsider the scores he gave and edit his review scores. If he doesn't i'll mark him as a junior member and his scores will all be ignored. That's the only way I can deal with these types of things, and maintain high quality data.

Originally Posted by philodox

I also think that the scores need to be better defined. There are open headphones that are getting rated with better isolation than my k271s. No matter what you think of how the k271s sounds, this is obviouslty not accurate.

I think the site's quite clear enough generally, but I have to deal with stupid people like everyone else. I've modified the review template to point that one out. At some point i'll do a batch update so basic stuff like's done automatically.

Suggestions are always appreciated, but please don't clutter this thread up with inane chatter.

[HiroshimaJoe]

Hmmm, the site is a great idea, but it's going to be very very hard to get "fair" reviews until tens or hundreds of people have reviewed each headphone.
Maybe you could make teh option to n/a the "improves with amplification" if the reviewer does not have what is considered a good headamp.

I just read through some of the reviews, and the review of the AKG K240S they are rated under "improves with aplification" 0.0 which is obviously a mistake, and the midrange (that these are known for) gets 4.0, kinda makes me doubt the credability of the review.

Maybe you could impliment the option of viewing the top10 in different priceranges, because I know this is one of the most decideing factors when you (normal headphone purchaser) are choosing a new headphone.

[Eagle_Driver]

Originally Posted by commando

Good idea, i'll do it some time.



I noticed that yesterday and sent an email to the reviewer, who turns out to be eagle_driver. I asked him to reconsider the scores he gave and edit his review scores. If he doesn't i'll mark him as a junior member and his scores will all be ignored. That's the only way I can deal with these types of things, and maintain high quality data.



I think the site's quite clear enough generally, but I have to deal with stupid people like everyone else. I've modified the review template to point that one out. At some point i'll do a batch update so basic stuff like's done automatically.

Suggestions are always appreciated, but please don't clutter this thread up with inane chatter.

I've updated my scores. The score of 6.8 is much more in line with what's expected from that review site.

In addition, let's also set a minimum number of reviews for each headphone model before that headphone is even included in the rankings. On top of that, let's eliminate the highest and the lowest overall scores and then average the remaining scores. That way, a headphone that has very few actual reviews and rankings will not be ranked, and a headphone will not be unfairly skewed by an unusually high or an unusually low overall score. (I know, nothing will stop a reviewer from giving the best, most expensive pair of headphones an extremely poor overall score.)

[hugz]

the scores *should* even out over time, but it may require some moderation still to make sure it's not misleading

[DoomForce]

man, this is a great idea.

What i think you need though is added moderation on the reviews, with space for "uber head-fiers" to add their comments on each review.
Like if i get a headphone and it is my first one, and i give it a 9.5/10 where it should be 6/10, thats where additional comments should be added by mods.

Or a seeding (ranking) prog to categorize everyone so that the more experienced user's reviews weigh heavier than the average one's.
just my 2cents...but overally this looks like a very promising website.