Thanks for everything, Tyll. I'll always remember analyzing every feature of the Senn HD555 on HeadRoom when I was 14... 'Persuaded my parents to buy them for my next birthday (2005), and it's been on ever since.
As a fun aside: HeadRoom used to send out headphone stickers, which I placed on my lacrosse and hockey helmets for all of my high school playing careers... Much to the chagrin of many a coach.
Another aside: conversing about THE OG Tyll is my 1,500th post. It just feels right.
One word - legend. Your resources and measurements sections were instrumental in me wanting to learn more about the objective side of the hobby. Your blending of the subjective and objective - with the grace to be open to everyone's viewpoint - is still the standard that any reviewer should aspire to. You've set a really high bar. Enjoy the retirement Tyll - you've earned it. And if you do make the odd Meet, hopefully our paths will cross. With any luck I'll be permanently in Nth America later this year (waiting for the final pieces to drop into place with a career move).
I'd love to see Head-Fi set up a blog for you (not about headphones - but about life on the road), and then you can maybe drop a line when you will be around a Meet.
Anyway - thanks Tyll. You may not realise that you were a quiet mentor to many of us. We are richer for all of your contributions.
One word - legend. Your resources and measurements sections were instrumental in me wanting to learn more about the objective side of the hobby. Your blending of the subjective and objective - with the grace to be open to everyone's viewpoint - is still the standard that any reviewer should aspire to. You've set a really high bar. Enjoy the retirement Tyll - you've earned it. And if you do make the odd Meet, hopefully our paths will cross. With any luck I'll be permanently in Nth America later this year (waiting for the final pieces to drop into place with a career move).
I'd love to see Head-Fi set up a blog for you (not about headphones - but about life on the road), and then you can maybe drop a line when you will be around a Meet.
Anyway - thanks Tyll. You may not realise that you were a quiet mentor to many of us. We are richer for all of your contributions.
Tyll was the first personality I started to recognize, and the first person I saw a photo of at a meet. At the moment at first seeing him I thought..........
“What.....they actually have National Headphone Meets?”
“Wow, these people are really into headphones!”
Tyll,
Your reviews have always been my personal single favorite reviews around. You and your input will be surely missed. Thank-you for all your dedicated work, all our lives have been enriched.
During my honeymoon with Ruthie, I could not resist a pilgrimage to the HeadRoom store in Bozeman, which you were instrumental in establishing... the only store I know of that lived entirely on headphone sales, not just headphones as a part of audio or home theater equipment.
It was also the only way I could be sure that I could buy one of the more recent Grado RS1e's, one that did not have the protruding drivers that had the poorer sound of the first RS1es... I could actually look and check, rather than risk it by online purchase. So I bought 'em:
Purchasing Grado RS1e at the mecca of headphones.
When I was new to audiophile headphones, I reveled in your wonderful review of the NAD VISO hp50 and your discussions of how Paul Barton had designed it to closely approximate the response of Sean Olive's target response curve. They were the second audiophile headphone that I bought, after the Sennheiser HD598 (the Grado purchase above was several years later). I was sad to say that the NAD hp50 was like the smartest kid in my school class... probably always right, always accurate, but devoid of personality and booorrringg!!!
I guess I like less "accurate," more "fun" headphones. I love any of the Grados, I am very fond of my Fostex TH900, and I believe neither has been very high on your list. Hence, you love the headphones I don't and I love the headphones you don't.
I put that theory to the test when I viewed and read your review of the Ultrasone Edition 10s. I already had (and loved) the closed Ultrasone Edition 8s; when I found a like-new pair of Edition 10s for a great price, I insisted that my wife give them to me for my 65th birthday!
She did, and I love Love LOVE them! They are very bright, just as your review suggested. They are even brighter than my brightest Grados, the SR325i (Golden Anniversary Edition). I think I like the ice-pick of bright treble as wasabi to clear my ear. They also have an amazing imaging quality that I'd only heard in my Grado PS2000e's. (I also notice that my own hearing is becoming less acute... headphones that in past reviews I have documented as sounding different, now sound the same. Is that why I like “aural wasabi,” or is it that aural wasabi causing the decline? Both, I think!)
But finally, I think I can look to you to start yet another trend in headphone design. I hope that you can take up the mantle that I suggested to counteract the preponderance of celebrity headphones. As I outlined in a comment to your Feb. 28, 2014 column "Will Headphones Save The High End," I suggested a three step approach to seizing the headphone market from the celebrities and their youth:
Buy those celebrity headphones and wear them ourselves... nothing will dissipate the panache of youth-oriented celebrity headphones than their wearing by distinguished, substantial gentlemen of beyond a certain age;
Offer non-celebrity endorsed headphones in their place...counter meaningless endorsements of poor headphones by celebrities with meaningful endorsements of good headphones by nobodies;
Design an eye-catching logo sticker to place upon these good headphones to retrofit it with "Style." Holographic gratings, mood-ring-based color-changing LCDs, and flashing lights can all be part of transforming the sedate to the sizzling.
You, your writing, and your leadership have caused thousands to actually THINK about headphones and their accessories, and to pay attention to measurements, and to enjoy headphone comparisons, and to understand in plain language such difficult concepts as "damping factor" and diffuse-field vs. free-field frequency response.
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