I dunno, I haven't heard many flagship headphones (only two to be exact) but I quite enjoyed the LCD 2 hooked up to the Schiit Lyr/Bifrost. When I did a A\B comparison to the HE-6 I thought the HE-6 was a more capable can in that the bass was better controlled mids were more detailed and the treble was more extended. Here's the thing though out of the two cans it was the LCD-2 that was able to make me tap my toes to the music. Meh, what do I know I guess I'll never be an audiophile. Maybe one of these days I'll take the plunge and grab myself a HE-500 and see what the fuss is about. Even so I'd be quite proud to own a LCD-2.
@dan.gheorghe
Keep rocking the LCD-2's my man. I also have to compliment you on being lucky enough to be married to such a beautiful wife.
I dunno why I ever doubt the Prophecies of the Pirates, but it seems that they are right, again. Mahler's list is now being thrown around as Word of God.
Man, you cannot deny the posts' value. The man has a vast experience and further more he owns most of those cans ) . And i say i agreed with him on most opinions that I can afford having (with my so much more smaller experience). It is the most complete review on headfi, which makes it one of the best.
IMO, every list, every impressions is just another data point for me to decide on where I should waste my money, and never can any one list or impressions or opinion be the sole Word of God. I don't doubt that it's invaluable to a lot of people, including me, but I would never just take that list as the singular Ultimate List.Heck, even going back to a 'lesser enlightened' (sarcasm) state, back when I was looking to purchase the FXT90, I don't just take joker's word for it, I just scoured the whole Head-Fi.
It's lazy and irresponsible just to throw around only a list, as if it's the Ten Commandments, no matter how complete it is.
The description of "internal sound ports" in a closed-back design has me a bit confused. If the ports are internal only and not to the outside, what exactly do they do? It seems to me that the earcup is either part of the sound chamber, or it's not. Headphone acoustics are more confusing than speakers...
http://kaminstruments.com/Headphones_%26_monitors.htm
A closed-back headphone is not necessarily a sealed headphone. Many of them are vented in some way. For the KAM, the headphone has to be closed-back, otherwise there's no air chamber to port.
Think of this in speaker terms: Most dynamic speakers are in boxes. Those boxes aren't always sealed; there are different porting designs to exploit the physics of vibrating air in a chamber, ranging from poking holes in the side of the box to building a maze of passages inside the box, turning it into a long horn. This is similar to how the KAM, Fostex-built Denons, Audio-Technicas, etc. closed-back headphones work (though IIRC they mostly only use discreet little holes; there's not enough room to build a working transmission line horn).
Open-back speakers -- like Magneplanars or Quads -- have their fronts and backs exposed to the room, plus or minus some material damping, and the entire room is the air chamber that you have to tune, by positioning the speakers and adding or removing furniture. This is similar to how LCDs, Grados, HiFiMans, etc. work, albeit without the furniture.
IMO, every list, every impressions is just another data point for me to decide on where I should waste my money, and never can any one list or impressions or opinion be the sole Word of God. I don't doubt that it's invaluable to a lot of people, including me, but I would never just take that list as the singular Ultimate List.Heck, even going back to a 'lesser enlightened' (sarcasm) state, back when I was looking to purchase the FXT90, I don't just take joker's word for it, I just scoured the whole Head-Fi.
It's lazy and irresponsible just to throw around only a list, as if it's the Ten Commandments, no matter how complete it is.
IMO, every list, every impressions is just another data point for me to decide on where I should waste my money, and never can any one list or impressions or opinion be the sole Word of God. I don't doubt that it's invaluable to a lot of people, including me, but I would never just take that list as the singular Ultimate List.Heck, even going back to a 'lesser enlightened' (sarcasm) state, back when I was looking to purchase the FXT90, I don't just take joker's word for it, I just scoured the whole Head-Fi.
It's lazy and irresponsible just to throw around only a list, as if it's the Ten Commandments, no matter how complete it is.
I thought it was interesting. I agreed with some of it, disagreed with some of it, and much of it I have no opinion about because there are a lot of headphones on his list I haven't heard. I think in some ways that the ambition of his project outstripped its general usefulness but I don't regret the time I spent paging through it either.
The significance of it has kind of metastasized on head-fi and, I infer, elsewhere; at no time did I read into it anything other than it being one guy's incredibly well-informed opinion.
I'm usually not enthusiastic about list posts, but he backs up each entry with a reasonably detailed critique. While the critiques are should be what's drawing the criticism, the membership generally seems to have stopped at the rankings tables and used those as the basis for picking fights. The rankings are themselves only interesting in a vague way, and I suspect that if he were to revisit the post in 18 months half the collection would be rearranged according to whim and further listening. And then people would fight anew over those, and take him to task for having changed his mind.
The thing about criticism is that it's criticism; it's one thing for somebody to be a flatly poor judge of a thing and make wrong statements ("This wine should be more garlicky"), but that tends to call itself out. For him to say that a particular headphone is insufficiently bassy when you think the bass is perfectly adequate or maybe excessive; that's purely de gustibus non est disputatem, and can be contingent on circumstances beyond matters of taste; he doesn't listen to the music you do, he doesn't use the audio equipment chain you do, he doesn't have your ears...
Compare your own opinions of what you've heard and size up your impressions to his, and as long as you believe he speaks in good faith, take him at his word... and especially don't be too quick to judge differences of opinions on things you only know by description. That last flaw seems to be epidemic hereabouts.
The nature of this hobby is to bring more music to my life. And yes, you didn't use it as a word of God, but it's a growing trend that others will. Unconsciously, you are doing it too. Obviously I did too at some point. That was before I prune out a lot of the noise and cherry-pick who I am willing to spend my time to read their impressions, and who that I will simply skim. Mahler's list wouldn't be one of the ignored, albeit still skimmed by me, since I've no monetary capacity to warrant interest, and I'm basically very very very content with just my 'measly' Nami-chan at my disposal.
I value Tyll's impressions and measurements too, and the only thing I have to compare with is my Creative Aurvana Live headphones. Some times I just have to read his review on it again to reorient myself to how he's perceiving music. I can't take Mike's thoughts at all since he has his own store now. If I take a grain of salt for normal reviews, I'd take few spoonfuls of salt for his. *shrug*
I also peruse graphs and measurements, since I'm always finding ways to learn how to minimise waste in this hobby, whether by trial-and-error (buying and selling headphones to try. Being in Moscow, and being someone not from Moscow, or anywhere near Eastern Europe, it's not worth my time to go have a lookaround for shops to try headphones) or wasting time to decipher someone's abstract review (each and every review IMO are abstract, in the sense that you have to 'study' what they like to listen to, what are their equipment used in their evaluation, how their taste and listening habit match mine, etc.) and above all, the most important feature in measurements, IMO, are consistency.
I'm not saying that measurements are the be-all-end-all for this hobby, just showing that I take data from every and all points of view, whether from the living or the unliving, just to achieve one thing: making my music sing.
I thought it was interesting. I agreed with some of it, disagreed with some of it, and much of it I have no opinion about because there are a lot of headphones on his list I haven't heard. I think in some ways that the ambition of his project outstripped its general usefulness but I don't regret the time I spent paging through it either.
The significance of it has kind of metastasized on head-fi and, I infer, elsewhere; at no time did I read into it anything other than it being one guy's incredibly well-informed opinion.
I'm usually not enthusiastic about list posts, but he backs up each entry with a reasonably detailed critique. While the critiques are should be what's drawing the criticism, the membership generally seems to have stopped at the rankings tables and used those as the basis for picking fights. The rankings are themselves only interesting in a vague way, and I suspect that if he were to revisit the post in 18 months half the collection would be rearranged according to whim and further listening. And then people would fight anew over those, and take him to task for having changed his mind.
The thing about criticism is that it's criticism; it's one thing for somebody to be a flatly poor judge of a thing and make wrong statements ("This wine should be more garlicky"), but that tends to call itself out. For him to say that a particular headphone is insufficiently bassy when you think the bass is perfectly adequate or maybe excessive; that's purely de gustibus non est disputatem, and can be contingent on circumstances beyond matters of taste; he doesn't listen to the music you do, he doesn't use the audio equipment chain you do, he doesn't have your ears...
I do think that the fact he was able to make comparisons like what he did is an achievement in and of itself. And I can't agree nor disagree with him since most of the headphones in that list is something that I've yet to listen to (there's a Beyer T1 in it yes? If so, then I have to disagree since I can kind of guess what he's saying about it. )
I think that it's unfortunate that people would talk about his list because of how he ranks them, and not fully on how he perceives them. Sure it would eventually went that way, but mostly people would be (and could already be from the looks of it; I didn't follow the thread since there's little I'm interested in it anyways) arguing why he (and other people that agrees with his ranking) is wrong.
For the emphasised part, I'd say that people (not all) just don't want to try and correlate the differences in perception. I always try to remind people how I listen to my music whenever I did huge impressions posts.
Compare your own opinions of what you've heard and size up your impressions to his, and as long as you believe he speaks in good faith, take him at his word... and especially don't be too quick to judge differences of opinions on things you only know by description. That last flaw seems to be epidemic hereabouts.
This I have to agree. Sure I admit I still do this; I do this mostly to a lot of the Rising Star Reviewer Extraordinaire that has been cropping up a lot lately. But in context of Mahler's list, I'm not dismissing his list because I don't agree with him; I don't have anything much to agree nor disagree in fact; but it's just that it's an interesting and useful collection of data, only not now in my point of life. Maybe in the next few years when I have my own place to call my man-cave, or when I have enough income, but by then the whole landscape would be utterly different, and that list would probably be obsolete; if not entirely.
------------------------
I love rants, and arguments that I can join in. It exercises my mind on how to think, structure and present my opinions, and how to counter (or concede) someone else's when it goes contrary to mine. Also I have a feeling that I'm leaping before I look again and making assumptions. A lot.
The description of "internal sound ports" in a closed-back design has me a bit confused. If the ports are internal only and not to the outside, what exactly do they do? It seems to me that the earcup is either part of the sound chamber, or it's not. Headphone acoustics are more confusing than speakers...
You're really trying to assert that something can (and maybe should) be objectively good to all. This may just come down to a matter of an error in diction, with "the truth" being a poor choice of words. But just in case it was meant exactly as stated, I'd like to point out that you cannot simultaneously assert that this hobby is ultimately subjective AND maintain that there is something called "the truth". I'm not trying to argue with you BTW, but that contradiction is glaring.
IMHO, an MOT that creates a list like that must be willing and able to face ALL criticism. We shouldn't be defending him - it's up to him to defend himself. But, I'm very cynical - I do not think it is possible for an MOT to speak purely from his own opinion - the influence of his employer is always there - whether consciously or subconsciously. So, in the end, I see it as a vendor-sponsored list, and I take it as such.
I thought about that, and it's why I qualified my opinion with the caution that he has to be perceived as acting in good faith. I think his MOT status is relevant but I don't think it's very relevant. Many of the headphones on the list are not offered for sale by his employer (Stax, HiFiMan), and some sold by his employer get, at best, caveats out of proportion to their praise (Ultrasone Ed. 10). Many others haven't been available for retail sale to first owners for, practically speaking, a decade or more.
On the whole, I think he'd be displaying a greater conflict of interest if he began dumping a significant portion of his collection in private sales, than if he wrote this under the aegis of his employer.
No, you didn't. But when you say things like this...
You're really trying to assert that something can (and maybe should) be objectively good to all. This may just come down to a matter of an error in diction, with "the truth" being a poor choice of words. But just in case it was meant exactly as stated, I'd like to point out that you cannot simultaneously assert that this hobby is ultimately subjective AND maintain that there is something called "the truth". I'm not trying to argue with you BTW, but that contradiction is glaring.
It seems that the harder i explain the more i am misunderstood by some ) .
There is absolutely no contrast there, actually is quite logical.
You cannot take just one review as a reference, but when you read tens of reviews with similarities it is clear that you can take some of the similarities as reference.
I rarely failed with that technique, and I use it in many domains, even when i pick a movie to watch.
If i pick a higher graded movie on IMDB the chances i lose my time with it are much smaller.
Take this movie for example : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/
607 thousand people voted and ranked it with a very high grade bringing it to the top of imdb.
The chances this is a bad movie are quite smaller, not impossible but much smaller.
I have heard a friend saying that this movie sucks because he does not like this type of movie, saying that "The Young and the restless" is a better damn movie. )
If you do not like that genre, that does not mean that movie is bad, or you can easily discard the opinion of 600 thousand people. Of 10k maybe, of 50k maybe, but not 600k.
The higher the number, the higher the chance you have to be in the group of people that like it.
As I'd mentioned, if he'd left out the STAX it would have been painfully obvious, also leaving out the "divine classics" would get him mauled. Sitting down and reasoning it out, while looking at his list, it was the only logical way to slip some of those cans so high up in there without causing the whole house of cards to collapse.
Average Head-Fi guy: "I can't afford or find the best ones up there, but I can get these."
No ESP/950 at all, Fostex TH-900 at 23, T1 at 13, ED10 at 18, HD700s being on the list to begin with... all of those are shocking and I can think of a lot more. It's a subjective list, and people keep saying that in defense of it, but then at the same time they're waving the results around as if they're a divine decree, using it to defend whatever purchase they've made (without doing any comparison testing of their own). As I mentioned in another thread, top 50 lists are irresponsible, especially when they're compiled by a MoT and presented from a position of authority.
It's not a grand conspiracy, and I'm not accusing any of the fine admins and Head-Fi execs of anything nefarious, but it is an unfortunate string of events that will negatively color perceptions, which is especially bad in a hobby where bias is so easy to create.
You cannot take just one review as a reference, but when you read tens of reviews with similarities it is clear that you can take some of the similarities as reference.
I rarely failed with that technique, and I use it in many domains, even when i pick a movie to watch.
If i pick a higher graded movie on IMDB the chances i loos my time with it are much smaller.
Take this movie for example : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0167260/
607 thousand people voted and ranked it with a very high grade bringing it to the top of imdb.
The chances this is a bad movie are quite smaller, not impossible but much smaller.
I have heard a friend saying that this movie sucks because he does not like this type of movie, saying that "The Young and the restless" is a better damn movie.
I am not disputing any of what you just said. What I am trying to point out is that - within this subjective hobby - there is no such thing as "the truth". Popular opinion? Sure. Consensus? Harder to come by at times, but definitely possible. But a single truth? You claim that this hobby is subjective. If you are sincere in saying that, then you must concede that all opinions are personally and individually valid right? Thus there cannot exist one universal truth - because such opinions can (and do) conflict.
Okay, I'll try one last time before resorting to a facepalm. Look friend, what you're essentially saying is that might makes right. Actually, by labelling the group-think as "the truth", you're going even further and positing that those in the minority are false (or at the very least wrong). I cannot even begin to tell you just how uncool that is.
If we were to accept majority opinion as factual truth, then I can tell you that there are a number of things this world should not be (e.g. round, revolving around the sun, etc.). And yet...
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Also I have a feeling that I'm leaping before I look again and making assumptions. A lot.
