The problem isnt Head-Fi. The audiophile community at large is full of bull-droppings. This was the case nearly 20 years ago when i got into the high end community, and is the case now.
The subjective nature of the hobby means that all sorts of idiotic BS get passed as facts, or are grossly exaggerated. Shakti Stones and green pens, anyone? Hell, people post whatever the hell they want, doesnt even make any sense (What is "warm bass"??) and it gets repeated until it becomes a generally-accepted reality. Of course, the flip side is that if all the arguments are challenged, then this becomes rec.audio.high-end V2, where every thread degenerates into a flame war about A/B/X testing, so it isnt as if there is a better solution - FWIW, i think the approach Head-Fi takes is reasonably sound.
Personally, I'd like to see a little more discussion/debate b/c right now, disagreeing with a FOTM product leads to the cyber equivalent of a stoning. But that is primarily up to the individual posters to be a little more mature, a little less emotionally-vested in their products and a little more open to the idea that it is possible to share different views without establishing a right/wrong answer, and without getting into an endless debate on who's right and who's wrong: state your position, and maybe comment on why you disagree with the other guy's position and move on. Sadly, humanity is going to need 5000 years of evolution before THAT is going to happen
@vkalia Awesome!
Hello,
While this may be my first post, I assure you I am not new to the world of headphones or this forum. I started to really get into this hobby around 2000, but had some interest in the late '90's. At the time Headwize was the authoritative forum. Then Head-fi appeared and grew. It was a great place where people formed their own opinions and shared with the community. I lurked for a few years. I was getting a lot out of it, but not contributing. Maybe I was selfish, maybe I thought I had nothing to offer, maybe I thought people were more knowledgeable than myself? I do not have a good reason for being a member for almost 10 years and making this my first post.
I am not trying to go off on a rant, but I think it is important for people coming to this great hobby to understand that there are many great opinions here, but there is equally a lot of misinformation. How can someone recommend something - a headphone, a DAP, a DAC, an amp or even a cable without even trying it? How can they dismiss it? This forum is filled with people with thousands of posts posturing and declaring an opinion that is not even their own as a fact. The headphone market has grown over the last two decades (thanks mostly to Apple and Beats) which has brought about pseudo-experts. For the people who have enjoyed this community for years, they have learned who they can trust, but often a very vocal or prolific user does not have the knowledge or experience to make a thoughtful recommendation. Music is personal, sound reproduction is personal, our ears are all different. There is too much regurgitated circle jerking information here.
I don't know if this post will be deleted, but my whole point is that sometimes it is best not to talk, but to listen. Please don't make a headphone recommendation to someone if you have not owned the headphone in question. Listening to something in a store or at a meet does not qualify you as experienced with that item. I have owned or own most TOTL headphones HD800, LCD-2, TH900, T1, ED8 and many others, yet I have not felt the need to pass my opinion off as fact. Please be considerate of others and don't just copypasta other people's thoughts or give praise to your latest purchase when you have nothing to compare it to.
This rant is over. I will continue to lurk, but I want to thank all of the experts on here for the great advice and recommendations over the years and let you know how difficult it is to sort through all of the BS to find you...
Join Date:
10/20/04
First Post Date:
6/10/14
@livedavid I was (and continue to be) a victim of such misinformation. While not limited to headphones, I'd "wasted" most money on them than any other product. I had to spend beyond my means as a student just to verify one hype after another. However, I disagree with your claim that people should not be allowed to parrot second-hand experiences. There is such a thing as citing references. Buying and trying out the headphones yourself before you can speak of them is akin to repeating the research yourself before you can cite it. As long as the reference is credible, there should be no problem. And as long as the second-hand claim is cited and not plagiarized/passed of as one's own, then that should be fine. Of course this is not often the case, even in academia.
As for reasoning that people should not parrot opinions because "music is personal, sound reproduction is personal, our ears are all different," this is problematic in that it implies an inherent impossibility in communication (a still hotly-debated topic in philosophy). It begs the question, "Why else would you communicate your opinion if it's going to be fundamentally different to the other?" I agree with the subjectivity, but, in a limited context we can derive an "objective measurement/scale" especially when we are dealing with hundreds of reviews of the same product--a bit like using the weak/strong law of large numbers. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman specialized in objective measurements of subjectivity later in his career.
Finally, I disagree with your assumption that ownership precludes authority, that store/meet auditions do not count. As I stated earlier how this is not feasible, it is also mistaken.
@Hawaiibadboy for example changed the climate of Head-Fi at least in the areas where bassheads are concerned. He walks around Japan carrying his own equipment and
comparatively tests Summit-Fi headphones in Denki mega-shops with the same settings, and the headphones available in one Denki shop is usually more than one can audition at a meet.
The classic approach to objective measurement of auditory experience is using a KEMAR dummy head, which costs $8,000.
This A/B/X testing methodology by SonicSenseProAudio is a game-changer in headphone reviews: they measure the FRs of headphone subjects, apply the FR to a test track/song, and play the song on YouTube so you can HEAR how the FR affects the original signal. Also,
Headroom has been the number one source for FR graphs. FR graphs, while not accurate (some headphone FRs change drastically with volume, head placement, earpads, and so on), are currently the best representation we have of the auditory experience. However,
for EQ and digital signal processing enthusiasts like myself, stock FR means little--if only to approximate the amount of EQ needed to achieve a particular FR curve.
To avoid making a "weighting mistake" (in decision-making) by straying from my initial criterion, I resorted to prioritizing a measurable aspect of headphones that I crave (and shunned by audiophile elitists), which is maximum low frequency SPL before distortion. This is no different from car audio SPL competitions. Low frequencies should be as important as any other band in high fidelity sound reproduction--but it astounds me how
very few "hi-fi" rated headphones do not distort the low frequencies at normal rock concert loudness (here I am citing HBB). If you want a straightforward need for tons of quality bass and appreciate a straightforward objective methodology, then come say hi at the
Extreme Bass Club. It's a new club spawned out of this "meaningless communication between incompatible languages" that you were referring to in your post. You are free to challenge the reigning bass king: the JVC HA-SZ2000. We've been working so hard in finding a new challenger.
