[DuncanDirkDick]

So in the meantime we should just take Amir's words as gospel I guess? Messiah much?

Nope, but you shouldn't take any manufacturers word as gospel either. Their job is to sell you headphones. Since Abyss criticized ASRs measurements, they seem to have measurements of their own. That's what I would expect anyway just for quality controls sake. Ofc it's their prerogative to share their own measurements, but not doing so doesn't really reinforce my confidence in their products. It would have been easy to debunk Amir's measurements by posting their own, I wonder why they don't do that.

 

[seamon]

^

Exactly!

 

[XUPX]

Few things.
1. I think we should keep the discussion about the review. Not Amirs personality nor the composition of the people who read ASR. Those thi gs have nothing to do with each other and mixing them makes things get personal and inflammatory unnecessarily.
2. I'm in sciences. If I'm reading 2 different papers, in one the author says "looking at x, it seems that y", while the other paper describes methodology, results and conclusions, I will likely put more weight to that. I might read it, and try amd think why the methods might be wrong, or why the conclusion is etc. but the onus is on me to figure that out and bring meaningful reasons why I think there's a problem.
Simply saying "because it doesn't fit my biased opinions" isn't enough, or relevant.
And if we figure out a real reason it might be lacking, we can experiment again, get more data and revise our conclusion. That is science. And it brought us so far.
3. Reading more of Amir's comments on why there are issues with other measurements, I tend to accept his points. He did go through a process to separate noise and distortion, and has described that process. He explains why it matters.
4. For people who have used EQ you know that certain transducers take EQ better than others. There's no secret in that. It's also easy to change your EQ to add or remove certain areas to emphasize if they are "there or not". That seems like a perfectly reasonable approach to me.
5. Don't confuse conciseness in writing with a short review time. Amir specifically mentions he tried to get a different fit for hours, repeating the process multiple times and listened for hours validating the results.
Compare that to people taking notes while listening over. along time, well, studies show that many things can affect our attention to detail, even things like time of day and other external factors. It is ok to say we have biases. Expectation biases, confirmation biases, even being approached for a review, as you know that giving a good review has a higher likelyhood of being approached again or being sent things in the future. And yet, we accept, as a community reviewers saying "I got this for free, but trust me, that had no influence over my opinion" instead of minimising biases. Measurements are one such approach.

 

[seamon]

I mean Abyss can literally just put the entire thing to rest if they just publish their measurements. We are literally arguing over nothing.

 

[MSA1133]

When I would like to buy a car, I wont ask for the gear ratio and engine revs graphs.

I'd compare it with what I have, how does the engine sound, the luxury, speed, etc. etc.

Same goes with Headphones. Not all things could be correctly quantified from graphs and require us to listen for ourselves.

Measurements are only a part of the overall experience, and a small part at that which could be affected by a HUGE number of variables.

I respect Amir and Abyss, and I wish them all the best!

 

[up late]

With this I agree. I'm simply stating that Abyss not releasing measurements doesn't automatically make Amir correct. He went on about how hard it was to seat them properly and how many times he had to take measurements. But instead of saying "due to seating issues I can't reliably measure them and therefore it's not appropriate to publish results", he went with whatever he got and dispensed with a verdict. This is not science, it's cranking out content to generate clicks and eyeballs for his website.

i don't recall seeing a single post here claiming that @amirm's measurements are correct. however, i have seen a number of posts asserting that they are not, and with only one poster offering a plausible explanation in support of their assertion.

and i don't see why @amirm should qualify his review any further, let alone not publish it all. it is his website after all and he is under no obligation to appease his critics. if folks don't like his reviews then they could simply stop reading them along with the hand-wringing.

 

[chocomel167]

Amir's Measurements seem fine, of course would have been nice if he had posted/done more Measurements to fully characterize the behavior with regards to seal and positioning but the FR he posted doesn't seem like an unrealistic result.

It's more that his Measurements appear to be incomplete, not wrong.

 

[szore]

groovy

 

[GoldenOne]

Someone who has better measurements of the Diana and can explain clearly with examples and graphs that what Amir did was wrong. If Abyss can do this then they can proudly claim that his review is misleading. That is what we should expect from them instead of taking their words(without any explanation whatsoever) as gospel.

Amir's Measurements seem fine, of course would have been nice if he had posted/done more Measurements to fully characterize the behavior with regards to seal and positioning but the FR he posted doesn't seem like an unrealistic result.

It's more that his Measurements appear to be incomplete, not wrong.

https://www.head-fi.org/threads/diana-the-second-release-by-abyss-headphones.777618/post-16101725

 

[A Jedi]

Nope, but you shouldn't take any manufacturers word as gospel either.

Who says I do? FYI I take nothing from anyone as gospel. What I DO however do is call bs when I see it.

 

[cadgers]

I posted this on reddit but it works here too.

The measurements he took don't line up with others. Point blank, Crin and Resolve both measured these and they don't have the same issue that Amir had. ABYSS 100% should just release their own measurements instead of leaving comments on YouTube. That said, the impressions of the headphones don't lineup with Amir's measurements either. I personally heard these at CanJam NYC 2020 and I am a bass fiend, if they rolled off that hard I would have noticed. They are uncomfortable and wildly expensive for me but this ASR crap is getting stupid.

edit: Removed a link to a Phi review. Amir measured the V2.

 

[bluestorm1992]

I posted this on reddit but it works here too.

The measurements he took don't line up with others. Point blank, Crin and Resolve both measured these and they don't have the same issue that Amir had. ABYSS 100% should just release their own measurements instead of leaving comments on YouTube. That said, the impressions of the headphones don't lineup with Amir's measurements either. I don't want to drag people into this but here is Resolves review. You can see his measurements and thoughts there. Do you think we wouldn't mention that type of drop in the bass? I personally heard these at CanJam NYC 2020 and I am a bass fiend, if they rolled off that hard I would have noticed. They are uncomfortable and wildly expensive for me but this ASR crap is getting stupid.

When our subjective impression is not align with the measurement result, either we hear it wrong or the measurement is problematic.

In ASR’s case, it still seems quite likely to me that the measurement is missing something. Of course, I cannot dismiss the possibility that I am affected by my own biases and preferences, so my subjective impression is wrong.

I think we all agree with the bottom line here: Abyss should consider sharing with us their measurement results.

 

[XUPX]

I don't think that people are aware or are willing to admit how much biases affect us, humans. There are many studies that show that and that's why science developed blind and double blind tests, to counter that issue.
Of course, it's not always possible to conduct double blind tests, but an attempt at objectivity is always a good thing.

Anecdotally, I actually think that at least parts of the measurements do correlate with my experiences. If you look up my comments on the differences between the V2 and the Phi, and the few I was DMing with, I did mention a veil in the mids on the V2, which is exactly where we see both a dip and distortion in the measurements, both could account for that.

 

[XUPX]

I personally heard these at CanJam NYC 2020 and I am a bass fiend, if they rolled off that hard I would have noticed.

Bass and sub bass sound and feel very different. The roll-off here is around 55-60Hz, which is sub-bass. A lot of bass-heads (or friends!) are just that - they really like bass but don't care ir notice sub bass as much. It is also harder to hear and reproduce in transducers in general. there aren't a ton of tracks that use it either (in comparison to rest of the hearing spectrum).

You also heard it in a noisy environment (by your account), and may have missed something like that, or attributed it to "I couldn't hear it due to noise".

I'm not trying to call you out here, and mentioning this here just as an example of biases that *might* exist in all of us. I'm nitnfree of biases, which is why I like reading measurements.
I think there might be things we don't know how to measure yet, or explain, and I'm always doubting everything, but I do like it when people at least try and explain their approach (and just approach things scientifically in general)

 

[A Jedi]

The issue here is not a matter of "the measurements show a bad headphone". The issue is that there is a blatant disconnect between the measurements and reality. If you told me that you measured the color of the sky to be blue while I perceive it to be LIGHT blue, I'd concede that measuring equipment can be more sensitive than my eyes and there is a realistic chance that my perception is wrong. However, if you tell me that you measured the sky color to be red while my eyes see blue, I guarantee there is something wrong with your measurements. That's the case here.