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I do think that is the purpose of Head Fi, letting one get a sense of a product without having to try? Whether I approach it with naivety is debatable, but I am still a person that trusts and believe in people. Perhaps my bad!
Ideally, one gets a sense of new products or directions to explore, then goes out and tries it somehow before hand (like at a meet-up or store demo) and determines if it suits one's taste. The reality of the situation, obviously, is that many people cannot (or will not) do this before hand and instead make purchasing decisions based on intuition. It's risky, especially when a) the item in question is an import and cannot be returned easily due to buyer's remorse and b) the item in question costs
quite a bit of money.
Honestly, most head-fiers would probably find buying an IEM that costs as much as the K3003 or the TG 334 to be bewildering behavior in and of itself, let alone site unheard. In my case I do it all the time, but then I'm a collector more than an audiophile. You seem to be a collector as well and have the income to dispose on this stuff. But I'd say we're in the minority.
When people ask me what headphones they should buy, I'm uncomfortable because I simply dislike telling people how to spend their money, and I can't help but feel partially responsible if they end up spending money on something they dislike, even though it wouldn't
really be my fault since I'm not trying to overtly hype or shill something. It's not so much a matter of trusting or believing people as it is sound being hard to describe, and our ears varying so much to make this hobby far too subjective to not be careful with impressions and recommendations. Especially given that my personal philosophy with regard to head-fi is pretty unusual / differs quite a bit from a lot of others'. That's why I feel it's important, if one cannot listen to something first-hand, to base purchasing decisions on as many different sets of impressions as possible rather than the word of one person. Unless you know that person well enough to know how he/she usually hears things compared to the way you do, or you can establish this based on precedent in their other impressions.
I dunno, I just don't like the thought of people taking me for some kind of "expert" because I own a lot of gear and post a lot. It's flattering but simply untrue. Most of the time I post on head-fi to simply socialize these days, but I still get an inbox filled with requests for advice and recommendations, so I tend to be really cautious about these sorts of things.
Anyway, I wont derail the thread any further.
TL;DR lol.
