This is the part I liked, which reveals that it really does come down to personal preference and one's unique perception of a can's performance, so we should take others' opinions here with a grain of salt, and ultimately trust our own ears (another good reason to go to a Meet!)-
"Hertsens is fascinated by the fact that the acoustic impedance of the ear canal itself is very different for each ear. "When we visited Etymotic Research’s labs, we found, even with us, that our ears will be as much as 10dB different -- the norm is 5dB difference. But you would never notice this because the auditory cortex corrects this and adapts."
"You are measuring the response of the entire system within the near field. It’s all one thing." This leads Hertsens to pose a question: "What can your reference be when you cannot separate the subjective perception of the listener from the performance of the headphone?"
His conclusion, therefore, is that everyone is unique, so headphones also perform uniquely. Hertsens recommends using trial and error to find the best headphones. "You have to compensate to not listening in the far field, and then you have to remember everyone is unique."
