[MegaMatt5000]

To the main question, I would say yes and no.

I picked up a Solaris a few months ago and was very happy with it during the honeymoon phase (still am happy). However, after reading several forum posts and reviews mentioning midrange hollowness with female vocals, it started to stick out to me much more than before I had ever read any of that.

On the other hand, I also picked up an IER-Z1R and expected to hear piercing highs and lower-mid recession present in male vocals due to reading many posts about it, but that's never been an audible issue to me.

 

[SilverEars]

To the main question, I would say yes and no.

I picked up a Solaris a few months ago and was very happy with it during the honeymoon phase (still am happy). However, after reading several forum posts and reviews mentioning midrange hollowness with female vocals, it started to stick out to me much more than before I had ever read any of that.

On the other hand, I also picked up an IER-Z1R and expected to hear piercing highs and lower-mid recession present in male vocals due to reading many posts about it, but that's never been an audible issue to me.

I could imagine that can happen, but I think there are people that has a mindset that doesn't get influenced like that.

I heard IER-Z1R just like how it's graphed, upper-mids peakiness with rolled off treble. I find that $2k+ iem should at minimum have good tonal balance eventhough I'd want technicalities on top for that in terms of tonality. Such a shame that such iems are priced like they are, which causes very low faith in the high-end.

In general, graphs do line-up with what I hear.

Look at this $2.5k LCDi4 response with cipher EQ applied. Notice that the cipher EQ doesn't really help a whole lot. It's hard to have faith in this industry with crap like this. I'm just losing interest in iems due to such experiences (It's like I'm getting scammed). This is a pure example of why you should not trust reviewers. Sometimes you have to check behind these reviews/reviewers to see if they are providing a bunch of fluff.