headphone buyers database - opinions/help wanted

[commando]

Following on from this thread, i've started creating a headphone buyers database. The idea is to help new users choose headphones based on the experience of people who own the headphones. It will probably just be a first step in a purchase decision, but it might help some people, especially people who don't want to post to head-fi. If you have a few minutes i'd appreciate if you could have a read and leave any suggestions you have.

The basic functions will be:
- Add manufacturer/headphone (submitted by user, approved by admin to prevent abuse)
- Suggest headphones - user gives their criteria, the system suggests one or more headphones based on user reviews.
- View headphone - shows the aggregate data about a specific type of headphones, along with all the comments about it.
- Admin functions of edit manufacturer/headphone/review

I've made a start on this now. This afternoon I learned PHP (it's not very hard), I have a database in place, now i'm making the user interface. I think it'll take in the region of a week or two to get something basic up and running, and a few weeks to to get it polished and working well. Another upside is I get to learn PHP, which i've wanted to do for a while

The following information will be added once for each type of headphone:
- manufacturer
- model name
- frequence response (not that useful, but ah well)
- impedence
- weight
- cable length
- connector
- position (supraaural/curcumaural/canal)
- isolation (effectively open/closed/semi-closed)
- sound pressure level (not sure if this is useful, must be somehow related to sensativity)
- how long you've owned them for
- places to buy it could be added

To make sure we get good quality reviews, the following information will be collected from the user
- email address
- handle (which the review will be attributed to)
- best headphone you've ever heard
- an anything else?

A person can submit a review on a headphone, and they can rate it as follows (0-10 unless otherwise specified, 10 = good, 0 = lousey, 5 = average)
- bass extension (ie how low does it go)
- bass impact
- mids
- highs
- smooth/analytical/neutral (optional?)
- soundstage
- detail (ie is it a detailed headphone)
- portablity
- amplificationRequired (1 = no, 2 = helps a little, 3 = helps a lot, 4 = required, 5 = speciality amp required)
- isolation
- comfort
- durability (optional_
- comments (whatever text you like, optional)
- price paid (to the nearest dollar)
- value (new)
- purchased from (store name or URL)

Couple of questions:
- Does this look useful? Could changing anything make it more useful?
- Should users have to register to add a review? This would be purely to stop people adding rubbish and spam? Alternately reviews could be queued and not shown until approved by an admin?
- Should we weight the reviews of some users more highly than others? The benefit of this is if we get 13 year olds come along who love their MDR-V300s or whatever, they might give it a perfect score, where in reality there are better headphones around. Or is it better to trust the users and figure it'll all balance out in the end?
- Any other ideas?

Once I get feedback i'll edit this post to keep it up to date with the latest design of the system. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Edit1 - added open/closed, comfort, supra/circum-aural

 

[adhoc]

i would remove entire the 2nd bit, keeping only the technical and factual specs.

the 2nd bit is just too subjective - what is detailed to someone may not be to another person. ime you will end up with volley-and-serve style rebuttal posts from people who do not agree with another poster's opinion(s).

EDIT: and i almost forgot this.. ALL THE BEST!!

 

[3lusiv3]

Good luck. It sounds like a big job.

 

[mikeliao]

So it'll be something like http://www.ecoustics.com/Editorial/Reviews/Headphone/ when you're done?

 

[Wmcmanus]

It think this could be a fantastic project, and it could easily follow along the lines of ecoustics or even www.audioreview.com.

I'd especially like it if you added the following rule: each head-fi member is allowed only one post per product! You could do as much editing as you wanted to your initial post based on any further impressions you have of the product, but the idea would be to "rate" the product on a scale and then provide your comments. This approach would allow a new head-fi member to effectively see what the general consensus is about a product (say the CD3000 or HD650) without reading any debate or discussion among members. If they wanted to learn more, they could read other threads.

I agree that it would be a big job but it would potentially add a lot of value to all head-fi members (especially newbies).

 

[commando]

Adhoc - that's the point. Subjective reviews from many people would average out, I hope. If all you want is specs, use http://headphones.warzone.org/

It will be like other sites when it's done, but it'll be headphone specific, so it can be much more detailed and more easily searched by different criteria. Most sites are x/10 or even yes/no. Whether that's useful or not I don't know. Part of the point is me learning php, so even if no-one uses it it's not wasted time. And it's not really that big a job - I do things MUCH bigger than this for a living, this is a tiny little thing that'll take hours not weeks

Wmcmanus - integrating with the head-fi member database would be quite difficult, i'd need jude's co-coperation and I don't think it'd be worth his time quite honestly. The question then is should people be asked to register on my site before adding reviews? I have a registration system I could use without too much hastle. It would add complexity but if it increased the quality of the information it might be worth it.

I've added a couple more parameters to each review (edited above). I wonder is mids/highs are really worth having. Are they useful? What would they even mean? And soundstage - I don't think everyone evens thinks soundstage is the same thing, so it might be worth removing?

Quote:

Originally Posted by 19lexicon78 that's a good idea, but it's taking too much time. i think it's good to have a sketch first, you can later find the details. In such an overview, with each headphones a number of points, is enough to start with. when you add soo many details, beginners don't want that, it's too complex. it takes months before knowing this information. this kind of overview will be a good thing for people who are more experienced.

That's a good point. I think maybe a wizard style interface for new users would be a good idea, and a power users interface for experienced users.

 

[ayt999]

that is a great idea.

would hopefully cut down on the recommendations threads since most of them I would think could be answered with a simple database like that.

the review part is good if we maintain it and make sure the ratings are not too far from what most people would rate it. that would be necessary if people are to use it to get recommendations for a headphone.

you can narrow down a search with closed / open headphone types, price ranges... but after that a brief description of the sound would be useful to make sure that the headphone you are after is the one you want.

a possibility may be is to create a thread asking for opinions for a can then collect all reviews into one concise paragraph trying to get the majority opinion into it then use that as the basis for the review. it may be more work than a simple database with multiple entries but it offers more quality control and ensures that the results are not too far off from what they should be.

adhoc - this is a headphone buyer's database, not a regular headphone database. without user comments, I would think it won't serve its purpose too well.

 

[commando]

I don't really like the idea of linking to a thread - this kindof is a way to get around all the guff, see summaries, and have some details from the users comments.

I'm considering a slightly different way of ensuring we get quality reviews in there right now. When anything is submitted (new headphones or a review, etc) the state is set to "new". An email would be sent out to whoever submitted it, and when the person clicked on the link in the email the entry would progress to the new state, which is basically "ready for admin approval". Once an admin approves the new entry then it's made public and it's data is used in cacluations. How does this sound to everyone? I could cut out the email confirmation step and it'd make things a little easier, but that step might result in better quality reviews. I'd never show/share the email addresses.

General feedback is still encouraged, I want to make this as useful as possible.

 

[3lusiv3]

commando, I just noticed you've joined the elite "Headphoneus Supremus" headphone squadron. Congratulations.

 

[commando]

Ah, that's just based on post count, and that's only high because I have a big mouth

Any thoughts on what i've said 3lusiv3, to make it an effective and truely useful system?

Edit - suggestions/comments by PM are welcome if you don't want to post here.

 

[bubbagump]

I'd love to help out. What type of server are you using?

I'd add THD and load rating to the info stored in the database. I wouldn't do any user management personally- just not enough time and most people dont want to do another username/password IMO. Reviews or comments on cans I would leave open to the public, but restrict posting them to their IP address and a timer and just moderate it. I would think asking interested users here at head-fi to help with the task of adding cans into the database and use htaccess to restrict access to a main admin page.

I would add code to curl through http://headphones.warzone.org too.

 

[commando]

Apache/linux server, php 4.3.x, smarty templating engine. This is partly a learning excercise for me so right now i'd love to have someone code review my work, but it's small enough that I can do it all myself (for now!).

I was wondering how I could restrict access to admin pages, and I don't really want to have to write a user management system. How would I do that with htaccess?

 

[3lusiv3]

Quote:

Originally Posted by commando Any thoughts on what i've said 3lusiv3, to make it an effective and truely useful system?

It seems to me that you're on the right track and have enough headphone experience to do it properly. I can't think of any suggestions at the moment and I think I may have to see a prototype before suggesting changes. I'm not sure how you can avoid ratings being skewed by inexperienced users. Maybe forcing people to log in to post would stop some of this.

 

[psychogentoo]

Quote:

Originally Posted by commando Apache/linux server, php 4.3.x, smarty templating engine. This is partly a learning excercise for me so right now i'd love to have someone code review my work, but it's small enough that I can do it all myself (for now!). I was wondering how I could restrict access to admin pages, and I don't really want to have to write a user management system. How would I do that with htaccess?

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/howto/htaccess.html

You can limit certain directories/files and its contents to your list of authorized users/groups.

Or you could have it be application based with a db holding the encrypted passwords.

Keep in mind that the passwords are passed from the client in plain text in either case unless a secure server is used which in this case is overkill.

BTW - what are you using as a backend? mySQL or postgresql?

PM me if you have more specific questions.

 

[commando]

Thanks psychogentoo and bubbagump (PM) for the .htaccess suggestions. I do need an admin role and .htaccess would be the easy way to do it. I might still go with application level security, it's probably not hard to have a database table with users and passwords and to authorise them for certian actions. But I think .htaccess will do nicely for the prototype.

3lusiv3 (and others), i'll work on doing a functionally ok prototype before I refine it to look pretty, so I can get feedback. I'm learning php to do this, so it might take me a week or so to get the prototype running. I have a day job (programming) to do too

It'd be fun to be able to do this for a few days solid - maybe a different kind of fun to what most people have, but interesting and a little challenging because i'm new to php