BIG caveat: A few of the guys at LH are my friends.
That being said, I am probably the most vocal to them about what they do correct and what they do poorly. They get a LOT of feedback from me and I don't hesitate to tell them what I think about their business, operations, and products.
I've had the Verb for a while and they're not for me. I'm giving my pair away as the FR makes these sound wonky in my book and my two pairs of UERM get most of my IEM headtime with an occasional guest appearance by the Rockets. The distortion is actually pretty good and the IEMs respond to EQing, but I am NOT a fan of the tuning.
That being said, I do think a few things should be called out in the review that sparked the shenanigans:
- The CSD is sketch to provide (and if it was accurate, would actually indicate a pretty good CSD for a $40 headphone or whatever many of us paid). Couplers introduce resonances and the data is garbage past about 8kHz for FR as well when measuring IEMs. I didn't find ringing to be significant when stacked against many other IEMs in my collection. Saying that the CSDs tell us anything meaningful is misleading.
- The Sound Guys have done a bunch of audio reviews. I personally don't know if they're good or not, but it's not like they've never reviewed anything. They seem to skew high in scoring so an 8.6 should be adjusted to scale.
- I really love shotgunshane and others, but I know Lachlan has a past with LH which should probably be called out since he's heavily invested in that site. I'm also wondering who wrote the review since the author is unlisted (not really a big deal, just curious).
The (definitely non-trivial) problem with the IEMs are the FR: mainly the low end boost, the midrange dip, and the peak. That should be the focus of the article.
Anyhoos, I think there are some super valid concerns in this thread, but to suggest that LH is a fraud in that article is pretty sensational.
Because it seems to be a hot topic as well, I've ordered a pair of the Xumas to see if they are actually the same, or just the same housing and if they sound any different which I'll test before giving the verbs away.
I would like to echo zero's post and point out a few things:
First, the CSD graph's scale is really messed up. Look at the time scale, guys:
The peak ends at 1.07ms.
Okay, ya got that, right?
Next, let's try... looking at the CSD of... the SR-009:
Look, ma! There are ridges at 4KHz, 6KHz, 8KHz, and 9.5KHz that all got further than 1ms!!!
And guess what? The Verb decay ends at 2.6ms at 200Hz. The SR-009 keeps decaying at 1KHz past 4ms!!!
If I didn't know better, I'd say the CSD of the Verb makes it look... unrealistically clean! Even compared to the most transparent headphone in existence: the Stax SR-009!
Or okay, let's forget about CSD. Maybe something went wrong? How about distortions?
My God! It reaches dangerously close to 0.01% distortion!! In fact, it DOES reach 0.01% distortion!
Just so you'd know how crazy that is, here's Tyll's distortion measurement of the SR-009, again.
Look at that! It stays at 0.1% distortion.
That's right. Cymbacavum's distortion measurements of the Verb at 500Hz is 10 times better than the distortion of the SR-009... at any frequency!
My God, if I didn't know better, I'd say the Verb looks from the graphs like it's the best transducer on the planet... surpassing the SR-009 by a significant margin at every metric that counts. This thing would probably sound ridiculously transparent if those measurements are right!
Okay, honestly, though, I'm an outsider, just staring at those graphs and dropping my jaw in awe. Disregarding the frequency response measurements, the rest look fantastic!!