[jaaron53]

Wall of fame is such a valuable resource, and all those measurements!

https://web.archive.org/web/20180529213004/https://www.innerfidelity.com/

Thanks for this link!

 

[moriez]

About two years from Tyll's IF to ending :0 Talk about a steep declining graph. At the time of passing the baton Tyll introduced Rafe in a video (without mentioning his name or details) and I remember he said something along the lines of that he felt good/confident about that choice. Bad call Ripley.. it was a baaad call.

 

[Raketen]

In fairness, we don't have any picture on the internal operations at the parent company at whose behest RA was operating, and who, at any point in time, could have pushed for a course correction, assisted with more resources (for the measurements, more outside contributors etc...), or just outright replaced him. In restrospect it seems like they may have put IF (and probably Audiostream too) on the zombie/DNR pile a long time ago.

 

[Beagle]

https://web.archive.org/web/20180529213004/https://www.innerfidelity.com/

This link does not work.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

This link does not work.

It did but it appears not to be fast or reliable enough. Hopefully @project86 or some other known good guy/reviewer can prevail on the management over there to rehost the old site and leave it alone for posterity.

 

[NA Blur]

Saw it coming as soon as Tyll left.

They should have made video content on a daily basis much like the Headphone Samurai.
Reviewed more affordable gear ( $1000 and under )
Including a comprehensive gaming headphone section. A huge market miss for them for sure.
Reached out to more of us for input / reviews. It felt like little to no community outreach. We form the foundation for their income.

 

[llamaluv]

Man, what a dick move.

 

[roskodan]

Yeah, but, Tyll's InnerFidelity content made all their other sites look bad in comparison. Way out of their league.

Btw, did you guys check the latest blog entry from Tyll's, there's some gossip worth content in there.

 

[project86]

It did but it appears not to be fast or reliable enough. Hopefully @project86 or some other known good guy/reviewer can prevail on the management over there to rehost the old site and leave it alone for posterity.

Oh man, I have so many stories I wish I could share.

Bottom line, Tyll hired me way back in 2011 and I will be forever thankful. He was a great friend, boss, and mentor, and bottom line just a fantastic ambassador for our community. Believe it or not, he was even more entertaining behind the scenes, when he shared his real unfiltered opinion.

Although I've still got a link in my signature, I actually left InnerFidelity in late 2018. It just wasn't the same without Tyll. First things that happened after he left was a pay cut and the loss of admin privileges to tweak my own articles. Tyll was always a fierce advocate for higher pay for his crew, and he was (famously) not the best at editing details (more of a big picture kind of guy), so it just made sense to let me handle my own typos etc. I guess in retrospect I'd say taking those two hits was the beginning of the end for me. But I knew in my gut the site was headed in the wrong direction anyway.

Rafe was always polite and I appreciated him allowing me to seek out and review basically anything I wanted. But I no longer felt proud to be affiliated with the site. At that stage it felt more like being a freelance contributor rather than part of an actual editorial team. I had been writing for Darko.Audio from time to time anyway, and decided to make the switch permanent. Have not looked back since.

I'm sad that my articles are gone, or at least not easy to access (still listed here though). And I'm even more sad that Tyll's resources have disappeared. There will never be a time where his musings and measurements on important headphones like HD650, LCD-2, Utopia, Ultrasone Edition 10, etc will not be relevant - even if just down the road as a piece of audiophile history.

I've got a full time (and then some) career unrelated to audio, so I'm not at all suited to "replace" Tyll (as if that would ever be possible anyway). And ever since he first asked me, my answer has always been "that's not for me". But it is a shame that they couldn't find someone to carry the torch and continue his vision for the site. I can think of several people in the community who I think could have pulled it off, at least to some degree of success.

I have no contact info for the "new" management, so I wouldn't even know where to begin in terms of making the request to put the site back up. At the very least I'd think they could fold the articles into the Sterophile site, the way Tyll had a few relevant Stereophile reviews cross posted to InnerFidelity when it first started. That shouldn't be difficult to achieve.

 

[catscratch]

From my vantage point as a reader, it seemed like Rafe's mistake was not listening to people. The community bombarded him with suggestions and advice, but instead of listening he said "this is now my show" and then proceeded to ban everyone that even remotely looked at him sideways. Right away he destroyed any community good will, and building a community is one of the hardest things to do in any business. Then he proceeded to make empty promises and do nothing, even though people could have told him exactly what they wanted to see and how he should go about doing it.

I expected it to end for a while now. I'd check site traffic and most of the time, it was trending downwards. Granted, so was a lot of the audio community, and I'm guessing there was still enough traffic left to keep the site hosted. Hopefully Stereophile archives it and links to it off their site somewhere, as the site has a ton of value and is an important piece of headphone hobby history.

TL;DR there is no substitute for talent.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Oh man, I have so many stories I wish I could share.

Bottom line, Tyll hired me way back in 2011 and I will be forever thankful. He was a great friend, boss, and mentor, and bottom line just a fantastic ambassador for our community. Believe it or not, he was even more entertaining behind the scenes, when he shared his real unfiltered opinion.

Although I've still got a link in my signature, I actually left InnerFidelity in late 2018. It just wasn't the same without Tyll. First things that happened after he left was a pay cut and the loss of admin privileges to tweak my own articles. Tyll was always a fierce advocate for higher pay for his crew, and he was (famously) not the best at editing details (more of a big picture kind of guy), so it just made sense to let me handle my own typos etc. I guess in retrospect I'd say taking those two hits was the beginning of the end for me. But I knew in my gut the site was headed in the wrong direction anyway.

Rafe was always polite and I appreciated him allowing me to seek out and review basically anything I wanted. But I no longer felt proud to be affiliated with the site. At that stage it felt more like being a freelance contributor rather than part of an actual editorial team. I had been writing for Darko.Audio from time to time anyway, and decided to make the switch permanent. Have not looked back since.

I'm sad that my articles are gone, or at least not easy to access (still listed here though). And I'm even more sad that Tyll's resources have disappeared. There will never be a time where his musings and measurements on important headphones like HD650, LCD-2, Utopia, Ultrasone Edition 10, etc will not be relevant - even if just down the road as a piece of audiophile history.

I've got a full time (and then some) career unrelated to audio, so I'm not at all suited to "replace" Tyll (as if that would ever be possible anyway). And ever since he first asked me, my answer has always been "that's not for me". But it is a shame that they couldn't find someone to carry the torch and continue his vision for the site. I can think of several people in the community who I think could have pulled it off, at least to some degree of success.

I have no contact info for the "new" management, so I wouldn't even know where to begin in terms of making the request to put the site back up. At the very least I'd think they could fold the articles into the Sterophile site, the way Tyll had a few relevant Stereophile reviews cross posted to InnerFidelity when it first started. That shouldn't be difficult to achieve.

Thank you, John, for this post and all the others I've read from you.

 

[Wyville]

Oh man, I have so many stories I wish I could share.

Bottom line, Tyll hired me way back in 2011 and I will be forever thankful. He was a great friend, boss, and mentor, and bottom line just a fantastic ambassador for our community. Believe it or not, he was even more entertaining behind the scenes, when he shared his real unfiltered opinion.

Although I've still got a link in my signature, I actually left InnerFidelity in late 2018. It just wasn't the same without Tyll. First things that happened after he left was a pay cut and the loss of admin privileges to tweak my own articles. Tyll was always a fierce advocate for higher pay for his crew, and he was (famously) not the best at editing details (more of a big picture kind of guy), so it just made sense to let me handle my own typos etc. I guess in retrospect I'd say taking those two hits was the beginning of the end for me. But I knew in my gut the site was headed in the wrong direction anyway.

Rafe was always polite and I appreciated him allowing me to seek out and review basically anything I wanted. But I no longer felt proud to be affiliated with the site. At that stage it felt more like being a freelance contributor rather than part of an actual editorial team. I had been writing for Darko.Audio from time to time anyway, and decided to make the switch permanent. Have not looked back since.

I'm sad that my articles are gone, or at least not easy to access (still listed here though). And I'm even more sad that Tyll's resources have disappeared. There will never be a time where his musings and measurements on important headphones like HD650, LCD-2, Utopia, Ultrasone Edition 10, etc will not be relevant - even if just down the road as a piece of audiophile history.

I've got a full time (and then some) career unrelated to audio, so I'm not at all suited to "replace" Tyll (as if that would ever be possible anyway). And ever since he first asked me, my answer has always been "that's not for me". But it is a shame that they couldn't find someone to carry the torch and continue his vision for the site. I can think of several people in the community who I think could have pulled it off, at least to some degree of success.

I have no contact info for the "new" management, so I wouldn't even know where to begin in terms of making the request to put the site back up. At the very least I'd think they could fold the articles into the Sterophile site, the way Tyll had a few relevant Stereophile reviews cross posted to InnerFidelity when it first started. That shouldn't be difficult to achieve.

Thank you very much for sharing that!

It is discouraging though, to see this happening with what by all rights should indeed be a piece of audiophile history. I fight hard to protect important heritage, scientific in my case, so this is something I find a particularly painful to see happening in my hobby, especially with someone like Tyll. It is not just that his work is an incredibly useful resource for people interested in headphones, it has (for me at least) been a source of information on how to review. For an amateur reviewer such as myself it is always good to look at the work of quality reviewers and see how I can learn from them while I build up my own experience. Not having access to that is like a punch in the gut.

ps. Thanks for the tip on Idagio in your review of the Nativ Vita! I primarily listen to classical music, so their service looks very interesting.

 

[Beagle]

It did but it appears not to be fast or reliable enough. Hopefully @project86 or some other known good guy/reviewer can prevail on the management over there to rehost the old site and leave it alone for posterity.

Seems to be working today. Thank you for this.

 

[megabigeye]

Still appears to be available here: https://cdn.innerfidelity.com/

EDIT: it appears that only some, but not all, links within the site still work.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Seems to be working today. Thank you for this.

Thank you, but no reason to thank me. It's not my site nor was I the one who posted it. Unless you weren't thanking me, in which case everything is ok