Blindranger
100+ Head-Fier
HD600/650/6XX enters the chat...Still the best value rn in the entire hobby imo He1000se
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THE WATERCOOLER HEADPHONE EDITION – Headphones, Amps, DACs, and desktop/home audio related – a freewheeling discussion of gear, impressions, music, and musings.
- Thread starter goldwerger
- Start date
& Tungsten.HD600/650/6XX enters the chat...
HEKSE is actually a bad value if you don't have tubes in the chain lol.
Was my favorite tube amp for awhile. Then cayin went on and dropped the Soul.
I enjoy these as well. I don't really rely on one or two but rather have a short list (similar to above) where I triangulate perspectives. The entertainment value on some are reason enough to watch.
Below 1k yes hd600 easy lol above 1k he1000seHD600/650/6XX enters the chat...
agreeeStill the best value rn in the entire hobby imo He1000se
TheMiddleSky
Headphoneus Supremus
I can understand the strong value/performance of HE1000SE in today's price. However, Hifiman headphone (in general, incldue HE1000SE) never really match with my preference. Always too airy, too thin and too soft attack notes, even on powerful tube amp.
If I have to re-start the hobby all over again and start the journey from $2K range, I would choose to save up more and get ZMF Verite at $2.5K.
Edit: Or Abyss Joal, still less than $2K and I also truly like it. As bonus, it is easier to find the match amplifier for Joal than Verite as well.
If I have to re-start the hobby all over again and start the journey from $2K range, I would choose to save up more and get ZMF Verite at $2.5K.
Edit: Or Abyss Joal, still less than $2K and I also truly like it. As bonus, it is easier to find the match amplifier for Joal than Verite as well.
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As someone noted here before, a lot of this content can be highly influential for newcomers into our hobby. It takes time to appreciate the variances in taste and influences behind the various personalities.
For myself, I mostly rely on this community to get inspired and discovered new products that may be worth trying. It’s easy for us to compare notes over time and discover each other’s references and preferences to inform how we interpret our inputs. Eventually, I’ll demo 99% of anything I buy with some very rare exceptions (e.g. rare vintage gear).
As far as specific reviewers, most don’t provide reliable inputs for my taste, except a few, such as Currawong and Golden Sound, whose videos are often informative and helpful.
That said, I do enjoy a lot of the online content and, in general, view it mostly as great entertainment. With this lens, I just enjoy listening to discussions and watching videos about a topic I’m deeply interested in (I similarly enjoy YouTubes in my other hobbies), even when their critical value or rigor varies.
Doug2507
Headphoneus Supremus
Which reviewers do you feel actually wield a large influence on products’ sales numbers?
&
Which reviewers do you trust vs. which do you discount?
I very rarely read reviews these days. Mostly rely on community influence. Some reviewers I find "interesting" but on the whole I find it very hard to discern between what's a genuine unbiased review and one that's got some influence behind it. My paranoia is strong for "professional" reviews based on how much is given free of charge for review, or just out right promotion.
&
Which reviewers do you trust vs. which do you discount?
I very rarely read reviews these days. Mostly rely on community influence. Some reviewers I find "interesting" but on the whole I find it very hard to discern between what's a genuine unbiased review and one that's got some influence behind it. My paranoia is strong for "professional" reviews based on how much is given free of charge for review, or just out right promotion.
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On the topic of reviewers, I do think that many of these YouTube reviewers have an outsized influence on people in the hobby, particularly new people. And that's not a criticism of the reviewers specifically, but more an observation that "influencers" and personalities in general have outsized influence in society these days (I'm talking like an old dude now...). This is particularly true for those reviewers who present themselves as authorities. But, lest we forget, in the past, there were simply other sources of influence. I took home a print copy of The Absolute Sound magazine from my friend the audio dealer and those were the equivalents of YouTube reviewers today. Also, it felt like every other page in the magazine was an ad...
Now for me, I don't look to reviewers for buying advice. That's what many people who are starting out in the hobby use reviewers for, because why not? If you're looking to buy a vacuum cleaner, you'll want to read reviews to see if you're spending your money wisely. Same deal with audio until you figure out your own tastes. But since I have plenty of ways to listen to headphones more myself, I usually don't consider a review useful in telling me what to buy. However, I can still enjoy a review as a view into the reviewer's experiences with that headphone.
The key thing I want to find in a review is how the headphone sounded to the reviewer. And this is often tricky to write well, because it involves describing the perceived sound of music, which is like describing in words a flavor or smell. It's tricky to do, and even trickier to do succinctly. Some might retreat to using a graph, but graphs have their own limitations in terms of HRTF and HpTF variations, and also how different parts of the FR map to perceptions of spaciousness and timbre and impact. I think Resolve once called parsing graph data a bit like reading the tea leaves once you go beyond tonal balance. Comparisons are the best way to explain how something sounds by comparing one headphone with another. I'm less interested in whether a reviewer likes or dislikes a headphone; that's subjective and I may come to a different conclusion. I want to know what they hear from the headphone.
As for reviewers, I've never quite found DMS's reviews to be useful. First, we have evidently very different tastes, sensitivities, and priorities, but I also don't really find much useful info on how he hears a headphone from his reviews. I think he's very sensitive to treble in ways that I'm not, so he doesn't like most Audio Technicas due to their treble while I find most ATs to be perfectly acceptable (other than the ADX3000). So the only thing I can really get from any of his AT reviews is that they're too bright for him, which is basically saying nothing to me. Contrast this with @Ishcabible and his reviews at Den-Fi. I rarely agree with his judgement on a headphone, but I find his reviews to always be very insightful and I can get a good sense of how he hears the headphone from his reviews. And in many cases, we hear similar things in a headphone, but we judge those qualities differently. So while I may disagree with his opinion on a headphone, I often concur with his observations on that headphone. Hence I don't require a reviewer to have similar taste to me to find their reviews useful.
As for the Headphone Show, I'm similar to a bunch of people here in that I like GoldenSound; I find that he combines the objective and subjective sides of the hobby well in his reviews. I respect Resolve for his in-depth knowledge on the technical side of headphones, even though he's too focused on tonal balance for his reviews to be all that useful to me; I'm more about spaciousness and he and DMS don't really hear spaciousness. One of the things I appreciate about The Headphone Show is that they have multiple reviewers and sometimes they do tandem reviews where they have multiple reviewers review the same headphone and we can see how they agree/disagree on a headphone. I think that's a very useful format for showing (particularly to newcomers) of how much variation exists between people's opinions of headphones. Of the Headphones.com crew, I find that I agree with Fc-Construct the most; he usually doesn't do video reviews, but I like his written reviews and broadly agree with his preferences the most. I don't follow any other reviewers with any regularity.
Now for me, I don't look to reviewers for buying advice. That's what many people who are starting out in the hobby use reviewers for, because why not? If you're looking to buy a vacuum cleaner, you'll want to read reviews to see if you're spending your money wisely. Same deal with audio until you figure out your own tastes. But since I have plenty of ways to listen to headphones more myself, I usually don't consider a review useful in telling me what to buy. However, I can still enjoy a review as a view into the reviewer's experiences with that headphone.
The key thing I want to find in a review is how the headphone sounded to the reviewer. And this is often tricky to write well, because it involves describing the perceived sound of music, which is like describing in words a flavor or smell. It's tricky to do, and even trickier to do succinctly. Some might retreat to using a graph, but graphs have their own limitations in terms of HRTF and HpTF variations, and also how different parts of the FR map to perceptions of spaciousness and timbre and impact. I think Resolve once called parsing graph data a bit like reading the tea leaves once you go beyond tonal balance. Comparisons are the best way to explain how something sounds by comparing one headphone with another. I'm less interested in whether a reviewer likes or dislikes a headphone; that's subjective and I may come to a different conclusion. I want to know what they hear from the headphone.
As for reviewers, I've never quite found DMS's reviews to be useful. First, we have evidently very different tastes, sensitivities, and priorities, but I also don't really find much useful info on how he hears a headphone from his reviews. I think he's very sensitive to treble in ways that I'm not, so he doesn't like most Audio Technicas due to their treble while I find most ATs to be perfectly acceptable (other than the ADX3000). So the only thing I can really get from any of his AT reviews is that they're too bright for him, which is basically saying nothing to me. Contrast this with @Ishcabible and his reviews at Den-Fi. I rarely agree with his judgement on a headphone, but I find his reviews to always be very insightful and I can get a good sense of how he hears the headphone from his reviews. And in many cases, we hear similar things in a headphone, but we judge those qualities differently. So while I may disagree with his opinion on a headphone, I often concur with his observations on that headphone. Hence I don't require a reviewer to have similar taste to me to find their reviews useful.
As for the Headphone Show, I'm similar to a bunch of people here in that I like GoldenSound; I find that he combines the objective and subjective sides of the hobby well in his reviews. I respect Resolve for his in-depth knowledge on the technical side of headphones, even though he's too focused on tonal balance for his reviews to be all that useful to me; I'm more about spaciousness and he and DMS don't really hear spaciousness. One of the things I appreciate about The Headphone Show is that they have multiple reviewers and sometimes they do tandem reviews where they have multiple reviewers review the same headphone and we can see how they agree/disagree on a headphone. I think that's a very useful format for showing (particularly to newcomers) of how much variation exists between people's opinions of headphones. Of the Headphones.com crew, I find that I agree with Fc-Construct the most; he usually doesn't do video reviews, but I like his written reviews and broadly agree with his preferences the most. I don't follow any other reviewers with any regularity.
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Allnic is seriously impressive, heard about them yesterday from Danny Mckinney in a phone call, I'm keeping my eye out on their products. Probably pick up one of their amps in the future.
Goldensound is truthworthy as is twister6.
Oh yeah, Allnic products are fantastic. I currently own one of their headphone amp which is the Allnic HPA-5000XL and it makes every headphone I tried sound really nice on it. I especially like pairing my vintage headphones with it like my Audio Technica W10VTG or my Sennheiser HD580 Jubilee.
Old photo, but it’s a cool nigh time shot:
JackarlTwo
500+ Head-Fier
Still the best value rn in the entire hobby imo He1000se
Verite Open in the used market enters chat.
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