[aaf evo]

Crap, sounds like a direct upgrade and not a sidegrade to the SP3K Cu....thanks for the detailed impressions. Luckily I am not into UM stuff in the slightest so I don't have to spend a few thousand more, I guess.

I haven’t heard the Cu of the SP3000 so I honestly have no clue. Compared to the SS (from memory, which I heard again a few weeks back) the N30 (in solid state mode) is going to pack a quite bit more punch and sound density but not be as soft or laid back. It’s more in your face but does so while remaining very open and 3-dimensional, which is what really drew me in. The immersion with music I felt is so hard for me to describe. Let me know if you get to try it, I am eager to see other people’s thoughts on it!

These were my initial reactions to some Head Fi’ers I chat with on WhatsApp… as you can see it had me by the balls from the start.

 

[DarginMahkum]

Products are not result of philosophical talks. We don't randomly throw 5 capacitors and 10 resistors on a board, randomly connect them and then check how it sound for subjective evaluation. The drivers in your IEMs are not developed by throwing a dice for what material to use where, and checking how that random 'thing' sounds. You don't write random lines of code and expect it to correctly mix the instruments in a recording session. We don't know everything but we know a lot. There's is nothing like 'we anyway don't know how the brain works'. A finished product does not draw the border for technical knowledge acquisition. In fact, gathering an understanding outside the professional context is often common practice in any hobby. Do you think for channel matching they choose someone with good ears and he decides if the channels are matched or not? Do you think the company just employs a 15 year old with "good ears" and s/he decides if the amplifier works as intended? And why should that be considered a sin for the hobbyists?

If this is called a hobby, it is just normal that some people would want to know more than just clicking on the buy button and putting them into their ears until the next hype comes, and repeat the cycle. Wanting to know and understand more is just as human as using and experiencing your last purchase. Whether you do it or not, should not divide people and categorise them differenly.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

Products are not result of philosophical talks. We don't randomly throw 5 capacitors and 10 resistors on a board, randomly connect them and then check how it sound for subjective evaluation. The drivers in your IEMs are not developed by throwing a dice for what material to use where, and checking how that random 'thing' sounds. You don't write random lines of code and expect it to correctly mix the instruments in a recording session. We don't know everything but we know a lot. There's is nothing like 'we anyway don't know how the brain works'. A finished product does not draw the border for technical knowledge acquisition. In fact, gathering an understanding outside the professional context is often common practice in any hobby. Do you think for channel matching they choose someone with good ears and he decides if the channels are matched or not? Do you think the company just employs a 15 year old with "good ears" and s/he decides if the amplifier works as intended? And why should that be considered a sin for the hobbyists?

If this is called a hobby, it is just normal that some people would want to know more than just clicking on the buy button and putting them into their ears until the next hype comes, and repeat the cycle. Wanting to know and understand more is just as human as using and experiencing your last purchase. Whether you do it or not, should not divide people and categorise them differenly.

Did what he posted warrant this reply? All he did to start with was quote a somewhat biased definition of subjectivism and objectivism (not his own), and I think we can all see he's moved on from that.

 

[DarginMahkum]

Did what he posted warrant this reply? All he did to start with was quote a somewhat biased definition of subjectivism and objectivism (not his own), and I think we can all see he's moved on from that.

One cannot just place a mine in middle of the room, and then say 'I moved on'.

 

[Not so fat head]

Finally getting some time with the Helios SE x Go Pod pairing today! Review unit in over the next two weeks from @SoundJedi!

Is that actually comfortable to wear, or is this the “no pain, no gain” approach to sound perfection….

 

[Not so fat head]

Darn, didn’t mean to sound rude or like a troll here, sorry.. I’m really curious about how the dongles feel hanging behind the ears..

 

[fejnomit]

I heard a fascinating talk once by a psychologist on the subject of perception. Among other things he said that current research has shown that, contrary to the "commonsense" notion that perception involves us "perceiving objects and inferring meaning" in actual fact it seems that intead we "perceive meaning and infer objects". There was obviously more to it than that but the general idea is that many of our most basic notions of perception have been completely inverted in recent decades.

Edit: Here is the talk timestamped at the relevant part for anyone interested.

That's brilliant - and that's exactly the implication of the book. Thank you for sharing. Absolutely fascinating.

 

[fejnomit]

Products are not result of philosophical talks. We don't randomly throw 5 capacitors and 10 resistors on a board, randomly connect them and then check how it sound for subjective evaluation. The drivers in your IEMs are not developed by throwing a dice for what material to use where, and checking how that random 'thing' sounds. You don't write random lines of code and expect it to correctly mix the instruments in a recording session. We don't know everything but we know a lot. There's is nothing like 'we anyway don't know how the brain works'. A finished product does not draw the border for technical knowledge acquisition. In fact, gathering an understanding outside the professional context is often common practice in any hobby. Do you think for channel matching they choose someone with good ears and he decides if the channels are matched or not? Do you think the company just employs a 15 year old with "good ears" and s/he decides if the amplifier works as intended? And why should that be considered a sin for the hobbyists?

If this is called a hobby, it is just normal that some people would want to know more than just clicking on the buy button and putting them into their ears until the next hype comes, and repeat the cycle. Wanting to know and understand more is just as human as using and experiencing your last purchase. Whether you do it or not, should not divide people and categorise them differenly.

Yeah, not sure you're really addressing the issues being brought up. Do all the research you want! Read all the white pages! Take classes! Become a professor! Make your own IEMs! Write lengthy discourses about objectivity. All of it is relevant. No one is attacking knowledge. The conversation veered toward consciousness and brain chemistry and the nervous system and how that affects perception, auditory and otherwise. There's room for all of it. The Watercooler is biggggg!

 

[gLer]

All of this philosophical talk at close on 1 a.m. gave me a headache, so I put on some music, which I perceived to be pleasant, and now I feel better.

 

[o0genesis0o]

I think perhaps the darker characterization of this isn't so much that FR is all there is but rather... target adherence is all there is, which is a straightforward misunderstanding of the science.

THANK YOU! This is what drives me nuts when talking with friends in both camp who think measurement = Harman adherence.

Again, I m just thinking out loud here, but I'm curious how this could be taken to be "demonstrated". "Most important" relative to what other factors?

IMHO, graph (aka tuning in this case) is the most important even with uber experienced watercoolers like yourself, even though you don’t look at graph when you buy. Say, for a trifecta fan like yourself, you likely wouldn’t look at the likes of Symphonium Helios twice even though it has (arguably) better “technicalities”, simply because the tonality is not right to you. Your preference for that THICC sound stands in stark contrast to the deliberate dip in 250Hz of Helios. So, if an IEM fails to impress you at tuning (which is reflected in a FR graph), you wouldn’t consider it, thus “most important factor”.

This also demonstrates the difference between graph and Harman adherence.

 

[jambul]

there is a good sample about engineering wise and philosopy about human perception on sound. you can read on firstwatt website on zen i/v converter. The almighty nelson talk about how the opamp iv need to be change due to judgement from the producer ear.the result
they remastered the record and nelson use the non opamp iv

 

[Joe Bloggs]

One cannot just place a mine in middle of the room, and then say 'I moved on'.

Why not reply to the original post in the original thread with a well reasoned argument against that author's flawed definition then (as people there actually already have)?

 

[salwani8888]

THANK YOU! This is what drives me nuts when talking with friends in both camp who think measurement = Harman adherence.



IMHO, graph (aka tuning in this case) is the most important even with uber experienced watercoolers like yourself, even though you don’t look at graph when you buy. Say, for a trifecta fan like yourself, you likely wouldn’t look at the likes of Symphonium Helios twice even though it has (arguably) better “technicalities”, simply because the tonality is not right to you. Your preference for that THICC sound stands in stark contrast to the deliberate dip in 250Hz of Helios. So, if an IEM fails to impress you at tuning (which is reflected in a FR graph), you wouldn’t consider it, thus “most important factor”.

This also demonstrates the difference between graph and Harman adherence.

I cannot speak for others, but in my case, I know that FR is definitely not the most important factor. The things I like in equipment are more in the technicals....timbre, soundstaging & imaging, attack and decay presentation, resolution, dynamics....none of which are represented on an FR chart. Tone, within reason, is quite low on my checkbox list. I trust that any IEM discussed here has reasonable tuning. And I can very easily enjoy a bassy set or a brighter set or even a 'weird Japanese tuning' set, as long as they do well technically. In my view, its the technicals that play a more important part in PRaT, and the ability to take my breath away, both in admiration of the product, as well as in connecting me emotionally to the content. I appreciate that many of the technicals are also subjective preferences (biases) that are personal and developed over years, and still developing with new experiences.

 

[Sajid Amit]

Again, I m just thinking out loud here, but I'm curious how this could be taken to be "demonstrated". "Most important" relative to what other factors? Just speaking for myself, one of the reasons I moved on from putting too much stock in what a graph of an IEM says before hearing it for myself is that I found I could not divorce an IEM's graph from its driver configuration, driver type & quality as well as the skill of implementation. Driver type is the most obvious factor for me, as I've indicated elsewhere, and I'm in the camp of people who deny that, say, the intrisnic differences between BA and DD drivers (or between single, hybrid or tribrid driver configurations) can be reflected and discerned from and FR curve. So out of a handful of factors I could perhaps accept that FR holds the most individual weight...but it doesn't tell enough of the story for me to ever feel justified in saying anything absolute about an IEM just based on the graph alone. Or something.

I heard a fascinating talk once by a psychologist on the subject of perception. Among other things he said that current research has shown that, contrary to the "commonsense" notion that perception involves us "perceiving objects and inferring meaning" in actual fact it seems that intead we "perceive meaning and infer objects". There was obviously more to it than that but the general idea is that many of our most basic notions of perception have been completely inverted in recent decades.

Edit: Here is the talk timestamped at the relevant part for anyone interested.

Brilliant. I agree. @Rockwell75

Nonetheless, good to see you here mate @Resolve

 

[Rockwell75]

IMHO, graph (aka tuning in this case) is the most important even with uber experienced watercoolers like yourself, even though you don’t look at graph when you buy. Say, for a trifecta fan like yourself, you likely wouldn’t look at the likes of Symphonium Helios twice even though it has (arguably) better “technicalities”, simply because the tonality is not right to you. Your preference for that THICC sound stands in stark contrast to the deliberate dip in 250Hz of Helios. So, if an IEM fails to impress you at tuning (which is reflected in a FR graph), you wouldn’t consider it, thus “most important factor”.

I've learned over the years to not try and place artificial limits around what I may like or dislike and to always judge things on their own terms. The Dunu Zen Pro, Oriolus Isabellae, JVC FA10K are all IEMs that, on paper, I should have hated but ended up as some of my very favorites. There are many others I thought I would love but did not. Fundamentally for me I think tuning IEMs is an art more than a science. I prefer it an expression of soul and inspiration, more than the result of some mechanical process, algorithm or "greatest common denominator" approach, and I think the IEMs I gravitate to tend to reflect this ideal.

Products are not result of philosophical talks. We don't randomly throw 5 capacitors and 10 resistors on a board, randomly connect them and then check how it sound for subjective evaluation. The drivers in your IEMs are not developed by throwing a dice for what material to use where, and checking how that random 'thing' sounds. You don't write random lines of code and expect it to correctly mix the instruments in a recording session. We don't know everything but we know a lot. There's is nothing like 'we anyway don't know how the brain works'. A finished product does not draw the border for technical knowledge acquisition. In fact, gathering an understanding outside the professional context is often common practice in any hobby. Do you think for channel matching they choose someone with good ears and he decides if the channels are matched or not? Do you think the company just employs a 15 year old with "good ears" and s/he decides if the amplifier works as intended? And why should that be considered a sin for the hobbyists?

If this is called a hobby, it is just normal that some people would want to know more than just clicking on the buy button and putting them into their ears until the next hype comes, and repeat the cycle. Wanting to know and understand more is just as human as using and experiencing your last purchase. Whether you do it or not, should not divide people and categorise them differenly.

To be perfectly honest I don't have any idea what you're on about here or how it is in any way connected to anything I've said.

One cannot just place a mine in middle of the room, and then say 'I moved on'.

What are you talking about? My comment in the EE thread? I assure you that the "mine" had long since blown up in that thread before I turned up. If you're refering to my citing the objectivist and subjectivist definitions from the Holt glossary I was not quoting it as gospel so much as pointing out that something resembling that "dispute" has been a fixture of audio discourse since the dawn of time (or at least since the early 90s when the original Stereophile article was published).