Wow! Rant away! Love it!!! Thanks for this well thought it response! Totally agree with you. Interesting you mentioned about mood. There are times when I feel the Starlights are just too bright, but then there are times when I feel they are just perfect. You are so right when you say you cannot reduce subjective to a science. That's human nature and hubris on our part to think we can. The more I think about it, the more I believe, like you, that it is an art form. That's why reviews are so dangerous and worst still, when they reduce it to a score. Like wine for instance. While a particular wine score can give you an idea of what the wine might taste like, until you actually experience it for yourself, you would never have given the wine a fair chance, and for that matter, your palate the opportunity to experience the wine and to come to your own opinion of the wine. It's sad to see how the wine business had to bend over just to appeal to certain wine critics. That really spoilt it for the wine business. I hope the iem business does not go down that some route.In my view your question is a good one, as I have never tuned earphones, I can only express my opinion, however inexact it might be....my opinion that is.
Definition of science [Oxford Dictionary]:
"the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment."
Definition of art [Oxford Dictionary]:
"the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power."
I believe humans observing and understanding and imaginatively representing nature (art) contributes a large portion if not the majority to tuning what our ears perceive.
Attempting to study and replicate nature (science) is a worthy human pastime but in my view plays a very little part, if at all in tuning. Graphs reduce sound to a chart and may tell the reader something about the sound but graphs do not replicate sound. As a good friend once said, "no one ever listened to a graph". Graphs are merely an indicator. He went further:
"We all like guides, and we even need teachers, but to have such hubris and belief to think that we can grade sound is bizarre. We are trying to make the subjective, objective, and make the right brain, the left brain." Partially paraphrased but in essence his words.
A reviewer said, those who do not believe graphs are important, do not understand or know how to read graphs......it is complicated, or words to that effect! REALLY!
I beg to differ, I have seen many more complex human endeavours.....graphs are simply an attempt to replicate sound in the form of a chart. Further, there are variations in the equipment used, manner of use of the equipment and even placement of the equipment, so not an exact science! It is a human attempt to study and replicate nature. As humans we think we are the pinnacle of natures creations despite the fact that with each new generation we discover how little we knew in the previous generation, the human condition! For heavens sake, we do not yet understand the "language" of dolphins, on our doorstep yet and we believe we have conquered space??? That will be the day I would applaud our achievements. We have so much to learn...but for now, let us stick to audio.
Then there is also what we each hear, we do not know what the other person hears, add to that the various equipment we use to listen to music and then our preferences. Someone said there is an 8k peak on a set which is dreadful, "you must be deaf if you do not hear it", again I make reference to track, source and preferences, and yes, age, but I believe age is overplayed in this equation, there are young people who do not hear it, so simply put, some are more treble sensitive than others.
You cannot reduce the subjective to a science. The chart is merely an imperfect guide, which I would happily refer to as an indication of what to expect from a set of earphones but not the precise representation of the sonic characteristics of a set of earphones.
To answer your question, tuning is, in my view, an art form which reins supreme, with one caveat, subjectivity. Regardless of how well a tuning is to one set of ears, someone out there will hear it differently, because of their music, their equipment, their preferences and even their mood on a given day, but above all, we are all slightly different from each other thus our hearing may also be different.
I have no objection to graphs but I believe we must put them in perspective.
Bear with me @yaps66, this is my rant of the day, I will keep it down to a maximum of one a day as the doctor prescribed!
My Starlights are back in my hands now, so I took a break from another set of IEMs to listen to them for a few minutes and what joy! Clarity, purity of tone yet not bass shy....As you say some days they are just right and on other days something else. This is why I have had great difficulty getting rid of IEMs, although some would argue (and they be right) that I am hooked to this hobby!
While I definitely agree, because everyone has different ears and personal preferences, I would still love to see manufacturers develop at least one product line that targets the Harmon 2019 curve. It's a pretty generic, satisfying sound signature to aim for, and slight deviances from it can have meaningful impact on the resultant sound. It's just painful on my wallet when companies try to be "special" without really thinking through what their approach will do to the resultant product. Take TRN deciding that they needed to make a 15BA per side IEM with a PTSD-inducing graph. It could have been a nice product, but they didn't approach making it special with as much diligence as is actually necessary to make it work well for anyone but the most die-hard treble-heads.
Experienced wine tasters are just as affected by the color of what they drink as are Head-Fi forum members are affected by the color of the headphone cables. And the Dunning-Kruger Effect is as alive and well in those circles as it is here.
Yeah, I only really care about cables when the added resistance of having used too small a wire actually has a detrimental effect on the sound quality. For the most part, you're not going to see much of a difference as long as they aren't incredibly cheap cables. Coating the wires in silver can dramatically improve the performance of an otherwise inadequately small wire gauge, since silver is the best conductor of electricity that isn't a super-conductor. As for the people who swear by cable rolling, that's their prerogative and their choice of expenditure. If they say it makes a difference to them, then I'll believe them and keep on keeping on with my silver clad 8-core cable, because it does what I need it to do without any fuss. I don't have the time, money, or inclination to buy enough stuff to test it and prove or disprove their claims.
I do agree with you, but it is not so simple. In the case of deep concentration and mindfulness, it is possible to notice and focus on minute details of whatever arises and notice purely arisen details and differences. Regular Concentration and Vipassana meditators experience this. I would say you are correct but there are states of mind in which you are not correct. It is important though to point out how easily the mind can set up it's own personally flavoured view/zeitgeist that is purely subjective, but interpreted as how something is.
When it comes to things which can be proven or disproven imperially, that's usually the route I prefer to approach them in. The difference in performance on certain cables can be done in such a manner and, to an extent, has been. The problem is found in the extreme diminishing returns on investment. If you find it worthwhile to invest hundreds to thousands of dollars into cables to chase that minute difference, then I'm glad you have the disposable income for such endeavors. It's an enviable place to be in life that I would truly love to be able to experience. Regardless, people mentioning in reviews what effect changing between copper, silver coated, and solid silver wire offers to the sound signature of more sensitive IEMs can be useful, particularly as those cable types can be relatively achievable. As for the more esoteric materials, I'll just have to take their word for it (though graphs would be even better).
I just bought my most expensive cable ever for £23, I can't see me spending any more than that. The Faaeal Cables and TRi Through cables I bought and like are around £10 or so each. Good because no financial harm done and they keep me happy. I have no inclination to get into the higher end cable world.
Here is a bit of Crinacle´s post on it: "You hear the term “colouration” getting thrown around a lot but here’s how I see it. When the tonality of the sound gets skewed to any direction, it goes from having a neutral tone to a coloured one. Skewing towards the low frequencies creates a “dark tonality”, while skewing towards the higher frequencies creates a “bright tonality”. Being lower-frequency-biased puts the focus more on the fundamentals and lower-order harmonics, which subjectively gives the instruments some extra richness and heft. On the other hand, being higher-frequency-biased puts the focus more on the higher-order harmonics, which can boost the clarity of the instruments as well as improving the perception of “air”."
Here is a bit of Crinacle´s post on it: "You hear the term “colouration” getting thrown around a lot but here’s how I see it. When the tonality of the sound gets skewed to any direction, it goes from having a neutral tone to a coloured one. Skewing towards the low frequencies creates a “dark tonality”, while skewing towards the higher frequencies creates a “bright tonality”. Being lower-frequency-biased puts the focus more on the fundamentals and lower-order harmonics, which subjectively gives the instruments some extra richness and heft. On the other hand, being higher-frequency-biased puts the focus more on the higher-order harmonics, which can boost the clarity of the instruments as well as improving the perception of “air”."
https://crinacle.com/2021/06/04/the-tonal-technical-dichotomy-the-ief-evaluation-system/
And I agree with him. Graphs can give you a good idea of the tonality/signature of the transducer, whether it is having a lot of treble and making it an overall bright sounding tonality. Or having a lot of bass and making it warm.
What we cant tell however, is the technicalities. Stuff like how big the soundstage is, how much detail or how good the imaging is. We cant tell that from a graph and that is where our ears are better. BUT I do believe that some of these factors can be implied with graphs.
For example:
The soundstage, air and micro-details are very limited on the Zen. Why? Well, it rolls-off in the upper-treble, that area bottlenecks those 3 factors a lot.
Meanwhile, we can see that it got quite a lot of of lower-treble, what does that imply? It implies that it has a lot of macro details, and that is exactly what I hear with them.
Then we have the Oxygen. See how it has quite a lot of upper-treble? Its not a coincidence that the soundstage is very wide on it, as well as being very airy and having very good micro-details.
Then we have the Tape, and looking at the graph it looks like it has around the same upper-treble quantity as the Oxygen right? So it should have a similar soundstage, air and micro-details with my logic. But no, it doesnt, it loses in the air and soundstage while it beats the Oxygen in micro-details.
Basically, I believe that we can tell the tonality of the iem pretty accurately based on graphs but with technicalities its not as certain but it does have some implications on it.
