One can say whatever they want about crinacle, but what you can't say is that he does not like the data/measurements. I happen to like data than subjective aspects as well, so tried to do some analysis of his database/rankings using common data analysis methods. The results are summarised in this notebook and can be modified to your liking. Basic idea was to test whether
1) you (or at least crinacle himself) can judge headphone/IEM by it's graph as he always says (and the answer is yes - FR is the single most important thing about an IEM)
2) what actually makes or breaks an IEM. Here the answer is also surprisingly simple and given by a figure below:
Here "feature importances" are plotted (thick bluish line) as function of frequency (and remember, FR is the main thing which defines ranking in crin's table).
What one can see in this plot is that two single most important features are the presence peak and dip at ~2 and ~5 kHz respectively.
This is something long known even among experienced amateurs, but it took sound engineers quite a long time to understand importance of this region.
Note that both peak and dip are important (peak gives what's perceived as details and if there's no dip then sound will be too harsh), and their frequencies/amplitudes are a matter of personal biology/preference and what works for crin may not work for you. On the other hand, if you know a headphones you like, you can use one of the graph comparison tools to select similar ones with perhaps a touch more detail (higher peak) or less brilliance (deeper dip), or "more bass" as desired.
The bass is also important, by the way, but perhaps not for crin
In any case, even if you like the bass, I'd first look at presence region.
Another conclusion is that tech used in IEMs is relatively unimportant unless there's Piezo. That's likely because Piezo is operating in presence region, so if anything goes wrong with the implementation, you're screwed. At least that's my interpretation. Feel free to correct/expand analysis if you like, the linked repo also contains some code to digitise FRs from the plots on crin's website, so can be also useful in this regard.
1) you (or at least crinacle himself) can judge headphone/IEM by it's graph as he always says (and the answer is yes - FR is the single most important thing about an IEM)
2) what actually makes or breaks an IEM. Here the answer is also surprisingly simple and given by a figure below:
Here "feature importances" are plotted (thick bluish line) as function of frequency (and remember, FR is the main thing which defines ranking in crin's table).
What one can see in this plot is that two single most important features are the presence peak and dip at ~2 and ~5 kHz respectively.
This is something long known even among experienced amateurs, but it took sound engineers quite a long time to understand importance of this region.
Note that both peak and dip are important (peak gives what's perceived as details and if there's no dip then sound will be too harsh), and their frequencies/amplitudes are a matter of personal biology/preference and what works for crin may not work for you. On the other hand, if you know a headphones you like, you can use one of the graph comparison tools to select similar ones with perhaps a touch more detail (higher peak) or less brilliance (deeper dip), or "more bass" as desired.
The bass is also important, by the way, but perhaps not for crin
In any case, even if you like the bass, I'd first look at presence region. Another conclusion is that tech used in IEMs is relatively unimportant unless there's Piezo. That's likely because Piezo is operating in presence region, so if anything goes wrong with the implementation, you're screwed. At least that's my interpretation. Feel free to correct/expand analysis if you like, the linked repo also contains some code to digitise FRs from the plots on crin's website, so can be also useful in this regard.
