Yeah I think some of this is just semantics as terminology for these things varies among people. I think no matter what there is going to be opinion and subjective thoughts. Look at Tyll’s reviews. That is how I try and format my own reviews. I like to evaluate build quality and comfort first which will inevitably be a mix of objective observations like materials used, weight, quality of parts, etc as well as subjectively how it feels and fits. For sound, I feel a full review would evaluate the frequency spectrum (measurements may or may not be needed). But it helps to at least talk about quantity and quality of the spectrum heard and how they fit in together. Again, some of this is objective here like quantity of mid-bass as that can be measured. Or notable treble spikes are objective things that can be analyzed. But that will also involve subjective opinions in how you feel that level of bass sounds as a whole in the entire spectrum or whether those treble spikes make the headphone harsh or sibilant. It doesn’t have to be super technical, but there should be some critical thought into understanding why the sound signature sounds “good” or “bad” to you. That really might be what distinguishes a “review” vs an “impression” to me. For me, impressions are more like bullet points of thoughts. You just say stuff like “this headphone has a really nice bass response that works well with electronic music”. Those types of comments are great for getting a feel of a headphone and whether or not to even consider it. But a full review helps me actually understand the details of the headphone and what it is doing such that it sounds a certain way. This can even be applied in the physical attributes as well. And impression would be like “headphone felt heavy and it started to get uncomfortable after 10 minutes”. But a full review would be more critical in thought like “headphone weighs 475 grams so it is on the heavier side of the spectrum, and the headband has a very rigid shape with pleather pad material that doesn’t compress such that it clamps too tight and I get a hotspot on the top of my head that gets uncomfortable after 10 minutes.”
Basically, I feel that writing a full review takes a significant amount of time/work to put together. When getting ready to write a review I often spend hours listening to the headphone, staring at its FR graph, trying different genres, and really trying to understand critically what I am hearing. And then I will spend even more time volume matching against other headphones and doing A/B switching back and forth. I also try it on different source gear and note how things change. It just takes a lot of time to actually fully understand a headphone and quite a bit of work to write out all those thoughts into a full article. Those types of reviews I feel deserve a separate space. Impressions that are those quick notes you can make without having to spend that much time really thinking about. So those I feel work great in the official threads. Hopefully that helps clarify my distinction.
