Listener's Official Headphones.com Community Forum Thread

[listener]

Hey all! I wanted to start a thread based on a bit of “forum-centric” ideation I’d been doing.

So I realized that on most audio forums there are yeah, a bunch of threads, but usually one or two threads that are so popular that they represent a majority of the site’s traffic and end up being a hub of sorts for all kinds of discussion about products, the state of the hobby, measurements, manufacturers, etc.

Upon reflection I realized that we don’t have any threads like that (at least, not ones that are super active) and I’d actually love to have a place on the forum where I can just kind of upload whatever I’m thinking about, as well as serve as a hub for people to find me if they’re not super active on Discord or other forums.

So here it is, and here I am! This’ll be my little corner of this forum where I talk about whatever I wanna talk about at a given time, and hopefully y’all will be around to hang with me while I talk about… whatever really

If ya have any questions for me, feel free to put em here, as long as they’re not purchase advice!

Listener’s Headphone Ranking List

Listener’s IEM Ranking List

[Shaye_Inge]

This should be exciting. Will this also a be a hub for others to share what they might be thinking about the audio hobby as a whole?

[listener]

Sure, it doesn’t need to be topical. Can just be anything you’d like to discuss that you wouldn’t mind me giving my thoughts on.

[listener]

Something I’ve been considering lately is our volume of review content. Frankly I get the impression that most people wish we did more, and I share this desire, and I’m hoping this thread can help with that.

Part of why this idea of "reviewer-specific’ threads is interesting to me is because it’s going to give me an opportunity to talk about more product, both in terms of being able to give my take on product I’ve received that I’ve not deemed worth a full review, as well as give updated takes on products I’ve reviewed a while ago but may have new context on.

Here’s a great example of an IEM I’ve received this year that I didn’t deem worthy of a full review: the OoopusX OP.24.

Simply put, this IEM just kinda stinks.

I was hoping that, as the marketing material suggested, the tuning switch would be enough to offer two meaningfully different treble responses.

Unfortunately (using Mark’s measurements here because apparently I didn’t even bother to save my measurements at the time, but they aligned with his data), OP.24 just ended up being a choice between a harsh, gritty Harman-like signature, and that same signature but with slightly more upper bass/low midrange.

What didn’t help OP.24 was how ghastly the comfort was, how cheap the shell and switch felt, how rough the nozzle profile was, and how terrible the included cable was.

Basically every part of the package here was bad, and it was from a completely new brand under the ShenzhenAudio umbrella, which to me said absolutely no one was going to care about content on this IEM, which is why this is the first you’re seeing me mention it despite the IEM coming out months ago.

But even at its $50ish price, it’s a pretty bad value compared to the typical IEMs available around $20-30, which again is probably why you haven’t seen many other people talking about this IEM, and why I’m not going to recommend it.

---

Now, there are plenty of other times when the IEM is actually reasonably solid but for one reason or another, you won’t see content on it (often simply because there won’t be much interest from our audience, who is primarily over-ear headphone enjoyers).

But regardless of how the product ends up, I’m hoping this thread offers an opportunity for me to change that & start throwing out impressions for products with less prep needed and more regularity, without having to iron out a full, polished content piece on it.

Let me know if thats something you guys will be interested in, or if you have any other ideas for stuff I can do in this thread!

[Nuance]

@listener

But regardless of how the product ends up, I’m hoping this thread offers an opportunity for me to change that & start throwing out impressions for products with less prep needed and more regularity, without having to iron out a full, polished content piece on it.

That’s sounds great. I’m looking forward to it!

[Funelas]

Do you think the reason that a “Normal” tuning is so risky with headphones is because Sennheiser exists and it’s value (both because it goes on sale pretty often, and their aftermarket care is exceptional insofar as headphones are concerned) is just very hard to compete against for anyone looking for “Normal-tuned Headphones”

IEMs looked at the headphone market, and falsely(?) concluded that since most headphone manufacturers are making their own “Special” sound signature, that is also what most audiophiles want.

An HD6X0 for IEMs will just push the rest of the market into each chasing their own “Special” tunings.

[Argha]

Pure for example (Even though I am optimistic) it’s not getting anything near 650 status.

Now the events that I went to , people are ready to pay >$2K on an IEM, just because it’s doing some crazy things in the FR. By Crazy I mean abnormal (like 6db boost in 12K / dip lime valley in 8Khz) and they perceive it as neutral.

And people rarely do care about tonality mostly, it’s always Detail/Layering/Resolution/Seperation 80% of the time on my watch. Which are not signs of a house sound (which I think doesn’t exist except some brands like - Tanchjhim).

And considering the fact that , most IEM users are new. IMO we can’t hardly conclude that. But let’s accept that Objectively Good Sounding IEMs are boring AF.

[listener]

@Funelas

Do you think the reason that a “Normal” tuning is so risky with headphones is because Sennheiser exists and it’s value (both because it goes on sale pretty often, and their aftermarket care is exceptional insofar as headphones are concerned) is just very hard to compete against for anyone looking for “Normal-tuned Headphones”

IEMs looked at the headphone market, and falsely(?) concluded that since most headphone manufacturers are making their own “Special” sound signature, that is also what most audiophiles want.

An HD6X0 for IEMs will just push the rest of the market into each chasing their own “Special” tunings.

I think the reason a “normal” tuning is risky is because the understanding of headphone sound (frequency response) is rudimentary enough among most listeners that there is a need to explain what they’re hearing in terms other than frequency response.

People have had to develop a language to describe sound separate from frequency response—even though what they’re hearing is frequency response. This language (obviously) proliferates much quicker and much more naturally because it requires no underlying understanding of sound. I’ll call this “audiophile language.”

The discourse is dominated by this language, both in terms of how enthusiasts speak to each other as well as how these products are marketed. This means not only that this is how these products are talked about, but its also how they are thought about. This is a problem for two reasons.

For one, it means even the people making or buying these products are often thinking using the “audiophile language” rubric instead of focusing on what matters (frequency response).

But perhaps even worse, it (among other forces) has resulted in most people thinking the “audiophile language” refers to things that are actually acoustically distinct from frequency response, which has meant that manufacturers are often making a conscious choice to focus on tuning their product to elicit the positive “audiophile language” responses instead of focusing on frequency response.

After all, the “audiophile language” is both understood more confidently (though certainly not any more correctly) by a wider pool of consumers, as well as ultimately more exciting to most consumers. One assumes consumer confidence/excitement translates rather directly to sales.

RE: the comparison to Headphones w/ Sennheiser, yes there are still plenty of over-ear headphone brands who are way more focused on playing into the “audiophile language” and expectations than tuning for neutrality/normalcy. Some of these brands do rather well. I’m not sure IEM brands looked to this as a model of how to make products, instead I think its more likely that the headphone and IEM spaces are filled with customers who are primarily speaking “audiophile language” and holding an “audiophile” value system.

Until we fix this aspect of community education/communication—or until brands get the memo that there are a ton of people who want neutral headphones—I don’t see this changing, and frankly I think IEMs are way further away from this because there’s basically only one large-ish manufacturer who seems to pay attention to what the community wants (Crin) and most people usually just decide to hire him for consulting instead of having any interesting takes on “neutral IEMs” of their own.

I’m not sure an HD 6X0 of IEMs will push the market any further into “special” tunings, we’re already up to our ears in “special”

[Spearthrower_Owl]

I see you’ve posted a curve on squiglink of the Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000. (Or at least I think it’s you.) Have you done a review?

[listener]

Review should be out tomorrow!

[SaazerSpalt]

I was listening to the recent podcast on YouTube in which Griffin and Andrew discuss how IEMs have sort of stagnated while headphones have had a stellar 2025. Great convo, but there was a part where Griffin was discussing the Truthear Pure and the limitations of the physical setup and the challenges that are presented when trying to achieve certain tuning qualities. “We couldn’t have less warmth while also having the midrange be better than the Hexa … We couldn’t have th slower treble length-mode thing be better without overdamping the midrange in the 2 to 3Khz region.” Andrew nods in understanding, I’m sitting here listening and thinking “This is fascinating, and I know nothing.”

I’m certain a lot of knowledge like this comes from constant exposure, years of experience, absorbing and doing over time in a way that sort of accumulates a strong fundamental understanding. I’m not a part of the industry, my professional life couldn’t be less aligned with the science of audio reproduction, but I am a curious person by nature and I love learning and challenging myself intellectually despite (possibly because) really not being all that smart.

Griff comments at one point in the podcast that some of the culture surrounding IEMs and how people prioritize intangible technical qualities demonstrates a misunderstanding of the fundamentals of audio reproduction. So, where does one even begin in understanding it? Where should I start in building a good basis of fundamental knowledge for how this stuff works? I apologize for how vague this question is, but I find this sort of thing so much more interesting than the marketing and consumption side of the hobby. I’d love to intuitively know what frequencies I’m hearing, I’d love to understand driver technology and the engineering choices that go behind these products, I’d love to understand more fully what Griff was talking about when describing the acoustic challenges of tuning an IEm or headphone. But this stuff is surprisingly difficult to google, in part because I’m likely not using the right terms and I’m not even entirely sure I know what to search for anyway.

Regardless, I figured I would muse about it here, and apologies for the wall of text.

[Resolve]

Just moved your thread over here since it’s a good opportunity to continue these discussions.

[NickZ]

I’m thinking about jumping on the Edition XV train but can’t find any information on whether the front volume is open/vented or sealed. I have noticed that open/vented front volume works better for me.

In your travels with the XV have you been able to tell if the front volume is open/vented?

[Spearthrower_Owl]

Bravo!

Great review: Audio-Technica ATH-ADX7000 Review: Bass + Space = AT’s Best Open-Back – Headphones.com

I was hoping you’d like them, but I also expected it to be a tough test.

Perhaps I have a head shaped like the designer’s, as the ADX7000 seems to hover on my head like a pair of comfy, airy ear muffs, and perhaps that also helps with the treble balance: It’s one of the best things I’ve ever heard.

Cheers

[listener]

@SaazerSpalt

“We couldn’t have less warmth while also having the midrange be better than the Hexa … We couldn’t have th slower treble length-mode thing be better without overdamping the midrange in the 2 to 3Khz region.”

The midrange is handled by a single balanced armature driver, which has a response like this (it’s not an actual measurement, just a simulation to get the idea across).

Now obviously something with 16 dB of 3 kHz and 8 kHz with no bass isn’t likely to be very appealing to anyone, so they add other drivers to handle the other parts of the response (add bass with a simulated DD shown in red, fill in the gap in the 5 kHz region, add upper treble with treble BAs shown in blue). Again, none of this is real measurements, just examples.

But when it comes to the midrange driver, which handles very critical parts of the audio band, we don’t just want to use crossovers (networked lowpass and highpass filters) to tune this region, because crossovers take up a lot of space inside a shell. One could use tubing as a sort of acoustic lowpass filter—and the Pure does use a bit of tubing throughout—but again the main constraint is space. Pic shows an example of how the midrange BA response would change (purple) with a low-pass filter (teal).

What Pure (and Hexa) primarily use for the tuning of both the midrange as well as treble BAs is physical damping—little bits of material with a specific resistance that damp the resonances (lowering their magnitude and widening their Q/bandwidth). Physical damping has an effect more like what’s shown in the image below (damping shown in pink, response after damping shown in blue):

However, because I joined the tuning process midway into the journey, because this was not a proper collaboration, and because Pure needed to be a very inexpensive IEM, we really only had a few things at our disposal: the crossover value of the bass DD to the midrange, the acoustic low passing of the tubing from the BAs to the nozzle, and physical damping of the BAs in the nozzle.

The thing I was referring to in the moment you mention is that we had to (among other things) increase physical damping on the midrange BA to both downslope it enough to hit the JM-1 + 10dB slope target we were aiming for, as well as reduce the magnitude of the resonance you see around 8 kHz. This required, if memory serves, stacking two separate Knowles dampers on top of one another to get the correct amount of damping for our needs, but it also meant—because of how blunt an instrument damping is, that it would affect the eargain peak around 3 kHz too. But to get the slope in the 300-2kHz region right and damp the 8 kHz enough, compromises had to be made.. Hexa in blue, Pure in black.

@SaazerSpalt

So, where does one even begin in understanding it? Where should I start in building a good basis of fundamental knowledge for how this stuff works?

Read Sound Reproduction by Floyd Toole, especially the new 4th edition which has a lot of headphone-relevant information that the 3rd edition didn’t, thanks to contributions from Sean Olive.

@SaazerSpalt

I’d love to intuitively know what frequencies I’m hearing, I’d love to understand driver technology and the engineering choices that go behind these products, I’d love to understand more fully what Griff was talking about when describing the acoustic challenges of tuning an IEm or headphone. But this stuff is surprisingly difficult to google, in part because I’m likely not using the right terms and I’m not even entirely sure I know what to search for anyway.

Check out this post from the grandfather of technically-literate audio reviewers Tyll Hertsens. Fantastic read that goes deeper into the topic of balanced armatures specifically.

[listener]

It is indeed vented! There’s porting around the circumference of where the pads meet the baffle.

[listener]

It’s a good headphone! Easily my favorite open back AT headphone, Shiwaku-san is cooking.

[SaazerSpalt]

Seriously, thank you so much for taking the time to write such a detailed response! I understand what you were talking about in the podcast way better now that you’ve explained it like you did. Also thank you for the further reading, I’m excited to dig into that!

[listener]

No problem, man! Let me know if you have any further questions.

[listener]

Okay, so I’ve received a massive pile of stuff from Linsoul and I’m going to be working my way through it gradually with some impressions while adding it to my (yet to be released) ranking list. First up:

Kiwi Ears Étude - $110 USD from Linsoul.com

Beryllium DD + 3BA + Vibration Transducer

I’m choosing to talk about this one first because its one of the weirder driver setups of the IEMs provided and it has some pretty strange consequences for use… and because it didn’t come with retail packaging, so I figure its best to get the ones out of the way that I don’t need decent pictures for.

They come with a solid amount of eartips, though I think they’re all very acoustically similar (similar core length and bore size) with the main difference being the black tips are seemingly slightly narrower in the bore. The included cable kind of sucks, very thin and wiry like the old Truthear Hexa/ZERO: RED cable, and quite microphonic… though that might be because of the IEM itself.

There is a Driver Meme™ at play here for sure, as the Étude includes a “vibration transducer” or what some people call a bone conduction driver. If we abandon marketing speak… this is essentially just a rattle. Googoo gaga.

For all of you mercurial little babies out there who are indignant without their rattle, unfortunately I don’t think the Étude delivers on what people often mythologize about with this driver type. The bass is seemingly modestly boosted but not crazily so, the midrange to my ear is quite lean with a fairly early ear-gain rise, and the treble seems to have a typical forwardness around 5 kHz and 12 kHz.

Furthermore, the inclusion of the “rattle” has really weird quirks. For example, if you click your teeth together while the IEM is seated in your ear, your head sounds like you’re inside a jack-in-the-box. Sproing!

As a result, I can’t say there’s anything really new and good about this IEM despite the driver memes. There’s a bit of bass bumpiness that has a decent interplay with the midrange texturing and its modestly “detailed,” but I get a pretty glaring sense of incoherence and lack of neutrality with Étude which means I can’t recommend it.

Additionally, this IEM will be going on my (as of yet, unreleased) ranking list, and I’ll be doing rating/scoring as well.

The ranking/rating system used will be purely sound focused, rated out of 10 possible points, and consist of a weighted sum between Bass, Midrange, Treble, and “X-Factor,” the latter of which can be seen as a “technicalities” score, “bias” score, or whatever you want to call it. Scores will be rounded up to the first decimal place.

The weights are currently: Bass 20%, Midrange 25%, Treble 30%, and “X-Factor” 25%, but these may be subject to change. My current highest scoring IEM receives a 7.3/10 for sound quality.

Score: 3.8/10

Haven’t had a chance to measure yet, will do that once I’ve got the time.

EDIT: Measurements below

Raw

Compensated (to ∆ ISO 11904-1 DF)