Resolve's Headphone Ranking List

[generic]

@johhnnnyooops

Anyone else have a “guilty pleasure” / terribly recorded set of stuff that they have to figure out how it fits into their chain that’s optimized for something else?

I put a ton of effort into dealing with suboptimal sources, as that’s the biggest audio chain challenge. The punk/new-wave/hardcore of the 1970s and 1980s is some of the worst technically. But even today there is a lot of stylistic vocal compression and rhythmic modulation (e.g., EDM) that’s not too pleasant to my ears.

See the intro rationale for my 50 track fatigue-evaluation playlist:

Headphone Evaluation: Test Tracks

Here is my 50 track, 3+ hour headphone evaluation playlist. I don’t generally write full reviews and focus on music over equipment. I seek an accurate presentation of music that lets me forget about the hardware. This list is oriented toward evaluating presentation, the suitability of a setup for different genres, and assessing fatigue. Fatigue is a big issue for me, and many of my purchases were driven in a quest to be able to listen all day without ringing or unpleasantness. These are TEST AN…

It’s not so hard to make a good recording sound good. It can be quite hard to make a bad recording tolerable.