Thanks, I’ve shared the Audionotch link a dozen times on this site. In my case it’s clearly neurological and can happen with super low volumes with some treble content.
In that case I’ll give you a pass on the tinnitus testing, but it’s a special case, so the method is probably of fairly limited use for the majority of people…?
I don’t know. Try my playlist or a similar sequence. It starts with gentle female vocals, then male vocals, inserts some badly compressed vocals, then moves to a variety of genres, and onto distortion and trashy/noisy productions. The specific tracks don’t matter, just that they become progressively more complex and potentially fatiguing. I ended the list with My Bloody Valentine, as the creator said producing that album gave him tinnitus. It’s a landmark in noise pop and perhaps an unsolvable issue in audio.
It has value to ME as a reliable method for finding a system setup that I will actually USE over time – fatigue is fatigue. Fatigue largely follows from treble issues and embedded noise. Note that some setups cause me no tinnitus after 3 hours and have no apparent risk at all.
since you are so fatigue focused, have you tried eq’ing away all peaks in the treble region of your headphone? you can use owliophile.com for that
I’ve tried umpteen different things, and yes, treble peaks are the main offenders. My Decware Zen Taboo Mk4 tube amp resulted in a massive improvement. It has kept me comfortable since I got it, and I can use it for hours and hours happily.
Quite curious what kind of specific peaks you’d find using a tool like Owliophile that lets you easily sweep back and forth and set negative filters for. To me it was pretty eye opening how there are distinctly large magnitude narrow peaks and valleys in the treble which are often different between ears, and definitely different between headphones.
Would be interesting to hear back from you, if you want to give that a try. Specifically the peaks you find with the Zen Taboo amp vs using a different amp.
Ranking FR features according to your personal preference and HRTF, from ‘get this off my head’ to ‘this colouration is quite tasteful’
Here’s a few from me:
F: 7-8kHz peaks
E: excess 200Hz bloat
D: excess 1.5kHz muffling
C: lack of 4kHz clarity
B: gradual sub-bass roll-off
A: 2kHz recess
S: whatever the heck HE 1 does
Instead of trying to reconcile audiophile terms to FR features, why not describe it in terms of existing products?
“the HD 800 effect” i.e. shifted ear gain,
“the Focal effect” i.e. that bass contour and excess 1.5kHz,
“the 64 Audio effect” i.e. ear gain dip,
“the Beyer effect” i.e. mid-treble galore,
“the Beats effect” i.e. mid-bass galore,
“the KSE75 effect” i.e. someone putting high-pass and low-pass filter, etc.
If someone associate Beyer with ‘soundstage’ or Beats with ‘slam’ then so be it. At least if they’ve tried a few of these, they can associate their experiences with what you’re saying. It isn’t ideal since it requires demoing some first though.
Hey, thanks for discussing ‘How much should viewers be trusted to know the necessary disclaimers to audio reviews’ on the latest Noise Floor. That turned out to be a really interesting topic! It was great to get your perspectives and to hear there is a meta-discussion / grand content strategy experimentation going on about these issues. Keen to see how future videos approach the concerns about getting the balance right and play with ideas like demarcation between content styles.
One follow-up question (just for here, not for the podcast): how does your concept of 2021 Resolve as discussed in the video differ from Resolve doing impressions sans all the disclaimers (e.g. Softears Volume S)? Would you say the latter uses the traditional lexicon that you say you’ve been trying to move away from? For me, when you said you could do videos with like 30% of what the people want, and 60% of the educational side of things (with the other 10% going somewhere else), my thought was: yes, give me the Volume S style impressions as your subjective impressions part of a review, then tell me all about the ‘nerd shit’ (preferably with some explanation about how you think your impressions are able to be explained with reference the measurements, etc.). Or maybe do the subjective impressions as a separate video, that’s fine too. But do that in addition to the technical discussion about how there’s a 3kHz dip and a 5kHz peak, but it has very smooth treble, low HpTF variation and good EQ-ability.
To be blunt, I’d rather just be genuine and talk about the things I personally find interesting about a product than try to fake the audiophile language game to suit what certain corners of the community are used to. While I have to be considerate of the audience, I’m just going to make the videos I want to make, and in the way I want to make them.
To answer your question, some of that may have been the traditional lexicon, but yeah I’d prefer not to do that personally. The bigger component to that video was talking about how the IEM handled very specific tracks, or passages in tracks, and there are many ways to do that. So in short, I think there are better and more grounded ways to describe sound than to put yourself in the audiophile language box. I’m sure I’ll continue to use some of it, but I don’t want to be bounded by it.
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That’s completely fair, and to be clear I think there is a lot of value in the way you push the community’s understanding forward through these videos. I only got into this hobby a few years ago, but in watching your old content and new I feel like I’ve come along for the ride in terms of understanding sound quality and the reasons why generalising about subjective experience is fraught.
The one thing I don’t understand - and this is coming from a place of interest and curiosity, I’m not meaning to push the point - but are you saying that you didn’t actually enjoy making the Volume S video? Is it a class of content you’d prefer not to make or focus on? Or is it that you don’t mind making that kind of video, but just that you don’t want to have to ground what you say in the traditional lexicon / subjective language?
If it’s the latter, then I am totally on board with that approach. The value in the Volume S video wasn’t at all the language used as such, it was, as you said, talking about how it handled specific tracks or passages, and getting your raw (subjective) impression about the product in a way that I found really engaging and relatable. And to be honest, you seemed to be having quite a bit of fun - and that was great to see!
Yeah it’s 100% the latter. I actually want to do more first impression style videos, since they are also easier to make. Or maybe I can do them but also add in the graphs afterwards, since I do them before measuring but I can still add them into the videos.
Hi, i have a question, i want tu buy a Hifiman edition xs and i want a dac/amp to power this headhpone and maybe some others midfis in the future, do you still recommend the topping dx3pro+? or is it better something like a fiio k7 or the ifi zen dac v3, or do you have another suggestion for the price? im kinda new to this hobbie and im just starting haha
Do you feel like Meze are kind of cheating by listing their headphone weight without pads? In Resolve’s review of the Poet, he states that they are 350g without specifying that it’s without pads which gives Meze an unfair advantage IMO
The differences between amps in that range are usually so small that as long as they all have enough power for what you are going to drive (and in this case they do), you should buy based on features and how much you like the user interface more than based on sound.
I have the DX3 Pro+ and it’s a very competent headphone DAC-amp. For my use case the remote control and the big display that can be read from afar are great. For your use case either of the others may be better suited.
However, this strikes me as an off-topic discussion and you are running the risk of getting called out on it by Griffin live on stream ( 
), so I suggest you ask in a thread where it’s on topic or start one of your own in the right place! 
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Yes, I do. No one listens without pads that I’m aware of. 
And it’s usually realtors that talk about “open concept”. I would bet that one aspect of that design is that they measure about the same for eyeglass wearers.
Edit: I am probably showing my age with this one. In any case, I know you’re probably all at CanJam, but I had a pang of disappointment this morning like I’d run out of coffee.
On another note: one possible topic you could discuss is the development of manufacturers putting in place media embargoes on product reviews to their commercial advantage. I’m not sure if this is a recent development, but the norm for a long time seemed like there would be reasonably steady coverage of a product over a period of weeks to months as review units were passed around from reviewer to reviewer. Now, embargoes are used as a way of ensuring there is a flood of day 0 reviews on your chosen date.
Meze seem to be masters at this - I recall there was so much hype about and expectation about the Alba after positive impressions at whatever CanJam it was, and then when the embargo broke there were about 20 day 0 reviews that dropped all at once (interestingly, yours came later). They’ve done it again with the Poet - I counted maybe 10 youtube reviews in my feed when the embargo was lifted, though this time the reviews are a bit more mixed (I guess the stakes are much higher with a $2k headphone). This is noticeably different from other headphone reviews, e.g. many of the reviews about the Unveiled Hifimans or the Heddphone 2 GT from the same reviewers trickled in over a couple of weeks instead of all at once.
I know this is becoming more common practice, but I wonder about the effects this might have on the industry. For one, it would seem to contribute to the potential for hype trains. I also wonder if it could have negative effects on reviewers who may otherwise have wished to publish their review earlier for some reason (e.g. normal scheduling maybe), or who review the product later, e.g. they might receive fewer views on a video about a product that has already had saturated review coverage. Would be interested on your thoughts on this.
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That is a pretty interesting topic for the crew to cover for sure.
I can see why manufacturers do coordinated reviews, people tend to purchase more products when they could see multiple positive confirmations in a short period of time.
There’s this question I’ve been wondering about lately. When we say a headphone has good soundstage, do we mean the amount/size effect of spaciousness of the sound, or the naturalness and seemingly life-like reproduction of certain sounds…
This might not make a lot of sense to most people but while I found the XS to stage obviously bigger than the 650, I would still pick the 650 as a winner for spaciousness and stereo reproduction qualities being the more life-like one. I often find myself confusing subtle sounds from music as real life sounds due to just how naturally the 6x0 conveys the frequency spectrum.
And well the XS was just stupidly big while having zero redeeming features. What do you guys think?
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