Brain burn-in is real. Mechanical/electronic burn-in is not.
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The preferred amount of bass is more closely related to context (mood, listening time, environment, etc) than correctness.
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This take is very interesting to me but what are you basing (heh heh) it on? I mean, the midrange treble errors inherent in headphones is well known but what makes you think the bass shelves are related to this? Personal experimentation with EQ?
If I weren’t a conehead, my HRTF wouldn’t be pe so peaky in the upper midrange.
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I do not think publishing the curve is the problem at all, actually!
My bigger complaints are that most of the “education” consumers actually receive on Harman comes from reviewers who don’t understand the full breadth of the work, and that if people want to read the research themselves, it’s paywalled.
Fwiw, Sean has pointed to a paper in the past that indicated personalized treble EQ results in a change of bass equalization vs. without personalization, but I’d need to find it again.
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So, while I 10000% agree with people having the freedom to buy whatever memes they want, I think there’s are two underexamined downsides to doing this:
- it keeps companies producing bullshit in business when they actually should have died because their products are bullshit
- the value system of high end buyers—whether we like it or not—trickles down to the lower price tiers, which is why we see $100-500 sets marketed on how many drivers they have or the fact that they use meme drivers like MEMS or bone conduction.
If we let people buy whatever they want (and to be clear, i still err slightly towards this side vs. telling everyone buying memes that they’re Big Stupid), it does actually make the market of products worse than it otherwise would be if we shamed this stuff more vociferously.
This is actually a pretty interesting one lol. I can’t say I disagree after thinking about it for a few seconds, especially since like… they’re charging so much, they can include a simpler carry case in addition to the nice one lol.
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I feel he fundamentally missed how unpleasant the idea of any sort of “poo corner” would be to imagine 
Yep, exactly. The better I’ve gotten at EQing treble and upper midrange, the less bass I’ve needed.
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Not spicy, I think, but I do want to shout out that I simply like and agree with this take 
Never thought of that. Might just give it a go.
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Porta Pros > KSC75.
As an all rounder the KSC75 is obviously better, But when you got a collection, any good Mid-Fi headphone like the FiiO FT1 would be superior to the KSC75, The Porta pros on the other hand has a Special tonality that is just irreplaceable.
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The Sennheiser HE-60 are a bargain when you can find them on the used market. Extremely comfortable, with that effortless, detailed yet smooth estat presentation, and very reasonable tuning.
This is a terrifyingly based take, I fear.
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Everything takes time. Given the impetuous nature of our current society and tech industry though, I’m surprised there haven’t been more companies or individuals willing to move forward and break things by doing their own in-ear measurements of speakers, instead of just following Harman’s lead.
We need more of that, I think. Without it, anything else is just subjective speculation, and farting in the wind imho. And I mean that in the nicest and most constructive way possible. 
The Porta-Pro is the quintessential all arounder. It works on phone calls and travels well. It is a superior rack for non color matched Yaxi pads. (Yellow and black for Steelers fans).
Because it is so convenient it gets a lot of use. Call you back in 10? There’s a YouTube I can check until you get out of the can.
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HD 6xx series is MID and if it was released today at its MSRP of $500, it would be lost and simply blend in with the multitude of other headphones out there.
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Honestly I’m torn between this simply being a terrifyingly bad take, or going even further the other way and saying that if HD 600 was released at $500 today people would like it even more, suddenly finding it has better technicalities.
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It would need to have Ethiopian goat leather it and made from old growth forests…
But yes.
Let’s go even further. No headphone will ever match up to the HD 6X0 because people have hyped it up for years and years with its magical timbre and source synergies and now people are gaslit to think that if it’s not the HD6X0, the midrange is bad.
Which conveniently explains why all the people newer to the hobby (and more into IEMs) don’t tend to be quite as passionate about the HD 6X0.
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