Thx for the suggestion! I’m sure I’ll spend some hundred hours with the Real World Audio! Looking great so far.
A great review here:
I’d say my top 3 channels are sandu (sound news), lachlan (passion for sound), and currawong (forgot his name).
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LOVE a good comparo! 
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He’s probably my favorite Youtuber, he tries to cut through the bs in the hobby and audio industry. Plus he has intelligent conversations with some of my favorite people in the business.
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I like his channel as he goes right after some spicy topics like cables, chord m scaler, and dacs. He’s not a measurement purist but he also doesn’t rely on industry sales slogans either. Just hooks the gear up and it able to articulate what he’s hearing in comparison to other gear.
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From my point of view, Currawong’s a pretty reliable YouTube reviewer as he seems to have a lot of internal consistency in that I have a general understanding of what he likes, what he doesn’t, and he doesn’t seem to be dropping videos just to get traffic (yes, I know consistency is the refuge of fools).
Internal consistency and a standard by which everything is measured are two of the most important qualities I look for in a reviewer. Reviewers that have a schtick such as being overly dramatic, overly negative, confrontational, etc. in order to generate traffic, do nothing for me and are at best infortainers, and at worst, a detriment to the personal audio community.
Regards,
Vic
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I agree currawong’s channel has been around for a long time. His location in Japan gives him access to some very unique gear but I think he’s also limited to gear that comes from EU/US so he can’t get everything. I’ve asked multiple times for him to review Mass Kobo 394 ii as he’s in Japan and he knows the owner. It would also be awesome if he could do Luxman and Accuphase speaker amps and do HP reviews of Sus/1266 off the speaker taps. OJI is also a japanese company that makes great HP amps and I recommended for him to review as well.
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I watch only some true crime videos…
Thanks to Taylor and Skeeb23 for this video, you have addressed some very good topics that have brought the essence of our hobby back to the forefront, ——the music—— everything else is just decorative accessories.
To be honest, the emotion of the music always comes across, I’m offering you this test:
Listen to this song:
regardless of whether it’s on a good system,
or on a bathroom speaker,
if you manage to hear the whole song without showing any emotional physical reaction, not even the movement of the little finger or a slight nod of the head,
—then you simply have problems with this hobby—
I don’t know anyone who doesn’t react to it.
—————
All the technical sky-stormers on the market who are meanwhile getting out of hand financially.
The gear and the reviewers with the finest measurements and gear for measuring that supposedly prove that anything deviating from ideal measuring is worthless.
And reviewers who think that other reviewers, who don’t use measurements are
Hmmm, I don’t know what to say
For normal mortals, there was a bit of arrogant performance here and there in this video.
—————
We should recognize again that,
all of that is worthless if you can’t recognize the emotion in the music because of all the technology.
Thank you both for kind’a grounding me/us.
Sorry if I stepped on somebody’s toes
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So… I’ve seen some of this sentiment around and have to say that quite a bit of that has been taken out of context and misrepresented.
There seems to be a rather unfortunate partisan split within the hobby of those who are interested in measurements and those who aren’t. I don’t imagine I’ll be able to reconcile this with a forum post, nor to convince anyone of my position on the subject here. But I do want to ensure it’s not getting misrepresented.
The point was never that people who don’t do measurements are ‘inferior audiophiles’ or bad reviewers because of it or anything to that effect. That is not my position, for these reasons:
- Even though it’s gotten more accessible in recent times, I don’t think we can expect people who are getting into this hobby to A) have access to measurement equipment, and B) to be interested in measurements in the first place
- There is nothing wrong with people posting purely subjective impressions and engaging in dialogue to that effect
- The majority of the discourse should focus on the subjective aspects of what we’re hearing, with music. The data is a tool to help guide and anchor the perspective, not lead it, and those of us who do focus on measurements are not the only ones permitted to have an opinion.
- An individual subjective report can still be signal, rather than noise. I do not know if this is something my co-hosts would agree with but that’s how I feel about it.
With that said… and I’ve said this in other places before, for anyone wanting to get a clearer or more comprehensive picture of how these products perform, they are at the very least well served by including measurements in their understanding of it.
Without that, they are taking at face value things they can’t possibly know to be true, and are at the mercy of human fallibility - and I include my own subjective reports in this as well. We should strive to do better than that when our money and ultimately our experiences are at stake.
So again, the position is not that purely subjective reports are useless, or that people providing them aren’t potentially putting out good content. It is that for those truly interested in getting a more complete picture, it is worthwhile for them to also seek out measurements. Not to limit the scope of what we care about.
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Thank you for your contribution to explaining your opinion.
Your video has obviously offended a few reviewers and even ordinary audiophiles, not because measurements are important in this industry, but because of the tone in which all four of you acted towards those who do not include this aspect of frequency measurements in their evaluations, but “only” rely on their ears and then give their evaluation based on the experience they have had with other comparable products.
It is also sometimes difficult for some viewers to accept your kind of brand bashing here and there.
Imagine you have bought a Grado,
a Bayerdynamic
or a Campfire Audio In-Ear
with your hard-earned money and then watched your video.
In which you not only find out that the product you bought measures and sounds terrible, but, as in the case of Beyerdynamic, you would drive over it several times with your car and then finally finish it off in a car wash. 
That sounds funny, of course, but it hurts people who can’t buy new headphones right away because of your reviews.
And yes, these headphones are tonally “difficult”, but my personal question is always, can this be explained in a less “drastic” way for potential owners of such devices, and is it possible to improve these devices and at what cost?
And in all three cases mentioned, I can say YES from my experience.
With the DT 990, which is popular with professional gamers, it is simply a dampening provided by Bayerdynamic itself, because they know about their „famous“ peak 
And then you don’t need a heavy pick-up truck to solve the problem.
With Grado, it is F-Type ear pads and Class-A amplifiers,
which make it difficult to find other headphones that can reproduce this type of music
“much” better.
And with Campfire, as with all other manufacturers, a suitable tip and the output impedance of your playback device are very decisive for the sound of your earphones. In this case, it is for my ears:
And the device sounds great.
—————
However, it does require a bit of effort, which I personally always put in before I give a final verdict on a product.
Even if my verdict is negative, someone else may still have liked it, and in order not to step on their toes, I always add my assessment:
„In my ears“, or „from my point of view“.
I usually don’t mention the truck as the final solution.
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There are a couple of specific things in here regarding your examples but I don’t want to skip the general point.
I imagine it to be that the discourse surrounding products that have meaningful issues/flaws in the measurements could be more kind to those products for the sake of the feelings of those who may have purchased them.
While there is a case to be made for this hobby to be kinder to others, it’s important for folks to realize that criticism of a product is not criticism of the people who purchased it, nor is it criticism of their preferences.
And I get that it can be difficult when this happens. It maybe feels like they’re directly saying to you “hey that thing you bought, it isn’t that good, you did a bad thing with your money”. A reviewer should try to conduct themselves appropriately, but the onus on the viewer is also to recognize that this person may just have different preferences, have different ears, be looking for different things.
Case in point, for our live show that you referenced, we’re regularly critical of each other’s favorite products, knowing that each of us doesn’t really care because we know we have vastly different preferences from one another. Griffin and Blaine couldn’t be more far apart in terms of their preferences for example.
But when speaking about these products, we shouldn’t feel afraid to say it like it is - or say it how we feel it is. We have to be able to plant a flag in the sand when we feel strongly about something. As far as I’m aware, nobody is attacking or criticizing those people who own those products when doing so.
Moreover, catering your review to the feelings of the people who purchased those products is particularly unhelpful to all those who might also find those products objectionable, even if you happen to love them.
Doing this amounts to pandering to people looking for purchase validation, and that only hinders the discourse on these products.
And I say that as someone who has owned some beyerdynamics, CFA IEMS, and many other headphones that I now find objectionable, in large part because I didn’t know any better - I didn’t know what else was out there and didn’t even know my own preferences.
Everyone just said they’re great, and I didn’t have a reason to look for something better. I’m glad I was able to get out of the cycle of purchase validation and was exposed to criticism of those products so I could find something that suits me better.
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Here we differ in our approach, but at the same time we complement each other in some way.
Roughly speaking: you tell people that the products are theoretically not really recommendable for the reasons mentioned, and of course you are right from a purely factual perspective, but when people have already bought them, I try to use my experience with these devices, to show them how they can make the parts a little less “unbearable”.
Because it is always my ambition to get things working and possibly improve them.
Same, same……
Will this be the end of my solution……… may be, may be not, who knows 
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Is that the empyrean 2? I haven’t seen that color if so.
Yep, it‘s the Sunset Edition
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Crazy. That’s an exceptional collection.
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It is always good to have reliable partners behind you, in your case it is headphones.com in my case it is
&
from whom I can always get headphones, amplifiers and DACs to test, if I am interested to.
If necessary, I can also get reasonable conditions for a purchase in some cases.
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Interesting discussion. Thanks for bringin this up, Lothar_Wolf.
I haven’t had a chance to watch or listen to either of the two latest livestreams (7-27-24 & 7-21-24) in their entirety yet. But wish a little more time could’ve been spent discussing the Harman research (specifically some of Floyd Toole’s work) in the Jul 21 stream. I wouldn’t necessarily call Erin of Erin’s Audio Corner an expert on this subject. But he’s had some pretty good discussions with Dr. Toole and some other luminaries in field of audio research. And uses the Klippel NFS, which is largely based on this. So it would’ve been interesting to hear some more of his opinions and perspectives on these subjects.
I was also sad to hear that Crinacle will be dialing back on his reviews. Just as I was when both Tyll Hertsens and metal571 stepped back or away from that. I don’t use IEMs, but I respect Crin’s views on headphones, and his subjective criteria for ranking them.
I’ll have to watch more of the videos before commenting on some of the other stuff above. I don’t think measurements always tell the whole story though. So I look at both subjective opinions and also some of the objective data when evaluating and making decisions about products. And try to do alot of my own listening as well, when I can. And find value in all the above.
I can also forgive some of the young pups at Headphones.com for feeling like they know better, I suppose. Because they have access to more data and equipment than most of us do. There is still quite a bit of art though in the interpretation of measurements. And I think most reviewers who use measurements would probably be well served to recognize that, and have some humility about it.
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My take with measurements is that they hold reviewers accountable (to some extent). For example, it would be hard to take a review seriously if it claimed that Beats by Dre are the most neutral, reference sounding headphone when we have ample evidence against that. Reviews are inherently subjective to begin with, so I don’t think there’s anything wrong with liking something that might “measure badly”. Reviews should be about explaining why someone might like (or dislike) something. Measurements are a supplement to that.
Ultimately, I think reviews are an exercise in understanding. It doesn’t mean that one’s understanding is always correct, but I think it should be reasonable. Measurements help us develop a more robust understanding of the gear we hear by providing a different perspective that we can have dialogue on. Some might want to focus more heavily on the measurements, others might not, and I think that’s OK. There’s room for all sorts of reviewers in this hobby.
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Exactly, and this really is the point. And we DO always make individualized judgments about these products in those evaluations. There are some cases where people will use them as like a checklist, like does it tick the harman box? yes? okay it’s good - no? disqualified. That’s not really a useful indication of how it sounds to a given human. But using it as a reasonable indication of how it might sound to people, to ground an evaluation or perspective, to hold us all accountable… it’s extremely useful.
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