Well, you haven't learned anything but posturing hoping to score an argumentative point. You are wrong factually anyway as I provided my listening test experience and did so precisely with what is wrong with the response of the headphone: "First impression out of the box was inoffensive but pretty boring sound. There was almost no deep/sub-bass response ." But no, you only want to hear people reinforcing that your buying decision, not any search for knowledge and objective information.
Would you kindly stop assuming wild stuff and change the tone. Being on this new and exciting interwebs doesnt give you the right to sound like an six-grade trying to mark his turf
- I am not trying to score anything here, this thread is likely to be the only time I drop by
- I mentioned the few short impression sentences that are in line with the FR which is either off or right in your books, this doesnt make a review a review. There is some variation depending on the mood and bias, but usually its in line.
- the whole point is, that your "right" is very questionable for this very scientific reasons you seem to be very excited about
- I dont need a validation by reviewers after I buy my stuff, I do my research before I buy something, including checking the graphs. Most importantly I listen quite a lot to a particular unit before I make a purchase descision, good thing nowdays its just that easy to try the headphone for yourself at least in europe and US.
I listen to every speaker and headphone. I do so because in every case I want to assess how much truth the measurements are telling. That in most cases subjective, after listening to those products, agree with the research is a feature, not a bug. That is what the research attempted to do: predict listener preference and it gets it right majority of time. Occasionally, I will go against the measurements and members give me grief for it. Wilson TuneTot comes to mind. I am cool with it as I could be wrong, or the research is right that it can't always predict preference.
And oh, if I don't listen, we hear people like you immediately claim the review is no good because "he didn't listen." I listen and now that is not good for you because I didn't give you a playlist? Really? You are that lost in this endeavor?
- use of "people like you" is part of your group think dogmatism problem." You are talking not to a hostile ideology but to a singular person that is simply not in the same boat with you opinion-wise.
- "ocassionally" is the keyword. Its rare and in 9 of 10 cases you dont. That people give you shit for slightest subjective deviation from the dogma here, is the consequence of the "review" culture of your own making, which as a social being you are likely more to follow than not.
- In my books anyone who spent less than a solid week with a piece of gear is not ready for a review, but thats my subjective preference when it comes to reviews based on my own experience.
- As a reader / or lets say consumer of the stuff you do: 1. I prefer the reviewer to spend considerable amount of time with the product. 2. Do his research about the options the company offers, pads and variants-wise. Especially with the amount of options ZMF offers it simply obvious that you didnt do you job as reviewer. I had to point you at the possibility of you not using the stock pads and it was up to you to confirm the configuration with the company. If the pads you got with the unit are the stock pads in the first place. Apart of that we will never know which mesh was installed on the unit and which wood it was. All of that factors are important to both subjective impression as well as the messurements. Its a question of ethos. Right now, people who read your review have no idea which configuration of the headphone was used to take the messurements. And thats the very objective part you like to brag about.
Other than that as a reader I want to understand the musical preference of the reviewer, since from my experience some gear works better with certain genres and some is a better allrounder. Therefor a reference tracklist is important, both subjective taste and recording quality/ tuning-wise. Just as well as the gear that was used in the chain while the reviewer was trying the unit. I can see for example why people might prefer harman target tuning with pop music or edm in shorter listening sessions. I can see why some people prefer to use certain headphones with solid state only, OTL or transformer coupled amplifiers, certain tubes, and so on. There are many variables in this hobby to be considered when it comes to music reproduction and preference. That what makes it fun for many of us. All of those factors are often considered by private reviewers on head-fi, simply to give information to the reader, so the reader gets some reference points to make his or her conclusion. All of this are obvious things and its rather wild, that someone who "reviewed" the amount of gear you did, isnt putting this variables in his "objective" equation or at least mention those as reference points for the reader.
you are baffled by nothing. Your designer has shown us no insight, no data, no studies, nothing to back up the choices he has made in the frequency response. He keeps saying the only justification is that he knows what he is doing and he knows what goes on in customer's head. To that end, we now know that he has made decisions that are simply not backed by how you properly evaluate listener preference. This is precisely what many headphone designers do with no compass as to what makes good sound. You have to put your trust in the hands, err ears, of this one person and go by faith.
Let me decide what I think and what I dont agree about, seriously whats up with your tone? Its not my designer, I buy gear from quite a few different brands and own a collection of cheap and more expensive audio gear. I dont buy gear because of the pricetag or because of the looks. And while I really like Zachs work (especially when it comes to tuning and creating unique, realistic and fun sound reproduction) I am the first one to voice criticism, privately and publically. For example head-fi, without me being attacked by any mod (I am yet to see any mod on head-fi btw). Apart of that Zach gave an insight about his tuning process, repeated several times that harman curve was something that was considered during the development. You chose to ignore that and again push out assumptions instead of arguments.
Saying that, the way the designer approaches the tuning is entirely his thing just like its entirely the thing of a muscision or a sound engineer how a track is mixed.
Its not the job of the makers to create a research for you about why they are successful with what they do, its your job as a supposedly scientfically thinking guy to try to grasp why its the case. The market reflects if the descisions that been made by a creator are valid or not, especially when it comes
to longer periods of time. In case of ZMF the descisions seem to be more than valid for ZMF target audience. Considering ZMF is not a marketing heavy company that is buying influencers left and right (but often just sends review units to random enthusiasts), and worked its way for past 10 years to their current market position against a financially much bigger competition, should at least hint you that there might be something about the tuning that A LOT of people like, not just about the looks and marketing, which is a very comfortable and somewhat cheap thing to assume in this argument in the first place. And yep I dont see much scientific thinking here, just the usual consumer bias. The disrespectful tone, is not something that speaks for your open mindness as supposedly scientifically thinking person either.
There are some misguided designers like you say. But there are many who follow proper science and engineering and like what we do as much as we do. The list is incredibly long. I routinely get emails from luminaries in the industry praising our work and saying it is "daily read" to keep up with what the industry/their competitors are doing. To be sure, participating in forums is difficult. Membership here is tough: there is no police going around defending manufacturers like you see in head-fi. At a drop of a hat a forum sponsor there can get someone banned, their posts deleted, etc. We provide no protection like that. So you better be on your game. Fortunately we have people who know their stuff like the CTO at Genelec. Chief designer at Neumann. CTO at KEF.
And of course, this is on top of the researchers whose work we cherish. You routinely see Dr. Toole here. And Dr. Olive. And they reference us in their work. See this article from Dr. Olive:
https://acousticstoday.org/wp-conte...ty-What-Do-Listeners-Prefer-Sean-E.-Olive.pdf
With the state of current research andthe market situation you are not in position to speak of "misguided". There is no "proper". There will be people who share your point of view, there are plenty who dont. There will be companies that are to small to deal with the backlash that you can cause, there are plenty who will speak up or just ignore you for good. We dont have enough statistical evaluation about who agrees with you in the industry and who doesnt. the rest of it is your confirmation bias.
Again I am yet to see a single moderated head-fi thread where somebody is being shut down because of his opinion about a product.
Could you please provide examples where on head-fi people are being shut down on the regular basis because of their opinions could hurt a company?
Regarding the research I read some of the articles and stuff that is availible to the public. 64% are even not 2/3 that prefered Harman tuning. Considering the margin of the possible error with the rather small sample size and to my knowing the fact, that we dont know which genres been listened to, how the recordngs been mastered, which chain was used, which gear was used and how this particular gear performs with different tunings, the part that the people are mostly harman employees doesnt make me think as adamantly as you about the conclusions made and how I should intepret it. I only could partially do this if I would know that same tuning will sound the same no matter which headphone I use. Which is not the case. Otherwise we all could buy a Sony MRDZX110, EQ it and be done with it, which even you hardcore followers aint doing for some esotheric reason.
Imho a lot more research must follow before we come to a generalizing conclusion like you already did. Please read up about how such experiments are validated in sociologically and what is considered a proper sample size especially with the amount of variables in play as here and how carefully scientist usually are about the interpretation. Funnily enough on the so subjective "folkore" and "esotheric" forums like head-fi you will find a lot of people who are genuinly interested in harman research and audio science in general but manage to adaquately curb their expectations and see the problems that we face evaluating the data. Much more people than you will find here. Thats what ideology does to science.
And yeah, I am very suprised that ACS as main paragon of this research is mentioned.... by the people who made the research, Its really something to be proud of.
I dont want to invalidate the research that was done, I find it helpful myself its great that we see things moving in that regard, like we do in other fields like colour reproduction. But I see the vast potential for more research in this area, epecially done by independed research groups and with much larger sample sizes and many more variables considered. And to be honest even then I dont see, mastering stuidios to apply the same tuning to their recoridngs, artists to use the same tuning and designers to stick to one certain FR never deviating from it. Anyways, I think I said enough and I highly doubt to see anything productive coming from a discussion with you on this board. Have a good one, maybe some things get stuck, plating seeds, who knows.
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