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I've noticed a kind of obsession with mental aberrations and similar phycological phenomena here. While it's important to bear those in mind, it's even more important to know and remember that you are (all of us) not immune to them as well.
I don't want to explicate further and go on about this issue in detail to avoid spaming the thread with more off-topic rants and embarrassing myself with bad English, so I'll limit myself to anecdotal evidence (which seems to be accepted here just fine, at least if it doesn't contravene with the general consensus) for this little argument. I've never defended an expensive purchase before others or myself if I was/eventually became dissatisfied with it. On the contrary, I try to make it known that the product/service in question is a ripoff or, in certain cases, an outright scam. All it takes is to be able to accept the fact that you can make mistakes since your knowledge, experience and abilities are always limited AND that lying to others and oneself always ultimately turns out for the worst.
In this thread we've already seen a person state that they see no point in keeping their Moondrop Variations after getting a pair of Zero 2's. I don't believe tha mindset to be such an exceptional rarity characteristic of only those few who have achieved the highest degree of enlightenment. I would share the sentiment as well, if I wasn't concerned with the slightly better treble extension on Variations, looks and build didn't matter to me at all AND I haven't bought Vari already (or could sell them for at least 60% of the price I paid). I feel like Zero 2's are tuned better overall, or rather have a better tonal balance OOTB. I find Vari's treble to be executed better, though, and since I EQ anyway...
Would I pay 20x times more for Variations now? I honestly don't know.
It's also important to keep in mind that Harman IE is not universally congruent with both subjective and objective factors determining the perceived audio quality and enjoyment for every single person, e.g. individual tastes and HRTFs.
Premium headphone and earphone brands typically go for some kind of "tastefully colored" sound in their products instead of aiming for neutrality. Those who are actually competent at what they do sometimes manage to achieve just that - a pleasing and in a sense unique presentation of sound with it's own distinct character that still manages to avoid obvious faults like huge peaks/dips in FR or easily apparent overall unnaturalness. And even the latter may not be an issue for some, especially if they just end up enjoying it more.
You could argue that it's possible to achieve that yourself with EQ, but it's already a slight inconvenience in any form, and many times more so if you embark on a journey towards discovering your own preferred/optimal sound, which is ultimately endless. That can become incredibly frustrating pretty quickly.
Just a quick interjection to touch on your last meaty paragraph - EQ is a great way to understand and determine what your ultimate preferences are. This is so because it's free and quick to apply a different EQ and then to quickly compare it to your previous. So with different EQ experiments with different headphones based around measurements (mostly done on GRAS for best validity), then you can really narrow down on the general target curve that you prefer. They'll always be unit to unit variation to get in the way, along with some peculiarities of how some different headphone models interact with your own anatomy vs the measurement fixture (eg GRAS), but you'll likely work out the kind of target curve that works for you. Ultimately though, all of that experience is not strictly necessary - instead you can purchase a good measuring headphone, use an Oratory EQ and then tweak the bass and maybe one of two other areas and then you've got close to your best heaphone - so you don't have to go on a major oddissey of adventure unless you want to take it to the nth degree (which some of us do.)
Yeah for a 20x difference price I should be immediately blown away in every way possible by the much more expensive pair, not splitting hairs over minor variations of treble or bass etc. That what's I got when I demo'ed a Blessing 3 Dusk versus a Zero 1.
Yeah for a 20x difference price I should be immediately blown away in every way possible by the much more expensive pair, not splitting hairs over minor variations of treble or bass etc. That what's I got when I demo'ed a Blessing 3 Dusk versus a Zero 1.
That’s false. For one Amir does use the Harman in-ear target. Aside from that there’s no general agreement about bad research at all. This all just stems from Crinacle personally not liking the treble of Harman IE and having some anecdotal evidence that his Professional Reviewer friends don’t like it either, from which he then reverse engineered the argument that the research must be bad. The research admittedly hasn’t been done as thorough as for over-ear, but that doesn’t make the reasoning of Crinacle any less nonsensical.
You don't know what is then. The goal for a target is to get close. It will never be perfect. It can't be when the world of audio has no production standards. The current targets are good enough for us to rally around. The notion that every reviewer cooks up their own, with zero research, is absurd.
You don't know what is then. The goal for a target is to get close. It will never be perfect. It can't be when the world of audio has no production standards. The current targets are good enough for us to rally around. The notion that every reviewer cooks up their own, with zero research, is absurd.
agree that the targets varying by a lot is more or less preference of certain genres that they like which are heavy on bass or certain treble frequencies at 5-7k.
If you look at some harman owned companies taking it easy after the 3k peak. i suspect the research is pointing towards a general trend of backing out of 4k-7k frequencies. In any case if you can see the trend in tuning their in ears over the past 5 years.. any case i agree its mostly following the OG harmon 2017 over ear target more than the 2019 ie target. that was my point. Below is the 2019 IE target which is considered bright by reviewers and also by myself after owning and testing various eq's and genre's.
For the record, I own the Truth Zero:2s, both blue and red. I only demoed the u12ts. They do indeed sound better. I’d put them over my Blessing 2s for tuning though, outside of edge cases.
Well, people are funny in that sometimes they associate words and phrases with certain perspectives in life. If by using a word is a way of signalling association with a certain crowd, then maybe it might not be the most productive thing to do if the objective is to have a fact based, constructive conversations at times.
I want to find out, honestly. I remember many people debating this when the u12t and Truthear Zero were reviewed, and when I tried them both in real life, the u12t blew the Truth Zeroes out of the water. Maybe that's not special at 40 times the price, but ever since then, that's the dragon I've been chasing.
I own a12t (custom variant of u12t), original Zeros and red Zeros. My humble opinion: blue Zeros sound great (albeit a bit shouty in upper mids for my ears, blame my tinnitus), red Zeros are perfect for me and a12t are embarrassingly bad in comparison. Upper midrange and treble are nowhere to be found and there is way too much bass (even with the m15 apex module). They sound muffled, heavy and wrong. All the detail is squashed, vocals sound unnatural, guitars don't have bite…The only redeeming qualities of a12t are 1) the looks and 2) the comfort and noise cancellation, since they're molded to my ear canals. But still, I never use them because I can't stand them without EQ and it's a big pain in the butt to fiddle with the Qudelix 5K on the go in comparison to the tiny USB-C dongle I use with red Zeros.
My advice: let go of this "dragon". I'm telling you from my very expensive mistake of an experience — u12t only seemed amazing to you because of the atmosphere generated by the price tag, the context and the looks. I remember when I tried them the first time in a super fancy IEM store in a fancy area of Scottsdale, AZ, they sounded amazing. But when I flip between my a12t's and red Zeros at home, that magic is replaced by a sobering and painful realization that my brain was tricked by the atmosphere of that fancy place.
If you have 2K burning a hole in your pocket, spend it on records or travel. We have more than enough proof that expensive in-ear jewelry is not worth it.
I own a12t (custom variant of u12t), original Zeros and red Zeros. My humble opinion: blue Zeros sound great (albeit a bit shouty in upper mids for my ears, blame my tinnitus), red Zeros are perfect for me and a12t are embarrassingly bad in comparison. Upper midrange and treble are nowhere to be found and there is way too much bass (even with the m15 apex module). They sound muffled, heavy and wrong. All the detail is squashed, vocals sound unnatural, guitars don't have bite…The only redeeming qualities of a12t are 1) the looks and 2) the comfort and noise cancellation, since they're molded to my ear canals. But still, I never use them because I can't stand them without EQ and it's a big pain in the butt to fiddle with the Qudelix 5K on the go in comparison to the tiny USB-C dongle I use with red Zeros.
My advice: let go of this "dragon". I'm telling you from my very expensive mistake of an experience — u12t only seemed amazing to you because of the atmosphere generated by the price tag, the context and the looks. I remember when I tried them the first time in a super fancy IEM store in a fancy area of Scottsdale, AZ, they sounded amazing. But when I flip between my a12t's and red Zeros at home, that magic is replaced by a sobering and painful realization that my brain was tricked by the atmosphere of that fancy place.
If you have 2K burning a hole in your pocket, spend it on records or travel. We have more than enough proof that expensive in-ear jewelry is not worth it.
I’ll elaborate on this further; I don’t really like the bass on the Truth Zeros. I think they’re too light. I prefer lighter highs, but I didn’t demo the u12ts long enough to know if I could live with that half of it, but I’m sure I prefer both it and the Zeros to the Blessing 2. I demoed more expensive 64 IEMs that I liked less, along with other kilobbuck IEMs that weren’t as impressive to me.
It’s not just the price tag; if it was, I’d have written off the Salnotes Zero 2 from the offset. Instead, I have one coming in the mail and hoping it’s what I’ve been waiting for.
The resistance should be expected after all...
The human brain perceives a disconnect and tries to make sense of it: A $20.oo IEM shouldn't sound better than many $1000 models .. yet here we are: They do.
It seems that , IEM costing more than $100 makes no sense in 2024... There are a plethora of better or at least similar products for less .. And that trend will not stop ... perhaps, excellent , HiFi , IEM, will be soon be given away, with the purchase of ...?
The resistance should be expected after all...
The human brain perceives a disconnect and tries to make sense of it: A $20.oo IEM shouldn't sound better than many $1000 models .. yet here we are: They do.
It seems that , IEM costing more than $100 makes no sense in 2024... There are a plethora of better or at least similar products for less .. And that trend will not stop ... perhaps, excellent , HiFi , IEM, will be soon be given away, with the purchase of ...?
Where are these proofs? All I see here are subjective opinions. I haven't seen any scientific research on the differences (or lack of differences) in sound between single-DD IEMs and multi-armature IEMs.
Where are these proofs? All I see here are subjective opinions. I haven't seen any scientific research on the differences (or lack of differences) in sound between single-DD IEMs and multi-armature IEMs.
Well, people are funny in that sometimes they associate words and phrases with certain perspectives in life. If by using a word is a way of signalling association with a certain crowd, then maybe it might not be the most productive thing to do if the objective is to have a fact based, constructive conversations at times.
If it was a person i would be more careful but other misspells that don't intentionally point to satire or wordplay don't bother me as much as the point of a conversation should be larger than a typo.
