Abyss Diana V2 2nd Review (Headphone)

[Deleted member 27694]

A customer that gets his information on Head-Fi.

That is some expensive “advice“ your probably better of buying actual snakeoil…

 

[carlosmante]

Thanks to Amir’s reviews, I’m beginning to think that the headphone business is saturated with a lot of snake oil. Price /= quality.

"≠ "

 

[TheWalkman]

"≠ "

Not on an iPad keyboard. How about this, ”<>”?

 

[Deleted member 27694]

≠

Not on an iPad keyboard. How about this, ”<>”?

… press and hold =

 

[Tachyon88]

The unit that was reviewed here is a Diana v2, not a Diana Phi. You can verify this by looking at pics of the Diana v2 and the Phi on Abyss’ website to see the visual differentiators.

I had my doubts if it was a PHI as well....yellow driver with black aluminum, looks like a V2. If it is a V2 then driver consistency varies wildly.

 

[Jimbob54]

I had my doubts if it was a PHI as well....yellow driver with black aluminum, looks like a V2. If it is a V2 then driver consistency varies wildly.

This is definitely worth clarifying with @amirm and/or the member these belong to.

I think that there is some form of lazer engraving somewhere on the chassis that says exactly what each Abyss is (you can probably pay them a few $$$ not to do that).

 

[Tachyon88]

This is definitely worth clarifying with @amirm and/or the member these belong to.

I think that there is some form of lazer engraving somewhere on the chassis that says exactly what each Abyss is (you can probably pay them a few $$$ not to do that).

Yeah there is, if you pop the pads off it will say either PHI or V2. I know they recently changed the headband to black on the PHI, but the housing should be painted grey. I think some of the drivers were purple, but on some videos and images I have seen I did not see purple on the PHI's.

 

[Somafunk]

edit : ignore what I wrote below, i was being a doofus, I deleted cookies for headfi and now showing threads.

Looks like the ”abyss threads/forum posts“ on headfi have been pulled since the the publication of this review (unless I’m too dumb to find them), perhaps that means abyss are about to release their own measurements to contradict amir’s findings

 

[Tachyon88]

Looks like the ”abyss threads/forum posts“ on headfi have been pulled since the the publication of this review (unless I’m too dumb to find them), perhaps that means abyss are about to release their own measurements to contradict amir’s findings

Diana thread is still there.

 

[Somafunk]

That’s weird, it’s showing when I click your link but if I go to the website/forum in another tab it’s not there?. Perhaps I am too dumb to find them after all.

edit, deleted cookies and that has sorted it, all showing now.

 

[Rthomas]

So much inconsistency between the objective vs subjective reviews of this company.

Headfonics 9.4, Headfonia "best headphone category", Majorhifi "Platinum award

Headphones.com. W/DMS mod
View attachment 131574
The midrange and treble look completely different

Headfonics??? You must be joking right? One of the biggest shill sites ever.

Their BS numerical ranking scale starts at 8 and gets close to 10 as prices increase to $4k to $6k (for headphones)

I've never ever seen a bad review for anything expensive.

A utter waste of time that site is unless you want pretty pics of gear.

 

[amirm]

Yeah there is, if you pop the pads off it will say either PHI or V2

I just checked and the bloody thing says Diana V2. The owner had told me it was the Phi.

I put a note in the review and changed the title.

These damn companies need to start putting model names/numbers on the darn headphone. It should not be up to us to have a decoder sheet on what is what when even the owner thinks it is a different unit. They keep model numbers the same for search engine optimization (so anyone looking for old and new gets the same hits and that raises ranking Google searches). They benefit but the customer and lonely reviews like me get confused this way.

 

[roskodan]

Well, Crinacle measured both versions, hopefully he really did. No difference in fr tho, so who knows.

The 500Hz distortion of the second sample tells us everything about how much these are worth.

 

[milosz]

To those who suggest bringing some kind of false advertising claim against these manufacturers, that can be very complex as many mfg. claims are based on subjective criteria. Take for example a claim that I think Abyss seems to make for their products - "the highest resolution headphones" (look at the Abyss FB page they seem to be making this claim)

OK, so now we have Amir's measurements, and other similar engineering data could be carefully gathered.

But their claim is "highest resolution" - what does that mean, exactly? THAT is what you'd have to show was false in your tort. Resolution has solidly accepted engineering definitions in optics and electronics, but I can't find a standard engineering definition for "resolution" as applied to transducers or to acoustics generally, except maybe when discussing sonar. So how do you disprove something with no accepted definition?

One could argue, I think, that a transducer with the hideous THD that Abyss drivers are noted for could not possibly offer "high resolution." But that would end up being an argument over subjective qualities not amenable to scientific proof.

I seem to remember that Abyss claimed they made the "best headphones in the world." I didn't find this claim in a cursory web search, so maybe they never said it. But if they did, then you would have SOME ammunition in a false advertising beef, because clearly their products have WAY more THD than many other 'phones, and I think it's generally accepted by engineers that more THD is bad and less THD is good.

You might also be able to beat them over the head with their uneven frequency response, but then you'd get into an argument over the Harman Preference Curve. AFAIK, the Harman Curve is not engineering cannon, it is the result of findings by one set of researchers at a commercial concern and I don't know if it ever went through the typical peer review vetting and attempts to reproduce the results that are generally accepted as criteria for acceptance in the STEM world. Did Harman write a paper and submit it the IEEE or anything like that? I don't know, maybe somebody here can educate us on that matter.

In any event, bringing a false advertising claim to court would require that the plaintiff had standing and damages. Standing would be established if you bought a pair of these monstrously overpriced headphones, and your damages would be the $4000 you spent on the things. Legal costs to bring such a suit would be substantially more than the $4,000 a plaintiff might recover from such a suit, so the only way this would work out economically would be if a class action would be brought on behalf of a large group of people who bought these phones. I'm not sure you'd find enough Abyss owners to make it work, though perhaps as Amir's measurements gain wider circulation enough Abyss owners might feel cheated and be interested in participating.

I wish some wealthy engineer would endow a foundation to attack sellers of audiophile snake oil in the courts. Firms like Machina Dynamica and Bybee ought not be able to enrich themselves on their dubious claims and junk science without suffering punishment,

 

[amirm]

I think if we are going to litigate, there are far, far better targets than this headphone. At least this one produces sound which is a feature you can use. There are countless devices that do nothing for audio yet are marketed with the same imaginative words.

A better approach may be what we are doing. Keep showing that objective data matters and raise awareness of consumers. Over time that ought to do some good. Whether it happens before I am too old to type, is the question.

 

[milosz]

I think if we are going to litigate, there are far, far better targets than this headphone. At least this one produces sound which is a feature you can use. There are countless devices that do nothing for audio yet are marketed with the same imaginative words.

A better approach may be what we are doing. Keep showing that objective data matters and raise awareness of consumers. Over time that ought to do some good. Whether it happens before I am too old to type, is the question.

This will only work for people who are rooted in facts and reality. Recent events show that there is a large population who eschew solid epistemological methods and are content to accept fantasy and live inside echo chambers. I think that the snake oil sellers will always have customers no matter how much evidence against their claims is available. I'd like to see them forced to defend their claims in court, to spend the money to answer to reason.

There used to be consumer protection law in New York that forbade claims about fancy speaker wire, but such laws to protect the unwary and ignorant were swept away by the caveat emptor doctrine of the free market mysticism that now rules the day.

 

[LTig]

Perhaps off topic but from here on out the only headphones I'd consider buying are wireless anyway. I'd love to see the higher end offerings from Apple, Sony, Bose and Sennheiser tested.

Don't forget the AKG K371bt, the wireless version of the K371 tested here. I got me one and @amirm's EQ setting works so I think SQ is comparable.

 

[markanini]

There used to be consumer protection law in New York that forbade claims about fancy speaker wire, but such laws to protect the unwary and ignorant were swept away by the caveat emptor doctrine of the free market mysticism that now rules the day.

Regulations are not going to make the population more smart of informed, quite the opposite.

 

[Aperiodic]

Another overpriced, under-engineered lemon from Abyss. At least they're consistent

 

[Tachyon88]

I just checked and the bloody thing says Diana V2. The owner had told me it was the Phi.

I put a note in the review and changed the title.

These damn companies need to start putting model names/numbers on the darn headphone. It should not be up to us to have a decoder sheet on what is what when even the owner thinks it is a different unit. They keep model numbers the same for search engine optimization (so anyone looking for old and new gets the same hits and that raises ranking Google searches). They benefit but the customer and lonely reviews like me get confused this way.

Well, at least we got another sample of the V2. Looks like you got more bass on this one, so I think that seal issue was overblown. I have been waiting for something else to beat the firstly reviewed V2 distortion, but it was the very same model that beat it, that is pretty funny actually. The impedance was also a bit higher on this one. Who knows what the hell other FR and distortions other users are hearing on theirs...the journey to the bottom of the abyss continues.