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Dan Clark Stealth Review (State of the Art Headphone)

amirm said:
There is no war. Explanation was demanded of me and I responded in kind:

As you, listening to music is a very enjoyable hobby. Writing these reviews and defending them though, is a serious thing. It can be fun but some of you don't let it.
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Sorry Amir maybe sometimes you should sit back and read again what you have written:
"Here is the thing though: science doesn't have its own voice to defend itself when its being trumped upon with dirty shoes. It is up to us, certainly me, to stand up for it."
This sounds to me like a "mad scientist" who is on a crusade against the non believers.
This is way to seroius business for me and I do not want to part of such thing, so I have asked one of the mods to be deleted from this forum so I can enjoy my hobby again a little bit more.
 
amirm said:
First subjective remark is damning it with faint praise. "Good detail but not like Abyss level?" How on earth did he determine that and can prove the correctness of? Nothing. Just an appeal to himself as authority. He thought it, so it must be true, forget that the Abyss has boatload of distortion so can't possibly be faithful on its own let alone against the Stealth.
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How was he trying to parrot his subjective opinions as the truth or himself as an authority? He didn't invoke his reputation. He prefaced his subjective opinions with a title indicating that the following paragraph was for subjective thoughts, not objective thoughts. Unless I'm missing something, such a title means he's preemptively signaling to the reader "personal, unprovable opinions only - take with a grain of salt".

amirm said:
Bluntedness? What on earth is that? And I am putting aside the garbage adjective of "microdynamics." It is excellent in tailing ends of tones but not as clear as other flagships? You tell me how he arrived at that. Was it an AB test with levels matched and blind? Heck was it any of that? Or did he take that out of his hat based on some old memory of those headphones?
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Unless you're implying that all subjective impressions should be AB tested, level matched and blind to even be posted on the internet at all, I don't see the problem with how he arrived at this opinion. His title not only includes the phrase "Subjective thoughts", but also the phrase "Very EARLY". I would indeed expect the contents of that paragraph to be based off of memory. Is that wrong for first impressions?

As for the usage of the term "bluntedness", I admit I haven't seen that before haha. Perhaps his readers would know what he means - I don't see anything wrong with using terms your target audience may understand.

amirm said:
So it can't do anything right without qualification. Even if it is "shockingly open sounding" it must be only in the context of closed backs.
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His qualification could be interpreted in different ways. It could be taken to mean "open for a closed-back but not as much as open-backs", or it could be taken to mean "shocked that a closed-back could ever be this open". The latter interpretation is not guaranteed to imply an inferiority to open-backs.


amirm said:
To me it appears that he wanted to manufacture faults and he did. There is no indication that he had identified any of these characteristics correctly. I am not going to sit here and just nod in disagreement as you ask. I am here to say hey, in this forum where we go by what we can prove, this type of subjectivism is totally nonsense. If you find that aggressive, my question to you is why are you so laid back about it?
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I would argue that everyone's subconscious manufactures nonexistent praises and faults to varying quantities, so I wouldn't fault him for that or for writing his honest thoughts as long as he qualifies those thoughts as early and subjective.

But yes, I can understand it appears to you like he manufactured faults. On the other hand, is he doing this on purpose? Is he attacking the headphones or company with a malicious intent to smear? Was he being impolite in any way or attempting to imply his opinions are infallible? Are his remarks aggressive?

No. That's why I'm so laid back about it. Why be aggressive towards anyone who is making discussion without ill intent?

I get it. We're all humans and we all get frustrated. But Andrew was civilly contributing ten posts before your post and you rudely describe his content as so cringe-inducing we "wouldn't be able to wipe that expression off [your] face". That's not acceptable to me, more so than any perceived affront to science.
 
okok said:
can we test adx5000? properly the best non-stax from jp
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I believe you're in the wrong thread bud. Also saying something like "properly the best non-stax from jp" is most likely false without any proof or evidence. We only make subjective truths when we have objective measurements to back them.
 
The difference between Amir's and Resolve's subjective reviews is that Amir's is backed up by how the headphone actually measures and Resolve's is full of BS descriptors that don't correlate with anything. If that doesn't make it clear who you should believe, what possibly could? What's the point of reading/watching any reviews? With the way some of you approach "reviews", you might as well pick your next headphone purchase from a hat.
 
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smodtactical said:
Hey Amir, so I see that you don't like Andrew's subjective components to his reviews. But you yourself have subjective components to your reviews. For example you said "it brought out their beauty like you would not believe" , "it sounded so amazing" , "tonality was so perfect" , "every few seconds I would say WOW, WOW, WOW", "I could not stop drooling over the sound of this headphone".

So I am curious why your subjective comments are not cringe inducing but Andrew's are? Moreover... if this is 'audio science review' and we are here to be as objective as possible... why not get rid of the listening tests or recommendation section all together? Just post your objective analysis and measurements and leave it at that? Why add a subjective component at all? Why not go all the way into the science?
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This is a very interesting concept and ones that seems to be overlooked many times. Based on the reviews that I have seen from this site, I've never been able to quite connect how "sounded so amazing" and the measurements work. What made it sound amazing? How aligned it is to the harman curve? Where is the proof that shows that the harman curve sounds amazing or that tonality is perfect? Isn't it just a combination of preferences? How much distortion (or lack thereof) does it take to produce three WOWs?

It would also be interesting to see the evidence that Andrew's comments are incorrect. While he might not have measurements to show details, microdynamics, or soundstage, where is the evidence that those don't exist? If a claim can be disproven in the US, surely it can be disproven in other parts of the world. Everyone is able to see the effects of gravity because it applies all over the world. If Andrew's subjective comments are 100% incorrect, shouldn't it be easily disproven with some type of measurement? If not, isn't it reasonable to believe that there is a chance he is correct?
 
Shazb0t said:
The difference between Amir's and Resolve's subjective reviews is that Amir's is backed up by how the headphone actually measures and Resolve's is full of BS descriptors that don't correlate with anything. If that doesn't make it clear who you should believe, what possibly could? What's the point of reading/watching any reviews? With the way some of you approach "reviews", you might as well pick your next headphone purchase from a hat.
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Can you explain to me where I can see this subjective experience on the graphs? I must've missed it.

"On spatial qualities, it is also excellent which is surprising for a closed back headphone. The Sennheiser HD800S may be a tad better but I consider what that headphone provides to be artificial, albeit of the rare, nice kind. Not so with Stealth. Every bit of spatial quality when it comes to separation of instruments and left and right positioning sound natural and normal like the world's best audio system."
 
ExquirentibusVeritatem said:
This is a very interesting concept and ones that seems to be overlooked many times. Based on the reviews that I have seen from this site, I've never been able to quite connect how "sounded so amazing" and the measurements work. What made it sound amazing? How aligned it is to the harman curve? Where is the proof that shows that the harman curve sounds amazing or that tonality is perfect? Isn't it just a combination of preferences? How much distortion (or lack thereof) does it take to produce three WOWs?

It would also be interesting to see the evidence that Andrew's comments are incorrect. While he might not have measurements to show details, microdynamics, or soundstage, where is the evidence that those don't exist? If a claim can be disproven in the US, surely it can be disproven in other parts of the world. Everyone is able to see the effects of gravity because it applies all over the world. If Andrew's subjective comments are 100% incorrect, shouldn't it be easily disproven with some type of measurement? If not, isn't it reasonable to believe that there is a chance he is correct?
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So this thread already now has additional measurements which show that the Stealth doesn't suffer from compression at higher volumes. We also already know it has extremely low distortion. That IS direct evidence that the comments about "macro" and "micro" dynamics are junk.

Everyone here already knows that "spatial" qualities are in a nefarious position. Amir has said as much himself. The fact that you want to use an already admittedly subjective quality to strawman in the place of descriptors we're actually arguing about ("bluntedness", "macrodynamics", "microdynamics", "resolving", etc.) tells me that you're not really arguing from a place of good faith. We're clearly not going to agree.
 
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solderdude said:
@Dan Clark perhaps glueing the foam only to the underside of the pad (on the inside) may be an easy way of preventing the foam inside twisting in the pad ?
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Yes please! I understand there may be some important business/sound/design choices being made we are not aware of, and you can't solve every problem, but this is not a case of 'user error'.

Something like below would be more expensive to produce, but if the foam could be spec'd out like this, it could be possible to have a durable glued base that shouldn't impact the sound very much, or at least not compared to the foam turning inside! But, who knows.... armchair design is easy.
1629894986088.png
 
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Shazb0t said:
So this thread already now has additional measurements which show that the Stealth doesn't suffer from compression at higher volumes. We also already know it has extremely low distortion. That IS direct evidence that the comment about "macro" and "micro" dynamics is junk.
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That doesn't seem like contradicting evidence to me. Macrodynamics is generally described as the change in volume in a large scale. AFAIK, the measurement at different volumes are set at one volume and then measures the frequency response. There are not changes in volumes during those tests. So to say that the driver can demonstrate changes in volume during music playback just because a headphone can be measured at different volumes seems to be a stretch. I'm also not sure where the lack of distortion = more micro dynamics. If you have something to cite, please send it over so I can read where these are correlated.

Also, if this measurement is important to show whether or not a headphone has or does not have "macro" or "micro" dynamics, wouldn't amir have included it in his original review? Since it was excluded, I would assume that it was deemed useless and not really evidence to prove something one way or another.
 
aandres_gm said:
Biggest question at this point is where to buy DC headphones in Europe. My girlfriend hates my Ananda because of the sound leakage, and something like the Aeon RT Closed would be great. Issue being I can't find it anywhere in Europe.
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Thomann sells DC headphones in Europe.
 
 
Shazb0t said:
The difference between Amir's and Resolve's subjective reviews is that Amir's is backed up by how the headphone actually measures and Resolve's is full of BS descriptors that don't correlate with anything
Click to expand...

Just FYI, I do conduct measurements on a GRAS 43AG and anchor reviews to them in a section called 'Objective'. However I also like to express my subjective experience as well. This is not as different in practice as you make it out to be.
 
Dogcoop said:
If you took one headphone with great macrodynamics and another with terrible macrodynamics and compared their frequency responses would you be able to see that their macrodynamics differ?
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I believe @Resolve has tried to find a correlation between the two but isn't able to definitively say what is the main determining factor of whether or not a headphone has good macrodynamics. Correct me if I'm wrong.
 
The question is with macro and microdynamics do audiophools mean the same things as sound engineers.
What I understand some folks mean by micro dynamics is similar to 'plankton' i.e. the ability of a headphone to reproduce the finest and smallest details.
With Macrodynamics they seem to mean large dynamic sounds that aren't sounding muffled or compressed and come out clear and dynamic sounding.

I haven't been able to capture 'dynamics' of a headphone with the known measurements.
There are headphones that sound very dynamic or should I say 'lively' and ones that do not sound dynamic but rather 'polite'.
When I EQ them that effect stays largely the same. They are just tonally more correct.

That's what still has to be done using subjective evaluations.
The weird part is that the Focals do not sound more 'dynamic' than most other similar priced headphones.
I also heard a few 'mr Speakers' era planars (open and closed) and did not find them to lack dynamics.
A headphone that sounds very dynamic to me for instance = DT1350 (with EQ) and found the HD595 very 'boring' and not dynamic for instance.

Maybe some other more 'dynamic' test signals need to be developped ?
 
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ExquirentibusVeritatem said:
That doesn't seem like contradicting evidence to me. Macrodynamics is generally described as the change in volume in a large scale. AFAIK, the measurement at different volumes are set at one volume and then measures the frequency response. There are not changes in volumes during those tests. So to say that the driver can demonstrate changes in volume during music playback just because a headphone can be measured at different volumes seems to be a stretch. I'm also not sure where the lack of distortion = more micro dynamics. If you have something to cite, please send it over so I can read where these are correlated.

Also, if this measurement is important to show whether or not a headphone has or does not have "macro" or "micro" dynamics, wouldn't amir have included it in his original review? Since it was excluded, I would assume that it was deemed useless and not really evidence to prove something one way or another.
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What you're saying doesn't make sense. Your "idea" of "macrodynamics" is that the frequency response would not be linear at differing volumes. Testing the full response over multiple increasing volumes proves your fears to be misplaced. That is direct evidence that "macrodynamics" isn't in play here. I'm not even going to try to understand what Plankton could possibly mean. I think it has something to do with the Ocean??? Lol

If you want to go further, Resolve also said that the Stealth isn't as "resolving" as the Abyss Phi. What does that mean? The Abyss has some of the highest measured distortion of high end audiophile headphones on this site. It's frequency response is also ragged. Since we know from the research that frequency response is the most important thing to tonality and that high distortion isn't preferred, and by definition detracts from signal accuracy, then how does this statement make any sense? It doesn't. If by the most "resolving" he means that it sounds the most different, then yea sure, maybe. Discrepancies like that cannot just be swept under the rug. It calls into question the grounding of the entire subjective assessment of his reviews.

Resolve said:
Just FYI, I do conduct measurements on a GRAS 43AG and anchor reviews to them in a section called 'Objective'. However I also like to express my subjective experience as well. This is not as different in practice as you make it out to be.
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I appreciate that you go through the effort to take and post the measurements, I think you're coming from the right place there. Unfortunately, in my opinion, your subjective experience doesn't appear to be correlated to reality. I get that it's not intentional, it is what it is.
 
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