Have you heard the headphones, and have you heard this distortion yourself when listening to music? (not test tones) The people who have heard the headphones have largely been praising them, and have made no mention of this "not good headphone performance".
20s in above timestamped video, he talks about bass, and didn't notice any issue.
"Best studio monitors for $500 ... sound has exceptional punchiness, dynamic, [...] very precise, etc." Again, absolutely nothing about upper bass distortion, or poor bass performance, or any sort of poor performance.
So... "It's not good headphone performance though.", like I said, looks bad on graphs, but if it's basically not audible...! I guess that's where a lot of people have issues with ... let's amicably call them 'measurement gurus', people who feel so confident making absolute claims on performance for headphones or speakers they've not even heard. Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree with you, it's a measurable 'issue', something that exists, is measurable, and not having would 100% be
better... But having someone making absolute claims about performance;
"not good headphone performance"... At best, it's a comment that could easily be misinterpreted as in; it's a headphone with poor performance. At worse, the comment is meant to be taken literally, the author inferring that it's a bad quality headphone / will not sound good / poor transducer / sounds bad / headphone with poor performance, etc...
As per the above, and many other reviews pre ASR/SBAF reviews/measurements, pretty one everyone who heard them seemed to at least think that they were good headphones. And none seemed to notice any issue. It's almost like some people's opinions are
tainted by measurements, rather than their opinions are reached through experience (ex; listening to the headphone), and then measurements used as a validation too or something; see a flaw in measurements; it'll sound bad... Meh.. In my experience, it doesn't always translate 100% of the time. And I'm a 'measurement'-type guy.
Anyway, gave lots of examples with other headphones with similar or worse flaws, and they don't seem to matter that much... But if you read my comments in the Edition XS of a few months back, you can see my fear / reluctance in purchasing them because of those flaws. Yet, "best 500$ headphones, sound great, etc", not everyone hears or are seemingly bothered by those measured flaws. Maybe they don't matter as much as people who haven't heard the headphone make it out to be; or maybe it all 100% is audible and you'll notice and be bothered by it... Honestly, as I've said here multiple times in multiple threads, it's nearly impossible to have an idea of what something will sound like just by looking at graphs. Ex; looks something would sound awful, and doesn't sound as awful as you thought they would given measurements..
Like I said, issue might not be as serious as some make it out to be.. (or who's statements can be misinterpreted in.. hehe)
(Really, didn't mean any insult or start any sort of war, everyone please don't take issue or read this in the wrong way ... I'm guilty of the same, I do the same thing, etc., just commenting because I do find this topic interesting!

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