I spent the entire day yesterday reviewing what they have done at Rting. They are doing a first class job in the quality of the graphs and data they present. There are some issues with what they are doing though. Specifically, since they have a different measurement rig than Harman's, they have proceeded to make their own changes to target curves and measurements. For Bass they use human subjects and for treble, they use the HRTF graph from their HATS manufacturer.
They have justification for these changes but the problem is, they have performed no controlled testing to see if the changes are validated with respect to listening preference. Their own anecdotal testing is not good substitute for that.
Well, Harman took it upon themselves to take their data and correlate it with their objective criteria. This is what they found:
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Ideal correlation would be 1.0 (objective data matching subjective). As you see, RTING is way down there around 0.5.
Sadly, there is more bad news in that their reviews seem to be biased toward price (the higher the price, the better the headphone):
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The question Sean asks at the end is interesting one: is this real or a bias?
I also listened to the top rated headphone by Harman. It was exceptional in fidelity. Yet, it got an average rating from Rting.
This is why I say I don't want to manufacture my own science here. I like to start with Harman work and refine from there, not invent something new and hope it is as good or better than Harman's.
Rting also doesn't do any listening tests. I plan to do that.
But yes, your larger point is valid. Unlike many sites with poor graphs, hard to read and understand data, Rting has done an incredible job of presenting their data and certainly put a lot more work in their reviews than I do or plan to do.