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The most overrated and underrated headphone you tried?
- Thread starter yuki980e
- Start date
TimW
Major Contributor
Overrated: Mod House Argon Mk3
Underrated: Shure SE215
Underrated: Shure SE215
I think you could say something similar about Bose headphones. A large part of the population assumes they must be good because they are made by Bose, a lot of audio enthusiasts hate them because they are made by Bose. I think their QC35 is a terrific product and probably is under rated by audio enthusiasts.
I think some of the Sennheiser cheaper IEM are very under rated, these tend to be ignored by many audio enthusiasts but some of their lower cost IEMs are very good and very affordable.
Sennheiser iems are objectively bad. Even ie800. It's marketed as diffuse field target, but actually nowhere near accurate, huge dip at 3k. There isn't one iem that's good from them. Well that doesn't mean most other companies make good iems either. Most don't. Just saying those aren't underrated.
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I don't think there are really underrated stuff.
Overrated: headphones: hd800(not s).
Inears: most in ears are overrated. From shure to westone to JH to ALO. Most are genuinely shit.
Overrated: headphones: hd800(not s).
Inears: most in ears are overrated. From shure to westone to JH to ALO. Most are genuinely shit.
- Thread Starter
- #26
You mean the 3 who came up with the Multi BA scene, who spend years touting it being better than the ER4's 1 BA set up with no proof?.
Well, it may be just coincidence. There are more than those. Since those are relatively big in the audio scene. Also akg k3003 is horrible, ie800 is pretty bad too. Sony had ok ones. Most ones from ue are really bad.
And yes I love er4 and etymotic.
Nango
Major Contributor
Those are extremely picky with amps, once you get the right amp, they do really great, on all genres!!
Underrated: SE215, SRH840, SRH1840
Way overrated: K812
215 is very popular so i don't think they are underrated. hd800 tho, i don't see the possibility of an amp fixing the issue in frequency response. Eq does. but hd800s is much better.
Shure srh840 really good indeed. Also the 940. I don't really like srh1840 3khz is too much for me and sounds kinda grainy and dry over all. Srh1540 is ok. I guess. I prefer oppo pm3(maybe underrated). But oppo gone. Thats That's sad.
And k812 lol. Especially in "semi pro scene".
Nango
Major Contributor
While SE215 indeed is very popular they still sell lots of 425s, 535s and 845s I don't see them so much ahead of 215s nor is the price difference in any way justified. So I think it's underrated.
I never had probs with the 3khz or 6khz you mention, on the other hand, never heard female voices -mids in general- more realistic than on 1840 (Shure's in general). Grainy or not may be related to the amp or the recording quality. I often end up listening with them instead of K702 or Sundara.
K812 is such a rip-off still selling close to €1.000 even in Europe, unbelievable!!!
I never had probs with the 3khz or 6khz you mention, on the other hand, never heard female voices -mids in general- more realistic than on 1840 (Shure's in general). Grainy or not may be related to the amp or the recording quality. I often end up listening with them instead of K702 or Sundara.
K812 is such a rip-off still selling close to €1.000 even in Europe, unbelievable!!!
425 should be actually good especially for vocals. 535 sounds horrible. 846 is ok for the time it came out but not for the price, it needs the white nozzle. Se215 is best for it's comfort and isolation. Sound wise, i prefer mh755 and mh1c for a quarter or less of the price. Spaceship from moondrop is also really good, I think you may like it.
- Thread Starter
- #33
Well i heard that JH helped with Shure/Westone in the early days. The 3003i faded very quickly once reviews showed it was a peaky mess, More of experiment that a new leap. Reviewers always downplay poor coherency wither Multi BA/Hybrid which i noticed.
Multi drivers have always been a meme, a Good BA(ER4) any good single DD beat them. But then again they'll bash BA bass but are okay with electrostatic/planar bass which is the same.
It has been discussed before but there isn't a thread dedicated specifically to the paper.
No, that would be silly. The researchers used an AKG K712, which they equalized to match the frequency responses of the headphones they wanted the listeners to rate.
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I heard that too. So at some point majority of iems are tuned by him. The reason that jh won for the longest time was because it's tuning is equivalently boosting bass and treble. Most people like this. Accurate er4 doesn't have this, in contrast it has extra energy around 1.5khz than neutral making it harder to accept. If there's 1-2db attenuation at that region it will sound much nicer.
Aha, so they did not test the headphones per se but the frequency response. Was the method validated in the paper?
It was validated in other papers. Sean Olive wrote an article about the "virtual headphone method": https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2016/04/a-virtual-headphone-listening-test.html
Thanks. I don't think I saw whether the cross-checked in the first study, e.g. choose three of the headphones, top-mid-low rank to do see if the results were consistent with the AKG K712. Perhaps they did so in the validation paper but it would be beneficial to repeat the experiment using another headphone as control in all experiments.
solderdude
Grand Contributor
The OW test is only about tonal balance differences (which are pretty big and can be emulated with a reasonable accuracy.
That test cannot simulate the headphones exactly.
For instance the distortion characteristics differ a LOT as well as resonances, comfort, the way headphones react to skin, seal issues and other aspects.
So the preference shown in that research is about tonal balance only.
I have EQ'ed a lot of headphones to have a similar tonal balance but can still hear differences between them.
That test cannot simulate the headphones exactly.
For instance the distortion characteristics differ a LOT as well as resonances, comfort, the way headphones react to skin, seal issues and other aspects.
So the preference shown in that research is about tonal balance only.
I have EQ'ed a lot of headphones to have a similar tonal balance but can still hear differences between them.
I got a pair of Bose QC35 last year as a welcome gift for opening a bank account. My main use for them is for playing guitar - cordless headphones (though you can use a cord with these if you like) are a lot easier to transcribe or generally play guitar with. I was very pleasantly surprised how good the QC35's are.
