You are misapplying that experience. A doctor with 10 years of experience does have more intuition and wisdom than another doctor who doesn't. But here, we are talking about two disciplines: building headphones and creating a target frequency response. I have no doubt Zack has gained that knowledge and wisdom in building headphones. Given its great looks, and good work in marketing, he clearly has validation of that. He has however done no formal studies of any kind in listener preference. So cannot present any wisdom or intuition.
This statement would be true if the maker spent the past 12 years
only with woodworking perfecting his craftsmanship creating nice looking earcups. Which as you know is simply not true. The maker is using measuring equipment and is finetuning the frequency response and many other aspects of sonic reproduction of his designs. For years. I highly doubt that the he isn’t aware or interested in listeners preference. It was stated in this thread several times that Harman target is something that is one of the steps during the design process. You ignore all of that. You are trying to sound objective, but your selective use of facts to strengthen your point make you sound rather biased. Its not a way a dialogue can emerge and I am not surprised that this is going nowwhere, while it could be a very interesting discussion, between a reviewer and a maker both having a lot of experience but coming from very different directions in regard of audio reproduction.
Your comments about this and that owner liking a headphone has no value. We review because we want to get to facts, not personal opinions biased by many factors outside of performance. The headphone market is heavily polluted by youtubers who will praise anything expensive loaned to them for testing. And if it is expensive in their book, it must be great. Even when they measure, they paper over the facts that conflict with their subjective remarks. This is why I started to test headphones.
You yourself are validating your “scientific approach” with “what most people like” Its obvious that ZMF is very successful and a lot of people from the audiophile scene do like the tuning. ZMF was NOT always well received by the youtube reviewer crowd, designs like Verite Open became mixed reviews and big youtubers like ConvinceMeAudio seem to prefer older designs to recent releases like Caldera. Others see Caldera underpriced considering its perfomance compared to stuff like Abyss or Susvara. You are painting a picture of corporate influencer marketing for simpletrons that is simply not there. Again, to strengthen your point.
Maybe there is some common ground of what “most people” like but I don’t think you can make a finite statement like “it is definitely what most people like” alone because of the sheer amount of different audio gear, different approaches that lots of people highly appreciate. Apart of that I believe that mainstream consumer and hi-fi market are very different groups of people with different preferences. And I am yet to find a that mythical 250 usd headphone that is loved by the mainstream market, which performs to a level of a high end design that is tuned to my personal preference. Personally I buy ZMF primaly because of the tuning NOT because of the craftsmanship and the luxury aspect, which sure are a nice cherry on top.
Apart of all of this noone in this thread could answer how you measure the size of the stage, the natural body and decay of the instruments, the texture of the bass and the illusion of holography. How do you messure the harmonics and resulting quality of timbre which, at least, for me, is the most important foundation of sound (paraphrasing a statement of another audiophile here). Harman target is still very important, just over-relied by on and overstated as a primary reliable data point to heavily weigh decisions upon by some.
Harman research is one of the steps in understanding audio and understanding what we like and what not, but its no singular holy book that is to be blindly followed, there much more research and empirical trial and error to be done before we arrive at something that we can call a universal music reproduction standard.
There is another major reason why what he is doing is wrong: it continues to randomize the music industry. We all need to get behind one standard that is used both in production and playback. Only then we have any hope of hearing what the artist approved (and heard). If we continue this wild west of every designer's idea being right, we will never get there. With a single standard that is close to what many like, we have a headphone that can be used without EQ. And those that don't agree, can EQ to what they like.
That’s a question of your approach and of your ethos, but no absolute truth with a right and wrong. Many people on this board will agree with you since the idea of creating one singular standard is nothing bad per se and might help many of us, especially new people in the hobby with finding some orientation.
Other may argue that you are asking the artists to use a limited set of colours without deviating from it since they might randomize the art industry making it difficult to find objective truth. Other may argue that they don’t want all audio reproduction to sound mostly the same tuned to one target curve. I understand your reviewer perspective and how you come to this conclusion, its still just an idea which to be honest I doubt will ever come to fruition. Another thing are the recording studios and artists that would have to record according to a certain standard, which just aint happening, we are still talking about art and not about accounting.
I am still very curious what pads, what chain and which reference tracks you used for your review Amir.
Well usually to me trying first, reading reviews later is the best approach. Try Caldera yourself at a fair or your audio dealer, compare yourself the EQ that Amir proposed with the tuning that the maker came up with, the EQ is eaisly implemented in roon. I think for the most the conclusion will be obvious since comparing the EQ with the stock tuning alone is making it glaringly obvious that there is more to audio reproduction than applying the harman curve.
Open mindless is important especially if you are claim to follow a scientific approach. I don’t think Zach tried to convey anything else in this thread.
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