Re: Source for objective headphone review
Reply #4 – 2018-04-24 15:24:57
Measurements: If you want a very objective approach, Inner Fidelity has great raw headphone measurements (IEM not so much). But it demands a very good understanding of how to read them because his current compensation is bollocks. Also his axes are very clinched which makes reading the peaks very difficult sometimes. Headphone.com is the old website for which Tyll Hertens worked for. I think he did a good job catching up on Inner Fidelity. Rtings has some good raw measurements, but do keep in mind that they use a different measurement setup (head and coupler) so the raw frequencies might deviate from Tyll and thus would need a different compensation. I also don't agree with their target if you want studio linearity but they are currently working on a refined target curve. Again, be very careful when trying to read the frequency response because I know people discussing headphones for 10 years who still misinterpret them. IMO, GoldenEars is not too useful. Their curves are heavily smoothed and their selection of head- and earphones is quite different to what is available on the European market. YMMV. If you want subjective opinion and prefer to read articles, more often than not I would agree with Tyll from Inner Fidelity. I do think he prefers warm sounding headphones (ironically his compensation shows the opposite) but overall I think he is without bias. I write a tiny fraction of articles on Headfonics but Marcus is the main guy. His tuning description is usually spot on and I personally rarely disagree.