I really like the idea of the demos that Dan is doing and all the effort he has put into, but even the direct comparison on the macro level (@darkgod5) falls flat in danās demos (even tough it may be generally true for such demos).
First the Aria recorded far more terrible in comparison to the other gear and now the timeless (which I havenāt listened to IRL so far).
Actually I have been inspired by danās demos to try to do some of my own recordings with a 3d printed coupler and a regular inline headset mic with mixed success. So far I couldnāt get a good frequency response for the mic/coupler setup, so highs and lows are extremly obscured in my recordings, but I am still working on that. I took the inverted frequency response of the mic/coupler setup, put it into an equalizer and was amazed by how close I could make the recording resemble the original in terms of tonality. Didnāt expect that. Also my 0$ setup, Iād argue, gives much more comparatively consistent results then Danās setup.
Long story short: I like what Dan (and zpolt) are doing, but I think their method/gear is lacking.
Any recording on a video for demo will be useless: you have all the chain that will modify it: the mic and gear if course, the YouTube compression, your own player, windows mixer, your DAC, your earphones,ā¦ Too many unknown variables.
I recognize the effort, and it seems that a demand exists for demos (I can relate to that: I canāt really demo gear in my country, especially for chifi products), but yeah, doing that like this canāt be really useful except for entertainment purpose.
Right, all earphones tested are influenced (almost) the exact same way (almost, because of influence of seal due to the shape of different earphones). However, the result can be misleading. Imagine an earphone with too much mid bass and a recording chain that suppresses this region, suddenly that earphone sounds better because itās flaw was corrected while others will sound lean because they are missing this region. The tuning also will now seen balance even though itās really not. This is enough to give a comparative wrong impression. At best, you can only tell earphone A is warmer than B and stuff like that. You canāt say how warm in reality it is. The earphone you prefer based on a demo can turn out to be too extreme even towards your preference.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that we donāt know the alteration being made, we only hear the result.
Demos are more useful when you have one of the sets compared. Then you can get a better idea of how much the true sound has been altered and account for that when evaluating the other sets.
Either way, I still enjoy listening to demos (some better than others).
Another way to look at it is this: imagine you take an eq which are custom made for an iem and apply it to 10 iems, listening to the result, how accurate can you tell the properties of each iem?
Remember that we perceive frequency response in a relative manner.
I think itās just āaā way to talk about the IEMs in question. I mean, thereās reviews where the reviewer shows you his table for 45 minutes. Another shows his hands, random places in the roam feeling like youāre in a roller coaster, charts, staring at a screen where music is playing you canāt hear, whatever. I try to focus on how the reviewer is experiencing the IEMs and explains HIS version of the truth. If I pick up a thing or 2 then Iām happy and Iām very appreciative for all the time and efforts they put in sharing their snippets of wisdom.
Absolutely. This hobby is already full of vague terms. Add that to someone trying to describe a sound to you and you expect to have any idea what it is like. I think thatās why people like @hawaiibadboy use tracks as a reference to be more concrete and less vague about that they are saying .
I guess you can say half loaf is better than none.
My favourite audio demo is by Oluvās Gadget. The recordings are quite good and he plays the original so you can get a reference point and almost eliminate the influence of your current headphone (because the reference has also be altered by your current headphone)
Totally agree. A demo is just another way of talking about IEMs (just like frequency curves, oral/written comparisions with other IEMs, impressions with certain songs/genres, etc.). I just think they are sadly underrepresented and when they are done, they arenāt done as good as could be.
I mostly agree with everything you say. However I think reviewers could make an effort to fixes some of the chain issues at least to some degree. E.g. if the chain supresses the mid bass as in your example, you could measure that and equalize it away (to some degree).
In the end the demos will never be a true representation, but can be a useful tool for comparing iems.
Right, if you can account for the impact of the chain and correct for them, then itās better. Sadly, Iāve heard a lot of demos to know not everybody does this or maybe the result is just not great. If you listen to Oluvās Gadget, youāll see an example of a well corrected recording. He says he adjusts based on his own hearing, which is good enough.
Iāve said this earlier in this thread about that reviewā¦If you like Planarās and have a diverse library like me you need both those sets in your collection
