Good audio reviewers and ones to stay far far away from

The whole headphone show thing will forever be iffy to me cause they’re literally working for a store… have they ever slammed something they sell?

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Think they’ve addressed that relationship.
I’m sure there are lots of examples, but I don’t think the Clear MG was celebrated on release.

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I’m sure they did sell a ****ton of discounted og clears they had on stock from that video tho…
Anyway we’ll know when/if DMS changes his takes.

Here we go…

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DMS and Valour have some beautiful production quality and a nice straight to the point reviewing style. I hope this works out for the better for sure. Maybe I’m just blinded by the pretty color grading and shallow depth of field, but I enjoy this guys videos.

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I’ve spent 100’s of hours on live streams with Andrew (Resolve) and Tyler. Both of these guys are good dudes and always provide advice to the best of their ability to answer the question regardless of whom is selling what. I don’t question the bias as they will routinely suggest products that hp dot com has no affiliation with.

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I would stay away from this, but then again it was quite amusing (how to turn your 7hz Timeless into a HD650 with a cable change):

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Finally got to view this great piece last night

This is great work. @WaveTheory you are really hitting your stride, dude. I felt like chapter 2 was a great setup for the next episodes. But now you gotta drop chapter 3. Please tell me it’s going to drop soon. You can’t leave us hanging like this! :rofl:

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Thank you! I will get part 3 up as soon as I can. I beg for patience. I’m still a physics professor teaching full-time and have a family. And the bread-and-butter of the channel is still gear reviews. I will get this series out as quick as I can, still. No Half-Life 2 Episode 3 situations here…

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Cool sales pitch for audiophilia and his new project. I heared of Chesky before, but never really listened to anything he did. I have no clue, why you have to go through a payment processor to get a free sampler, but I gave the whole thing a quick listen:

I listened to both headphone and speaker mixes on my IEMs. Talking about the stage in IEMs is a meme to me and those recordings are proof that stage is in the recording/mix, not the IEM. However even after I looked at the booklet I didn’t understand how the headphone mixes supposedly improve on binaural stuff (I heared better binaural recordings than you can find in this sampler). To be honest though I prefer the speaker mixes on my IEMs because they gets rid of a lot of unwanted DSP effects like reverb (which some may like but I don’t) and still have quite the stage. It’s funny, that they can’t get the filenames right on the free sampler as track 6&7 are switched in the speaker/headphone mix.

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I listened to both speaker and headphone mix on my IEM last night. It was brief but I can appreciate the expansive stage on the hdp mix. Pretty cool. It felt like I was in a concert venue.
It is def different but I could get used to it.

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Just found this guy a couple of days ago. Interesting…

I know it’s only been 9 days, but… Might there be a chapter 3 soon?

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HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry man, I had to do it! You really got me going with all this and I look forward to the next installment. I know it’s hard work to create this content. I just wanted you to know that we (well, I, but I know I am not alone) really appreciate and enjoy what you are doing.

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When I first discovered Amir and ASR I thought it was pretty cool, that this guy seems to be one of the very few who doesn’t just measure stuff, but measures a lot of stuff. I still think it is pretty cool what Amir accomplished with ASR.

That being said: I think his headphone reviews are highly questionable. And if you didn’t know: he recently started reviewing IEMs.

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Two of my favorite ASR videos.

Amir is a much needed audiophile snake oil exorcist. I too have an professional electrical background and whenever I read about how good or special some exotic IEM cable sounds I could rip my eyes out.

Like a few weeks ago there’s a french company that sells a audiophile ethernet switch for over 3000€. How on God’s earth would you improve TCP/IP? Error correction is already built in.

I don’t want to start a discussion it’s all so tiresome.

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I have a love-hate relationship with ASR. I very much appreciate the accurate measurements in many aspects of the sound signature. I very much detest how those measurements become the only parameter of a good headphone for ASR zealots.

The number of people at ASR who love or detest headphones they’ve never heard – decisions are based on measurements only – is comical. Ears and brains don’t matter to the Measurement Sheep.

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Here’s what I’ll say on the matter. The average person cannot try every headphone or every audio product. For a lot of people the only way to try a headphone is to purchase it. Subjective assessments of headphones are highly variable. Different reviewers come to wildly different conclusions. Perhaps, with experience you can discern the good from the bad, but the average person would as likely think Zeos or What-hifi? to be as authoritative as the next reviewer.

Objective assessments are difficult to understand. All the information presented by ASR is not of equal importance (this is sometimes commented on), and to some degree is concerned beyond the point of audibility, into the realm of engineering performance (also sometimes commented on). All that said, I am very grateful to have ASR, and other reviewers who make some effort on objective measurements, with all their caveats, as they at least give those of us, not content to be forever blindly purchasing headphones, some tangible anchor, from which a determination can be made.

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Agree. Well said.

Frequency curves are a good indication of how a headphone will sound, much like a spec sheet for a car. But until you listen to a headphone or test drive a car, you don’t truly know what you’re getting.

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The ASR denizens are a weird and mixed bunch << not at all like the denizens at HiFi Guides :ok_hand:>>.

Half of them swear up and down that it’s impossible to hear the difference between ANY (good measuring) DAC or AMP while the other half of them “down vote” and throw stones at a (good measuring) DAC and AMP or whose THD happens to be - 0.0001 less than what ever Amir has anointed at this months G.O.A.T.

And some of the replies to his “approval” of the Blessing are just sad. I mean, while I’ve not heard it, I do believe the Blessing is a very VERY good IEM that many enjoy. But some of them think its the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And everything he listens to he HAS to set it to the Harman curve before he can even possibly announce it as good.

Someone, remind me, how many Harman Audio IEMs are TOTL?

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