always use HIFIGO5 for 5 dollar discount 
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Measurement of my favorite IEM from 10 years ago. They still sound respectable. Not as muffled as the graph indicates.
I’m happy you’re able to just move past it and get on with your life, brother. I do feel as though with some of those guys that the time they have doesn’t always go to good use. It’s overwhelming at times with the extensive 5 paragraph articles on each comment … I have some serious ADHD when it comes to reading long passages so I tend to just give up halfway through 
Anyways - I appreciate your affirmation, I won’t mention it again. I know that one day when you do make it big, we’ll all find out exactly which band you’re in so I’m not worried 
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Is anyone else seeing the shit storm over on head-fi in regards to the, honestly, just strange customer service Thie/Linsoul is providing on the Thie thread?
It makes me so weary and downright hesitant on buying from Linsoul in the future. For anyone interested or not in the loop, I’ll link it below:
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Oh my that reminds me of my experience with the aliexpress support. They always act like their personal life and honor is directly connected to the products they distribute. I imagine their thought process something like,
Oh noes we shipped a faulty product, that can’t be. Either I’m right and the costumer is a dishonest swindler or if the customer is right then I must perform Seppuku immediately.
This is why I shy away from spending big bucks on Chifi products. The most expensive for me was the Penon Serial for around 250€,the Variations for 450€ through Amazon and the the EST112. With Dunu, I have good gut feeling.
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It definitely does come off that way - the way the Thie rep. basically publicly released the otherwise private email exchange without the customers consent has left a seriously bad taste in my mouth. It’s almost like the intention when they chose to do that was to make sure their image wasn’t tarnished… well, how about just providing genuinely good customer service first and foremost? Doesn’t sound like a crazy concept to me in the slightest.
Some Chi-fi companies do stand out however, I don’t want to generalize here. Penon in particular has some of the best CS I’ve seen period.
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The concept of “Losing Face” is huge in China. Basically, you can never directly admit fault or blame BUT you can and also should bend over backwards to help a customer. It’s weird to western sensibilities, but it is what it is.
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Seen it now.
A valuable lens to see this through, helps explain how KZ handled their accusations, and other situations too.
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Unfortunate circumstances but I felt the need to share it so others can see the experience they’re buying into. It’s less than ideal to say the least and it makes me a little sad, honestly 
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Wow just read that and holy Linsoul really needs to get better CS. You DO NOT treat your customers that way.
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This competition some reviewers over there seem to be having over who can write the longest “review” using the most flowery language while making the most hyperbolically positive claims about a product (I’m looking at you Penon Audio shills) is just getting pathetic. When the same three dudes are rating basically every Penon product 4 to 5 stars and spending 10,000 plus words talking about how ground breaking it is, it becomes blatantly obvious that they have a quid pro quo relationship with the producer/seller of the products and it makes it hard to take the reviews there as anything but extended advertising pieces.
The fact that Headfi does nothing about such blatant shilling, despite it being clearly against their rules/policies, really diminishes their credibility, IMO. I mean, I know that they will remove negative product reviews that fall outside the norm/average for a product under the justification that their site is policed for fairness so it’s not like they can fall back on being free speech absolutists. It’s frustrating watching what can be a great resource be watered down and trashed by hucksters who are obviously abusing their access to it and it just ends up feuling the rumors started by folks who say that paid sponsors over there get special privileges. 
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You have said it far better than I ever could - Exactly This ^ I have 2 or 3 guys I can think of right now that are the absolutely worst offenders and I try my best to just simply skip over their “Reviews” and posts on the threads.
The absolute WORST offenders of this are the people that claim cables change the sound in a 180 degree manner … the jury that’s handling the cable case is still out to lunch when it comes to my personal opinion but listen, I have yet to be completely blown away by a cable when it comes to any changes in the sound and I highly doubt spending upwards of $500+ will give me $500+ worth of
performance upgrades. These guys put a sour, spoiled taste in my mouth and while I think companies like Penon are genuinely great companies, having these shills shill for them discredits their image in my eyes.
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Head-Fier
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Rules 6 and 7 are violated constantly
Cable discussions are religious, it’s solely based on believe.
Cross posting is also done all the time, well I do it too but see no problem with it.
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You and I are undoubtedly thinking of the same few “reviewers” no doubt. It would be funny if it wasn’t on the biggest head gear site in the world. A site that holds up its review section as being free from advertising and paid influence. As far as the cable thing goes, it doesn’t matter which side you fall on, I think we can all agree that a $700 cable isn’t going to take a terrible $100 IEM and turn it into a five star performer and yet that’s the claim now being made in damn near every one of a particular offender’s “reviews.” Most rational cable believers will say that cables have a sub 5% performance effect at the most. F*ckin’ ridiculous! BTW, I actually like Penon well enough, too. Great resource for purchasing good and somewhat hard to find buds.
When it comes to the Linsoul thing, I have never had any problems with them, even when it comes to returns and warranty service, but I can see how that thread wouldn’t inspire confidence. I probably would have waited to buy the Prestige from a dealer stateside if I wasn’t trying to get them here before I had to hit the road. With bigger purchases, I generally think it just makes sense to buy them from someone you can deal with in your own country whenever possible.
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The issue to keep in consideration that in order to get to that “professional” or highly regarded reviewer level, you can’t be free from advertising and influence. As soon as you get picked up by a Linsoul or HifiGo and they’re sending you free/reduced priced units for review, the goalposts have to change for the goal of your reviews. There’s too many interests involved that even beyond “pissing companies off and not getting sent sets”, you have to do things the way the company giving you the samples wants to some degree, in order to keep getting the supply of units to review.
It’s the difference between someone like me, who picks my own sets to check out and gets help from the goodness of the community to give opinions on sets out of my reach, and a Dan’s Audio Reviews now that he’s sponsored by Linsoul. Doing it as an actual business is a different beast.
Shillers shouldn’t shill though, I think we all agree with that.
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Oh, I don’t doubt it we share the same ideas when it comes to certain “reviewers” and I put the word reviewers in quotation marks because generally, a reviewers Is meant to give you an un-bais, thought provoking opinion on a product that cost money. It is so blatant and so Unashamed with what they do. It sucks, it really does. I want to have fun here and over there as well. I don’t mind sticking to HFG but we’re undoubtedly a much smaller group of passionate guys and sometimes, we have other obligations in the real world which causes the threads to die a little bit from time to time. So of course, when I’m bored I head over there to Head-Fi. I am quickly turned off by the Bs being spewed all over the floor.
I suppose I don’t mind someone being picked up by a big time company, maybe they get a few free review sets here and there, but I think it’s important to maintain integrity. I for one know if I was one of these so called influencers or reviewers, I’d let the company know off the bat that I will not be giving everything top marks but not only that, but blatantly lying to the consumer. That just wouldn’t sit right with me in the moral area of my brain.
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Every time Penon posts to their Facebook "[our product] reviewed by headfi user [insert one of 2 names], surely they can’t be blind enough to see how that backfires?
You might have a good product, but if you keep only referring to the reviews of two or so reviewers, who are always waxing lyrical, that actually has the reverse effect. It feels like “Oh the person you sent a free IEM to is saying something paradigm-shifting about it? I thought maybe someone had bought and enjoyed it and shared their thoughts. Oh well.”
“Those are all the good reviews you could find? The two or so people you’re supplying with IEMs?” is probably not what they think they’re doing to their image, but it is.
Then there’s all the cable alchemy I’ll never get my head around. Pig-tail connectors of one ostentatious material somehow making up for the mumbo jumbo of the other cables linked in. Even with a conductivity/resistance model trying to make sense of why a cable should make any difference, that doesn’t compute.
EDIT: It’s hard being someone who enjoys some of their sets a lot, because of association alone. I expect anyone who doesn’t know me fairly justifiably counts what I’m saying as drivel when I say something good about the Serials. The more impressed I am by a set of theirs, the more I sound like one of their shills. They’ve destroyed any credibility for when something deserves high praise and big claims.
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