He does not mind balanced armatures.we all like different things. Look at your love of the Timeless and Rikous review. You have to know what bothers you and avoid.There is no absolute right or wrong. You do not like Balanced armatures so you most likely should avoid the soft ears offering. He also likes the Oxygen just an example of more than one way to go. You will find the original and the EJO7m on Chris’s list.
I would say that I don’t like the dusks balanced armatures. But, as said by others, it is particularly bad at this aspect. I don’t know if it would apply to other IEMs with BA. And I am not going to assume it does based on a sample size of one. All other IEMs I have heard have been single driver either Planar or DD. Not enough data to draw conclusions.
Ironically, I rarely had IEM irritation issues with the dusk. As long as I didn’t have to take them out and put them back in constantly, they were fine most of the time. Not true of Zen or Timeless. I think the larger body of the dusk helped it stay put so very little adjustment was required. Less movement of the tip equals less irritation.
Oxygen and 3dt are high on the try list. But I do want to find out if it is just dusk or BA in general.
On a different front, one of my pet projects lately has been to design a headphone rating site. And by that I mean crowdsourced.
The hardest part isn’t/hasn’t been the technology, it’s selecting the rating ranges. Tier lists are not particularly functional. Serial ratings are. For example soundstage. Just rank the stuff you have heard from Soundstage you liked the most, to the least.
If lots of people do that, it now becomes relatively trivial from a machine learning perspective to 1) find people better headphones based on their own ratings and preferences 2) to get a very good idea about a headphones capabilities.
It’s been kicking around my head for a while. Not enough time to pull it off though.
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It’s a bit more mature/evolved than that. The problem is a bit more base than what to use. Let me give an example directly from this thread.
Despite having an interest in developing the above described site, and hearing dozens of over ears, timbre has never really become fully understood to me. I don’t go to a headphone and listen for it. And it wasn’t a problem at all until the dusk.
Given the above: How does one create a rating set that is explicitly consistently understood by the crowd sourced masses? How does the site make sure I don’t get something like the dusk, given I didn’t even know what it is I didn’t like. (and, at the same time, dusk was spectacular)
To capture that in a crowdsourced way, I need to pick attributes that are easily understood and described. And, ideally, likely demonstrable with sample clips on any headphone.
Second, there are two things that need to be captured. Let’s take soundstage and imaging as an example (which, I think should be two separate categories). There are the semi-objective things of how big is it? Can you locate positions of instruments? These typically come to a “consensus” within audiophile communities. We all basically agree, timeless has very little to no depth of soundstage. What people don’t come to a consensus on: “How much do I like it”.
Case in point @Rikudou_Goku finds the soundstage and imaging to be fairly substantial flaws on the timeless. I do not. At least not compared to Zen and Dusk.
The question I am trying to answer that is “how do I capture that with ratings”.
So far, the best answer is I really need two ratings for each attribute. Objective and Enjoyability. This makes any UI/UX for the masses to be fairly complicated. It would be fine (maybe even great) for professional reviewers. But for the average listener? It’s tough.
Audiophiles tend to talk in terms of absolutes. In reality, it is a very wide spectrum. Large sound staging isn’t automatically better than small. Open backs aren’t automatically better than closed. Over ears are not automatically better than iems. Designing a rating system that cuts to the core of that and acknowledges the problem is actually really hard.
And then think about breakdowns. Do you address soundstage width/depth/height independently?
Rabbit hole. And I am not qualified to make these decisions. So I would need industry experts to help define and agree on this for any of this to work.
Then, tonality needs a completely different effort. Given all the graphing available, that data could probably be processed more objectively.
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1.The big sound production is better than the small one for audiophiles, but it’s also a matter of taste. 2.The tonality is only a matter of taste - different styles of music need different tonality. 3.Graphics are not everything, it is difficult to judge the set of sounds only by the graphics. 4.Everything shows that 07m has a more mature sound and a wider range of genres from Variations. The music is for pleasure and such comparisons are very useful !!! Thanks nymz!! 
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There’s a listing on UK Amazon for a pair of og 07’s used like new for a good price if anyone’s interested? 
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Variations review might drop today/tomorrow. Will do 1v1 to EJ07m
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Your wife?? How the heck did she get involved in this thread?? I thought by now you had figured out how it works in this hobby:
- Play a song on your IEM
- Ask your wife to sing the very same song
- Keep the one that sounds best
Easy peasy…
drftr
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RE BA: I came across this comment yesterday but forgot to share:
“Tonality and dynamic illustration, natural sound decay is something I do notice RSV is top of any IEMs that I have tried so far, which includes Thie Audio Monarch, one of the highest regarded IEMs. So if you are looking for natural sound reproduction, RSV is it. It has a state-of-art mastery of liner phase, I would refer it as almost a “insane” level of perfect phasing.”
Still it’s one persons opinion and YMMV. But that goes for all of (y)our opinions all the same as you perfectly know.
drftr
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May I know why?
Well, bye bye headphones. My wife is a very talented vocalist. ANd live performance is always better, right?
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BA. Based on the dusk only, whatever the BA drivers are doing is not desired for me. So, I don’t know if it will apply to other BA drivers. Or maybe my unit is defective? But all the single driver IEMs I have tried are many steps above in this coherency.
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I’m visiting sites that do similar things but I’m always annoyed, the main reason being that I want to see the ratings of someone who has listened to many contenders in the price range I’m looking. But what you get is that people that have had 1, 2, or 3 rave about their favourite (which more often than not seems to be the current hype) and in the headphones on top are simple the most popular ones, while the best that can be much more obscure stay hidden in or under the middle of the pack. So it may be good to think what you really want to achieve and how you would get that part of “quality control” in check - if that fits the purpose of the website.
drftr
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You won’t have that problem with neither of those 2.
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RE your 1 and 2:
I’ve heard very wide soundstages that only “showed” left, center, right, but nothing in between. In that case I would definitely prefer a smaller soundstage to make it more, dunno, believable?
It’s extremely hard to rate tonality as probably 80% of listeners ranks based on electric/electronic instruments instead of acoustic ones. How do you know that a distorted electric guitar sounds better on one headphone over another? I guess you won’t come closer than saying you prefer one distortion over the other. But is that how you want to build up a rating system? Not sure.
drftr
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This is why it’s essential to crowdsource. There is a lot of overlap between what people hear. If most people put the mest above clairvoyance in soundstage that have heard both, and then different groups of people put clairvoyance above zen consistently, but almost no one heard both the mest and the zen (which obivously isn’t reality based), you can still extrapolate an overall structure.
But, keeping the input clean and not abused by… whomever… could be a challenge. I have some thoughts about it. But, it’s not the biggest problem to solve at the moment.
And remember, ideall, the system should have your inputs. And should be able to make some smart observations.
Dang… We’re waiting for the Timeless and Zen to show up for a good price!
drftr
Okay… But u won’t get that problem with the EJ07M…
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Not sure. I only 3 people were able to hear the MEST (but have heard hundreds others) they would never come out on top if a 1,000 people absolutely loved their Blessing. The other extreme is that very cheap IEM that Z reviewed, the $12 one. Say only 3 people have heard it and it’s the only thing they know. In that case we would have the MEST have 3 top reviews and the $12 one as well. Close finish?
drftr