What do we think about him? He’s smart and I like his attempt at method in his audio reviews. But he is super contrarian and sort of an anti-Z. He may also just have very particular tastes. Any thoughts?
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Seems like a good one to move in this thread.
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Anyone who doesn’t believe that the source affects the sound and uses a cheap topping op amp for all headphones is an automatic “opinion invalid” for me. Also he doesn’t describe the sound well and only cares about the tuning.
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He’s critical of Z but to be honest I find z’s assessments to be consistent with my own experience. If Z says something is good and has certain characteristics, and I buy that thing, I find he was right. I can hear what he was talking about.
Z is a massive shill imo. Hype train after hype train. If there is a new Chinese headphone you know he is gonna hype it.
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Most of them are, that is how you get clicks. At least Z tries to have criticisms for most things he reviews, and almost gets angry about not having enough.
I do think you need to watch them all considering what they are trying to sell you. Is the thing in the video, the sponsor, or their merch. Some are more transparent than others.
He’s like a ghost driver on the autobahn who, in all his self-confidence, always claims to be the only one driving in the right direction.
If you start to disagree, the guy quickly becomes insulting.
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I don’t know him super well, but what I have seen so far, he kind of seems like an idiot. One or two years ago I checked out his bluetooth speaker reviews, where he trashed Bose loudspeakers and hailed Anker Soundcore loudspeakers as the best. IIRC big part of that was that he put both speakers on full volume and the Bose distorted earlier… however it was a flawed comparision if you overlook the fact that the Bose was 3x smaller/lighter than the soundcore.
I just checked some of his videos on his channel, where he basically nowadays hails the Anker Soundcore Q30/35 as the best headphone. Better than the Sennheiser HD660s and better than the Dan Clark Stealth. In his comparisions/demonstrations he (for whatever reason) uses an equalizer for the Soundcore, but not for the other headphones. He often makes up what seems to me like bullshit excuses “the other headphones didn’t really sound good after eqing”. Didn’t really talk much about technicalities and the song he used for the comparision had terrible sound quality to begin with.
Again: I don’t know him very well and my first and second impression may be wrong, but he seems like an idiot. There is nothing wrong imho to say “for me this 50$ headphone is all that i need and for me there is no reason to upgrade”, but then why have a channel where you bitch about it all the time and portrait your opinion as gospel? I don’t know whether or not he is involved with them, but he comes across as a Soundcore shill…
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To add to that: I think his whole shtick is to tell people, that they can have the high end audio without spending money. Once I read his comment section I realized how many people resonate with that message.
I don’t even think that is necessarily a bad take, but the way he communicates this opinion seems very disingenious to me.
This sounds about right. His views on what constitutes “good” sound are remarkably unique. Many of those headphones he derides are ones I know for a fact to be excellent. In my experience, more expensive cans are in fact better than cheaper ones. Their “value” of course is debatable, especially when diminishing returns kicks in.
I really don’t perceive Z to be a shill. I think he can get carried away with his enthusiasm. He’ll claim that something that objectively is an 8 out of ten is in fact an awe-inspiring 11. But usually he’s right at least that that item is very good. Not an 11, of course, nor even a 10. But it is good, and for the reasons he describes.
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That might be the best description of Z ever, he does get overly enthusiastic.
My oldest son is the same way about nearly all movies, so I always to force him to rank order things to get a better assessment of their value.
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I used to think he was the best reviewer but he went crazy recently, he really doesn’t give af about anything but tuning, still mostly agree with his fr preference, I do have his earbuds and the anker q30 and they’re actually really well tuned imo but you can’t compare them to proper higher end headphones resolution, soundstage, etc wise… his sound demos are still the only somewhat useful ones tho.
But yeah I don’t think I can trust most reviewers at this point, zeos just shills everything, joshua is too abstract, dms has the weirdest takes, andrew likes 4.5k peaks and calls it detail, I just go by graphs and maybe forums lately.
Tbf the soundcore come with an app and the eq stays embedded in the headphones so you just have to set it once and it works on any device forever, to eq regular headphones you gotta do it on each device with third party software
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Oluv is hilarious, his views are unique and refreshing. You can call him what you want, but basically dismissing the entire industry takes some balls, he obviously doesn’t have any fucks to give. His comparisons with the sound signature of the HPs are comprehensible to some degree and left me giggling. I do see some paralleles to vastly contradictory reviews of the Sendy Peacock. I was also quite shocked about the ear placement issues of the Dan Clarke Stealth. A HP shouldn’t vary in sound signature this much just by changing Its’ position, that’s just not OK. To me, these videos come at a good point in time. Over the years, I have invested thousands in gear and differently tuned HPs and IEMs. I do have a variety of differently built cans and some serious source gear. I will completely jump off the hype-train now. If i want something new or if i’m not satisfied with the sound characteristics of my cans, i will play around with APO and different chain combinations. Buying new gear comes dead-last. I had this growing inside me for quite some time. What made my head spin, were the discussions about EQ’ing in the so-called “audiophile” community. What? Using an equalizer in your setup is a bad thing? Adjusting the frequency response of your gear to your own linkings, or what fits good to the recording you’re playing (!!!) is a no-no? Do you know how f’ing many EQs, normalizers, effecst etc. are being used in the studio to produce what you’re hearing? You do know, that no studio geek in the world can produce music to fit 100% to the capabilites and characteristics of your personal HiFi-system? To me, this so-called “purist” approach is ridiculous, to say the least. I am quite happy with the technical capabilities of my gear and will stop making a fool out of myself. I won’t make myself a bitch of some audio engineers, that just give their gear a different sound signature to stand out of the competition and grab one’s attention. I want to have access to a good EQ in every scenario, if necessary, i will even have to change gear for that. (lol) But taking or keeping matters in your own hand seems to be a foreign language to some self-proclaimed “audiophiles”.
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He thinks a 150 dollar chinese op amp sounds the same as a nice class A amp
well, i won’t even start to defend all his views. But shifting the focus to more major issues like horrible tunings of headphones and away from the more subtle differences source gear can make, is quite legit. Shiny, expensive crap is still crap.
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It is precisely this “culturally valuable” way of expressing oneself that is also Oluv‘s specialty.
I would never have believed that a headphone or hi-fi community is so unable to articulate itself moderately.
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Really wondering why people are going after the reviewers themselves here, imo it’s fine to criticize/discuss/critique the reviews and the info in those reviews, but don’t go after the person behind it, that’s just name-calling/ad hominem at that point
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