I guess that’s fair, but just because someone else is being an asshole doesn’t mean you have to become one in response as well. The youtube comment section is typically filled with garbage with some actual decent comments sometimes in there so I can see how that can really get to people, although still doesn’t justify what he’s doing (apparently, haven’t seen what he’s up to lately myself)
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Oh you’re 100% correct on that assessment!
i find all of this is highly reflected in most parts of todays’ society and its issues. It’s a discussion on how offensive, emotional and possibly political incorrect a person can be publicly etc. This kind of stuff is all over the place and you will find different opinions on it everywhere. People have different values and behaviours which is the result of a million factors.
Nowadays a $150 chinese amp can measure as good as expensive amps. So you can’t tell the difference if it’s sufficent enough to drive whatever headphone you’re using.
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I think you messed some things up there, buddy. Oluv prefers a rather bright signature in my opinion, which is exactly the opposite of what you discribed. He critisized the Harman Target for having too much bass (which is ok to do, as especially the bass is highly determined by preference), and adapted “his” version of the B&K Optimum HiFi-Target, which is kinda the opposite of “dark” and “warm”. And what do you mean by “detail”? A boosted treble response? Maybe your preference is “VERY unorthodox”?
While I disagree with Oluv on a couple of issues and I sometimes dont like his kinda “aggressive” style, I still think he is a honest guy who just aims for the most natural sound reproduction. I can also understand him in some way, as there is a lot of crappy audio hardware out there which is still getting a lot of praise and hype by “audiophiles”. This can be chastening and I have gone through this too.
But I generally dont care for all this “reviewer” stuff, as I dont find it helpful to try to discribe an audio product like a bottle of wine and I think most of these reviewer guys are just paid or have other incentives, so for me this isnt really helpfull at all. There are way worse reviewers on YouTube I have seen (with even more followers).
Have a nice day.
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I view Oluv the same way I view Anthony Fantano for music reviews - he makes fun videos to watch but his tastes are awful and he seems like a bit of a dick.
I’ve been watching a bunch of Oluv’s videos recently and the problem isn’t just that he has very particular tastes; it’s that he’s so harsh and dismissive of anything that doesn’t meet those tastes.
It reminds me of some people I used to know who would only listen to classic rock. Every band had to be a classic rock band with a convention guitar + bass + keyboard + drums, and anyone who deviated from that, tried unique instruments, did anything electronic, or recorded anything experimental - was making music ‘wrong’ and was thus bad.
There are people who actually have that type of viewpoint. And it’s not a viewpoint I’m very fond of.
Oluv’s reviews sort of remind me of that, except with him viewing a particular sound signature as the only ‘good’ one and anything that deviates from it is crap. For example, in a recent video he listened to a Grado RS1e for the first time, put it on for literally 14 seconds, and declared it to be “a broken cheap $20 headphone from Radio Shack”. It wasn’t “This is an unusual sound signature that I’m not a fan of.” It’s “I don’t like it, therefore it’s shit.” And that’s after literally 14 seconds of listening.
Now you can love or hate Grado’s sound, but that’s not a valid way to review something. And he does that all the time with so many different headphones. It’s a mentality of “I have a viewpoint of how things ought to be, and anything that doesn’t match my viewpoint is automatically shit.” That’s just a bad review style and makes people put very little weight on his opinions, even if his videos are entertaining.
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He’s the perfect anti-hype guy. 
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He is like a less scientific Amir in my opinion. Music isn’t just about being accurate. He would probably take the Sony mdr 7506 over the grado ps2000e, which is laughable
He’s the perfect anti-hype guy.
More like anti-expensive or anti-non-earfun/anker imho
He is like a less scientific Amir in my opinion
I appreciate what Amir is doing, but his headphone reviews are useless imho, if you don’t adhere to harman curve
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Definitely not a shill. Anti-hyper and authentic.
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Well, he does use his MH1 over much more expensive iems, doesn’t he? They do sound more natural and relaxed than my FH3 and I used to prefer them over them too for a few months but nowadays my ears have been accustomed to the higher resolution of the FH3 and I hardly take out the MH1 anymore.
And he also said my Nighthawks are shit as well as the new Stealth’s, come on Oluv! Don’t spoil our fun!
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Oluvs personal preference aside the one thing I love about his reviews are the sound demo/comparisons of headphones and BT speakers. This style of review I find much more to my liking than the standard yt reviewers mumbo-jumbo “oh this product x is really crisp and smooth at this an this frequency range”.
Sadly there are only very view reviewers who do sound demos. Hats off to Tharbarmar and Oluv. Zeos does them too but only for the single product at hand. Thanks to them I saved a few bucks on gear which turned out to be not so great as I imagined.
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Dan’s Audio Reviews is a new channel that contains audio demos…
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One audiophile meme he initially supported and even hyped was the Focal Elex. Then his broke, and he had issues with the replacements too, so he went public with the build quality issues and withdrew his endorsement. That’s not something you see often, and I have to give him props for it.
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Thanks for the recommendation his latest sound demo is gold. And btw Mangird Teas suck compared to the other sets 
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I would agree with his sentiment there. It’s one thing to have a fantastic headphone and what seems to be initially good build quality and finish, only to pull your hair out once something actually breaks.
Focal and Klipsch are the prime evils of aftermarket parts when you want to replace it with original ones. Look at the Klipsch HP-3 as an example, looks and sounds fantastic. Build quality is very solid at a glance, and all the hinges etc are of superb quality. But did you know that the leather headband is not actually stitched? It’s glued, with an absolute miniscule amount of material and glue too.
So when my brother’s pair separated at the top of the headband, Klipsch basically wanted him to shell out €300 for the headband and €150 for EACH cup. That’s half the bloody headphone for parts that are basically wear and tear only.
Focal are equally retarded expensive when it comes to spare parts. Not something you want to deal with when the drivers can basically survive for decades if you treat them right. Meanwhile you can get Sennheiser parts anywhere and for very little money out of your own pocket, it’s basically like buying spare parts for an older Volvo. Got a pair of 22+ year old HD600 and they’re still kicking.
I wish more companies thought of product lifetime and aftermarket support.
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Couple thoughts on Oluv here:
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I really wish people, particularly people who expose themselves to the public through things like YouTube, would learn not to be dismissive dicks about other people’s tastes. Which is hardly unique to Oluv, in fact seems to be endemic to the audiophile community honestly, particularly on Discord. But for Oluv, like it can’t be that some people just like the enhanced soundstage of the 800S, it’s “wrong” and “unnatural”. It moves for him from a matter of taste to a moral issue. If you like this, you’re wrong. It’s funny to me that he’ll call something “unlistenable” and then in the same video say your ears adjust to unusual tunings and they sound normal. So, not actually unlistenable then? His hyper focus on frequency response is weird, he seems to think detail retrieval is just a function of treble FR, but this is obviously disprovable by taking a cheap earphone and eq’ing up the treble and seeing if it has the same detail as an expensive earphone with high detail retrieval. But maybe he just doesn’t hear detail retrieval or speed or transient response or timbre the way other people do? Or he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t hear these things? Like I think he said he didn’t hear the 800S having more detail than the 400SE, and I haven’t heard the 400SE but I find that hard to believe? I donno, it’s weird, and I don’t really get it, and I feel like there’s something that I’m missing. Like I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt (unlike what he’s willing to give other people’s opinions) that there’s something honest and real to him about what he’s saying, but I don’t understand what it is. In any case, dismissing everything except like 3 things as unlistenable crap is just absurd and frankly makes you look insane.
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Though I do kind of respect the way he’s kind of an anti-reviewer more than a reviewer, like generally a reviewer’s brief is to explain what a product is about and who it might be for, why someone might want to or not want to purchase it and how it compares to similar products. Oluv though isn’t interested in who a product might be for, he’s only interested in whether it’s his very particular definition of true, and almost nothing is, and the stuff that is is typically cheap.
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Further, this idea of using pink noise to figure out what’s neutral to your personal hearing is absolutely fascinating and I wish he or someone else would break down step-by-step instructions on how to do it, because I’d love to try it with just all my headphones and see what it sounds like. It looks like Oluv MIGHT have something like that on his Patreon, if it doesn’t only work for those EarMan things he worked on, and I might have to sign up for it just for that, unless anyone knows someone else who’s explained the method somewhere. I have headphones and earphones that I love but feel like there’s something nigglingly wrong in the FR that needs tweaking, but I’m not skilled enough at recognizing the frequencies to know what it might be.
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There is a tool made by a researcher that claims you can adjust a headphone’s FR to your hearing by listening to specific tones a volume-match them one by one. I guess the methodology is similar to oluv’s?
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That does sound interesting!
I think what Oluv’s doing sounds more like this method: Ear Training for Critical Listening with Pink Noise – Headphones.com
I’m going to get some pink noise going and see what I make of it