It is hard to find a reviewer online who you are convinced is thrustworthy.
Some just praise everything in all their videos and for some it is specific brands they always recomend. Others spend a lot of time, saying how independent they are and that they are 100% legit. And then the next day, they have a collaboration with an IEM company and put their name on one of their IEMs.
For me it is the same as being a shill and using the trust we have in them, to make a $. I don’t care how much any reviewer says “oh, but it is only the tuning” or whatever; they have their name on a product they say we should buy:
Is that being impartial?
The reviewer makes money from a product he clearly says we should buy…
The only version of that, that I can kind of accept, is if the reviewer doesn’t talk about it, doesn’t review it and doesn’t rank it. Which I guess is the way Crinacle does it.
What I can’t accept is when the reviewer encourage us to buy the IEM with his name on. I stay away from those, both their products and their reviews.
Not sure what you are alluding to. There was no collab with the ZEX. There was a collab between Crin and the KZ ZEX Pro. In my post I referred to HBB giving a recommendation, who doesn’t relate to the ZEX (but had a collab with KZ… the DQ6S if I am not mistaken).
I just assume that HBB has a different taste when it comes to his ZEX recommendation…
For me the credibility of reviewers is not as important as my overlap between my and his taste. If he shills products unjustified, I will rely less on him. Same thing with Crinacle: I don’t care if he shills Moondrop or not, but he gives the Blessing 2 high praise. Many people agree with that, I don’t… so I don’t rely on his recommendations. Nothing personal.
Yeah same thing. I got the ZEX as a cheap beater for $25(???) or whatever.
At first, after hearing about this; I was like, “Hey I was duped by KZ but it sounds fine to me so I shouldn’t be bothered by it.”
BUT $25 and cheap is relative, it may be a lot for someone else and if they purchased it based on drivers as advertised and are getting something else - that kinda sucks! They were deceived.
Also what if KZ are doing this with prior knowledge and driving prices up because X amount of drivers? That just isn’t right.
I mean, there’s just a lot more potential tests to do on speakers, for iems and headphones I mainly think of FR, CSD/time domain, distortion, and impedance curve, all of which are being regularly measured for the most part. There’s more measurements for speakers since there’s simply more to measure and more variables to account for vs HP or iem.
Also the big question here is again how much these truly matter, since the real test is listening to the thing, but it’s good to have the data after that
I feel like it’s pretty hard to remain neutral no matter the stance one takes if you are selling a product with your name/association on it in the same category as the stuff you are reviewing. Personally if I was a reviewer and wanting to collaborate with a company, I’d just stop reviewing entirely once that collaboration happened. Because there’s far too much conflict of interest to continue to do reviews in my mind. Well admittedly if it was me I wouldn’t do a collaboration because most of the time I don’t feel like I know more than the people who design audio products for a living, and I wouldn’t want to be a reviewer lol, but that’s besides the point
In the end that’s really what matters, do you agree with the experiences of the person, and do they align with your taste
I mean, if they are willing to put in drivers just for show, I wouldn’t put it past them to capitalize on that further, who knows though, not enough info to really say what’s going on yet
This video is from a few days ago, but I hadn’t spotted it posted here. Ian is a fairly new reviewer, and has an interview with some people at KZ. Ian asked some very direct questions, which was impressive, since he has mostly been reviewing KZ IEMs.
KZ basically spent 20 minutes making excuses, and blaming workers. He stayed on message about the drivers impacting the timber, which won’t surprise anyone, but was interesting to watch. They even did the “come visit our factory” line.
Along with the release of the Atrium, the Aelous and Eikon are being discontinued. Though the Aelous will be returning this summer with the Atrium damping system.
