Given the recent discussions about hi-fi headphone misleading marketing https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36377875, and how hard it is to quantify quality, I found this resource a while ago and loved how they tear them apart and fixed the shortcomings of $40 headphones with simple hacks like adding a coffee filter on the cup to make them sound better than $500 models
Got some SHP9500 open ear headphones, as far as I can tell of outstanding quality for the money, $39.99. It’s true that bass is quite soft but I find myself jamming out for longer sessions because they are very comfortable. There are various hacks and mods out there for these as well. I highly recommend these headphones for good bang for the buck ratio.
After purchasing the Beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO, I discovered the Superlux HD 662 EVO on this website and decided to buy them for $38 to see how they would compare. I was pleasantly surprised by the significant difference in quality, considering the Superlux headphones were almost five times cheaper. This experience led me to return the Beyerdynamic headphones and approach overpriced headphone reviews with more skepticism.
Reviews of Beyerdynamic headphones shouldn't tell you they're good without also telling you they have poor audio tuning with a treble peak that makes things sound "sibilant".
You might be the kind of person who puts an EQ in your headphone path, but most people should go for something more neutral instead.
I don't know what in my comment made you assume I use an EQ.
As a first-time Hi-Fi headphone buyer, the reviews on Amazon and Youtube didn't surface the nuances of the different headphone models using quantitative information as DIY-Audio-Heaven does.
This reminds me of Crinnacles In-Ear Fidelity graph database of IEMs. https://crinacle.com/graphs/iems/ iirc it is the largest database of IEMs in existence.
Also, wow I haven't seen this wordpress theme in 10 years, it used to be my favorite!
Kind of an odd undertaking, though. The biggest improvement you can get with IEMs by far is custom fitting. You could take one of those middle-of-the-pack IEMs from that big list, spend a few hundred on fitted tips, and get a better result than the non-custom stuff at the top of the list.
What's this based on?
AFAIK, custom molded tips, should create a better seal than generic ear tips, but unless they're molded with optimal insertion depth for a given in-ear, they might change the perceived frequency response.
Bearing in mind that the material of the tip also matters, one might not necessarily get an "improvement", but merely a change in sound signature and a more secure fit.
Since we're on this topic: a great thread on modding the Fostex T50RP. Some folks even turned this into a few small businesses. Some were selling modded versions and others selling mod-kits.
On the topic of trustworthy review sites, especially for headphones, I thought rtings.com is the standard. Detailed data-driven reviews and supposedly crowd-funded. What do people think about rtings?
Objective headphone reviews are only valid in the same setting, which means if your room sounds different, your head is shaped different, or you're wearing glasses they stop being true.
Noise cancelling headphones and IEMs are better than reviews make it sound due to this.
> Objective headphone reviews are only valid in the same setting, which means if your room sounds different, your head is shaped different, or you're wearing glasses they stop being true.
I get this with speakers but how are any of these valid with headphones?
Hang on a moment. Headphones can be the best in the world but uncomfortable on my wonky head or incompatible with my glasses and they're worthless to me personally, so I'll give him a pass on that. I have some not-audiophile-but-better-than-meh headphones I rate very highly because they're nicely made and super comfortable; they sound good but that would count for zero if they didn't feel nice.
Room acoustics, though, ought not be very important with headphones unless I'm missing something...
The room you're in has no bearing on headphones, except perhaps for the background noise.
Having a wonky head, however, may affect the seal of the pads against your head, or the headphones may clamp too much or not enough, or the cups might be oddly angled, all of which may affect the sound somewhat.
Same with ear shape versus driver placement. If you have shallow or deep pinnae, that may make a difference depending on the relative location of the driver.
Almost all spatial audio is built around a head related transfer function, which attempts to model all sorts of things, like how much sound reflects off your shoulders and other such things, although those questions are usually considerations more for DSP than they are for the tuning of the headphones themselves -- in cases like the Airpods Pro & Max, though, those two things may be one and the same.
What I'm after and can't seem to find are good quality¹ glasses frames that have (bone-conduction) headphones built in to the stems. I want to replace my existing prescription glasses with this.
