The Head-Fi Healing Thread

Sure do, all the time.

NEVER in general discussions, I just hunt down threads on the gear I'm buying or thinking of buying or putter around in the classifieds.

 

The worst thing is that it is a genuinely great product at the price point- but Head-Fi's party line of "everything is awesome!!!!!one", and deleting threads critical of flawed products rather devalues this. Hyping everything all the time produces a brainless and febrile "boy who cried wolf" situation. Jude and his little happy-clappy retail-friendly unit shifter magical thinking elves are absolutely shameless.

Ahem. End of rant.

 

You wanna see something insane? Look at the Martin Logan Mikros 90 thread. I haven't been in there in a while, but those people seemed to genuinely believe it was the best headphone in the world. People were claiming after FIVE HUNDRED HOURS of burn in it became the best headphone under $1000. The echo chamber over there is insane.

There are good members, GREAT members, you just gotta know who to look for. And Jude... I swear that dude refuses to ever say a product isn't revolutionary, even when it is dead-ass proven to be a scam.

 

I've been on Head-Fi since early '03 and still haven't hit 1000 posts. In part because I love to read more than I like to post, and I try to say something helpful or not at all. That's not to say I haven't contributed to the noise now and then. It's taken me a while to realize the impact that has on threads when they start to get really big.

Back when I used to read the audio mags 20-30 years ago, there were certain reviewers I looked forward to hearing from and others I felt were more interested in writing ad copy. Head-fi is similar. Some people are great (and have come over here) and others quickly get moved to the block list. Most of what I subscribe to on Head-fi are the Schiit threads for when Mike or Jason pop in and have something to say.

 

Typical Head-fi thread that drives me insane:

- OMG! Product X will be out in 6 mos
- OMG! No way! I bet it will kill everything out there!
- How do you think unavailable product X will compare to something someone has actually heard ?
- Oh I'm sure it will be much better!
...50 pages and 9 mos later....
- OMG It's available!
- I'm buying one
-so am I
-so am I
-so am I
-mine has shipped
-so has mine
-so has mine
-argh. UPS sucks mule dong.
another 30 pages later....finally a single post that has useful info.

 

- OMG! Ponies!

Or, to put it another way, an entire thread of the sort that you mention is equal to one attention-span-challenged-but-obsessive early teen.

 

Wait, ponies? I'm totally getting one.

 

Balanced or Single-Ended?

 

I was looking around at headfi today. I ran across this post that struck me as funny:

________________________________________________________
"There's also this thread from 2010:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/486598/testing-audiophile-claims-and-myths

It's an amazing thread - over 6500 posts, and you only have to read the first one."
________________________________________________________

 

I love it. Not surprising either. The kind of "audiophiles" you see out there are people who want desperately to be part of an elite club, and you can't do that unless you have equipment other people don't, which means buying shit most people can't afford. After all, any peasant can listen to Spotify with a Fiio amp and a pair of HD598's, but only WE TRUE AUDIOPHILES can have our FLACs pumped through a Chord DAVE and Jotunhelm to power our HE1000's with our $1500 hand-woven cables. You clearly aren't hearing as good of audio as we are because YOU just can't AFFORD it. PFEH!

 

From your favorite poster MTOC:
http://www.head-fi.org/t/819959/oppo-sonica-dac-a-affordable-es9038pro-sabre-dac

It's funny how $799 is considered to be "affordable".... especially in the context of Jotunheim with or without Modi Multibit.

 

Heh, I just added my two cents in there...

 

Speaking of ES9038PRO... Do you really need 140db Dynamic Range? Which speaker or headphone can reproduce that? Or what kind of recording/microphone can capture that level of dynamics?

 

Same ones that need a freq response of 5Hz - 50KHz I suppose.

 

Still go there every few days. Being a Glenn otl owner there's some useful info there. Besides that pretty useless. I've learned much
More here.

 

Whatever the FOTM is I suppose, but only with gold cables. (The silver ones are too bright apparently.)

 

An inexplicably high blood-alcohol level seems to have me posting there today, griping about another DAP ... and I swear I only went there to peruse the trade forums.

I expect my BAC is down to my fiancé's friends throwing her an engagement party this evening, leaving me home alone with my music, a rather well-stocked bar and an overflowing wine rack. I mean, come on, this stuff is not just going to drink itself. And since a little Balvenie is as good an audio-tweak as I know of, well, it's not just the big plastic discs that be a spinning!

Less inclined to post utter bollocks over here. You know, except for posts like this ...

 

He who is tired of Schiit is tired of life.

So said Samuel Johnson, 1709-1784, as he swapped the latest Schiit product into his stack, and, shouting "Guardez L'Amp!" flung the old one out the window, where it silenced the song of "Cherry ripe! Cherry Ripe!" from a passing pretty young vendor who had managed to get away from the portrait sitting and back to real work...

But as the scheen has worn off the purchase of any more hifi these days, I'm afraid that... yes I am tired, even of Schiit. Which removes the final reason, and the relevance of my last active Head-fi subscribed thread.

Buying or not, Jason's "book" was brilliant, and the story of the company was gripping. For the first year or two. Now... not so much.

I suppose I'll drop in on it occasionally. But the bookmark will get demoted.

SBAF is now my final forum link to the world of headphones and hifi.

 

I don't know if you feel similarly, but I find that my enthusiasm for all the crazy forums is pretty much proportionate to how much I feel like I have a bottleneck that needs eliminating. I'm a lot calmer when I'm on a "plateau" and can sit back and enjoy the music.

I had an itch, which was a a better amp itch, to make my HD650 sound more like they should. Specifically, I also wanted to try an amp which could offer a decent choice between SE and balanced- but so many of the alternatives were either fancifully priced or half-arsed (or both). I was keeping an eye on second hand sales for something that appealed, and suddenly Schiit released exactly what I was looking for- bless their little cotton socks. A clean, powerful balanced SS amp at a sensible price was very relevant to my interests.

Less itchy now, gathering more beautiful audiobling balanced cables for some of my headphones to enjoy the marginal difference of going balanced, and making some stuff available lossless where I can actually hear the difference (annoying, but it's a first world problem). I'll probably put a few things up for sale, reduce the bulk of stuff a bit, and then maybe treat myself to a slightly better planar to keep my 650s company.

It's a nice position to be in. I feel like I don't need the unbridled hysteria and groupthink of head-fi quite as much now, though. SBAF is starting to fill the gap nicely, mind- there's actual conversation, occasionally somewhat grounded in reality.. it's a bit more civilised.