Headphone report-card: Let's judge them!

To transform highly subjective and often subtle impressions into notations and charts is a dangerous task imo. Dangerous because as all statistics and chartss , they tend to hide the reality and simplify it . when charts are done people tend to read them quickly to malke their opinion and forget to read the real impression written with real words. and audio is sometimes subtle , too subtle for charts.

Charts and notations done by one guy could be compared. Charts and notations made by a lot of people will be some lukewarm average opinion that's not relevant or informative for me when I want to know how a headphone sound. I much prefer to read written impressions of a bunch of guys I know where they come from + a good set of measurements.

Moreover, CHarts and notations give an apparence of objectivity on somewhat that's highly subjective and dependant from listener tastes in audio and music.

Just my opinion but I know it's a lost battle ...

EDIT : I agree with Bill-p as well

 

Yup . but "very much in tune" means there're differences and those differences matter more than what we generally agree about to understand bothe the headphine itself and the listener. to

You heptagon would be valid for me if and only if I knew you and your tastes and the heaphone you love and all the context. So between poeple who have a decent knowledge of each others , I could estimate the risk of simplification and misleading is low because we agreed on the rules and how to read and understand the charts. But on larger scale , potential issues and misleading are too high. Real information would be diluted in average opinions synthetized in notation that fools will trust because they're too lazy to read and try to understand beyond the charts and the notation.

I wouldn't use any charts or notation for my own review for Tellementnomade.org for that reason. I know it could mislead readers. if the reader want to know objective data about headphones , he looks for measurements. If he want my impressions, he takes the time to read and understand what I mean between the lines.

Moreover, Seasoned pirates ( does that exist anymore ? ) are not numerous in my book. and the seasoned pirates I really trust are maybe not the ones someone else trust. With the new forum , I struggle more and more to find impressions I'm really interested about. Not to say , what I read is invalid or bad. I just don't know where people come from.

 

There certainly is a risk of misleading through oversimplification, but that risk is only mitigated with a well written review, not eliminated. (As I think you stated) Each method has its limits, whether purely quantitative/objective (like measurements), purely qualitative/subjective (like impressions) or somewhere between the two (like this effort). I like the mixed methods approach, therefore I see merit in all these methods.

I think it would be a step in the wrong direction to shun a "total average" metric. Instead, it should be acknowledged with an accompanying explanation of why it's useless. Inclusive and transparent is better than exclusive. I believe the first satanic heptagon was accompanied with a note that said "don't do something stupid like add up all the numbers to figure out what is best. Sit down and figure what aspects of sound reproduction matter to you most and what things you can afford to lose out on." Being able to weight those aspects might yield a more meaningful total average.

As for a reference point, the need for one depends on what you're looking for. If you just want to know what most people think of "X" headphone, the approach Alessandro1/the Illuminati/stereo-head.it is taking is sufficient. If you want to know what YOU should think of "X" headphone, a reference point is necessary. Perhaps the aggregate scores for each "aspect of sound reproduction" can be recomputed once you input your own score for a designated reference headphone. Still, that only tells you what most people think of other headphones relative to what you think of your reference. And just the fact that CS/SBAF exist says what users here think of what "most people think." But doing the same thing against what most/or some users HERE think would be useful. Limiting things to certain users would eliminate the dishonest contributions the other approach is liable to see. Would also be interesting to be able to filter which users you want to see aggregate metrics from.