SBAF don’t know shit about iems and why bigger penis mindset is happier

Asians with their small penises and small ears....forget it not worth it.... *Facepalm*

 

To be fair, they look like Singaporeans and we don't know shit about proper music experience, most of us live in small apartments with zero sound isolation and can't use BWC speakers

 

Maybe I shouldn’t be talking about this given my... history... but it felt wrong to let this whole thing take its course on a false premise.

Firstly, I don’t know whether purr1n took that screencap himself or if he got it from someone else, but it’s sorely lacking in full context. If anything, Nihlar (Jonah) likes SBAF, and it reflects in the full context of what he said in that discussion.


Of course, you can disagree/feel offended about him saying SBAF “doesn’t know shit” about IEMs, but it feels like a misrepresentation to paint him as attacking the website when he was simply trying to give his own opinion on what he thinks it does/doesn’t do well. Hell, he’s outright defending it in the second screencap.

Secondly, Nihlar is not Singaporean. Neither is rocky. Both of them live in Hong Kong, and Nihlar does in fact have a speaker setup (KH120s). So I don’t know where this completely false accusation is coming from.

I hope, at least, that the full context of whatever was said in the screencaps shines more light on the intentions at hand here. And for the record, I’m defending him on his behalf not just because he asked me to due to not being able to make an account (captcha broke), but also because he’s a friend and this dog-piling on a false premise just felt disconcerting to look at.

 

Lol I just like to shit on my own countrymen at any opportunity for audio cos the audio culture is head-fi buying toxicity amplified. Plus a lot of my songs are crap Japanese recordings anyway, though not necessarily "sweet female vocals". But no more OT from me.

 

I'll respect Jonah more from that discord chat if he makes a direct post on SBAF that we don't know shit about IEMs since we live in America and we're limited on demo access.

 

This should go in the banner.

 

It definitely can be unhealthy, as can obsessing about anything really. That said I can't fail to reflect that this hobby probably spared me from a good deal of rancor and borderline insanity due to being locked alone in my condo for unusual spans of time this year. I am continually surprised about the degree of drama, though.

 

I like my drama medium like my steak, which is perfect at the Brazilian steakhouse. Too rare or well done and you blew it.

On Discord, to be honest I don't know how someone can spend so much time on there. Like I have a job and a life (well, a pretty lame life but I have things to do).

 

Apologies for the delay, registration has been broken. SBAF doesn't know shit about IEMs since you guys live in America and are limited on demo access.

It seems like there's been a misunderstanding. It seems like you're under the impression that I like the U18t. I listened to the U18t sometime last year. For about 10 seconds. I then politely gave them back to the shopkeeper and promptly exited the store.

To be clear, my comments were not in reference to this review, nor any review in particular.



Now, to whomever took a selective screenshot of a partial message taken out of context to intentionally misconstrue me as some sort of kilobuck iem apologist for a laugh: Shame on you. That's some cowardly and shady bullshit.

 

Can you have this fight in another thread? Believe it or not I put a lot of effort into trying to evaluate these iem’s in as many different conditions as possible and there will be more reviews posted here. I’d like the personal shit to go elsewhere and comments to be kept to the U18t. Good or bad, it’s about the U18t snd is not personal.

 

He is here! Thanks for joining, just don't bring any of that Discord stuff here. If you like we can take this to the PMs.

 

I would say that a Yoda/force ghost-like level of omnipresence is necessary to write IEM reviews that genuinely speak to everyone.

I say this because Campfire IEMs have mostly sounded like shit to me, as well as many of Crinacle's favorites.

 

I've sometimes wondered what's with the CA love on SBAF and much of HF vs the pretty negative reviews that seem to come out of Asia. Jingoism? Or do we in America just not know all the goodness we're missing with all the boutique Asian brands that are hard to get stateside?

 

Simple answer: you don't. It's about which 50 IEMs you hear, and which IEMs you have access to on a regular basis to compare other IEMs with (this is just as important). You yourself said it, a lot of stuff on the market is just plain bad or variations of something else. Having 50 variations of the same design in your inventory (obviously an exaggeration for example's sake) doesn't help you articulate anything at all.

The reasons why people in Asia often separate IEMs from headphones or speakers are as follows:
1. Driver types in IEMs are weird as shit and don't apply to other transducer types. You don't see BA speakers or BA headphones for a really good reason. And even mainstay stuff like DDs and planars behave very differently with IEMs than they do with headphones. Then there is the nature of hybrid designs, which has absolutely nothing in common with headphones and skips right to speakers (which even then, is only tangentially related due to the fact that BA and DD designs have fundamentally different operating principles and different transient and timbral behaviors, not to mention throwing bullshit like piezos, electrets, planars etc. into the mix).
2. Headphone and speaker perception have more in common than IEM perception. I'm sure you all know about HRTF, pinna comp, head gain etc. so I won't bore you with all that technical information. The point here is that with IEMs, so much has been bypassed that a person's IEM perception and headphone perception cannot be correlated. The amount of head gain a person likes on a headphone says nothing about how much pinna comp they want/need on an IEM, which is why there are a billion and one arguments over whether or not stuff like Andromeda has enough upper mids or if PP8 has too much. It's all about the pinna compensation.
Does listening to speakers or headphones or having audio engineering experience contextualize what's possible in audio as a whole, and what IEMs are shit at? Absolutely, which is why I would argue the vast majority of IEM people are guilty for not recognizing how low the bar is for many IEMs due to not having enough experience outside of it.

It's really not even about appreciating them, I've heard uncountable numbers of IEMs and I'd be the first to tell you that I wouldn't touch the vast majority with a 10 foot pole. It's about understanding what they can and can't do, and what driver types are really good and really shit at, and what can be accomplished with unique designs and what can be improved on in existing ones.

Here's something that not many people might not realize without decent experience: The vast majority of IEMs, BA, DD, whatever, have terrible macrodynamic response, and the ones that actually perform on par with a HD600 or a HD650 at macrodynamics are extremely rare. I can count all the ones I've heard on my right hand. Or how about the limits and capabilities of staging and imaging in IEMs, and how a designer can make IEMs project larger than usual. Obviously, none of this shit matters or is important when it comes to just enjoying or listening to IEMs or casually talking about them, but when you're actively discussing them on a regular basis with the intent on separating the wheat from the chaff (which, as stupid as it sounds, is what many of the Discord people actively do as a hobby because why not), having this kind of knowledge is really useful.

Give me some time and I can probably cook up a list of 20-50 IEMs ranging from good to shit that show off what every driver type and design can or can't do. The point of it won't be IEMs that are absolutely amazing and will blow someone's mind, but it'll be stuff that contextualize the IEM market and what's possible at the moment.

That's the important thing, I think. Contextualizing the IEM market is what the accusation should really be about here. So let me rephrase Jonah's statement.
"SBAF doesn't know shit about IEMs since you guys live in America and are limited on context for the IEM market."

Ultimately, the point of his statement wasn't to deride SBAF, it was to inform other people of a pretty critical notion: SBAF has less IEM experience than Asians, but more headphone and speaker experience than the vast majority of us. Trying a Schiit Yggdrasil is nigh on impossible in Singapore without jumping through a few hoops. Trying one in CA is as easy as going to the Schiitr or to a meet. Likewise, good luck finding a qdc Anole VX (an IEM I don't even like, by the way) in the states without knowing an owner, and the chances of that steadily drops the further away you get from coastal states. In SG? There are 2 shops in the same area (that also has a ton of other personal audio stuff) that carry it, and uncountable other brands you would never see in the States outside of a Canjam.

It's a pretty fair give and take and half of the point of this is to point out to Asians that we're pretty f'ing lucky for having the access to IEMs that we do. Hell, not just in SG, but in Hong Kong, Japan, China, too. We might lose out on speaker or headphone gear, but hey, sucks to suck. Likewise, the reverse can be said for SBAF or anyone living in the more audio-centric states of the US: You guys have tons of access to rare, OOP, otherwise unobtanium speaker and headphone amps that the most of us won't ever see in real life. You lose out in that you guys don't have ready access to anything from Moondrop or even the Sony IEM lineup. Sucks to suck as well.

Neither of these situations are even particularly bad because they're both geared towards their local markets. Asia people care more about IEMs than headphones or speakers because we spend shit tons of time in transit (usually public) to and at work. CA/SBAF people drive everywhere because the public transportation system in CA is nigh nonexistent, and even then they have plenty of time at home after work or on weekends to f**k around with speakers, or headphones if living constraints force them to. Joke about Singaporeans not having the space for speakers, but hey, it's mostly true. I know I don't, and the few people I know that do exclusively have desktop studio monitors. But in return, expect for Asians to joke about SBAFers or CA people otherwise not having access or experience with IEMs. That's kind of just how it is.

 

If you have easy access to BWC speakers (and maybe also uber tube amps for headphones, though I've never heard these), I don't think you need to worry about what you're missing out on for IEMs.