Audio Science Review Review

Amir too busy raging out at criticism on his HD600 review when It comes to seal leakage.

 

He is indeed relentless in his effort to destroy what little remains of his credibility.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/sennheiser-hd600-review-headphone.23233/

" I don't know what is supposed to be different between HD600 and HD650. Based on both objective and subjective testing, these two headphones perform the same."

 

hard to believe this isn't sarcasm.

It makes zero sense, the measurements even show slight differences but it's amir subjective proclamation that debunks hundreds of other experiences over years.

https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ser-hd600-review-headphone.23233/#post-774807

 

Prime example of being lazy and too egoistic to admit he once again messed up.

Hd600&hd650 are propably the most well documented headphones ever and if one gets results that differ from the consensus any reasonable person would ask themselves "why?".

Further research would have proven that it's because of the well known effect of worn pads. Amir's conclusion is that everyone else has been wrong for 18 years and he finally got things right. I don't know how he could be less scientific and yet he keeps doing this over and over again.

 

I actually feel bad for Amir a bit and I am not being facetious. Maybe COVID-induced mania is getting to him. I know a lot of people in my personal life that have recently started deliberately picking fights with others even if their argument is completely wrong or out there. I guess it makes them feel alive and connected to the rest of the humanity in some way. It's almost like they choose a controversial topic and take a position that is diametrically opposite of what everyone else thinks, thus provoking a schiitstorm.

How else can one explain making a statement that HD600 and HD650 sound the same? I mean, these headphones have been some of the most listened to and compared devices in the history of this hobby. They also come from Sennheiser, a fairly reputable manufacturer who would not issue two identically sounding headphones and give them different model numbers.

 

Solderdude worded it pretty well though: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...iser-hd600-review-headphone.23233/post-775796
crinacle comparison: new 2020 HD600 and new 2020 HD650
vs Amir comparison: random HD600/HD650 of unknown date with unknown earpad condition
That doesn't mean HD600 and HD650 in general do not sound different.

 

This episode very clearly illustrates that what ASR does is not science. Read any scientific publication and there'll be sections considering, and often one explicitly named as, Previous Work.

Also - I'm much amused by this post. If that's his standard for not being able to tell things apart, what does it say about the teeny-weeny distortion differences he measures in sources & amps? The last sentence would make a good signature line.

 

So on top of being frequently wrong, Amir is also a dick. His responses in that thread are childish and yet people have declared his measurements to be proof of “yet another audio myth busted.”

 

ASR guys have AIDS.

Amir
Is
Deaf
Syndrome

 

Holly smoke

After reading Amir's "scientific" opinion I am finally satisfied that I was right in my first ignorant impression, years ago, that HD600 and HD650 sound significantly different and why I preferred and still prefer, HD600. What a relief..

 

Solderdude is right. However, it is a very peculiar choice on Amir’s part to review the most classic of all the mid-fi headphones, the HD600, with very worn ear pads. In general, he should be measuring headphones either brand new or less than a couple of months old. Otherwise, one could be comparing apples and oranges.

 

I believe he's measuring stuff in whatever condition they're shipped to him so yeah, these 'reviews' should come with a major notice about that. Earpad changes can have major impact on sound, any self-proclaimed expert should know that..

 

Agreed. It’s like testing a sports car with noisy winter tires lol.

 

He is sloppy in methodology, analysis, and, perhaps most importantly, communication. I’ve run into people like this before. They’re utterly convinced they’re super-clear in enunciating complicated ideas but end up making a mess they’re incapable of even seeing. Recall the discussion of linearity bits and mono speaker imaging, where it took forever just to extract out of him the basic set of definitions he used to draw his conclusions — definitions at odds with everyone else’s use of the same terminology. And as for measurements, his activities have about as much in common with the scientific method as do reviews on 6Moons.

That said, I have a charitable explanation for why the narrative on ASR is that +/-0.5dB of distortion at -125dBFS matters for DACs, while +/-2dB in a headphone is a wash.

The working assumption there is that electronics have no audibly detectable differences. Only transducers have the right to sound distinguishable. Toole’s whole textbook is essentially a treatise on this topic, and ASR is heavily influenced by Toole’s publications. Therefore, the only performance-related reason to distinguish between and choose an electronic component is when it measures better (or some other reason unrelated to sound, like connectivity). Therefore, when only the numbers matter, recommendations by necessity have to go to components with better numbers. Audibility is simply not a factor.

With transducers, the story has to change. Pretty much anyone will hear the difference between an airline earbud and an Orpheus. Since audibility becomes a factor, then how much audible difference there is suddenly becomes a topic of discussion. The 600 differs from the 650 on fresh pads by a couple of dB on some frequencies. This is a fairly subtle difference, and it’s been priced at a $150+ delta between the models (brand new, non-Massdrop, retail MSRP). That difference is worth it to some people, and not to others, and the “they sound the same” story will appeal more to people who do not think it’s worth the dollar bills.

For comparison, the Harman curve has very large boosts and cuts, leading to insane PEQ settings like a +12dB shelf at the low frequencies for some headphones. Compared to +12 dB, the +2 dB change between the 600 and the 650 is pocket change. Barely worth mentioning. This is the kind of difference between headphones the ASR narrative wants to emphasize. Not subtly different for $150, but massively different.

Add to this the sheer difficulty of hearing subtle boosts and dips. When the Philips Golden Ears program was around, its hardest part was figuring out which frequency range had a small (I think +/-0.5 dB) change between two otherwise identical samples. It was f'ing brutal and took me forever back in the day (and now, years later, I’m not sure I have the hearing to do it anymore if it were still around). The Golden Ears training program disappeared years before ASR came onto the scene. The bulk of its membership has never even tried a hearing test, let alone one of that difficulty. So of course they look at the 600 and 650 and conclude the two sound the same.

 

Shenanigans aside, the general observation has been made here numerous times that the more recent production HD650 (including HD6XX) have been trending to sound more HD600-like. But as SolderDude and others have pointed out, that doesn't mean they sound the same. Even eyeballing his measurements of the two, it looks like the HD600 measured around 2.5dB higher at roughly 3KHz.

Looks like Amir bought his HD600 pair in the year 2000, and his HD650 pair in 2017. We also don't know the condition of the pads on the pairs he measured.

Has anyone seen any headphone measurement methodologies published by ASR? Reason I ask is because in the HD650 review, Amir says:

Makes me also wonder how much his acoustic measurements of headphones and the like are affected because of these high noise levels...

 

Now to be fair, that Audio Precision of his is a seriously noisy thing, I can imagine sitting close to it with an open-back HD600/HD650 would be a terrible way of spending one's evening

 

Good call on the base supposition that electronic components have no audibly detectable differences, and therefore you just go with the best measuring unit for the least amount of money. That goes a long way towards explaining the attitude people go in there with. How they can reconcile that with actually hearing different components is beyond me though.

 

The latest debacle actually highlights much more systemic issues with ASR than just a silly statement about the HD600 and HD650.

One of these is the nature of the statement. If he'd said he couldn't hear a difference then that's a reasonable statement (I'm guessing the overwhelming majority of people in the world other than headphone enthusiasts would find the two headphones sound the same). Or if he'd said that the measured differences were small and that the overall sound signature was so similar that people wouldn't find a significant difference between either then that would also be a reasonable statement. However to make an absolute statement with no qualification or caveat that they are the same, despite plenty of measurements out there showing they're not as well as all the listener experiences speaks of a rather disturbing hubris. As do the responses he posted, it basically challenges his cherished claims to be blessed with golden ears.

A bigger issue is what it claims about his methodology. If you are going to do comparative assessment then you need to compare apples with apples. Meaning the HD600 and HD650 need to be in the same condition (especially pads), and really the only way to have any confidence in that is to compare new with new. Comparing headphones made years apart with pads in who knows what statement is an apples with oranges comparison and says absolutely nothing about whether or not the HD600 and HD650 sound the same. This would be equally true if he'd declared them to sound different, the two he tested may indeed have sounded different but such a statement that the HD600 and HD650 are different based on such a comparison would be no more valid than claiming they are identical. There is an interesting idea in testing old and new headphones and seeing how they compare but such a comparison would only be sensible if it was made very clear that testing a 20 years old headphone with who knows what condition pads cannot be taken as indicating anything about a new production example of the same design will sound. The whole episode is ridiculous and begs the question of whether he is incompetent, has an agenda or so full of hubris he has lost contact with reality and really does believe his own spin. Even the attitude to Crinacle (a headphone reviewer I respect hugely, as he values both measurement and listening impressions, and doesn't push a one tuning is best attitude) was really disappointing.