NSFW: SuperBAF Best of 2015 Golden Schlong Awards

I've considered the Stockholm 2 before but the lack of review (except some poetic sites) made me go AGD. Would be interested in your take with this as well. It has also the balanced option for 300 bucks more.

 

From what I can see it is mostly lack of experience in headphones/personal audio. They often assume that headphones will be a vastly inferior experience to speakers and then are greatly surprised when they discover that this is not the case - even with what we consider to be mediocre or even bad headphones. Also, with regards to Audeze and spekaer guys I think they are used to a different pricing model and I think there is some built in bias against lower priced/pedestrian looking products. (aka: it can't possibly be near SOTA if it only costs $300 and is mostly made of plastic)

 

Makes sense. Maybe the GOV3 will finally be the perfect one...

 

Yggdrasil dumps over cheaper consumer R2R DACs for detail and tonality 1992 Nickelodeon style if they used Porta Johns instead of slime. It has D-S DAC detail without glare or the danger of a shitty filter getting rid of instrumental positioning information or poor resistor/analog stage performance crapping up the timbre.

Should I post my drunk rant on D-S DACs vs cheaper R2R vs NOS and detail and vinyl developed from raging at how shit most old CD players are today?

 

@Chris F
Most of these people have never heard anything semi-flat before in their life. They only have heard a Koss porta pro at best quality can, shitty computer, bookshelf, and hifi speakers in untreated rooms equalized without a mic. They also don't know what instruments sound like in person. They come to the Hifi store ready to drop 2k as they get into music as adults and have jobs. They hear overpriced hi-fi speakers, hear Beyer/HD 800 treble of death, hear the LCD-X, walk out with LCD X. Normal people don't want to deal with pencils in their ears. If they knew what mids on nearfields or a violin or a distorted electric guitar as all good/rock metal guitars are distorted actually sounds like in real life, they would get something without upper mid suckout and with an inoffensive treble. If price didn't correlate with quality in their mind, they might get the 600/650 or a DT 880 if they listen to classical.

 

Funny you should mention that. When I attempted to explain how the T1 v2 butchers the sound of a piano, I received this response on a certain internet forham:

And that was one of the few people who even believed that the T1 even had the coloration I described.

 

Did you make your thoughts on Bifrost Multibit known anywhere? There is a lot of love for it here, but we need these counterpoints.

 

Do it. At worst, it will be entertaining.

 

I tried that in the head-fi metalthread explaining that there's not really anything below 25 hz actually recorded on metal recordings and that Audezes butcher noodly higher note electric guitars, especially shredders and wailers, and gave Marty Friedman and John McEntee as examples. Got flamed by Staxvocates.

 

Perhaps a slightly ridiculous question: yggdrasil was ranked a E. Should I assume that the X00 and HD6X0 would as well? Or do they get the Purrin Stamp of VG?

 

It'd be nice if we had a discontinued list:

Black Widow | VG
UERM | VG

Also, I'd like to add:

Paradox | G / VG for closed
Paradox Slants | G / VG for closed
Enigma | G / VG for closed

Now I guess I'm just adding to a leaderboard.

 

So here is my rant.

Seriously, in this whole long list of SBAF Best/Worst of 2015, only f'ing three IEMs are worth mentioning? It's good to see the old CS members have grown to harbor something less stellar like Ether, which would probably have been rated at best M on CS, but seriously, even with the somehow relaxed standards, still only K10 and N4 worth going up as above M? I remember seeing some people talking about liking Noble 6 and JH Angie, and LFF has approved Campfire Audio Jupiter. Despite the dramas, some people seemed to be thinking Savant as decent. Can't we just dig a bit more on these things?

I think @Koloth and I have been vocal in the IEM section saying that we're disappointed that IEM gets virtually no interest on SBAF, and perhaps the Leaderboard IEM part needs to have an overhaul. Then there seems to be nothing happening. The IEM section has been devolving into discussing company politics and giving purchasing advices. Now that UERM is being discontinued and nobody has heard UERR, does it mean that the Leaderboard IEM part is going to shrink even further?

Otherwise, I take it as the IEM market is just so shitty that there is just nothing outstanding.

 

There's just so many IEMs out there unfortunately. I definitely wouldnt mind giving some higher end IEMs a try if we ever got our hands on some for a loaner.