The Head-Fi Healing Thread

Maybe not killed, but it made me leave. You know that thing about conspiracy theories at that moment when you start to wonder whether it's really real or imagined. Visited my local headphone shop a couple of weeks ago and the guy said he had a new headphone he wanted me to listen to and pulled out a SR-207. I nearly ran out of the store...


TBH, something that I have been noticing of late is a number of reviews that are appearing with sponsored/loan equipment. I presume most of those are an obligation as part of getting loan equipment, but most of them are reading like advertisements and they go out of their way to make it look favourable. Ultimately when you ask people whether they would buy it or not, and they go "uhmm" you know the review is BS.

 

Just about the only thing he ever says anymore is how bad all of the flagships are and how amazing the SR-207 and MT220 are. And he always talks about how rich he used to be but now he works less by choice so he needs more time to buy an HE6 and high end speaker amp-which he finally decided not to do after taking over the HE6 and metal thread...

 

I was lurking on HF for a few months. Wound up seeing Marv's DAC chart on CS, which then lead me to a link here a few days ago.

I found HF too large and unwieldy for my taste. It reminded me of those kinds of places where the party had already come and gone,
and all that was left were the stragglers and late-to-the-party wannabes. Gearslutz is sort of the same thing.

I'd rather have some solid content and conversation with a good group of people. High signal, low noise sorta' thing.

I'm more of the mom 'n pop shop type, rather than the crowded mall dweller.

 

That was basically his FOTM. He's always lusting over something new. And whenever he buys something, he keeps it for a week tops, then says it isn't accurate enough.

He's pretty much never going to be happy. He should read Jason's latest chapter and take some serious notes.

@Darko haha he sold his 207 recently.

 

I'm going there less and less. The ratio of quality content to post is higher here. I found myself skimming way too many pages on a thread looking for useful content.

 

I was introduced to the sorbothane mod a few months ago by Richard51. While not as bad as Music Alchemist, the ONLY thing he posts is about how his HE400 out of speaker taps of Hitachi SR 904 is now high end headphone...literally every thread I see him on now is some variation of this. The HE400 does benefit from the mod, but jeez...Head Fi would ban me for telling him to shut up lol

 

stuartmc posting on headfi makes it seems that Gustard/ES9018 is the holy grail and everything else is inferior, including R2R.


Example:

http://www.head-fi.org/t/777597/vin...n-insight-and-review-thread/540#post_11961999

 

This has kind of become a complain about Head Fi thread lol. Honestly though, gotta vent somewhere

 

LOL. Yeah that guy doesn't shut up about his HE400. Which looks so bad now, but I'm sure it sounds great.

 

Ironically I just made an HE400 thread, and yes, while its pretty good, it's not the be all end all of headphones. Anyways, back on topic. Head-Fi, even after all of its faults, is still pretty helpful to me. I used it to set up a future meet and get knowledge on my receiver and what to look for. If it weren't for Head Fi, I would have never been enthralled by all of the high end headphones I heard at a meet a few years ago. It is largely why I am still pursuing the best sound that my budget allows, and I am still grateful. But I would like to spend more of time here.

 

I felt it was pretty apt for my first post on this forum to be in this thread considering I've been visiting Head-fi exclusively for info and discussions up to right about a couple of months ago when I stumbled upon Changstar (and subsequently SBAF of course).

I find myself frequenting this site more often when I want concise, solid and no BS recommendations/opinions on all kinds of personal audio gear. Some of the people whom I greatly respected on Head-fi are key members here (Ravi, Purrin, CEE TEE e.t.c), so it was quite a natural changeover.

Head-fi in comparison has dropped a lot in my eyes as an informative and constructive site. When I first went on there I took everything to be the truth and ended up regretting several purchases. As time passed it became clear to me that there were many frequent gear reviewers whose opinion meant utterly nothing. This has probably been discussed to death, but essentially almost every single review item would get some form of praise and a 4+ star rating. There's little honesty in that sense (although I can understand why the said reviewers are drawn to give good reviews and ratings -- the whole psychological thingy).

That being said, I will always visit Head-fi and I will always consider it a more valuable site than SBAF (for now at least) for a number of reasons.
1. I don't quite agree with the disdain towards Jude and the other admins on there. Well sure I do not know any of them personally. I don't really think they're especially nice in particular. But in my opinion and personal experience the site is run with an acceptable level of moderation. I do not see much repression or silencing. At least not yet, given which I would obviously change my stance towards HF.
2. The community there have really nice people as well. There might be mindless hype and lots of BS there but at the end of the day, this audio hobby is still a hobby after all. Not meant to be taken with too much thought. There are some really cool guys on there whom I've had a blast chatting with, either on PMs or in threads. Some of the stuff posted there (with some discernment) can actually be quite informative as well.
3. Head-fi has become what it is today because such is the nature of a forum with so many users and encompassing so many different gears and discussion topics. To me it is incredibly difficult trying to achieve a balance of allowing the site to be free for all to join and for everyone to express their opinion, no matter how uninformed, freely and without the need to be a technical expert in anything, as well as to preserve a high quality of content.

In a nutshell, SBAF has become my go-to site for the important bits of information. Head-fi has been and will continue to remain my go-to site just to browse and glance through on a lazy Wednesday afternoon when I need to keep updated on the latest happenings and just to chill.

 

Here's a little test: go ahead and post a link from here or changstar on head fi. Tell us what happens afterwards.

That said, my experience for the most part mirrors yours. Except for the "silent banning" thing.

 

Last few years I focused more just on IEMs, so I go on Head-fi to catch some new releases, since I didnt found any other web site or even blog that would focus on them. Unfortunately with IEMs it seems FOTM syndrome is even stronger, so any impressions from Head-fi are useless.

In IEMs I noticed nowadays almost everybody who can put some review together on Head-fi is getting review samples from manufacturers or at least is part of tour. And everything is so positive

 

Well, im friends with one of the most prolific ciem reviewer on headfi, and according to him, the marginal cost of CIEMS are so low (Start up cost is high but not headphone high), even though his CIEMS are technically loaners, they never ask for it back, as its likely to cost more to ship and reuse the drivers than to make a new one.

Basically, the benchmark is this, if the iem is not reviewed much but have legendary status, those are the ones you should aim for, ie Rhines Audio and Fitear. These 2 brands are one of the few that actually refused giving out samples as they needed to prioritize customers.

 

Having no personal experience with this, I guess I'm pretty neutral on this. I'm inclined to believe based on the words of many on here that doing so would likely yield some kind of post removal or warning, but then again I have no idea how this whole animosity between CS/SBAF and Head-fi even came about.

Sometimes misunderstandings come about. It's always a matter of perception and whether or not the motives behind this silent banning and other stuff are actually right or wrong, I'm pretty sure that the admins on Head-fi must have some rationale behind their actions. Pressure by sponsors? Pride? Groupthink? Greed? Could be all of them or none of them. Pretty sure this animosity didn't come about because Jude woke up one morning on the wrong side of the bed though.

I'm not defending anyone or anything though. For the record I think it's a shame that all of this crap is happening. It's unnecessary and I hope it changes.

Perhaps I'm just being naive. Guess I just want to steer clear of things that I don't have full knowledge of.

My only rule in this hobby is ultimately to enjoy the music. I can live with both CS/SBAF and Head-fi and achieve that for now.

 

hello,

having been trolled by Jude (himself) concerning a reference to Changstar i very strongly disagree with this assertion.

Head Fi is for shills, either within the industry or as fanbois.

the signal to noise ratio is off the charts in the noise direction.

the FOTM crap is unbeliveably bad.

having said that i still lurk there, for Jason's thread and Baldr's and a few other things.

what makes me sad is that as the largest headphone forum online, Head Fi is totally opposed to the free flow of information.

then again, i am old, i hate BS, and YMMV, i am totally full of Schitt, etc. etc.

edit: Jason's thread is gold! his last post was so spot on i very nearly wept.

 

AHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHHAH

Think about that for just half a second