There are the people who talk about which cables to use to make the sound brighter or warmer or whatever. All sorts of odd tweaks and somewhat suspect suggestions on improving sound quality.

That stuff just doesn’t bother me. I ignore it, or politely decline the option. Some people are more… sensitive to the existence of that sort of thing.

Head-fi is way better than reddit for discussing headphones IMO. The voodoo doesn’t bother me, I just ignore it if I need to. And the format is far more conducive to actually planning meets and discussing headphones than reddit is. People actually discuss the headphones rather than the stupid questions that constantly pop up here on reddit.

That last bit is so true. It’s way more fun to actually attend meets and know other people in person. It’s far easier to share and explain listening impressions and I get a better sense of how different people hear things than in reading posts on the Internet. And the most obnoxious keyboard warriors are generally allergic to in-person interactions, so they basically never show up.

I go to meets (Head-fi has a forum for organizing meets in an area), I go to expos (haven’t been to CanJam yet, but I went to Capital Audiofest this past month), and I demo at stores. The trick to store demos is to combine them with travel. If you are ever traveling somewhere for work or holiday or whatever, look up if there are any audio stores in the area you’re visiting and see if you can add a visit to your itinerary. That’s how I visited The Source AV near LA last week; I was in the area visiting my wife’s family and took the time to visit the store. Note that few stores are dedicated to headphones. Most will mainly deal in speakers and may have a few headphones on the side. If you’re looking at expensive headphones (I’d consider >$800 expensive), it really makes sense to wait for a demo opportunity before buying. If you’re looking at the topmost echelon of cost, like several thousand dollars, I think it’s absolutely worth spending a few hundred to travel to a store to demo a few pairs. Otherwise, no matter how many reviews you read online, you’re still essentially gambling on the purchase.

I also never liked the buy then return process.

I’ve listened to both the double-sided and single-sided Tungstens, though at different events a month apart so I can’t do a direct comparison. The Single-Sided version is hard to drive. It needs more power (particularly voltage) than a Susvara, which I was able to compare with at CAF.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I thought that non-feedback amplifiers didn’t play well with the Tungsten. When I tried it on the HeadAmp CFA3, the amp was initially in zero feedback mode and I thought the vocals were way too upfront and the soundstage had width but little frontal depth. When I flipped the feedback switch to enable feedback, the vocals moved back and the soundstage opened up. It was not a subtle difference. I also tried the double-sided Tungsten with the Schiit Mjolnir 3 which also has a zero feedback mode, and I thought the vocals were too upfront there too, but I didn’t check which feedback mode was used at the time. I wish I had been able to listen to it on my Ferrum Erco, as I’ve heard that Ferrum amps work well with it.

Sound-wise, I think it’s good, with no flaws that stood out to me. It’s darker than, say, a Hifiman Arya or HE1000, has more bass, and has a rich but mellow and not shouty vocal range. It’s a bit like an old-style Audeze. In fact, I’d say that it sounds the most like how I remember the Audeze LCD-2 Classic that I demoed at a store once. Smooth, a bit bassy (but not bloated or boomy), but without the midrange tonal weirdness that the LCD-X has. I don’t quite get the hype around them, but they’re good headphones.

I think there are two different aspects at play here with “diminishing returns”. First, there’s the “objective” evaluation that others have mentioned. Spending twice the money won’t give you a soundstage that’s twice as wide, for example. Twice the money won’t get you headphones that give you twice as many details. So in terms of these “technical” attributes, there are diminishing returns on how much more of any one quality you can get from spending more money.

On the other side, there’s another subjective factor working against these “diminishing returns”. I’m sure there’s a psychology term for it, but I’ll call it “the princess and the pea” effect. It comes from the fairy tale of the princess and the pea, with the idea being that a princess raised in luxury and comfy beds would find even a single pea under her mattress to be uncomfortable, while a person raised in normal circumstances with average beds wouldn’t notice that pea. Once someone is beyond the point of diminishing returns, what often happens is that the small objective differences in performance make large differences in that person’s enjoyment. That’s where those 5% differences will make or break someone’s enjoyment of a headphone.

My most recent example of that pea effect is when trying out the Stax SR-X9000 vs the Dan Clark Audio Corina at Capital AudioFest. Both of those headphones are extremely good. If I were to compare them side-by-side in any “objective” quality, they’d come out pretty close. But the Stax was just ever so slightly more open and layered in its positioning and imaging of sounds, and ever so slightly more reverberant with the trailing ends of notes, and slightly more relaxed and airier in its tuning, such that I found it significantly more enjoyable than the Corina. Again, they aren’t that different in absolute performance levels, but in terms of my personal enjoyment of music, it wasn’t even a contest, I’d pick the Stax every day and twice on Sunday (another funny English phrase).

A used 353x is probably the best value choice.

That joke never made sense to me. It only works if the joker doesn’t know how to pronounce Audeze.

For those who don’t know, it rhymes with ‘odyssey’. A long time ago, the name was spelled Audez’e to make it clear that the ending E is a separate syllable.

As a new owner of a Walkman (Japanese ZX707), I was wondering why you were retiring your high-end Walkman and buying DAC/amps when your Walkman could have driven both of those headphones/IEMs just fine. Then I realized that in classic Sony fashion, there are two products in their catalogue that both end in “1AM2”: there’s the Walkman NW-WM1AM2 and the headphones MDR-1AM2. I presume you are retiring the headphones?

Naming collisions aside, congrats on the purchase! I may be joining the MDR-Z1R club soon!

Oddly enough, I think I only bought 1 headphone this year. The Sony MDR-Z7M2. But the year isn’t over yet! And I may pick up the Z1R soon.

But most of my purchases have been source gear. I bought the Ferrum Erco, a Stax SRM-353x, and a Japanese SKU Sony Walkman ZX707 to round out my collection of players, DACs, and amps.

I tried out the Stealth at CAF last weekend, and I think you described its strong points very well. It’s very neutral and very precise in its rendering of sound. But to me, it wasn’t comfortable due to an intense hotspot at the top of my head, and I didn’t really get along with the sound. The aspects of sound that grew to annoy me on the Noire are still there in the Stealth. It rendered instruments as if they were played in a heavily sound-dampened or anechoic chamber. No decay to the sounds, notes just suddenly cut off. When I was A/B comparing it vs the Stax SR-X9000, the Stax was significantly more relaxed, open, and ultimately enjoyable to me. The Stealth sounded “uptight” in comparison, like it was trying too hard to be precise.

I don’t want to be a downer, and I’m happy that you are properly enjoying all of the things that the Stealth excels at. I wish it fit better on my head, and I wish I enjoyed the sound more. It has basically perfect Harman Target adherence, so according to Dr. Olive’s research, it should be the “perfect” sound. Maybe a bit too perfect for someone like me :)

I find it’s pretty simple once you connect with one of their sensory hobbies. My wife isn’t an audiophile, but we’re both foodies, so she understands my comparing of headphones in the same way she compares the French fries that we get at different restaurants. One restaurant has thick-cut fries, another has thin fries, a third fries them twice for that extra crunch, a fourth has normal fries, but a really good curry dipping sauce (Brasserie Beck in Washington DC, for those curious). Just like she loves evaluating the fries at restaurants and compares their flavors and textures, she understands that headphones are objects - or experiences - that I evaluate in a similar way.

For other people, it’s like keyboards. One of my friends really got into mechanical keyboards and built a whole bunch, many for himself, but also some as gifts for friends. He’s all about the sound and the feel, the clack or thock, the resistance or springiness of each key. I never really got into keyboards in the same way, I’m fine with a Topre for work and a tactile gaming keyboard for play, but we understand each other’s hobbies because we both understand the appeal of the underlying sensory experience.

I’ve never held a gun in my life, but from talking with people who have used guns, recreational shooting can be a similar sort of experience. Each gun has its own sound, its own recoil feel when fired, and its own action. Then there’s also ammunition and lots of different aspects to the experience of shooting.

Yet others enjoy the feel of driving. I’m not one of those people, but I can understand how people enjoy the experience of controlling a fast-moving machine, making it stop and go, and directing its motion using your hands and feet. Once you compare the sounds of different headphones to the different driving feels of different cars, they can understand more easily.

I think the vast majority of people have some sensory experience that they enjoy and can discern quality in. Food, alcohol, cast iron pans, coffee, keyboards, cars, films, the list goes on and on. I think reasonable people can understand that headphones and audio are the sensory experiences that you enjoy and discern even if they don’t discern them in the same way.

Think of headphone reviews like restaurant reviews. On any restaurant, you’re going to find people with different views on how good that restaurant is. Some will say “this is the best German food I’ve had!” and others will say “this food was terrible!” Or some reviews say “this dish was too spicy”, and others will say “this [same] dish was perfectly spiced”. Same deal with quality of service, with some people saying the service is great and others saying it’s terrible. Some people don’t care about service, others deduct two stars because “food was wonderful, but the waitress didn’t smile. 3/5 stars.”

Reviews are good for both restaurants and headphones, as someone else said, to calibrate expectations. If I see a restaurant has many reviews saying how their Peking duck is great, I’ll probably try it for its Peking duck. I’m not actually that big a fan of Peking duck to begin with though, so I’ll probably try other restaurants first. Same thing with headphones; if many people like the mids on one headphone, I’ll probably check it out if I want to listen to a mid-centric presentation.