There's also a divergence in this community with regard to choosing "the One" reference headphone vs. having a selection for various moods. Purrin, LFF & Anax are pretty fixed on modding unique headphone designs to neutrality. Alternately MF & n3rdling have a whole stable of oddities. I'm somewhere in the middle. The 009 would be my end-game headphone were it not for a couple of weaknesses, though with some EQ it's just about there. But some music feels right with Ortho bass and the diffusivity of the 800 is alluring for live recordings.

This is a little off. Purrin, Anax and I are NOT fixated on modding headphones to supreme neutrality. We each have a nice collection of headphones and quite often, we rotate certain headphones among each other. All three of us own relatively neutral headphones but we also have some bright ones and some dark ones in there. We enjoy different flavors at different times. The V-Moda M80 is not a neutral headphone, yet Purrin and I have given it good marks and have recommended it several times.


What I feel separated us as a general community is our intolerance for "crap" and "BS". Purrin mentioned this in another post, but that's essentially how Changstar started. We heard SOOO much positive hype regarding the LCD's and I think Purrin, Anax and I were the only ones at the time going....     . We all commented and gave our honest opinions and then Purrin showed me and explained to me how the measurements had been "tweaked" to give it a better appearance of not sucking so much. The measurements provided by Audeze simple didn't correlate with what the three of us were hearing. We all thought....wouldn't it be nice if there was a place that didn't hype BS, didn't lie and didn't provide a new "The One" FOTM every single time someone became a sponsor....hmmm....


Even better, wouldn't it be awesome if we could use both subjective and objective impressions and mention our thoughts freely without fearing being censored by the great dictator and his SS minions.....hmmmm.....




LONG LIVE CHANGSTAR! 

There are three reasons why I don't explicitly refer to music or recordings in my subjective impressions:

• The point about me having a preference for headphones within certain bounds of normalcy (if not neutrality) is a valid. I tend to gravitate toward gear which can get me by most recordings without either the pain of treble spikes or the boredom of being too forgiving. I eschew the technique used by some HF reviewers to rate gear based on a list of recordings with a W/L tally. Take this post on the Vali for example: http://www.head-fi.org/t/685162/new-vali-schiit-amp/540#post_9930077. Absolutely nothing wrong with it, but I just don't think that way. I feel that this method is excessive since one only needs to state that the Vali can sound a bit softer and slower on the bass (which that person's impressions with various tracks would seem to suggest.) It comes down to me not believing that a transducer should be the element that enhances certain recordings (through excessive colouration) at the expense of others (marginal recordings which react badly to a specific transducers' colour). Strat put it best: "When I was beginning to get into headphones, I thought the HD600s sounded nice but a little boring. It was only when I began to understand that the magic has to come from the music itself (when well recorded and mixed) and is not something that a coloured headphone should add, I began to appreciate them. I have kept them in high regard since then."
• My subjective impressions are not based on listening to test tones. They are based on listening to a selection of recordings, some excellently mastered, others of marginal quality. This selection of tracks does slowly change over time, but much of it stays constant. So inherently, music is part of the process, although it's never explicitly mentioned. I've indicated the tracks I've used at various times, in the DAC comparison worksheet, and also in the recordings section of this website. The point is that gear that renders snares painfully with one decent recording will probably do the same with another. Gear that makes baritone voices sound thin will probably also make the body of a cello sound thin. It's really not that hard for folks familiar with the Carnegie Chart: http://www.independentrecording.net/irn/resources/freqchart/main_display.htm
• While music is obviously the end part of the equation, there is a desire on my part to separate the gear from the music. There are three times I can clearly remember being very moved by music (and in all those incidents - it had absolutely nothing to do with the gear): Midori playing a Dvorak piece - on the stock radio in my car; Perlman and Yoyo - in a youtube video from my laptop speakers; and Taylor Swift Best Day on my current speaker rig. The gear is simply the vehicle for the transmission of music. I prefer to comment on the technicalities of such gear rather than how it affects the soul of specific recordings. Because the next day, I may feel much differently about the "soul" of the same recordings.

P.S.
As far as people being made an example of, being forced to publicly   , etc., do take the pirate theme seriously. Read up on pirates of yore, how they governed themselves, how they ran things on a ship. Pirates back then were not a bunch of psychopaths who believed in creating chaos of the sake of it, or that the mightiest and meanest ruled over all. Running forums or ships require a certain level of discipline. Idiotic sailors who threaten smooth sealing can be expected to receive a public flogging or thrown overboard. Make no mistake, this is not HF where anyone is free to blurt out whatever as long as it's followed by a smiley face.

That being said, the vast majority of people who have signed up and posted have never been a problem. I mean you have to really try to be dumb.

Indeed.

Quote from: MuppetFace on November 11, 2013, 07:30:23 PM

Meets use the same few tracks over and over as a result, so you get all those audiophile cliches. Girls strumming guitars and small jazz ensembles are going to sound good on most stuff, after all. It's all the stuff audiophiles often say to avoid that, ironically, tests the capabilities of your gear more adequately.

We have a phrase for that: "Music that sounds good on a walkie-talkie." Someday I'm going to do custom categories on JRiver and put all the audiophile stuff in a folder called, "Well-Recorded Music You Don't Want to Listen To."

Can I nominate "James Newton Howard & Friends" for that folder?