Josh Mound

For those following my IEM reviews, please check out my new interactive Squiglink site for IEM measurements. These are brand new measurements with an IEC-711 Clone Coupler, and they supersede my EARS IEM measurements.

For those following my IEM reviews, please check out my new interactive Squiglink site for IEM measurements. These are brand new measurements with an IEC-711 Clone Coupler, and they supersede my EARS IEM measurements.

For those following my IEM reviews, please check out my new interactive Squiglink site for IEM measurements. These are brand new measurements with an IEC-711 Clone Coupler, and they supersede my EARS IEM measurements.

For those following my IEM reviews, please check out my new interactive Squiglink site for IEM measurements. These are brand new measurements with an IEC-711 Clone Coupler, and they supersede my EARS IEM measurements.

For those following my IEM reviews, please check out my new interactive Squiglink site for IEM measurements. These are brand new measurements with an IEC-711 Clone Coupler, and they supersede my EARS IEM measurements.

I've been including measurements in my IEM reviews. But those measurements were taken with my MiniDSP EARS rig. While the EARS is a great budget headphone apparatus, it's far from ideal for measuring IEMs. So, following Theo Lee's excellent guidebook, I purchased two IEC-711 Clone Couplers to create IEM measurements that can be compared against those from other reviewers using similar couplers. Pleased with the accuracy of the coupler's results, I contacted Mark Ryan Sallee to get my own "Josh TBVO" Squiglink site. For those of you who don't know, Squiglink is a free platform that allows reviewers to upload their measurements and let users create their own interactive comparative graphs. Without further ado, here's my new measurement site: https://joshtbvo.squig.link/ These measurements supersede those in my previously published reviews, and the EC-711 Clone Coupler rig will be used for all future IEM review measurements.

His argument was that the Harman Curve should be the industry standard and that people who like other FRs should use EQ. I disagree with that.

I agree that everyone draws that “snake oil” line somewhere. But (as you seem to agree), I don’t think that even magic rocks should be banned. It’s not my business if people want to spend their money on them, as long as they don’t call other people dumb for not buying them. In the case of transducers with different FRs, it seems hard to say that any are “snake oil,” unless the manufacturer is explicitly lying about the response. In the case of the product under review in that thread, the manufacturer provides accurate measurements. So the only things under debate are 1) whether the third of consumers who don’t exclusively prefer the Harman Curve are objectively wrong and 2) whether they should be forced to buy Harman-tuned products and then EQ them. From what I gather, we agree that the answer is “no” to both of those questions, and that’s really my main point. Any reviewer has the right to insult or demean any product and its fans. I don’t think that’s particularly smart, but they can do it. I wouldn’t have written a whole article about that. It’s the argument that preference curves are so scientific that one should be enforced upon everyone that I object to.

I didn't want to make the article about that site or reviewer specifically, which is why I didn't name him or cite him alone. I wanted it to be more about 1) the increasingly common inflammatory and condescending tone in reviews, 2) the use and misuse of consumer preference curves, and 3) how those two things interact. I do read that site, though, to see the measurements -- even if I don't always agree about the threshold for their relevance or the subjective analysis. It's great to have more measurements out there. That said, I generally find that site to be a deleterious influence because of the tone of that reviewer. But I have to strongly disagree that I misrepresented the comment you mention. The one I quoted is just one of many similar comments he's made, and I think I presented it accurately in context. A manufacturer of headphones that aren't Harman tuned asked why people who come to shows would listen to dozens of headphones, including Harman-tuned ones, and end up buying his non-Harman headphones instead. The reviewer responded, "Because they will buy anything that is a) at the show b) looks nice like your headphone and c) don't have critical listening abilities." There's no way around the fact that he's saying that the people who don't like the Harman Curve are dopes, despite the fact that Harman's research shows that's almost 40% of people. I don't think that tone is remotely acceptable. But it's not just about him. That's why I also quoted the other increasingly popular YouTube reviewer who bashed people who like the Harman-tuned Zero Red. I don't care whether I agree or disagree with the reviewer's take on a particular product. You just shouldn't talk about people that way in a review. As far as the Harman speaker research, I think what @audiobomber is saying is that Harman's research found that, in a reflective room, a slight downward slope is preferred: Of course, that's very different from talking about how they'd measure in an anechoic room. Erin (a reviewer who, as far as I've seen, scrupulously avoids inflammatory rhetoric) has a good video on this:

That post has been bothering me since I wrote it. I kept wondering how it could possibly be that Harman’s studies used listening levels that seemed objectively like quiet background music to me. So, I spent my time in bed last night listening to music on IEMs (as usual) and reading about safe listening levels. None of the “rule of thumb” tests (i.e. can you hold your IEM or headphones at arm’s length and clearly hear the music) or descriptions of what __ dB “sounds like” (i.e. the inside of a car on the highway, a garbage disposal, etc.) matched what I was hearing when listening to music. It made much more sense to me that I was making a mistake in calculating my own listening level then that Harman’s levels were too quiet and/or that we were measuring the levels very differently. So, I decided to restart my computer, recalibrate my IEC 711 clone coupler using my external calibrator, and try again. Lo and behold, I calibrated it wrong in my haste to write the post last night! This time, I was seeing that coupler/REW was reading 10 dB higher than the calibrator’s setting. Indeed, when I repeated my listening test, I found that my normal listening levels are in the mid-to-upper 70s. In other words, they’re exactly like the Harman study. I’m going to pretend that this was an illustration of my article’s point that intellectual humility is essential.

The point about volume and equal-loudness contours is a good one. At least in this Harman study, the average playback level was set to 78 dB (b-weighted). I don't know how the level in the Harman study was measured or what that means in the context of dynamic music (especially since they were using dynamic songs like Steely Dan's "Cousin Dupree" as material). But based on my attempts, that seems low. I fired up "Cousin Dupree," put in my Moondropo Kato IEMs, brought the volume to a "normal" (for me) listening level, and measuriung it with both my 711 coupler and Dayton USB-C mini-microphone. I calibrated the former with an external calibrator, and the latter is calibrated by Dayton. On both, I was in the mid-to-upper 80s. When I lowered the level to 78 dB, it seemed too soft for "normal" listening, and I don't have any hearing loss (at least in the range tested by audiologists and the Etymotic home test system). Now, this could all be chalked up to my measurement process and the study's being totally incompatable. (Indeed, that seems more likely than them using "my" 78 dB.) But I'd love to actually hear how loud the music is in their IEM and headphone tests. EDIT: See below. I made a dumb mistake. The Harman study’s listening level seems great to me.

I completely agree about common model benchmarks being valuable. I include the HD6XX in almost all of my headphone reviews for that reason. The reason for not naming the reviewer is that I want to talk about the broader issues at stake, rather than get bogged down in personalities. After some thought, it seemed likely that foregrounding the reviewer would simply devolve into a debate about that reviewer, which isn’t what I wanted this article to be about.

For those interested, Sean Olive tweeted about my article, and there are some good discussions happening in the threads below his tweet.

To be clear, I am most definitely *not* anti-measurements. I just bought a few IEC 711 clone couplers to make my IEM reviews’ measurements more comparable to others’, and I’m setting up a SquigLink site. I measure headphones with my EARS unit, and if I could afford a Gras or similar, I’d use it in a heartbeat. I also measure my listening room with an UMIK-1 and REW and treat it based on those measurements. Indeed, I rarely buy a product (especially a transducer) without seeing measurements first, and I value all of the measurements conducted by reviewers, including the pro-Harman reviewer mentioned in this piece. So I don’t want anyone to think my skepticism about the accuracy or universality of preference curves for headphones and IEMs is an anti-measurement statement. Far from it.

Thank you for your response. As I mentioned at the end, I don’t have any problem with people enjoying or even touting the Harman Curve. I just don’t want it to become an industry standard. I think the research shows that there are frequency responses that are equally preferred, as well as valid ones that are enjoyed by substantial minorities of listeners, even according to Harman’s research. While, as I wrote, I like some IEMs and headphones that tend to follow the curve (or a variant of it), I also usually think the sub-bass is a bit too much and the 3-4 kHz peak is too steep. So, the SoundGuys curve, which is basically Harman but with those traits toned down, might be closer to my ideal. That said, I totally agree that there are some IEMs and headphones that stray way too far from any reasonable ballpark definition of “neutral” for me to enjoy them. Those tend to get negative reviews from me. But I also would never say that those products shouldn’t be allowed to exist.