Hacker News Reader

You're correct, but you're misrepresenting it as a problem. I don't have any audio hardware that doesn't distort audio in some way. I intentionally use headphones that change how my music sounds. For people who listen to music as a hobby, 1:1 sound reproduction isn't the goal and it doesn't need to be. It might be crucial for somebody editing audio, but that doesn't apply to the 99.999% of people who listen to music.

View on HN

That is a patently false statement. Extensive A/B tests have shown that most people don't like a coloured sound and instead prefer a flat frequency response with low distortion. You can convince yourself that your expensive audiophile headphone with coloured sound are amazing for you, but research clearly shows that preference in relation to music reproduction is not some sort of deeply personal preference that differs from person to person. Audiophiles seem to all try and convince themselves that it is and everybody is on their own audiophile discovery journey to find the sound they like, when these audiophiles are actually subjected to a blind A/B test, they find out that they're actually much closer to the norm than they'd like to admit...

I don't know what to tell you. Given a choice between headphones with more bass and studio monitor headphones, I'll take the ones with more bass. I'll also prefer headphones that have more subdued highs, because I'm sensitive to them and they hurt my ears. I don't need a blind A/B test for that. I don't need a scientific experiment to figure out what I like. You can't always reduce human experience down to A/B tests.

Also, I wonder why you care so much about "audiophiles".

That’s why people HATE studio monitors, because they love a flat frequency response?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com