What are they called?

Interesting. I agree closed backs are the worst, but what about IEMs is better than open backs in your opinion?

Get a thin long piece of wood/metal, tape it parallel directly on top of the headband on both sides of the crack. That should add some structural integrity

When you stop listening to them as headphones and start listening like they are speakers or like you are actually there, close your eyes and the magic will come

I think the 1266 TC isn't suited for EQ due to the high distortion

It will take you a while to adjust based on the difference in sound signatures. If you want a fun bassy headphones Edition XS is not it.

And yes there is more to DACs and amps than power. If you are looking to purchase more enthusiast headphones in the future an upgrade will be worthwhile

Yes indeed

This is a knee jerk response to anything that doesn't say FR is everything

Enjoy your Chu 😉

Yeah. What a random sample of people like isn't what you like necessarily. And your headshape and ears might mean even if the headphone measures completely according to the Harman target, you might not hear it sound like the Harman target.

There is this channel on YouTube run by a clown who doesn't even physically try the IEMs, just looks at the FR and labels them trash

Too factual to be a meme

For sure. Way more headroom on a strong amp

Planars have a flat impedance graph

I tried

With dynamic driver headphones, where the impedance changes over the frequency response, the output impedance of the amplifier determines the final frequency response that you hear. It is for this reason that sometimes people run for example the HD800S on tube amps, along with more second order harmonic distortion which produces a more "euphoric" sound. The high output impedance however is not unique to tube amps and can be reproduced by simply adding a resistor to output section of a solid state amp.

Powerful amps give you more headroom. I'm going to give a simplified example. Let's say in a certain song the drums are 10 dB louder than the vocals. Since dB is logarithmic, you can perform addition and subtraction on the numbers and maintain the difference in relative loudness. An under powered amp tops out at 90dB for a given headphone. If you turn the vocals up so that they are 90dB, the drums are still going to be 90dB because that is the limit of the amp. If you've got a more powerful amp that can drive the headphones up to 110dB, it will comfortably reproduce vocals at 90dB and drums at 100dB.

Amplification is a very complicating topic. You may come across SINAD for example, but they don't tell the whole story. But in general if you get an amp from a reputable brand which delivers high power you are good to go

Details wise, IEMs might be more detailed than any headphone at that price. However, it doesn't have the same soundstage

Crin uses the iFi black label to test all of his headphones to maintain consistency. He rarely comments on amps or dacs.

Sure, but I disagree with the point that since I don't like Amir, I don't believe in science. Amir is a subset of science. Science is not a subset of Amir.

I find Golden Sound, SBAF, head-case and headphones.com to provide better and more relevant measurements.

Not the measurements of the amps and dacs, but the interpretation of the results and his narrative

So Amir = Science? That's a big statement to make lol

"If your eardrums ain't frying, you ain't trying!" -Amir probably

Sorry, I can't listen to this amp because a) It isn't by Topping or SMSL b) The SINAD is under 125

That's the spirit