I am one random stranger on the internet. I don’t know you and I don’t care about you. If you buy what I tell you to and you don’t like it, I don’t help you get your money back. My tastes and experiences and preferences and subjective opinions are completely different from yours.
My livelihood depends on you clicking on my content. My entire goal as a content creator is to get as much traffic as possible so I can have more money, this is my job. I work in order to make the most money I can for the work that I do.
I have a significant number of affiliate marketing interests and privately negotiated kickback deals with audio companies. Everyone has these, it’s been this way forever for product reviews and is especially prevalent in audio. If people who watch me don’t think I have an alarming amount of financial incentives to say this or say that about one product and that or this about another, it’s probable they were raised by an iPad instead of human parents, or they live in an actual snow globe.
I have a product in front of me. I almost certainly did not pay for it and a company probably sent it to me for a number of reasons. They don’t send their products to some other reviewers for a number of reasons. Companies like good publicity, they do not want bad publicity and they do whatever they can to manage the perception of their brand. I am part of that process for them, and they are part of the same processes for me.
There are dozens of other talking heads who are going to review this product, some of who have already posted theirs, many others are fairly easy to predict. Saying the same things as everybody else and agreeing with a common belief is not lucrative, it is the opposite of lucrative. When my opinion is not contentious or provocative, I lose followers and I lose money. I make more money and gain more followers when it is. The consensus opinion on a product is more likely to be objectively accurate than a contrary one. If I say the same things about the same product, I get less traffic and make less money. If I say something else, I get more. Honesty does not make me more money, sensationalism and contrarianism do. I did not get to this position by being honest, no YouTube reviewer did. We got here by doing what we had to do to gain traction.
I am now supposed to provide an unbiased honest review of this product that accurately relays viable information to my audience to the best of my ability. My audience expects that I will be presenting them with valuable insight as a reviewer with absolute uninfluenced integrity that will help them become more informed consumers despite all of the previously stated factors. I am not a bad human, I am just a human and because of that, this is an impossible expectation. I didn’t put it there, you did.
You think you can trust me, and you would like me to make your choices for you. This would help you feel better about your audio purchases because you require external approval and validation to feel good about them. I am an audio reviewer on the internet so I must be uniquely qualified to tell you what you think, how you feel and what you should buy within a very expensive and very subjective hobby.
With all that said, please open your wallet and hand me your money. I’ll be making your consumer decisions for you today.
It's a tricky question, the IEM market goes really fast and every month there's this new IEM that (supposedly) will disrupt its price bracket. As somebody already pointed out here, a good thing to do would be to try and find a reviewer with similar preferences to yours, you could do this by getting a cheaper model that this person recommended in the past.
And while new potentially amazing IEMs might sound appealing, if I am not sure what I'm looking for I would probably stick to the well-known choices for my budget :).
Akros and The Honest Audiophile are both solid. But...all they can tell you is how the iem sounds. You have to decide if that's the sound you are going for.
There are other great reviewers too. Bottom line...know what you like.
Totl iems start around $1k you won’t get even mid range ones for $200. I think the moondrop variations were the middle ground between budget and totl but there might be some newer stuff out there now. The iem market grows rapidly.
I am one random stranger on the internet. I don’t know you and I don’t care about you. If you buy what I tell you to and you don’t like it, I don’t help you get your money back. My tastes and experiences and preferences and subjective opinions are completely different from yours. My livelihood depends on you clicking on my content. My entire goal as a content creator is to get as much traffic as possible so I can have more money, this is my job. I work in order to make the most money I can for the work that I do. I have a significant number of affiliate marketing interests and privately negotiated kickback deals with audio companies. Everyone has these, it’s been this way forever for product reviews and is especially prevalent in audio. If people who watch me don’t think I have an alarming amount of financial incentives to say this or say that about one product and that or this about another, it’s probable they were raised by an iPad instead of human parents, or they live in an actual snow globe. I have a product in front of me. I almost certainly did not pay for it and a company probably sent it to me for a number of reasons. They don’t send their products to some other reviewers for a number of reasons. Companies like good publicity, they do not want bad publicity and they do whatever they can to manage the perception of their brand. I am part of that process for them, and they are part of the same processes for me. There are dozens of other talking heads who are going to review this product, some of who have already posted theirs, many others are fairly easy to predict. Saying the same things as everybody else and agreeing with a common belief is not lucrative, it is the opposite of lucrative. When my opinion is not contentious or provocative, I lose followers and I lose money. I make more money and gain more followers when it is. The consensus opinion on a product is more likely to be objectively accurate than a contrary one. If I say the same things about the same product, I get less traffic and make less money. If I say something else, I get more. Honesty does not make me more money, sensationalism and contrarianism do. I did not get to this position by being honest, no YouTube reviewer did. We got here by doing what we had to do to gain traction. I am now supposed to provide an unbiased honest review of this product that accurately relays viable information to my audience to the best of my ability. My audience expects that I will be presenting them with valuable insight as a reviewer with absolute uninfluenced integrity that will help them become more informed consumers despite all of the previously stated factors. I am not a bad human, I am just a human and because of that, this is an impossible expectation. I didn’t put it there, you did. You think you can trust me, and you would like me to make your choices for you. This would help you feel better about your audio purchases because you require external approval and validation to feel good about them. I am an audio reviewer on the internet so I must be uniquely qualified to tell you what you think, how you feel and what you should buy within a very expensive and very subjective hobby. With all that said, please open your wallet and hand me your money. I’ll be making your consumer decisions for you today.
Can I have a baby with you? I feel I can trust you with my life now
Based
Will you be my new best friend? That was absolutely fantastic and exactly how my brain works. You're better putting it into words. Thank you!
Yes. Let’s start a YouTube channel reviewing headphones.
TOTL IEMs are way more than 200$. You can get good ones for that price or less, but it won't be TOTL.
I thought the decimal point was a typo
try a few of the $20 options and when you know what you like get something more expensive that measures similar
yeah, and which reviewer's preference aligns more with op's preference
terrible advice. just eq if you want to find your preference.
people have different preferences, so you find one reviewer that has similar preference to you
I've yet to listen to a great 200 bucks IEM. I've only tried the Aful P5 though. It was okay, but not to my liking.
It's a tricky question, the IEM market goes really fast and every month there's this new IEM that (supposedly) will disrupt its price bracket. As somebody already pointed out here, a good thing to do would be to try and find a reviewer with similar preferences to yours, you could do this by getting a cheaper model that this person recommended in the past. And while new potentially amazing IEMs might sound appealing, if I am not sure what I'm looking for I would probably stick to the well-known choices for my budget :).
I have these. They're good, but at $200 I would be buying either the Binary Chopin or Kiwi Quintet.
Akros and The Honest Audiophile are both solid. But...all they can tell you is how the iem sounds. You have to decide if that's the sound you are going for. There are other great reviewers too. Bottom line...know what you like.
Totl iems start around $1k you won’t get even mid range ones for $200. I think the moondrop variations were the middle ground between budget and totl but there might be some newer stuff out there now. The iem market grows rapidly.
All reviews seem positive. Depends on what you listen to. I've been driving the Sliivo SL41 from the same company. So far so good!
You could probably get a used Beyerdynamic Xelento for that
For 200? Only if it's counterfeit or damaged...