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Comment by edgefield | Hacker News Reader

rtings.com is very good for certain types of products like TVs, headphones, etc.

I trust their measurements, I just don't like how they score things, and people tend to just use their scores instead of looking at the pros+cons and measurements. (they weight all the different subscores, and add them up, so eg. if there was an excellent monitor except it had a 100:1 contrast ratio, it'd still get great scores despite having such a huge flaw that most people would consider it to be essentially unusable).

It's really bad for HDR monitors, where an edge lit "fake HDR" monitor can get a 7, while failing the basics that are necessary to give a proper HDR experience. Something like TFTCentral or HardwareUnboxed's HDR checklists, and just straight up failing monitors that don't meet all the requirements would be much better than their current (imo misleading) system that can give good SDR monitors high HDR scores, when they're terrible at HDR.

Sounds like those basic components should be weighted more heavily, then?

Not really. If any single category is "good enough" then the weights are reasonably correct. It's just when a single category is a deal breaker that the simple metric of adding them up doesn't work.

Agreed, minus the headphones. Their headphone reviews are a joke. It's also worth noting some products have a lot of variation due to poor QC (PC monitors) and they may get an unusually good/bad unit from time to time, skewing the review.

For headphones I just use Crinacle. It’s served me well so far.

For other stuff, I usually check Wirecutter and cross-reference it with Reddit reviews.

I also have noticed that Wirecutter seems.. less qualitative (?) since they got bought by The NY Times.

Also on headphones, head-fi ( https://www.head-fi.org/ ).

Nope. Head-fi is audiowoo fairy land. Members generally loathe scientific testing and subjective, unsubstantiated claims are regularly made. There's even a cable forum, that, last time I went there, banned double-blind testing completely.

Headfi wasn’t always that way. There was a mass exodus of their scientific-minded members, who dedicated themselves to posting objective, and double-blind tests. Naturally, this created a problem with their advertisers, and most left en masse. Now, the site’s little more than a dumpster dive of anecdotal evidence masquerading as reputable sources.

I don't like head-fi either, but scientific testing/measurements are (mostly) worthless. Really, the only useful test is an in-home trial in my view. If you like it, buy it. If not, don't.

Here's a good video detailing some of why: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fa1y9JRip68

Sure. Ultimately what works best in your listening environment is what works best. But that's the result, not the means to the end.

Head-fi is full of woo that thinks that you need a four digit power cable, and a rare wood volume knob.

Some of the videos from High End - audio show in Berlin right now are just mind blowing.

$12,000 power cables. Speakers that are $345,000 - each. Preamps that are the size of 4U rack servers. "This device streams from Tidal and Qobuz to your system. It's $39,000."

I agree. Lots of things make a difference (including power) but they are often quite negligible. Is a dedicated digital source better than a PC? By many miles. Is a $10k source better than a $200 source? Not by nearly as much. Do line-level and speaker cables make a difference? Sure. But it's really subtle and most setups would be hard-pressed to hear anything in a blind test. If you have money to burn and the test of the setup is 10's of thousands, a cable costing a couple hundred isn't that egregious.

Hell no. They are audiophool degenerates. They literally reject any semblance of objective measurements, to focus on non-rigorous (i.e. not done with ABX) subjective evaluations.

I cannot recommend audio science review[0] enough. They're the opposite. All about objective measurements and rigor. None of the bullshit.

[0]: http://audiosciencereview.com/

Crinacle is probably the best, but for headphones I think it's the kind of thing you actually need to try out yourselves: the comfort varies so much for people, as does the preference for different sound signature (and knowing how well headphones handle when they're EQ'd to your preferences).

Definitely trust rtings. They buy every product in store to do their testing.

Agree - they updated the review for Logitech G PRO X WIRELESS build quality while the SoundGuys still show build quality 9/10.

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