Phil's Superpower of Enthusiasm

A place to write about things I enjoy, for my own edification. Headphones, audio gear, albums, whiskey, wine, golden retrievers etc.

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Lawyer, unabashed nerd and geek. Purveyor and pusher of excellent sci-fi/fantasy, good food, and repartee. He/him. Dog dad/servant to @Goldendenali.

I’m experimenting with Amazon Affiliate status in an attempt to defray some of the costs of headphone reviews; Amazon links may be affiliate links (depending on whether or not I’ve figured out how to use them correctly). Please feel free to buy elsewhere; this is just one way to recoup the costs of this hobby.

Things I probably won’t review:

This is a thing that I do because it’s fun for me (and hey audio companies; if you want to start sending me free stuff to review I’m not going to complain!). If I try something and I don’t like it, I’m probably not going to do a review on it unless I have a compelling reason (I get asked about it a lot, there’s something specific that isn’t obvious upfront that I want folks to know about if they buy it, or something that I didn’t discover for a whiel, or I’m particularly irked). Here is an incomplete list of things that have spent some time with with the intention of reviewing and have decided not to review:

  1. Bose Quietcomfort Noise Canceling Earbuds
  2. AKG 371.1
  3. Sennheiser Momentum 3/4
  4. Sony WH1000XM4/5
  5. Sonos Ace
  6. Hifiman Sundara Closed
  7. Anything by KZ

“I don’t want to spend any fucking seconds going you know what sucks? Instead I will spend hours telling you about what I love. That’s a better use of my time, your time. If you’re looking for negativity, like you don’t need me. You can find it.”

— Kevin Smith

  1. I tried twice to get one of these; the first time they sent me the Bluetooth version which was … okay but substantially less comfortable to me and uses a super weird cable. When I returned that, they sent me a refurb unit with a 5-10 dB channel imbalance.

    QC issues happen. I expect that a refurbished unit will have at least been measured. ↩︎