Essays on audio
Overtones.
Essays drawn from our reviews and listening guides. Every borrowed opinion links to its source.
Latest essays
4 essays- Data study13 of 25of owners’ favourites land in the reviewers’ bottom quarter04
Five Stars for Everything
Almost every store listing for headphones, IEMs and speakers leads with its star rating. Those stars say little about what reviewers concluded. Owners’ favourites often land near the bottom of the reviewers’ list, partly because the two are judging different things.
- Data study85%of headphones and IEMs split their reviewers on treble03
The Treble Wars
Two careful reviewers can listen to the same IEM and describe its treble in opposite ways. It happens with more than four in five headphones and IEMs, at any price, and fit often seems to be why.
- Term studyWarm.02
A Thousand Warmths
The most-spoken tonal word in this publication's corpus is also its least settled. Read all 1,173 uses at once and warm turns out to be three different claims wearing one syllable.
- In depth
The Pilgrim’s Progress
Elysian’s first affordable in-ear arrived hyped to the heavens, and nine reviewers promptly disagreed about almost everything except its talent. Read all at once, the argument turns out to be about three millimetres.
