Cuprajake Ive been doing the same with headphones, I’ve been through 6 pairs and eventually bought the same ones I had and sold, because as much as we research it’s mainly opinion at the end of the day.
I gotta say. though, “headphones” (and speakers for that matter), are a superb example of the core of my, perhaps the problem. It’s comparatively easy to research these days, esecially with the power of the internet, but headphones and speakers, just like coffee have the same inherent problem with research - namely, both audip stuff and coffee are extraordinarily subjective, but the research is inherently objective. No amount of research can really tell us if we’ll like the soud profile of gear, or the taste of a particular grinder, bean etc.
What type of sound do you like? Equally or more important, what type of music do you like? I mean, if I like Bach Choral stuff, and you like Bruckner, or Motorhead, there’s a pretty decent chance we’d prefer a different sound profile from our ’phones or speakers.
And if you like really light roast and I refer dark, we might very well finder different grinders, or burrs, optimum.
Either way, my hearing and my taste preferences are using my ears and taste buds respectively, and absolutely nobody else is using my ears or taste buds. I’m pretty sure I’d have noticed if they were. None of those phones (assuming they’re decent) are going to be hugely better or hugely worse than the others. Just, different.
So we can research for years, and short of using the ’phones on your head, playing your musical preference, how the bleep is it possible to compare Model A with Model B? Nobody else can do it for you, and nor can raw spec’s or data. And just as the internet is great for ‘research’ while sat on your butt at home, the internet has also resulted in the closure of a very large percentage of small specialist ‘hifi’ shops. Thanks, Amazon. 😭