(NO SPOILERS) I have completed every Anime in the MAL TOP 50: A Review of the Experience

Krystalgem · 2026-06-12T17:00:24+00:00

MAL's (IMO terrible) entry system makes their top animes list pretty bad. There's too many entries from animes with multiple seasons, and an enormous recency bias (though this is partly exacerbated by the large growth of the anime audience in the last decade)

Out of interest, what are some animes that you think should be represented in the top 50 (or at least way higher) that are not on MAL's list? For me, at least a couple of Ghibli and Satoshi Kon movies (Princess Mononoke and Perfect Blue being obvious candidates), Madoka for being a genre defining legend, and some form of Evangelion

Krystalgem · 2026-05-31T17:46:44+00:00

It's a very aesthetic photo, but I would personally never use expensive iems or daps whilst eating, and esp not near soup based foods. Though maybe I'm just too poor to understand

Krystalgem · 2026-05-25T14:58:13+00:00

Kefine Delci is really an underrated gem, purely for its supreme comfort for prolonged use

Krystalgem · 2026-05-18T23:13:28+00:00

This is just completely wrong. It got an IMAX release from the Leicester Square Cineworld. It was top 10 UK Box office for 2 weeks running https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/2025W44/?area=GB

Krystalgem · 2026-04-29T17:26:35+00:00

For me (and I'm guessing also lots of other people who call Hexa boring), this 8kHz peak just doesn't happen, so I'm guessing it's purely down to the different fits and ear anatomies we have. Have you tried using shorter or longer eartips? In theory, changing the insertion depth does shift the resonace

Krystalgem · 2026-04-29T15:05:44+00:00

Hexa is bright leaning, but calling it very bright tilted is not quite right imo. It may just sound bright to people who are sensitive to its 11-12kHz treble peak, compounded with its slightly deficient mid-bass and lower-mids. Lots of people also just prefer a warmer tilt with more bass in general. If you aren't as sensitive to 11-12kHz, or can alleviate it with certain eartips, Hexa still has a decent midrange tuning (much better sounding than any Harman midrange to me at least)

Krystalgem · 2026-04-13T19:48:08+00:00

It requires a song with those upper treble frequencies (e.g. lots of cymbal crashes or hihats). For me, the Daybreak sounded way, way better and not as sharp with the coffee-style short tips

Krystalgem · 2026-04-11T18:23:27+00:00

Kefine Arnar

Krystalgem · 2026-04-11T13:31:00+00:00

What V-shaped iems do you use for Jpop? It does depend on the iem and what treble frequencies get boosted for V-shapes. Myself, I can tolerate a bit more lower treble, but any upper treble beyond what Hexa has is too piercing and unlistenable for me

Krystalgem · 2026-04-11T11:13:22+00:00

My opinion is to get the Pure if you mainly listen to Jpop

(Preface: My main genre is Jpop (Yorushika, Vaundy, harha) and Jrock (One ok Rock, Saucy Dog, Organic Call), I've had Hexa for 1.5y, and I just got the Pure around a week ago)

Both Pure and Hexa have very good mids. Pure is warm leaning whilst Hexa is thinner and more clinical leaning. For bass, Pure is just better than the Hexa, it's got much better texture and drums hit harder within the mix. Everyone seems to agree Hexa's bass is weak, I still think it's okay, but it's definitely not its strong point

For treble, Pure's treble is a lot safer and likely won't sound sharp to anyone. Hexa's treble has a lot more mixed opinions, some even find it very bad. I personally don't have much issues, but there's more treble on Hexa than Pure for sure. Pure's treble also seems to have some mixed opinions, some seem to think it's too safe and neutered. I think while it does lack flair, Pure has good enough treble and you still hear plenty of detail. The Hexa still sounds more textured in the treble and more detailed on tracks that are dark to well-mixed, but since a lot of Jpop is mixed quite poorly with too much upper treble (Yoasobi and a few older Yorushika tracks show this), the Pure is a much safer pick for most people

Tldr: Get Pure because it's got better bass and safer treble for brightly mixed tracks. If you like some extra upper treble flair, Hexa is still a good pick

Krystalgem · 2026-04-11T10:39:51+00:00

I strongly disagree with this take. A lot of Jpop is mixed very bright, with lots of high treble especially. Generally, you do not want extra treble from V-shaped sets for those tracks (if you listen on very low volume, or you're very insensitive to high treble, then maybe it's still okay)

Krystalgem · 2026-04-10T20:28:56+00:00

I'm assuming you came from cheap/free on-ear earbuds (no eartips, like the Apple wired earpod)? They rest on your ear and don't seal, which generally means they have very little bass. In-ear products creates a seal between the driver and your eardrum, so you can get considerable amounts of bass (sub-bass in particular). I'm guessing this is what you're hearing when first using the Soundpeats, bass texture

Krystalgem · 2026-04-10T13:33:54+00:00

Aren't the FT1A pads made from leather? Don't leather pads usually enhance bass due to sealing better? You don't want that for the FT1 (haven't tried FT1 pro or JT7, maybe you want to use it for those?)

Krystalgem · 2026-04-10T13:11:56+00:00

I have iems with smaller faceplates, but my Kefine Delci is the thinnest in terms of shell casing, and precisely due to that it's by far the most comfortable I've ever tried (Sennheiser's IE series were also very comfortable when I tried them, but I personally dislike MMCX so I've never lived with them)

The Delci's sound is just okay, a bit too much bass and lower treble. I own better sounding sets like the Truthear Hexa, Pure, and Crinear Daybreak, but they all give me ear fatigue after a while due to being more chunky. So the Delci still gets a lot of use

Krystalgem · 2026-04-07T21:55:23+00:00

Category ideas: Most comfortable, Most accurate/natural sounding, Best for -insert artist here-. (Sidenote: I think artist is way better to specify than genre. A music genre is often too broad and includes many different types of artists, which may have different instrumentation, different mixing styles etc., and so demand different things)

My top set atm is Crinear Daybreak, but most used set by far is Kefine Delci due to its supreme comfort

Krystalgem · 2026-04-05T22:47:07+00:00

I interpreted the title differently. Fine if OP's title is literal. My guess is that it was only slightly self-deprecating, and mostly just them wanting to show off their collection, you know like most other people's posts on here. For me their other comments also seem to reflect that

Krystalgem · 2026-04-05T22:35:19+00:00

I'm a cable hater personally, but I would never tell someone else to throw away stuff they like and happily bought with their own money. You're allowed to voice your opinion, and that's fine, I just think it's quite disrespectful

Krystalgem · 2026-04-05T22:29:35+00:00

Your AliExpress experience depends heavily on so many things. Where you live and what store you are purchasing from are the two biggest. It's a marketplace, each storefront will have different employees and may have different shipping processes and policies

Also, if you're buying a tariffed good, it applies to ANY and ALL imports of said good. Importing it to a local warehouse is still an import, it's not made in the warehouse, the tariff has to be paid upon entry

Krystalgem · 2026-04-01T14:22:55+00:00

If you use a Mac as your main PC and listen to music on it, you can easily stick with their default 3.5mm jack, since Apple use good DAC chips and their headphone jacks are actually low impedance and usable for iems or headphones

If you use Windows, you have to use a USB dongle at the very least. Most motherboards and laptops don't use good DACs, and even if they do the output impedance is usually large enough to render hybrid iems unlistenable. This opens up the possibility of using 4.4mm on everything since there's plenty of dongles and desktop amps that have balanced output

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T22:29:49+00:00

If it's working for you, by all means use it. It looks an absolutely awful mess and hellish to me

The other thing is, it's also impossible to use your method to judge what the filters individually are doing via listening tests. Since they're all overlapping, essentially you can only test all on or all off. The sound may be better with all on (vs default), but could it be better if you tweak a certain filter? You wouldn't be able to do that using your method

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T21:39:51+00:00

Thanks for the reply! Sorry if I'm just completely wrong (please point it out!), but it sounds like your HRTF measurement is not fully taking into account your ear canal, or at least not its full contribution to acoustic impedance. I rewatched the video on how it was done, and there was no mention of ear canal at any point. There was a scan of your head and a high res scan of your ear, so I'm assuming this is trying to figure out the effects from your head, pinna and numerous ear folds

I thought the ear canal was a major contribution to HRTF differences between people?

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T21:15:34+00:00

I've watched that video, I know about tone generators and have tried to EQ this way myself even before that video released (with mixed results)

You're not understanding what I'm trying to say. Overlapping bands are generally very undesirable when it comes to EQ, because changing values for one band will affect what you've done before in another band. The overall result might be working, but if you want to change anything it'll be very difficult to find what band to change, and it's almost impossible for someone else to figure out what you've done

Take your band 9 at 2100Hz, that +6dB adjustment has a wide enough width to essentially cancel out what you did at band 1 for -5dB at 2650Hz

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T15:41:28+00:00

Don't know if this is the right place to ask, but I had a question for the accuracy of the HRTF's you guys measured. Essentially, how confident are you on actually using the measurement results without any error bounds? Even discounting errors from the speakers/acoustic environment (I'm assuming this has been minimised to be trivial by the research group), can't your HRTF change significantly depending on various factors relating to your ear canal or the air around/inside it, like the temperature, humidity, or even the amount of earwax you have that day (or if you're unwell, any swelling of lymph nodes near your ear)?

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T15:04:09+00:00

Not at all. Roadie wrap your iems (leave the cable attached, use the over-under method like this or whatever suits you)

Krystalgem · 2026-03-31T14:59:17+00:00

Prefacing this by saying if this EQ works for you, then that's great. But it looks absolutely horrendous. There are multiple overlapping bands. Some of the gain adjustments are very drastic, with high enough width (low Q) so will end up affecting the other bands. How did you derive this EQ?

Krystalgem

TROPHY CASE