I have no doubt you can select for and create a playlist of tracks with ~20Hz content if you go looking for it, but the vast majority of music simply doesn't have content down there. Most all rock, metal, classical, folk, or jazz, is not going to have 20Hz frequencies because almost no instruments play that low, and the ones that do are rarely used. Back when I bought my 21" subwoofer for my speaker system I actually got into finding organ music that has 20Hz (and even lower!) content, but organ music is an incredibly niche interest. I agree it's nice to hear music that has that content, but I can also tell you first-hand that even Harman-tuned headphones with good low-bass can't touch what a subwoofer can do with those frequencies.I have a whole playlist of such tracks one of which gets used in every speaker and headphone review. This is one of the powerful strength headphones have even over best speakers in that they have no trouble traversing down to 20 Hz and even lower. It is delightful to hear music like this and give you an idea of what is really in you music.
And what you say is fair re the mids and treble, but your review for the Caldera put most of the emphasis on the "no bass" as if that was the primary problem when you didn't even mention it on headphones that measure much worse or the same in that area. Also, EQing the HD650 bass doesn't fix the high distortion and just makes it worse.They both lack it. What HD650 has which Caldera doesn't is incredibly good lower to mid treble. It puts a smile on my face every time I use it to test a headphone amp. The Caldera is the opposite with a dull sound as I reported in the review. Add some bass EQ to HD650 and it becomes a huge contender for one of the best headphones there is.
I have never suggested we aren't biased by such things. In fact, I readily admit I'm biased towards ZMF because of how they look. Still, if they performed terribly I wouldn't use them as much as I do. I'd just be using my HD650s or Aeon all the time and keeping my ZMFs on their racks to look at (it's actually far easier to enjoy their looks that way!). A lack of bias control is only an issue for the side trying to claim some kind of scientific objectivity. Maybe you'd object you aren't doing that, but many around here seem to think that's the case.I don't know how you, the designer and everyone doing sighted subjective testing of a headphone is not biased by its looks, reputation, supposed design and fidelity, other reviewers they have read, and a million other reasons. So don't ask me for bias control when you have no belief in it yourself. Those are massive *and improper* sources of bias.
I haven't objected to you or anyone doing reviews with measurements. What you say about AI reviews can be said of a lot of things, probably including peer-reviewed papers. I don't know what that's meant to prove other than how good AI is at generating human-like text.If you had watched my video I post video yesterday, you would have seen me explaining why doing subjective reviews without measurements is so wrong. An AI text generator can be substituted for many such subjective reviews and you wouldn't know the difference! After all, how would you be able to denounce them? You have nothing else to dispute their assessment of "this is what I heard."
The rest of your post seems to follow from your mistaken assumption that I'm somehow opposed to measurements or science or evidence when the truth couldn't be further away from that.
My own goals have less to do with audio fidelity and more musical fidelity. We know because of the circle of confusion audio fidelity (even if we could determine it with complete accuracy) doesn't necessarily get you towards musical fidelity. Last night I was listening to the Emersons performing Bartok's String Quartets. Phenomenal musicians, but the audio engineering was very hot in the in the 1k-4k region. Not just my "subjective impression" either as I could see it in the analyzer. Now, you can listen to those performances (and many consider them definitive in that music) on a Harman-tuned headphone and be happy about your audio fidelity, while I'll be over here with a headphone like the Caldera (which I wasn't using last night) and be happier that my ears aren't being pierced to death. Sadly, recordings like that are not as rare as I'd wish them. If they were maybe I'd be more enthusiastic about Harman, but I don't think it's a coincidence that a lot of Harman-tuned headphones get criticized by "subjective" users as being bright. I don't think Harman is bright, I just think a lot of recordings are, and those recordings tend to sound very bad on Harman-tuned headphones.I will tell you: it is that in that there is nothing else out there that comes close to giving us a compass pointing to true north (of correct audio fidelity). Just like a compass, we don't expect it to tell us 1 degree differences in headings. It is not a GPS as I usually say. So don't say it is and then complain that it can't be that. We need to be able to live with ambiguity just like a survivor does in digging his way out of a jungle with said compass.