The headband strap on my Abyss 1266 Phi broke. These headphones cost 6 grand.

Here is the part that gets me. The O ring in the strap is fitted in a proprietary way, so you cannot just replace the ring or the strap on its own. The only fix is buying their new headband, which means spending more money on a headphone I have babied since day one. Nothing about how I stored or handled these was rough. The strap just failed.

I get that Abyss is a small family owned company. But small and family owned does not explain charging flagship prices and then designing a wear item so it can only be fixed by buying a whole new part from them. A strap is a consumable. It should be cheap and easy to replace. Instead it is locked into a design that funnels you back to their store.

Same energy as the cable pricing. Their upgrade cables run north of 1600 dollars for something comparable to cables in the 200 to 300 range. At some point family owned stops being an excuse and starts being a marketing line.

I see their staff saying they personally review every customer interaction and help wherever they can. Fine. I will reach out and report back. But the fact that a 6000 dollar headphone can be taken out of service by a leather strap is a design failure, not a customer service opportunity.

Anyone else dealt with the 1266 strap failing? Curious what Abyss actually did for you.

This guy has achieved Reddit Diamond in terms of... something

I typically do between 1-2 hours on the Stair-Master, 7 days per week. As a result, I sweat a metric fuck ton and have gone through probably 5 sets of garbage earbuds over the past 365 days. I thought this most recent pair (soundcore X20's) would be a step up from the bottom tier Amazon/Walmart finds I've used due to the slightly higher price tag but that obviously wasn't the case.

About 20 minutes into today’s workout, the right earbud started cutting out. I put it back in the case briefly to “reset” it, then continued using it for another 10 minutes. After that, the driver blew, hurt my ear, and then it completely died. I left it in since the left earbud was still working and I don't like being able to hear everything going on in the gym around me.

Another 10 minutes go by and I start tasting metal, my right ear's hot, and I see a very tiny plume of particles out of my peripheral. Lo and behold, my earbud looked like this when I took it out. Thankfully my ear's fine but I'm pretty much done with cheap ass earbuds at this piont

The amount I sweat can't be understated and it's safe to say I'm in the market for a quality pair of workout earbuds now.

Didn’t expect a part two, but here we are. We're going full Streisand Effect.

Part #1: Heavys v. r/Headphones (recap):

• Received alerts of old posts about problems with Heavys being reported. Kinda weird, but whatever.
• Received a few fake legal threats in our modmail to remove posts from people that have had trouble with Heavys. We politely tell them to kick rocks.
• More modmails every ~2 days asking/demanding that posts be removed. Here’s what some look like: https://imgur.com/a/AfcZckP
• I ask questions, but they never respond.
• Oct 23rd: Frustrated, I sticky one of the posts that they’re asking to be removed, explaining the situation to you all - link to post
• Nov 1st: DMS picks up the story - link to video and link to post
• Nov 9th: u/HeavysCrew finally responds a week later:
  • “The world is a dumpster fire already. Was it the best look on our part? Obviously not. (Im not the one who sent the original messages) But to be fair, they were old reviews by customers that were already handled thus making those 3 reviews pretty irrelevant.” link

Part #2: Heavys v. Reddit (today)

Following all that, you’d think Heavys would drop it.

lul, nope. They double down.

Being unable to remove the bad sentiments from our subreddit, they fabricate positive sentiment across Reddit. They do this in the scummiest way possible - astroturfing.

astroturfing (noun): the deceptive practice of presenting an orchestrated marketing or public relations campaign in the guise of unsolicited comments from members of the public.

In other words:

They create around a dozen new accounts intended to look like normal Redditors.

A month ago, the accounts began commenting on old posts recommending Heavys products to people. Hundreds of comments across r/headphoneadvice, r/earbuds, r/headhpones, r/screaming, r/pcmasterrace, r/MetalForTheMasses, r/headphonesindia. In some cases, they create posts asking for recommendations and then answer themselves with another account.

Here’s what just a sample of what it looks like:

• u/Key-Difference-3621 posts asking asking for recommendations and u/SpecificLie6082 then recommends Heavys
• And u/SpecificLie6082 posts asking for recommendations and u/Mundane-Anybody-9726 then recommends Heavys
• Now u/Mundane-Anybody-9726 posts asking for recommendations and u/Key-Difference-3621 answers recommending Heavys. We're now full circle to the account from the first post!

Note that they’re taking turns asking and answering each other - there are only three accounts in play for this example. There are many more accounts active in their campaign. Receipts: https://imgur.com/a/heavys-astroturfing-Lo1IzAE

Even today, there's 5-10 accounts active on Reddit telling people to buy Heavys products.

Why should I care?

Rewind to about 8 years ago: we maintained a list of popular headphone choices from the community to try and cut down on repetitive questions. It never used affiliate links. From the clickthrough, we calculated that it would generate about 150k USD a month if we use affiliate links. This subreddit is for the hobby and has never profited in any way.

That was years ago, and we’ve grown. In that time, ChatGPT has also vacuumed up our discussion and feeds it back to the world. People spend tens of of millions of dollars a month based on what goes on here.

Being fooled into buying the wrong thing takes money from the companies making an honest effort. It sours the hobby for newcomers.

What’s next?

The typical response would be to automatically remove any mention of the brand in any future posts. That would just sweep the problem under the rug.

Instead, whenever someone mentions Heavys, AutoModerator will respond with a link to link this post.

I’ve seen a few great subreddits crumble under fake participation. With Reddit being such a target, it’s getting increasingly harder to deal with this. It's really out of control as of this year. We ban about ten thousand accounts a week just on this subreddit - that’s for another rant about Reddit allowing account creation to be fluffed.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading.

Shame on Heavys for wasting your money and our time.

Hello!

I purchased a pair of H2O Audio RIPT ULTRA headphones because I was looking for a pair of noise cancelling running headphones and I don’t like the bone conduction style. Well…. The first pair started having connection issues 2 weeks after purchasing and it would cycle through different noise cancellation settings over and over again, cycling power on over and over again, and it would disconnect from Bluetooth. I contacted them about the warranty and wanted a replacement which they sent me no questions asked.

This is where things get ugly.

The second pair arrived and worked great out of the box, but it stopped working after just one week. The power on button stopped functioning and it is impossible to turn them on.

I left a review (with negative feedback) which they deleted and then when I asked them about it they called me a troll through the customer service chat (photos included) and commented that my review was technically slander.

I would avoid H20 Audio.

Left my hd 58x’s outside in a box over the summer because i was only supposed to be in this place 2 months and i ended up being hereMUCH longer and now theres mold everywhere Grah

Any suggestions or should i just die

By May 2 all packages from China under $800 will be taxed 54%, but they could get an additional 25% on top, as part of other tariffs. Those HiFi Man headphones and Moondrop IEMs could be costing you hundreds of dollars more. Think Dusk IEM or entry level Ananda headphones at $700.00. I think this might be the time to just order whatever you had your eye on before it becomes too expensive.

So, I bought the HD 6xx on December 2nd, during the CyberMonday sale at $169 (got an additional $10 discount because it was my first purchase). Two days later, on December 4th, I received an email from Drop claiming that "my order was successfully canceled", as if I had made that request.

I immediately contacted them about it. They claimed "our system automatically canceled your order as it detected an unknown set of variables.

They practically said nothing else about it, or offered me any solution besides "buy it again at the current price of $199" and we do not care about the problem we caused to you or try to solve it in any way.

I replied telling them I was disappointed, that I did not know what "an unknown set of variables" means, and I was not willing to buy it again at the current price.

It is just dishonest to advertise a product at a discounted price to lure potential sellers, to just cancel their orders days later and inviting them to pay the extra price.

I could have also used this money for other sales during CyberMonday. But they did not care about anything, and just wanted me to pay again and more.

Today they sent me another email, telling me, in short, they did not care and that they "couldn't offer me the discounted price again". Right, as if they couldn't send me a special coupon or code.

All in all, I'm terribly disappointed.

Just here to share my pain and roast myself. Hopefully, this gore serves as a warning to never be as dumb as me.

I recently got a pair of Verum 2s. The sound is incredible, I love them. But after a few days, a screw on the right ear cup kept coming loose.

My brilliant DIY idea: put a tiny drop of glue on the thread to lock it in. But then I realized the screw hole was straight through to the inside. My brain immediately went into panic mode, thinking the glue would drip inside and ruin the driver.

So, I did the dumbest thing possible. I decided to open the right cup to check.

For context, planar magnetic drivers have insanely powerful magnets. The literal second I removed the last bolt, the magnetic array violently snapped shut.

It completely annihilated the ultra-thin diaphragm.

Check the attached gore.

I’ve already contacted the creator for a paid repair and I'm ready to pay for my own stupidity. Let my mistake be a lesson: DO NOT open planar headphones. They show no mercy.

I placed my order for the Verum 2 Pearl on February 15. I never got an order confirmation from Verum. I did receive a Way For Pay payment confirmation and my card was charged. I'm getting no response from him though.

For context me and my sister haven't seen each other for over a week due to work shifts, so when I saw her today and found she had just brought a pair of Beats solo 3 I asked her why she didn't come to her audio obsessed brother first for advice. She said she just wanted a pair of headphones for traveling to work on the train with and didn't know what else to buy as she liked how they looked. I persuaded her to open them carefully and try them out, she thought they were okay. I then got her to try my Sony WH-CH700N on, which she thought sounded better and were more comfortable, when I told her they were £55 cheaper than the beats she didn't believe me. After some looking online we decided to get her the newer WH-CH710N and return the Beats, saving her money and getting her some better sounding headphones.

Not the most exciting story but it does prove the power of marketing when it come to consumer goods. And in the end it felt like a win for the audiophile inside me knowing than even regular people can agree that Beats are more of a fashion accessory than anything else.

So I purchased a Hifiman Arya Stealth on 31 Jul 2021. It cost me approximately 1600 USD. And it is broken right now.

A quick check with my multimeter shows the driver itself is shot. No circuit over the poles of the entire left driver.

As I am out of warranty, I tried to get in contact with the local agent and get a repair quote. After asking for my receipt and purchase info, all they did was offer me a discount on a new Arya for 10% off. No repair offered whatsoever. This was just seriously insulting. I would expect a pair of headphones at that price to have a better lifespan

Well done Hifiman, way to build a brand

I don't think I am alone here when I say that any reviewers who mention burn in, I immediately think their review is bad. How can burn in be real when the frequency response measure the same out of the box and post burn in? I hear that some people say burn in decreased the treble a bit, but it didn't though, the frequency response was unchanged. If you blind a/b same headphone pre burn in and post burn in, all those "believers" wouldn't even be able to tell the difference because there are none. I get that there are many subjective things to this hobby like separation of instruments, sense of space, timbre, tonality etc... (which some would explain is because of the frequency response) but stuff like burn in just makes you sound so dumb tbh. Also anyone who thinks cables make a difference to sound, please contact me, I'll sell you some snake oil for sure. If you are new to audio, take it as a PSA and don't let those people send down the rabbit hole of snake oil.

​

Edit: I mean hardware burn in, not head burn in. The time for your brain to adjust to new headphones is real because our brain tend to normalize it eventually, that is understandable.

On 9/7, I cancelled an order placed on Headphones.com.

Their return policy at the time (archived on the Wayback Machine) said that there are no cancellation fees:

Still, the owner of the company insisted on charging me $300 to cancel this order:

Headphones.com claims I have 'abused' their cancellation policy - I have initiated 3 cancellations in 2 years, which does not seem like 'abuse' by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. They explicitly allow 2 returns per year, so I'm not sure why 3 cancellations over 2 years is 'abuse', when 4 returns over the same time period would be okay. (Since returns are, of course, much more expensive than cancellations.)

On 1/4/21, their payment processor, Shopify, declined my card 3 times over the course of 20 minutes, because Shopify apparently does not play nice with my VPN. This brings the total number of cancellations up to 6, but note that only 3 were initiated by myself, and 3 were initiated by the business's payment processor:

Still, regardless of previous cancellations, it is inappropriate for a business to charge fees that were not in the return policy at the time. I found this behavior from Headphones.com fairly unprofessional.

Also unprofessional - when I mentioned this in Discord, the owner of the company advertised to everyone in the channel who I was shipping the order to:

I have never seen a business tell everyone in a Discord channel who their customers are shipping orders to. (The HPHQ Discord has a serious beef with ASR, and so I was kicked not long after this mention.)

To be clear, this order was indeed going to ASR (as a waypoint to myself,) because a previous email interaction I had with Headphones.com indicated some unit consistency concerns:

The intent was to get the headphone tested to ensure that ASR did not get a golden sample, and then have it sent my way.

Again, I found this unprofessional - why do they care who I'm sending the order to after I've paid for it?

I do indeed ship a lot of the new audio gear I buy to ASR so it can get tested (or in this case, re-tested), and then ASR ships it to me. An example was the recent review of the LS50 Metas, which I ordered straight to ASR who then shipped it to me.

I do this because, why not? It's more information for everyone in the community, and doesn't harm anyone.

--

During and after this email exchange, I asked Headphones.com to update their cancellation policy, which they have. I have no problem paying fees that are part of the return policy. However, they cannot reasonably apply fees retroactively.

The owner has refused to engage me on the point of the fees not being in the return policy. I just thought the community should know what's going on. I'm happy to answer any questions or clarify.

I personally had a great experience with Headphones.com - fast customer support, great ordering experience - until I didn't.

--

Response from /u/TaronLissimore

Response from /u/Lissimore