Audio YouTubers We Love (And Why You Should Too)
Three audio reviewers (Resolve, GoldenSound, and listener) discuss top headphone review channels on YouTube and share their preferred content creators.
Three audio reviewers (Resolve, GoldenSound, and listener) discuss top headphone review channels on YouTube and share their preferred content creators.
Transcription below:
00:00:00 (Cameron Oatley) 00:00:18 (Griffin Silver) 00:00:42 (Andrew Park) 00:00:45 (Griffin Silver) 00:00:52 (Andrew Park) 00:02:36 (Mark Ryan Sallee) 00:02:45 (Griffin Silver) 00:03:10 (Andrew Park) 00:03:22 (Griffin Silver) 00:03:44 (Cameron Oatley) 00:04:36 (Erin's Audio Corner ) 00:04:50 (Cameron Oatley) 00:05:34 (Griffin Silver) 00:05:41 (Cameron Oatley) 00:06:07 (Griffin Silver) 00:06:32 (Andrew Park) 00:06:34 (Griffin Silver) 00:07:52 (Andrew Park) 00:07:54 (Griffin Silver) 00:08:39 (Joe from GadgetryTech) 00:08:50 (Cameron Oatley) 00:09:21 (Griffin Silver) 00:09:38 (Andrew Park) 00:10:56 (GeraldUndone ) 00:11:09 (Andrew Park) 00:11:21 (Cameron Oatley) 00:11:43 (Andrew Park) 00:11:52 (Griffin Silver) 00:12:05 (Andrew Park) 00:12:07 (Griffin Silver) 00:12:11 (Cameron Oatley) 00:12:30 (Tom Scott) 00:12:49 (Cameron Oatley) 00:13:48 (Andrew Park) 00:14:15 (SPEAKER_7) 00:14:21 (Andrew Park) 00:14:37 (Griffin Silver) 00:14:43 (Cameron Oatley) 00:14:46 (Griffin Silver) 00:14:48 (Cameron Oatley) 00:14:49 (Griffin Silver) 00:15:21 (Mark Ryan Sallee) 00:15:25 (Griffin Silver) 00:16:13 (Andrew Park) 00:16:22 (Cameron Oatley) 00:16:29 (Andrew Park) 00:16:30 (Griffin Silver)
Today we've got something a little bit different because Griffin wanted to ask myself and Andrew a question.Whilst we make content for you guys on YouTube, we also watch content ourselves, so we thought today we might do a little bit of reviewing the reviewers and talk about some of the people that we enjoy watching most.
Yeah, so an idea that I'd had for a long time for a piece of content was actually us doing a tier list of headphone reviewers.But I realized that could get, you know, maybe a little negative and not necessarily the kind of tone we're going for.So I figured instead we would just kind of highlight our favorites.You know, why not take the opportunity to spread the love a little bit and give some attention to some creators who are actually doing very good work out there.Spread the love?What is this?
Don't you know headphone reviews are just about playing authority games?Come on, man.
Anyway, I guess we'll start with Andrew.Andrew, is there a-Is there a headphone or audio content creator that you want to shine a light on?
Yeah, as it happens, there is.My pick for this is a guy by the name of Mark Ryan.Now, hold on.I know what you're thinking.People with two first names can't be trusted.They're highly suspicious.Is it Mark?Is it Ryan?Like, who even is this guy?This is, of course, Super Review.That's Mr. Super Review to you.Mr. Super Review, yes.And as we all know, this review is super.But my reasoning for picking Mark Ryan here is, quite frankly, he is somebody who I will genuinely watch for information about products.A lot of the time, for us at least, the things that are most interesting to do with headphones is we want to see a measurement.We want to see how something performs.We want to get a sense of it so we can kind of calibrate our expectation to whether or not that's something that we're going to enjoy.Because we have a pretty clear sense of what we actually prefer based on the measurements.But the cool thing about Mark Ryan is that he is not a graph sniffer he's not a measurement junkie quite in the same way he does the measurements he provides all the information but he also just gives his take and my favorite thing about him is that he's not one of these online like the rest of us are he's a much more chill and friendly kind of person and just gives his experience the way that he hears things.And I think that's really commendable.He's not trying to play the stupid authority games that so many other people are.And for that, I really appreciate what he's doing.If you guys want a particular video to check out from Super Review, he's done a very useful tier list for the things that matter in audio.And I have a slightly different perspective on this, but I think for anybody who wants to get into this, that's a very useful video to watch.And for the most part, these are things that I generally agree with.So give that video a watch, give Mark Ryan some love, and subscribe to his channel.
Even if these things do matter, and I guess they all matter to some extent, how much do they matter?Like, how much attention should you spend on them?And that's what we're going to figure out right now.
Hell yeah, dude.I love Mark.I spend every Wednesday at 8 p.m.with him in his Discord server.I consider him a friend, but he's also one of the only other content creators I do watch when it comes to audio because the first like 10 or 20 minutes of one of his videos is very focused on like quality of life, build, comfort stuff.And I find he gives kind of the best perspective and the most complete information in that regard.
Before I get a chance to experience a product, definitely agree with shouting out Mark Ryan And I just have to note, this isn't just me simping for Mark Ryan because he's a fellow Bellaroy boy, but that sure doesn't hurt.
I'll simp for Mark Ryan.And just so viewers know, we're actually going to be doing a forum post over on the forum at https://forum.headphones.com about our favorite YouTube content creators.So if you want to go ahead and contribute one to the discussion, whether it's audio related or non-audio related, go ahead and throw that on the forum and we'll take a look.Oh, and that forum will be linked in the description.So Cameron, what about you?What would your favorite audio?
So for me, I'm picking someone that is actually more in the speaker world than the headphones world and it's got to be Aaron's Audio Corner.So the thing with headphones is that whilst obviously on this channel we talk about measurements and the objective side of stuff quite a lot, we also give our experiences and Whilst there are significant challenges in terms of how one's experience with a particular headphone may differ from someone else's with speakers, things get really complicated just because the room itself can have such a massive impact, and also there's just a lot less actual objective data on speakers available, and Aaron's Audio Corner is a channel which really goes a long way to fixing that.He does a great job of providing a more sort of balanced perspective on speakers.He gives his own opinion, his own experiences, talking both about the sound itself, but also about some of the practical aspects of things and some of the things he might find in terms of quirks when he was setting it up in his own room.
Even though some speakers measure great, they measure great in different areas and they still have distinctions between them that make them different enough from another speaker; that I would want to own different ones for different reasons.
But he also provides really, really comprehensive measurement data for speakers using the Clipple NFS, which is the state of the art system.It is fantastic.And it tells you a lot, not just about what the frequency response of that speaker is, but also how it is likely to perform in various different rooms and some of the challenges or considerations you may want to make as to whether it is going to work well in your particular setup, even if it is otherwise a good speaker just from a baseline tuning perspective.He gives praise to products that deserve it; he will say when a product is not good, and I think more so than many other reviewers, he goes out of his way to kind of just avoid some of the biases and conflicts of interest that may muddy the waters a bit.Plus, he's just an entertaining and friendly, inviting guy to watch, so Aaron's Audio Corner's gotta be it for me.
Full agreement here; like-Obviously, his data is an immensely valuable resource that really can't be overstated how great it is.
Yeah, that Clipple NFS system is not cheap.It's like a hundred grand or something like that, right?It's, yeah, it depends on how you kit it out and whether you get a nice price or not.But retail price just for a fairly kitted out one is about 200 grand.So even if he's spending half that, the fact that he was willing to invest a significant amount of money to be able to provide us this data for free.Thank you, Aaron.We really appreciate it.And yeah, he just does great work.
Yeah, man.He's just one of those guys that I'm so grateful actually exists in this hobby.Me too.Obviously because of the data, but because kind of like Mark, he's an extremely chill dude with a very, as you said, balanced perspective and isn't solely focused on the measurement data and is very much so experientially oriented in terms of how he ends up summing up the value he perceives in a product.So yeah, great, great decision there.
So who's your person to shout out here?
So for me, it's actually going to be Gadgetry Tech, aka Joe, aka Tommy.Yeah.Yeah, so he's a friend of us all.I've known him for a few years now.I think the reason why I would choose him for content around audio is one of the things he cares, I think, more about than anyone I've ever seen doing audio reviews is getting everything right, dotting all of his I's and crossing all of his T's in terms of all of the data he can possibly have or present to his viewers.Uh it's it's why you'll see a lot of his videos are maybe like two or three times long as some of our videos sometimes it's because he is incredibly thorough about not only um stuff like his subjective impression of how it sounds for music or the objective data like he does measurements, similar to Mark Ryan, but he also has the entire gaming perspective which frankly no one in our sphere is really covering adequately except for him so it's great to see someone being incredibly detailed, incredibly, as I said, thorough.I think one of the things that people may not see is that behind the scenes, he's really trying to bring the best possible data and the best possible review to his viewers so they can make the best decisions possible.And, while, yeah, there are a ton of reviewers who do that, I've never seen anyone quite as hellbent on getting it right as Joe.
He's very responsible with his perspectives.
He's very responsible, but he's also very, like, enterprising and hands-on with identifying problems and coming up with solutions.Something he's been working on recently is coming up with a rig for testing the clamp force of a headphone and he started publishing some of that data like in his most recent video about the Audio-Technica ATH-R30x.He showed a visual of that headphone with its clamp measured versus a few other headphones and that's like just a perfect example of what I'm talking about where he wants to have the most useful comprehensive data to bring to his audience and I commend him for it and I think you guys should all watch his videos for that reason.
We love all of the creators that we've been talking about today but we also are very thankful for the support from headphones .
com which is what allows us to make content like this for you guys and so if you want to help support content like this see more of it then feel next audio purchase, consider headphones .com.And in fact, headphones .Com is plain and simple the best place to buy anything related to headphones, DACs, amps, or other kinds of gear, because if you buy something and you don't love it, you can just send it back thanks to their 365-day return policy.And if you're not sure what you should be looking at, well, as well as all the content we've got on this channel, they've got support staff who are also audiophiles just as into this as we are and can help lead you to the right choice.
Okay, so moving on from that, the second part of this challenge was that I wanted to know what the reviewers on our team watch on YouTube that isn't related to audio?In other words, what is their favorite non-audio content creator?So I guess we'll start with Andrew again.Andrew, who is your favorite non-audio content creator?
One of my other hobbies is to do with cameras.In fact, cameras are way cooler than headphones.Sorry, they just are.Headphones are okay, but cameras, hell yeah.So I'm a big fan of camera content creators, in particular, Gerald Undone.He has an approach to camera reviews and views that is pretty similar to the kind of content that I enjoy when it comes to headphones; he's very thorough and very technical with his approach, but the thing that I like about that.I mean, apart from just him providing kind of just the facts and making it a thorough presentation of how a given product performs, he also has a very refreshing perspective on what it is for reviewers to exist in that space.And it's something, there's a video that he did called 'Camera Reviews Need to Change'or something along those lines.And I remember watching that video and feeling like, damn it, this hits home like nothing else.So for anybody who does content creation or is getting into content creation, I would say that is like essential viewing because it provides a perspective on what it is to be in a niche or in a subculture and to be evaluating these products that I think everybody needs to hear.Along with everything to do with, you know, the relationships that exist with the audience, with the community, and also brands, potential, you know, incentive structures that exist and the pitfalls that come along with that.
And then lastly, there was a lot of comments from people in other sectors that wanted me to make it clear that this isn't just a camera/ YouTube review issue that other categories, basically anything that gets reviewed on YouTube probably has these same struggles.
So for anybody wanting a information about cameras or is just curious to know how a given camera performs, his content is great for that.But also, it's the reviewer space for products on YouTube in general, so that's why it's greatly undone for me.
I just gotta back up that choice-Gerald Undone stuff has been fantastic and has been a huge help for me personally.And also, he's one of the only channels that actually does objective evaluation of cameras, as well.Like again, it's a blend of subjective and objective, and the data that he provides is absolutely fantastic and quite frankly better than what is provided by pretty much any other resource-it's just top-notch.
Yeah, if I'm looking to buy a camera on at all at some point, I'm not doing so without watching his video on that camera.The same Yeah.
Damn.All right.So I know Andrew has mentioned him to me in DMs before, but I confess, I think I've only ever watched one of his videos and it was good.But now I'm definitely going to dive in a little deeper and see what's up with him because he sounds like a very, a very reasonable lad.
A reasonable lad is exactly how I would describe him.
Cameron, what about you?What would your favorite non-audio YouTube creator be?
So.There's one I wanted to pick, but I don't know if I can pick him because he technically doesn't make videos anymore, which was Tom Scott.I'm sure many of you watching will have heard of Tom Scott.Even if you haven't, go back and watch all of his videos.They're kind of timeless.It's just some random topic and he goes and investigates and looks at it for three to five minutes.And every single one of them is fascinating.
Thank you to you watching and to everyone who's helped along the way.I did think that I should end this with a big, syrupy, sentimental, self-indulgent montage and head off into the sunset.And you know what?Just this once, for the first time in 10 years, that's exactly what I'm going to do.
In terms of one that I really enjoy, and any time I see a video from him pop up, which is unfortunately not all that often, but there's a lot of work that goes into them, Exurbia, X-U-R-B-1-A.The best way I can describe it is actually, well, probably his nickname, which is the existential crisis turtle.He does a mix of deep dives into physics-based topics and history stuff and then his own stories with absolutely gorgeous visual accompaniments as well.It's really hard to describe his style because there is nothing else like it other than every single one is captivating and will leave you just reflecting on the meaning of life whilst laughing the whole way through as well.He does justice to his storytelling ability for both his own stories and telling of other tales, and looking into actual topics based on physics and black holes and whatnot is just incredibly captivating, incredibly amusing, but deadly serious and deadpan at the same time.Just go and watch him.I'm struggling to describe the style of his videos because they are very unique, but Yeah, just go and check him out.
I actually just, I realized I have to give an honorable mention here as well.There's another channel that I really enjoy called Lucas Yan.I think Yan is spelled J-A-H-N.And this is a guy who just goes around to various different parts of the world and will travel a country for a while and just go into the most remote sort of nature areas that he can find.And he narrates them kind of like David Attenborough.I think it's sort of like the YouTube equivalent of a David Attenborough style of content.
In Botswana, started in the far north as we were entering Choba National Park coming from Namibia.
It's so focused on being out in nature and being alone.And my favorite line from one of his videos is, you get to be rewarded with loneliness.And for me, this hits home.So a big shout out to Lucas Jan's content.
Got it.All right, cool.So Xerbia, and Lucas Jan, and Tom Scott. Strong list.Strong list.Okay.
I miss Tom Scott, man.Tom Scott's videos.
Yeah, me too.Dude, his videos were so good.
I never watched them.
Yeah.So something I've said on our podcast, The Noise Floor, is that music is kind of the main interest in my life.Like I don't really have any other hobbies.I'm kind of a very simple music oriented person.So my non-audio content creator does work in audio and is a musician.but a lot of the content they make is not about audio at all.So the channel is Ben Jordan, who has been making some absolute bangers recently, my favorite of which is called You Are Witnessing the Death of American Capitalism?
The more and more I learned, the less and less it made sense.
So.Light stuff?Yeah, you know, just some light casual viewing, exactly.But it's a very kind of easy to understand but still comprehensive accounting of how the structure of capitalism is changing amidst the kind of content economy and the digital attention economy.It's a very grim piece of content, but it's also insanely watchable and very interesting, especially if you are kind of part of the overall content creator economy.But he also has a ton of interesting videos about, like, field recording because that's one of the things he does that is audio related.He has wild stuff on his channel that's all very easy and fun to watch.And I want to see more content like his.Whenever I watch his content, I want to make content like that.So yeah, shout out to Ben Jordan.He does very good work.
These are recommendations like from both of you guys that I'm now like, okay, I need to go down the rabbit hole and discover.Yeah, for real.I'm going to send you some highlights.
I am actually gobsmacked that you've never seen Tom Scott.That is kind of crazy.
I exist in a different world.
And with that, that's going to wrap up this video.So if you liked it, make sure to hit that like button.If you want to see more videos like this from The Headphone Show, go ahead and subscribe.If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or want to fight, go ahead and put that in the comments.And we'll see you guys next time.Have a good one. Bye-bye.
