I'm also baffled by the "fr only matters" stereotype. Who says this? Anyone can easily disprove this by buying a set of awful headphones and eq'ing them to a graph, only for them to sound arguably more shit. FR doesn't tell the whole story, but it's way better than nothing, and reviewers have gotten a while lot better about nitpicking technical performance, so you can go to them if you want info about a headphone's audio quality

The reason frequency response graphs are focused on so much is because it's the only real way to know how a headphone/IEM sounds before buying it. There are a lot of aspects that a headphone can have other than tonality, but tonality is arguably the biggest factor of determining how a headphone will sound. Before FR measurements were standard, you had basically no reference as to how the headphone would sound before you bought it, so you could only really go off reputation and recommendations.

A bit of a loaded question. Usually your best option when it comes to accuracy is a set of studio monitors in a treated room, but for headphones, It depends on your budget, and where/when you plan on listening to them.

While the 280 pro's are still considered a decent budget option for monitoring and listening, I don't think they're anywhere close to accurate. As for a broad recommendation for "accurate" listening while not costing more than a car, the akg k612 pros with a decent amp/dac seem like a good option.

I think the only reason people consider clip-ons is because of koss ksc75, if it wasn't clip-on then I think they would be pretty much out of the conversation

I think there's still the sentiment that the airpods are generally overpriced for what they do, but I don't think many people are calling it bad. I think it's easy to hate the airpods due to them being beyond "mainstream", but measurements of both the airpods pro have shown surprisingly good tuning. I suppose with the ungodly market share the airpods have, you can't really be selling lemons at that point.

Most things effect the sound more than cables. What you are that day will effect the sound more than cables (unless they're really shitty cables)

I think people who are used to hearing very high quality dacs will recommend more expensive dacs as they have trained their ears to better hear subtle differences. For the rest of us, especially if you're not 10 years down the rabbit hole, the apple dongle + decent amp will work great. I'd only recommend spending on dacs once you've gotten a good collection of stupidly fast headphones to demo them before you buy.

In terms of tonality, I would recommend going to any graph comparison tool, like this one, and adjusting the frequencies to the target, or to your preference, using the Equalizer tool. You can then use any EQ program or app like equalizerAPO or Poweramp for android, and have the IEM sound to your preference. KZ's are notorious for their V-shaped "house sound", so from my experience, I'd definitely recommend eq'ing them.

Too neutral? Just looked at the graphs for this IEM, it's just upper mids and nothing else

It's a bit of an exaggeration, but the ie400 are very tonally unbalanced compared to its competitors

The ie600, on the other hand, is a very different story, and probably what you're referring to when you say this sub loves Sennheiser IEM's

most IEM's are better than the IE400

Also, if you want people to try something out, try to do it without smelling your own farts about your alleged superiority over the entire chifi market. I haven't heard of Onkyo, and I'd be happy to try them out, but you're not exactly giving me much to work with.

fair, but the superlux have stupid good soundstage/imaging for the price, and you can actually eq a bass response without making them catch on fire. too bad they're tuned to treble cannons.

The two main $20 IEM's that everyone are raving about are the Moondrop Chu's and the 7hz Salnotes Zero's. I've had my Chu's for a while and they're great. Can't wait for something similar to pop up in the headphone world, like maybe a better tuned superlux hd681 or something.

Headphones have been seriously stagnant recently, but the IEM world is going crazy. A-tier tuning has hit the $20 bracket, planar's are crashing the market, and moondrop exists. If someone manages to hit it big with a high-tier budget headphone, we might see a little more action.

Looking at the frequency response they seem pretty terrible but you really can't go wrong for four bucks

Strongly recommend EQ for these

I find eq'ing mostly effects slower drivers like dynamics. For faster drivers like planar's, I find the technical performance isn't effected nearly as much because it can account for more demanding loads. If you, for example, boost the midbass on a DD too much, it can run into issues with mud due to how much more air it has to push, lowering the precision of higher frequency notes. That being said, eq'ing too much of anything can present quality issues, it mostly depends on how much eq you're applying.

I understand that tuning headphones (especially on a manufacturing scale) isn't exactly easy, but I find it hard to believe that V-shaped signatures became the norm because it's easier to engineer. I've seen some enthusiasts DIY tune headphones with household materials and get significantly better measurements. I think it's more of a marketing issue, where manufacturers won't post any information about the sound signature of a headphone, and just kinda assume that people like V-shaped headphones because most people don't have the vocabulary to express what they like about a particular headphone. Recently JBL came out with a well-measuring cheap Bluetooth over ear headphone (the tune 710 I believe), but you wouldn't know it, because absolutely no-where in the website, stats or marketing material can you find the measurements. Clearly it isn't impossible if JBL can come out with a well tuned headphone. Not to mention the leaps and bounds the IEM market has been making, and some of the headphones Koss has released too.

I guess a better way to put it is that neutral should be the norm, not the exception

It's okay to like a certain signature, but I should not have to pay out the ass for a neutral headphone because almost every headphone under $150 measures like a damn heartrate monitor