Interesting take. What matters most/more in the source chains?
Torben
Nice video. It should be noted that the chain being ranked is the audio chain when listening to headphones, IEMs and earbuds. The chain and rankings for speaker systems would be somewhat different.
Okay now that that is out of the way, what do I think about his rankings? For the most part I agree with him but there are a few things I would move around.
For example burn-in does make a fairly big difference for items that have moving parts, such as speakers, headphones, IEMs and ear buds but burn-in makes almost no difference for electronics like amps, DACs etc. So burn-in should have two entries - one for transducers (B tier) and one for electronics (F tier).
I would also move “ear tips” up to either the A or S tier since the wrong size ear tips, which result in an improper fit and seal, can make an IEM or earbud sound much worse than they sound when using properly sized ear tips, which result in proper fit and seal.
I would likewise move “Pad swaps” down to B tier since while pads do make a difference, I don’t feel that pads make A tier level difference.
I have no issues with the rest of the rankings, although as I stated earlier, the rankings would be slightly different when talking about speaker based audio systems.