

[Audio] The slow decline of r/headphone's favorite earphone company



A bit of a long post that was inspired by a few conversations on r/headphones asking about what exactly happened (this one in particular recently). And I have the right brand of obsession with the industry to give you all the rundown.

The Main Players
  • Campfire Audio or commonly abbreviated as CFA, the "antagonist" of this drama. They are a company based in the US that builds and sells high-end (>$200) earphones that the community refers to as "IEMs" (which means "In-Ear Monitors").

  • Ken Ball, the CEO of Campfire Audio. Despite his position, he still participates relatively frequently on audiophile forums.

  • "crinacle", an earphone reviewer. More about him later.

Why does r/headphones love Campfire so much?

To remove as much of the industry-specific knowledge as possible, what CFA essentially did was capture lightning in a bottle for what is their most popular product, the Andromeda. Released more than 2 years ago, it still receives massive praise by the audiophile community today and is probably the most recommended earphone for anyone with the budget at-and-under $1,000. In an industry where it is not uncommon for a product's popularity to completely die off after a month, this level of staying power is nearly unheard of.

It would only be obvious that CFA would try to re-capture this lightning in the bottle for future releases, but it seems that they've failed every time. The Lyra, Vega, Dorado, Polaris, Comet, Atlas... all names that you need not concern yourself with but just know that all of them weren't even close to reaching the level of popularity that the Andromeda has.

That is, until late 2018 when Ken Ball announces their new flagship model. Their masterpiece that promises to better that of their one-hit wonder, and the community loses their collective minds.

Campfire's Newest Flagship: The Solaris

The Campfire Solaris: Ken Ball's Mona Lisa. There are many reasons why it was so hyped up by the audio community but probably too technical for a mainstream post such as this. The first wave of reviews were almost unanimously positive as everyone touted the Solaris to be the greatest IEM ever, some going as far as to call it flawless. It really did seem that CFA had matched or even surpassed the hype that the Andromeda had during its release, and the Solaris' future looked bright both in terms of critical response and in terms of sales.

That is, until one person stepped in and "ruined" everything.

Who is "Crinacle"?

If Campfire Audio is (was) r/headphones' favorite earphone company, then u/crinacle is their favorite earphone reviewer. He is a figure with ridiculous influence over the IEM industry with his hypercritical reviewing style, often fighting against the hype but ultimately standing victorious whenever the hype eventually dies off and proves his numerous analyses correct. He is famous (or notorious, depending on your perspective) mainly for two resources that he manages:

  • The "IEM ranking list", a list where he categorizes all the earphones he has heard into tiers on a subjective scale.

  • His database of measurements, which shows how an earphone would sound like on a more objective scale.

The second part is more relevant to this story.

Extra context: What are "measurements" in audio?

To be specific, what Crinacle measures is the frequency response of an earphone, i.e. the relative volume between the bass, midrange and treble. That technical tidbit is not required for this story, but it's good to have it in your mind while reading.

The Tale of the Three Solarises

Most of the facts outlined be obtained from Crinacle's own subreddit r/inearfidelity. Some of the linked posts were also crossposted to r/headphones, where they were upvoted to the subreddit's front page almost every time.

On the 6th of December 2018, Crinacle posts his first impressions of the coveted Solaris alongside measurements. He wasn't outright negative towards it, but he clearly was not gushing over it and was even pointing out certain flaws that he thought were dealbreakers. At the beginning, this made the community somewhat riled up and doubtful towards what was essentially the first bit of critique of these earphones then.

With the mild backlash, Crinacle then sought out a second sample of the Solaris and posted about it on the 11th of December just in case the pair he had just heard was a dud. To his and everyone else's surprise, that unit sounded different. And better. Crinacle thus promises to find a third sample to confirm which one was the "authentic" Solaris.

Then for a good two weeks or so, it was basically radio silence from Crinacle regarding the Solaris. His initial impressions were a blow to the Solaris' reputation for sure, but it was only a tiny setback for massive freight train that was its hype. Reviews were still pouring in from e-magazines and other formal review sites pushing the Solaris as the next big thing, and for a while even r/headphones was being swept up by the hype.

On the 27th of December, Crinacle's post dropped. It was titled "Solaris unit variance and the dilemma of determining the representative", detailing how all three of the units he listened to sounded different, with the measurements as an objective backup.

Crinacle Versus Campfire

The post made waves across the niche community, being shared on almost every avenue and finally making its way to the Solaris Head-Fi product thread, Campfire Audio's ultimate stronghold and safe space.

The firing shot

Exactly how bad was the response? The entire shitstorm continued for another six pages (15 posts per page) before the most unusual thing happened: the thread got locked. For more than 24 hours.

People got suspicious. Hell, I got suspicious. Whenever threads on Head-Fi get locked for whatever reason, they are usually locked for at maximum a few hours at a time. Campfire is a well known sponsor of Head-Fi so it was not too far of a stretch to assume that they were behind this extended lockdown. As the day passed, the thread finally goes public once again, the venerable Ken Ball leading with his response to everything.

Key points for those who do not understand what he's saying:

  • Their products are hand built, therefore variation is within the norm.

  • They try to minimise QC issues by measuring the earphones for imbalances in each step of the manufacturing process.

  • They claim that each Solaris had less than 1dB of channel imbalance. Channel imbalance in this case meaning that the left side and the right side should sound the same.

  • "As for the measured units on Reddit, we primarily trust our measurements over others."

Immediately, people called for Ken Ball to release their own in-house measurements of the Solaris to address the drama, which was met with no response. Crinacle jumped in with his own response here which was basically a rehash of everything that had happened leading up to his final post on the matter.

During March of 2019 after talks of the unit variance drama was still ongoing three months after it happened, Ken Ball finally breaks his silence on publishing Campfire's in-house measurements to dispute Crinacle's claims. Spoiler Alert: he doesn't want to, nor plans to.

Why was Ken Ball's response so bad?

Many people were quick to point out how shallow KB's response was to the whole situation. This post here highlights the consistency of Crinacle's measurements so his criticisms and data shouldn't be brushed off simply because he wasn't a big audio company.

This post here (as well as many others after that, look it up if you're bored) points out how KB dodges the question of unit variance with channel imbalance. The whole point of the drama was not about how well the left and right channels of each individual Solaris was matched, but rather the fact that every individual Solaris that Crinacle heard sounded (and measured) different from each other.

Effectively, the entire point of the drama was missed by KB and the final question of "do these $1500 earphones sound different from each other?" was left unanswered.

Yeah, did I mention that the Solaris was ONE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS? If you were shelling out that amount of cash, you'd expect a lot more consistency for sure.

The other issue was KB's unwillingness to share in-house measurements of the Solaris to dispute Crinacle. This is fine as the sharing of measurements is not a norm within the high-end earphone industry so they had every right and reason not to.

Sorry, not every reason. One weird fact about KB (and by extension, Campfire) was that they actually used to share in-house measurements of their products. The Andromeda, the Lyra, the Nova, the Jupiter, the Orion, the Vega, just to name a few. I'll steal a quote from fellow redditor u/doomdonker since I think he summarized this situation pretty well:

there was a time that Ken Ball was very willing to supply officially measured measurements to not only end users but for reviewers. I've provided not one or two graphs but graphs for their entire starting lineup. But now he doesn't do so and is actually extremely frigid with regards to measurements to the point calling out people who look at measurements as measurebaiters.

This comment was from a month ago. Yes, people are still talking about this half-year-old drama on r/headphones.

Side-note: some prime examples of the schadenfreude that manifested from this drama:

The "IO", a swing and a miss

Oh you thought the story ends there? Buckle up because it gets worse. Remember when I said that Campfire was constantly trying to re-capture the lightning in the bottle that was the Andromeda, and failing every time? Well here was what is arguably their biggest failure yet: the IO.

The IO's release mirrored that of the Solaris to a scary degree, with e-magazines and formal review sites chomping at the bit to get their (obviously positive) reviews out the door and jerking Campfire off about their next big thing.

And of course, everything came crashing down when our madlad u/crinacle dropped hot with some measurements once again, gathering 300+ upvotes and plastering itself at the front of r/headphones once again, subsequently killing another round of sales and Campfire's already controversial reputation in the Reddit community.

(For those unfamiliar, that is a very bad graph.)

Ken Ball Versus the Country of Singapore

Oh boy and it still doesn't end there. Back in the safe space that is the Campfire IO product thread on Head-Fi, fanboys desperately cling onto the last remnants of their sanity as negative non-formal impressions from potential customers start pouring in. And here is when it happened: Ken Ball decided to attack what is a fairly innocuous, rather legitimate set of (critical) impressions by referring to the poster's nationality as a point of suspect.

All hell breaks loose on r/headphones as it was quickly screenshot and posted, gathering 400+ upvotes by the day's end.

Why this matters

  • The implication that Singaporeans were somehow a shady bunch was quickly picked up by the community, as demonstrated by this comment thread on Reddit. I personally don't think that KB was trying to imply this at all, but his phrasing was absolutely atrocious.

  • Singapore is home to the world's largest English-speaking IEM community, so KB effectively alienated one of his biggest markets. Talk about horrible business decisions.

  • The "location" tag on a Head-Fi user's profile is manual input, which means that the original user might not even be from Singapore at all. Now that people now that KB gets triggered by accounts from Singapore, they can just use this to their advantage without even being from the location itself.

  • IMO the worst one: u/crinacle is Singaporean himself. It is very clear that KB meant this statement as a jab against the very person who dared criticize his original masterpiece and was quickly noted by Reddit users in the comments. Also note that this was half a year after the initial drama... talk about holding a grudge.

Ken Ball Isn't Racist

And to top this all off here is Mr. Ball's response to accusations that he's being racist, or at the very least, country-ist:

"Oh man, If your saying I am racist of course that is ridiculous and wildly false. I am part Asian and my wife is Asian and so is my daughter am I am a lot of things but racist is not one of them."

Now, I personally don't think that KB is racist, just heavily misunderstood and doesn't know how to phrase himself properly. But throwing out the "I can't be racist because I have an Asian wife" argument is, to put it nicely, absolutely goddamned moronic. Regardless of what you think his intentions are, the end result is still yet another blow to Campfire's reputation.

So here we are today. Opinion of Campfire is now at an all-time low though there are still pockets of die-hard fans that primarily lurk around forums like SuperBestAudioFriends and the Head-Fi product threads. The Solaris doesn't seem to be doing as well as the Andromeda and the IO is pretty much DOA in terms of critical response. I heard Crinacle is about to give them a bad review too, so this little drama breakdown might be outdated soon.

Thank you all for your time, and I hope you enjoyed my TED talk.

Bonus Content: reactions to this post by the totally-not-biased folks over at the Solaris Head-Fi product thread

UPDATE: Admins on Head-Fi removed all mention of this post on the Solaris thread as it was "off track".

99% Upvoted
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level 1

Posts like this are the reason I sub to this sub

level 2

Word. Informative, easy to understand for those outside the ingroup, interesting, and loaded with citations for hobby rubberneckers like me. Well done, OP

level 2
253 points · 1 month ago

OP did a pretty good job of getting me onboard for drama surrounding people who pay thousands of dollars for something I regularly ruin in the washing machine.

level 2

I'm subbed to r/headphones and r/subredditdrama, and this thread feels like home.

level 2

This is the post that just got me subbed. Love the drama summary!

level 2

This whole fiasco is pretty far outside my wheelhouse (I’m not the type of dude who can afford $1K IEMs,) but this post and chisme are fascinating.

level 1
432 points · 1 month ago

Great post and summary of the entire drama. Thanks for your work

level 1

Thank you for your service. I watched the whole debacle as it happened and I'm glad I now have a post I can easily bring up when I wanna let people know how dramatic the audio world can be (I also happen to be a member of a local group where shit happens a lot).

Still kinda funny that CFA were the ones who dropped the ball the hardest considering crin has >=kilobuck iems in rank E whereas Solaris is still in A.

Also, TIL: this sub. Thanks for cross-posting, crin.

level 2

Thanks for cross-posting, crin.

Wait, is OP crin? Or did crin just see this here and crosspost it?

level 1
169 points · 1 month ago

Maybe not racist but for SURE a dumbass

CEOs should really go back to hiring PR agents and keeping their mouth shuts, yikes

And op, really well written and put together post dude, 10/10

level 2

As someone who’s really into the beauty community I want to upvote this a million times. Having someone be the face of a brand is fine but don’t let them hold the megaphone, give that responsibility to a PR department. The number of cult favorite brands that killed themselves because their CEO wouldn’t shut the fuck up is unreal.

level 2

The argument that he can't be racist because he's part Asian is laughable. For anyone that doesn't know, Asians are notorious for being racist to other Asians.

level 2

Countdown till crinacle finds kb's thumb drive at a medieval times

level 1

Reddit, YouTube and Headfi are big echo chambers.

The Andromeda is okay. You pay a premium from a boutique manufacturer, brand, “luxury” feel, and part technology. But there are many well performing in-ears for less.

Owning Campfire became more about bragging rights. They’ve just been taken down a peg or two.

Good post and research!

level 2
12 points · 1 month ago

Like the ER4SR as example.

level 2

Being someone that’s only owned high end cans, what would be a good priced decent quality in-ear?

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