Methodology • Source Transparency
Who we listen to, and what they have to gain.
Undisclosed reviewer incentives are the biggest reason people distrust audio review sites. So every source qfiAudio aggregates carries a public incentive label, reviewer disagreements are shown instead of averaged away, and our own affiliate interest is disclosed on every page that contains buy links. The tables below are rendered directly from the source-policy module the research pipeline runs on. What you read here is exactly what the system uses.
Step 1
How sources are selected
Research runs only ingest material from a fixed allowlist. Nothing is scraped from arbitrary sites. Every entry below is stored with an incentive profile describing how it obtains review units and how it earns money, based on what the outlet itself documents. Where we could not confirm a source's incentives, it is labeled unknown rather than guessed.
| Source | Type | Incentive profile | Measures? | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Headphonesty | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Commercial review publication that typically covers manufacturer-supplied units and monetizes with affiliate links on product mentions. |
| Headfonics | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Long-running commercial review site; reviews routinely state when the sample was sent by the manufacturer, and the site carries industry advertising. |
| Bloom Audio | Review site | Affiliate revenue | No | Retailer-published editorial: Bloom Audio sells the products its articles cover, so coverage doubles as merchandising for its own inventory. |
| RTINGS | Review site | Independent purchase | Standardized lab bench with head-and-torso simulator | Buys every unit it tests (the site publishes a running count of headphones bought and tested) and funds itself through memberships and affiliate links, so its measurements carry no manufacturer obligation. Caveat for research: review bodies render dynamically and often do not extract, so a claim can only be cited when the fetched page actually shows it. |
| MajorHiFi | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Commercial review outlet with close retail ties (operated alongside the retailer Audio46); typically reviews supplied units and links to retail listings. |
| Headfonia | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Commercial review site that generally covers manufacturer-provided samples and runs banner advertising from audio brands. |
| Audio Science Review | Review site | Independent purchase | Klippel NFS / Audio Precision analyzers / GRAS fixtures | Forum-funded measurement site; review units are commonly purchased or loaned by members and measurements are published regardless of the verdict. |
| SoundGuys | Review site | Affiliate revenue | Head-and-torso simulator with published frequency response and isolation charts | Commercial publication funded by affiliate commissions that runs its own standardized test bench and publishes frequency response charts per ear-tip configuration. Reviews carry named authors and dates. |
| Everyday Listening | Review site | Incentives unknown | No | Small review blog whose unit sourcing and monetization are not clearly documented, so its incentives are labeled unknown rather than guessed. |
| Audio Discourse | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Long-running enthusiast review site (Antdroid) that states per review how the unit was obtained, including retailer loaners. Disclosure practice is unusually explicit, so weight its praise with the stated incentive in view. |
| Moonstar Reviews | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Independent reviewer whose write-ups typically note when a sample was provided by the manufacturer or a shop in exchange for an honest review. |
| Prime Audio | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Independent IEM-focused review site with named authors and scored verdicts; reviews state when a sample was supplied by a manufacturer or retailer in exchange for an honest review. |
| Acho Reviews | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | IEC 711 coupler, curves published at achoreviews.squig.link | Independent reviewer who publishes his own frequency response and isolation measurements on a public squig.link database and discloses when a manufacturer supplied the unit. English-language articles live on the english subdomain, which is the host that must be registered. |
| The Headphoneer | Review site | Review unit (disclosed) | No | Small independent review site with a named reviewer that discloses manufacturer-supplied units. Useful for budget and mid-tier coverage that larger outlets skip, but corroborate its praise before it shapes a verdict. |
| YouTube | YouTube | Incentives unknown | No | Incentives vary per creator: some buy their own units, others review supplied samples or run sponsorships. Check each video's own disclosure. |
| Independent purchase | No | Community impressions from owners who typically bought their own units. Anecdotal by nature, so expect unit variance, fit differences, and strong opinions. | ||
| Head-Fi | Forum | Incentives unknown | No | Mix of owner impressions and manufacturer-sponsored loaner tours; incentives vary per post, so individual threads should be read with their context. |
Reddit material is limited to the approved communities r/headphones, r/HeadphoneAdvice, r/audiophile, r/inearfidelity, and YouTube material to established review channels with meaningful view counts.
Step 2
What each incentive profile means
- Independent purchase
- The reviewer or community bought the unit themselves (or the outlet is community-funded), so the verdict carries no manufacturer obligation.
- Review unit (disclosed)
- The unit was supplied by the manufacturer or a shop and the outlet discloses this. Verdicts can still be honest, but access incentives exist.
- Affiliate revenue
- The outlet earns a commission when readers buy through its links, or is operated by a retailer that sells the product it covers.
- Sponsored
- The coverage itself was paid for or commissioned. Treat praise as advertising unless independently corroborated.
- Incentives unknown
- We could not confirm how this source obtains units or earns money, so its incentives are labeled unknown rather than guessed.
Step 3
How research runs weight sources
When a product's review intelligence is synthesized, every source is passed in with its type, engagement signals, and incentive profile, and the synthesis follows two sets of standing rules. First, by source type:
- Trusted review websites carry the highest weight.
- Strong dedicated YouTube reviews carry medium-high weight.
- High-signal Reddit discussions carry medium weight.
- Weaker or incidental mentions carry lower weight.
- Exact product focus outranks generic roundup mentions.
- Deep reviews outrank passing mentions.
- High engagement and quality outrank low-signal content.
- Recent relevant coverage outranks outdated low-value coverage.
Second, by incentive profile:
- Weight each source's claims by its incentive profile, not just its source type.
- Criticism from an INDEPENDENT_PURCHASE source is the strongest negative signal; praise from a SPONSORED or retailer-published source is the weakest positive signal.
- Praise from REVIEW_UNIT_DISCLOSED or AFFILIATE_REVENUE sources counts, but should be corroborated by at least one independent or community source before it shapes a verdict.
- Treat UNKNOWN-incentive sources with standard caution rather than assuming independence.
- Never let a single incentivized source override a consistent independent or community consensus.
Where reviewers genuinely conflict (tonality opinions, value verdicts, QC experiences), the conflict is stored and shown side by side on the product page under "Where reviewers disagree" instead of being blended into a false consensus.
Step 4
How scores are computed
Each published product carries six 0-10 scores synthesized from the weighted source material above: bass, mids, treble, technicalities, soundstage, value. Scores come from one research snapshot per product (with the sources, their incentive labels, and any disagreements published alongside the numbers), and they are never adjusted for commercial reasons. The recommender then runs deterministic arithmetic over these stored scores; its exact weight tables are published separately.
Step 5
What qfiAudio earns
qfiAudio is funded by affiliate commissions: when you buy through a "Buy Now" or shop link, the retailer may pay us a percentage at no extra cost to you. That makes our own incentive profile affiliate revenue, the same label we apply to other outlets, which is why every page containing affiliate links carries a standing disclosure, every affiliate anchor is marked rel="sponsored", and commissions never influence scores, rankings, or which conflicts get surfaced.
qfiAudio may earn a commission from links on this page. This never affects scores or rankings. Full disclosure
Step 6
How we test and retest
Everything published here comes out of a recorded pipeline rather than ad-hoc editing, so any number on the site can be traced to the run that produced it, and retesting means running that pipeline again, not touching up old copy.
- Curated catalog first. Every product we cover is deliberately added to a curated catalog with its brand, category, and known aliases before any research happens. The pipeline cannot research a product that was never cataloged.
- Recorded research runs. A product's review intelligence comes from a research run that collects material only from the approved sources above, stores every source document it used (URL, title, author, publish date), and writes the synthesized review and six-axis scores as a versioned snapshot. Retesting a product means starting a new run that replaces the snapshot and its research version together. Even manually assembled research is materialized through the same run pipeline, and it is rejected outright if a source is not on the allowlist.
- Price tracking. Merchant offers are re-synced on a recurring schedule. A price snapshot is stored whenever an offer's effective price changes, plus a heartbeat snapshot once an offer has gone a week without one, so the 120-day price-history window behind deal-quality math stays dense. Offers not re-checked within 24 hours are flagged as stale on the page instead of being presented as current.
- Frequency-response measurements. FR data is ingested with its source, license, and measurement date recorded, and every curve is tagged with the rig it was measured on (IEC-711 coupler, B&K 5128, or other). The graph tool enforces rig separation. Curves from different rigs are never overlaid on the same axes, because cross-rig differences are hardware artifacts, not tonal differences.
- EQ preset provenance. EQ presets are imported from AutoEq result files with attribution and license stored; a file containing lines the parser does not recognize fails the import rather than being partially trusted. oratory1990 presets are stored as links to his published PDFs (we do not copy filter tables we have no license to redistribute), and every preset displays its provenance (AutoEq, oratory1990, or qfiAudio editorial).
- Retest dates. When an editorial review is retested, it shows a visible "Last tested" date. That date is set only by an actual re-evaluation. CMS copy edits never update it, and it is the only date we report as a modification in structured data.
Step 7
Who writes our reviews
Editorial reviews are individually bylined, and every byline links to an author page listing that person's published reviews, so you can see who reached a verdict and what else they have written. Our current review authors: