Our Team: Alberto Pittaluga, Biodegraded, Durwood, Jürgen Kraus, Kazi Mahbub, Loomis Johnson, Rudolfs Putnins
Our audioreviews.org team comprises 7 writers (all savvy Head-Fiers and/or Super Best Audio Friends) with their individual styles. They are listed in alphabetical order below.
In this Article
Alberto Pittaluga (Author)
Bologna, Italy. Head-Fier “Hooga” since 2020. Alberto is a part-time music and audio lover. He’s got limited time to concede himself to listening to music, and that’s why his primary focus is min-maxing his audio enjoyment sessions. To make things further complicated, due to family compromises he stays away from airing music on room speakers and dedicates himself exclusively to in- or over-ear drivers.
Be as it may, min-maxing audio enjoyment is not an easy task: the market is flooded with ever developing new products and finding the “good” ones – adequate to one’s tastes, well built, and subjectively affordable – is a problem.
A technology enthusiast since he was a kid, Alberto is not overly attracted by novelties for the sake of themselves, he’s indeed not a compulsive gear roller, and is indeed mainly interested in understanding why and how a given piece of equipment produces better or worse results. His articles are about sharing his experience with the hope that it may be useful to others on the same quest.
In real life he is Italian, in his mid fifties, works as a sales&marketing executive, and his other main technical competence is IT.
Alberto’s Tonal Preference
Alberto is mainly fond of acoustic jazz, and even more in particular of cool jazz, bebop, and its developments (hard bop, post bop, avantgarde). He also listens to a few other genres mainly progrock, folk, and songwriters, and some pop, yet cool jazz plays the lion’s part and as a consequence he strives for his primary gear timbre to be as neutral as possible, with carefully calibrated fast transients, extremely controlled mibass, extended sub-bass as as airy and defined trebles as possible, without scanting into screechy exagerations – in short, not an easy target at all.
Biodegraded (Author)
Vancouver, BC, Canada. Super Best Audio Friend “Biodegraded” since 2016. Biodegraded is a learner-driver at Super Best Audio Friends. He likes listening to different equipment, but hasn’t heard much; likes measuring things, but only vaguely knows what he’s doing; and likes modding things to sound better, but he’s clumsy and often breaks them. Biodegraded is another Calgary geologist who now lives in Vancouver. Jürgen has had the pleasure and privilege of knowing him since the early 90s.
Biodegraded’s Tonal Preference
Biodegraded favours a neutral tonal balance but will happily accept a warmer or bassier tilt if it accompanies his preferred delivery – smooth in the mids and highs but a bit drier and punchier in the bass. While he appreciates good gear, if he likes the music he’ll listen with earbuds if he has to.
Durwood (Author)
Chicago, IL, USA. Head-Fier “Durwood” since 2007. From an early age Durwood liked to tear apart perfectly good working things to see what was inside, always an urge to understand what made it tick. His love of music started at the local roller rink and as a result grew up with pop, electronic music (think Freestyle, Trinere), and early hiphop from the 80’s.
Hit the grunge era and Chicago house in his teens when B96 had their street mixes with Bad Boy Bill, Bobby D, Julian Jumpin Perez. Became a DJ at the local now defunct roller rink because why not? A sucker for catchy TV/movie themes (Thank you John Williams). Car audio was his first audio passion, but now with a family his audio time is spent listening to headphones.
The nickname is not self-proclaimed, bestowed to him multiple times and fits his experiences in life. Collector of technology and music- a maximizer trying real hard to be a satisficer. Simplicity is the goal, but the maximizer fights every step of the way.
Durwood’s Tonal Preference
A mild or moderate V he likes his bass extended to the bottom and 5-7db Harman treble rise with upper treble in line with midrange to give it just the right amount if air. But don’t consider him a basshead or a detail freak, he likes things to sound warm and smooth most of the time but appreciates other signatures too.
Jürgen Kraus (Author, Blog Founder & Coordinator)
Calgary, AB, Canada. Head-Fier since 2016. He has been known as “Otto Motor” to Head-Fiers, as “Dr. Schweinsgruber” to Youtubers, and as “Brause” to Super Best Audio Friends and the Headphone Community.
For the purpose of confusion, he decided to pose under his real name Jürgen Kraus (“JK”) from now on.
This is a hobby. In “real” life, Jürgen is a professional geologist operating his own petroleum-exploration consulting company Franconia Geoscience Ltd. based in Calgary, Canada. He holds German and Canadian passports. Jürgen had a classical music education [piano, violin, choir; vocals and hearing training] from childhood through high school in Germany and he has been following popular music developments since the late 1970s.
His understanding of arts and crafts was influenced by Bauhaus pragmatism: “less is more” and “form follows function”. He also has a profound science background [PhD, peer-reviewed publications/technical writing] and he is a world traveller understanding cultural diversity [7.5 years on Canadian/Chinese joint venture; extensive international business background].
Jürgen’s Tonal Preference and Testing Practice
In Jürgen’s opinion, an earphone/headphone has to reproduce a sound as accurately as possible. Such accuracy is tested best on natural instruments such as piano, strings, and wind instruments. He therefore doesn’t like inflated bass and hence the frequency response should be leaning towards neutral with a bit of warmth added. His money is on the midrange on top of a dry, well focused, unobtrusive bass.
Jürgen is of the strong belief that a good earphone/headphone should please the listener with all musical genres. And he is a huge supporter of the single dynamic driver.
He always tests earphones/headphones over an ever growing cross section of music that provides a broad coverage of the frequency spectrum, including naturally generated sounds such as voices and classical instruments. Particularly orchestral instruments are important for assessing the timbre.
In Jürgen’s opinion, most earphone and headphone testers and tests largely ignore or underestimate the importance of “timbre” (= tone colour or tone quality) which is a key factor for musical enjoyment over a longer period of time. It is the timbre that makes us subconsciously enjoy our earphone/headphones most in daily use.
Kazi Mahbub Mutakabbir (Author)
Munich, Germany. Head-Fier since 2019. Mostly lurking around r/headphones as u/kmmbd and a very active member in local head-fi community since 2015. Got into head-fi in mid-2019 under the username kmmbd, and has been reviewing audio gears sporadically on his personal Medium blog since 2018. His introduction to portable audio was through a Walkman cassette-player in his pre-teens, and music has been his getaway ever since.
He harbors a minor OCD regarding the tagging and organization of his music library (which is all digital on a local NAS). Also, spends too much time custom-theming his desktop Music Player for no apparent reason.
In real life, he’s a Bangladeshi living in Munich and currently doing his MS in Computer Science, majoring in Computational Biology. He’s a penchant for the academia and research, though life is strange so he’s still unsure how things will turn out in the long run.
Kazi’s Tonal Preference
Kazi doesn’t have any specific tonal preferences, but he does know what he can’t endure: shouty upper mids, oversized emphasis on 4–8KHz region, and of course — bass that rolls off way too early and just can’t inject life into the music.
Other than that, he can appreciate what the tuner intended to do with any specific gear. He believes that “Resolution isn’t everything , tonality and tuning ensures how long something will remain enjoyable.”
He also tries to keep “specialists” in his collection rather than “generalists”, i.e. gears that tend to sound excellent with specific genres or instruments rather than those which only sound competent at best with everything.
Oh, and he’s an amateur photographer trying his best to not embarrass himself.
Loomis Johnson (Author)
Chicago, IL, USA. Head-Fier “loomisjohnson” since 2014. Loomis T. Johnson is a practicing attorney, failed musician, and lifelong music fanatic and record collector. He has frequently contributed to such review sites as Headfi, Sound Advocate, and Asian Provocative Ear (as well as many other far less interesting non-musical periodicals).
A former two-channel and vintage gear obsessive, he has sheepishly succumbed to current trends in home theater and portable audio. He’s a firm believer that the equipment should serve the music and that good sound is attainable at any budget level.
Loomis’ Tonal Preference
Loomis’ tonal preferences are agnostic…he can enjoy bright, warm or neutral as long as it’s coherent and well-tuned. However, if he had to choose, he likes a generally balanced signature with a bit of enhanced, bass and a crisp, extended high end.
Rudolfs Putnins (Author)
Riga, Latvia. Head-Fier since 2011. Active on Changstar (now SBAF) and Head-Case as well. Rudi got infected with music by exploring his dad’s bootleg cassette collection during the fall of the USSR. His first childhood musical memory was discovering “In Visible Silence” by Art of Noise on the Sharp GF-800 when he was 3.
During his philosophy studies, Rudi took up building headphone amplifiers starting with the classic Kevin Gilmore Dynalo. Since then, he has built about a dozen amps and DACs. Was one of the first to build a Gilmore CFA3 and present it to the Head-Fi community.
After financing his academic studies as a construction laborer, he started his career as a business journalist. After a short stint, Rudi got headhunted by Sonarworks and helped skyrocket the commercial headphone and room EQ pioneers. Since then he’s juggled various audio consulting gigs and a marketing director day job.
Rudi firmly believes that journalism means publishing something that someone else would want to be kept secret. Everything else is just PR.
Rudi’s Tonal Preference
The frequency response isn’t everything, claims Rudi, but get it wrong and the rest won’t matter. After spending 5 years doing various listening tests at Sonarworks, Rudi believes their target response to be in the ballpark of correct. He doesn’t hate the latest Harman over-ear target but is conflicted about the correct amount of LF shelf and its impact on tonal masking.
With years Rudi has had growing doubts about listener targets. If an engineer would ask, which target curve Rudi likes, he’d probably just bark back – “The correct one! Who cares what I like?”
Usually, Rudi loathes “specialist” gear and laughs in the face of “good for jazz” speakers and “female vocal”-oriented DACs. With that said, he acknowledges that every piece of equipment is defined by its compromises and will happily tell you, the dear reader about them.
Retired Contributors
Slater, Baskingshark, KopiOkaya.