>There is next to no acceptance of the in-ear target, I can't offhand think of anyone who thinks it is optimal. Most lean far closer to some variant of IEF neutral + bass, or Oratory 1990's USound, i.e. less shouty ear gain, slightly more mid-bass, and a flat rather than dipping transition through the mid-bass to the sub-bass.

Any data to back that statement? Because just saying something doesn't really make it true expecially when the research itself has shown similar predicted preference results in laboratory settings and in practice you see plenty of mainstream TWS adopting the Harman IE target too.

Excellent examples being the (Well acclaimed among audiophiles) Samsung Buds lineup in general as well as many of JBL's offerings and even a few companies that aren't sub companies of Harman international like Sony and Beats.

>Oratory I believe is talking about the over-ear targets there. I'm not talking about them, and they are widely accepted. There is actually a big difference with the in-ear target, the original one of that was super out there, it went WAY up and then dropped absolutely off a cliff. They revised that in 2019 to something far more sane.

Should apply to the IE target as well and those differences are due to different (And larger) sample population for the most part.

>Also, if you are saying you like the Chu, you don't like Harman in the bass then. The Chu is nowhere near Harman bass. I actually do like Harman bass- the Variations, the Galaxy Buds 2 Pro, these are great.

well "nowhere near Harman bass" is a bit of a stretch lol, it is relatively close (Which is why they get quite high scores to begin with, low deviation from the target itself) and I did mention that I don't love the bass specifically when it comes to them and I do agree with you that the ones you mentioned are generally better in that regard.

>I just take issue with this idea that Harman IE is a broadly preferred target. I don't think it is, there is a very consistent trend of people who have issues with it, far more than the over-ear curve, and I can't think of a single reviewer who takes Harman IE as their ideal IEM target.

Again 64% (Assuming that number is probably within range for the IE target as well) does imply there is a good 36% of people that wouldn't like it and that's still a significant number of people complaining in a community like r/headphones with 1 million active members, let alone the audiophile community at large.

And it's perfectly fine to prefer oratory's IE target (Which in itself is a variation of the Harman target to begin with) over Harman IE and in fact I actually do personally find it is the better one when it comes to using IEMs in nosy enviroments (Which is the premise of that target actually) but eh you are talking about the individual vs the overall population in this case, you shouldn't make assumptions on the latter based on the former since that would be considered an error in statistics.