About TheTuningChoice.

A one-person project by Ajit Sahu - built for audiophiles, by one.

TheTuningChoice tracks the prices of IEMs, headphones, DACs, amps, cables, eartips, speakers and everything else audiophile stores sell - across more than eighty tracked stores: Headphone Zone, Concept Kart, The Audio Store, HiFiGo, Linsoul, ShenzhenAudio, Amazon.in and the rest.

Not a shop, not a business

TheTuningChoice is a personal, non-commercial project. It never charges visitors a rupee, sells nothing, and shows no advertising.

Why it exists

Two aims. The first is to put Indian premium and well-known audio stores in front of more people - so that more listeners discover this hobby, learn where to buy honestly, and see how these stores differ from marketplace noise. The second is to make the hobby itself easier to understand: what an IEM is and how it differs from a regular earphone, what a DAC or an amp actually does, how a sound graph is read, and a rough, honest estimate of how a given IEM or headphone is likely to sound - all before any money is spent.

Purely for audiophiles

Deliberately distinct from generic consumer-audio sites. The catalog is curated - premium or well-known audio brands only, never a marketplace dump. If it doesn't matter to someone who cares about tuning, drivers and signatures, it isn't here.

The community

TheTuningChoice partners with audiophile communities - the groups and spaces where this hobby is actually discussed. The full list, with join links, lives on the partners page.

What the site does

Prices, tracked

• A curated catalog. Premium or well-known audio gear only. Every Amazon.in listing passes a brand-and-model identity check before it appears; unrecognised or mismatched listings are excluded by design.
• Every store on one page. The current price at each of the 80+ tracked stores - Indian stores in rupees, overseas stores converted at the going rate - with stock status and the time each price was last checked.
• The full price history. A graph over time, plus the lowest price this product has sold for in the last 365 days, with the date and the lowest last month. Facts on the table - the site never says "buy now" or "wait"; the decision stays entirely with the visitor.
• A price-drops feed. Every recorded drop across the catalog, all-time lows included, filterable by category and sortable, always current with the catalog.
• Price alerts. Set a target price for any product and an email arrives when a store's price meets it. Restock waitlists work the same way for out-of-stock gear.
• Saved searches. Watch a filtered slice of the catalog - a category, a budget, a tuning, a spec - and an email arrives when a drop lands inside it.
• A wishlist. Save products and keep an eye on them.
• A weekly digest. An opt-in email rounding up the week's drops - unsubscribe in one click.
• Browser notifications. The same alerts can arrive as a web push in the browser - no email address needed, and one click switches them off.

Sound, explained - and heard

• Listen to a product before buying. The site plays test tracks shaped by the product's tuning, right in the browser - a tonal-balance preview through the visitor's own headphones. Bass and treble lean sliders refit the preview - and the EQ preset - live.
• A searchable graph hub. Every measurement on file is browsable at /graphs - searched by model, filtered by category and by measurement rig, one page per curve.
• Measured and estimated graphs, honestly labeled. Products with a community measurement show the real curve, credited to the person who measured it; products without one get an estimate built from specs, and it says Estimated right on it.
• Graph compare. Pick any second curve and the two overlay on one axis - with a shared A/B balance player, so the difference is heard, not just seen.
• How sound graphs work. An interactive walkthrough of what the graph shows - sub-bass, mids, treble, air - and how different tunings differ, with audio so the difference can be heard, not just read.
• Hardware labs. Interactive DAC, amp, source, eartip and soundstage labs - see and hear what each part of the chain actually changes, from reading a distortion chart to why a bad eartip seal eats the bass.
• Find your tune. Play one track through several tunings - or take the 30-second quiz - and learn which signature suits the ear, then browse matching gear with live prices.
• A glossary. Every audio term - signatures, drivers, impedance, Harman - in plain language.
• "Sounds like". For every measured product, the closest-tuning alternatives with a similarity score and the price difference - the "sounds like the Hexa, cheaper" question, answered from the measurements and shown honestly.
• Guides. Plain-language, measurement-backed explainers on the questions that decide a purchase - how to read an FR graph, open-back versus closed-back, Bluetooth codecs, eartips and seal, IEMs for gaming, USB DAC dongles, call quality - every non-obvious claim cited to its published source, on the guides page.

Tools for the decision

• Compare. Up to three products side by side - tuning, ratings and best price together.
• Versus pages. Head-to-head pages for measured pairs: both tunings, both graphs, both ratings and the price gap on one page, browsable from the /vs hub.
• Budget pages. "Best IEMs under 2,000"-class landing pages for every category and price bracket, ranked by the stores' own ratings - facts, never a pick.
• EQ presets. AutoEq-format parametric EQ files generated from measurements, for people who already EQ - with a refit to taste on request.
• A compatibility checker. Cable connectors, source plugs and driving power - whether a given source can run a given pair.
• Specs and store facts. Published specs where stores provide them, and each store's own warranty, returns and shipping facts quoted from the store's pages, with a link to the source.
• Ratings. Store ratings shown exactly as the store displays them, plus one honest five-star review per account on the site itself.
• Share cards. Every product page shares cleanly, with an auto-generated price card for WhatsApp, X and link previews.
• A free account. Sign in with Google or email to keep the wishlist, alerts, restock waitlists and saved searches across devices, rate products, write in through the feedback box - and get replies in a notification inbox. Browsing itself needs no account at all.

The artwork

The anime-style illustrations on this site are all mine - every sketch is original, drawn specifically for TheTuningChoice. Please don't reuse, repost or edit them without asking first.

Affiliate disclosure

Some links on this site may be affiliate links - not every store pays one, and nothing on a price or a ranking changes either way. A referral fee, when a store pays one, may be used to maintain the runnability of this website: servers, hosting, tools. Other than that, nothing is earned - no profit, no revenue of any other kind. No ads, no paid listings, no fees, no sponsors. This is a one-person project, not a company.

No store pays to be listed or to rank higher. The cheapest price shows as the cheapest because the data says so - ranking is never sold.

The API

Everything this site shows - prices, store offers, specs, measured curves, sound-alike scores and the store list - is served to its own pages by a private JSON API. It is not open to the public: every data endpoint is closed to third parties unless the admin grants access. The only public endpoint is a health check (/api/health), used by uptime monitors and deployment checks.

To request API access, email hello@thetuningchoice.in. The admin decides, request by request, whether to grant access. Please state in the mail:

• the type of information you expect from the API - prices, offers, specs, measured curves, sound-alike scores, store lists, or something else;
• what you will do with it - a personal tool, a public project, research, a commercial product;
• who you are, and how the API will be called (expected volume, server-to-server or a client app).

Rate limits are decided per request, from the information above - what is being asked for and how it will be used. Access is read-only; keys are issued individually, can be pinned to your server's IP, and can be revoked at any time.

Commercial use is fine. Because every API read is charged to TheTuningChoice's own database read quota, the admin may decide to charge a commercial key user for the read tokens that usage consumes - a cost pass-through, not a paid data tier - depending on the request.

For brands and stores

Want your products on TheTuningChoice, or an affiliate partnership with the site? Email hello@thetuningchoice.in with a short brief covering things: the scope of your products and how it's relevant to TheTuningChoice, whether you provide your product details, and whether you would be interested in affiliating with TheTuningChoice.

Independence

TheTuningChoice is not owned by any store or brand on the site - no store owns it, runs it, or endorses it. Product photos and trademarks belong to their owners and are shown with credit, only to identify what is being priced. Anything a rights holder wants removed: one email and it is gone within 48 hours.

All product names, logos and brands are property of their respective owners. Company names and logos used in price comparison grid are for identification purposes only and do not imply endorsement.

How the data works

Prices are tracked on a fixed schedule and refreshed throughout the day. Stores change prices without notice, so always verify at the store before buying.

Where the sound graphs come from

Every measured graph on the site is somebody’s real measurement work, and every curve carries its source credit on the page. The open projects measured graphs are ingested from:

• AutoEq (MIT) - The open measurement-and-EQ project most graphs here come from. Its targets folder publishes the reference targets (Harman in-ear and over-ear generations, diffuse field, JM-1) and its results carry the measured rigs: crinacle, oratory1990, Rtings, Innerfidelity, Kazi (Super Review), Ted’s Squig Hoard, Jaytiss, Kuulokenurkka, RikudouGoku, ToneDeafMonk, kr0mka, freeryder05, Fahryst, Filk, Harpo, Bakkwatan, DHRME, Hi End Portable, Regan Cipher, Auriculares Argentina and more.
• SBAF HPDB (published for public use) - The superbestaudiofriends community’s headphone measurement database - MiniDSP EARS and flat-plate coupler curves, SBAF-compensated, published for public use.
• ASH-IR Dataset (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) - The Audio Spatialisation for Headphones project. Its headphone compensation filters (HpCFs) recover each headphone’s response relative to the diffuse field; those recovered curves are shown credited to it.

Contact

Questions, corrections, or a store that would like to talk: hello@thetuningchoice.in

Follow on Instagram: @thetuningchoice - price drops, new arrivals and hobby talk, right in the feed.

The fine print

Stores Tracked Terms of Use Privacy Policy

Emails to registered users

An account on TheTuningChoice is free, and with it comes the occasional email from hello@thetuningchoice.in - a new feature worth knowing about, a meaningful change to the site, that kind of thing. These mails are rare by design, they never sell anything, and every one of them carries an unsubscribe link that switches them off in one click. Creating an account means agreeing to receive them; everything else - price alerts, restock waitlists, the weekly digest - stays strictly opt-in, exactly as always.