AnOldMoth t1_j9xcspi wrote on February 25, 2023 at 6:09 AM

Reply to comment by [deleted] in Hifiman Edition XS and Moondrop Venus - Mid-fi Meh by slooploop2

> A 600 series with Oratory EQ does the job just as well

It really doesn't do it even close to as well. I've toyed around with the 6XX for a long time, I still do. EQ is like, my personal magic bullet for SO MUCH SHIT in headphones, I love it.

No amount of EQ makes the bass sound like anything but a mud cannon with zero definition, nothing makes them feel larger or more clear with good separation, nothing fixes the three blob imaging. They have timbre and mids, two things you CAN fix with EQ, and... that's it. Everything else is pretty damn bad. And I've fixed tons of headphones with similar issues, and none of them have this problem...

The drivers on them are over-dampened to hell and it's unbelievably audible.

HD600 are much better in my experience, but that bass roll-off isn't really fixed by EQ either, because it distorts the whole damn thing when you do it. Those drivers are very dated and it shows, when it comes to boosting frequencies in EQ.

[deleted] t1_j9xkff6 wrote on February 25, 2023 at 7:40 AM

Hm, I have no audible distortion with the Oratory preset. Maybe my listening levels are just not loud enough for it to be an issue.

Like, people complained about the clear driver clipping and I make fun of it myself, whenever I can, but I needed too boost the bass to ungodly levels and listen louder than I normally would, to get it clipping.

This, just like your tale and all the people complaining about powerful enough amps being to quiet, just reinforces my belief that many people in this hobby are listening at ungodly levels.

Stay safe, people. Hearing aida are expensive!

AnOldMoth t1_j9xl33h wrote on February 25, 2023 at 7:49 AM

I listen at 75-80 dB at most, it's not that loud. It's very specific to the 6X0 series, is the thing. I usually don't have this problem with other drivers.

Then again, I listen almost entirely to planars. There is something about that driver that just works better to my ears. Dynamics always have some quality to them that sounds... I hate to use this term for audio because it's stupid, but low-res. Details are meh, separation is meh. It's like the sound is blurry. Even the best of the best, it has this quality.

Except for speakers, but that's a whole different can of worms.

[deleted] t1_j9xnobi wrote on February 25, 2023 at 8:23 AM

Driver types don't matter. What matters is FR at the ear drum.

I believe your "low res" experience is due to marketing telling you that planars are "better" and "more advanced" making confirmation bias kick in. Just like the Stax crowd thinks a 1k boost and utter lack of sub bass "lets you hear god", because "Its the best in the world since 1960".

I am certain that if people were told a headphone was a planar and it had linear bass with good fr, they would just repeat all the "planar bass" and "speed" stick, even though it really was a dd .

AnOldMoth t1_j9xp3us wrote on February 25, 2023 at 8:43 AM

> Driver types don't matter. What matters is FR at the ear drum.

While this is technically true, planar drivers by design are able to deliver a more linear response than dynamic drivers are able to. Driver types AFFECT FR at the eardrum.

That is why dynamic drivers have roll-off in the treble and bass, and why good speakers have multiple drivers to cover different parts of the response. Trying to get all of them to cover 20 hz to 20 khz has its drawbacks, and we can see that in most dynamic driver FR graphs.

> I believe your "low res" experience is due to marketing telling you that planars are "better" and "more advanced" making confirmation bias kick in

Definitely not, I am not subjectivist by any stretch of the word, I argue with audio magic believers all the time, just check my comment history, lol. I'm a recording engineer. I know how this stuff works, it's my job to understand it.

In this case, FR at the eardrum is different in every headphone, they even change based on how the cups are positioned on your head, and FR measurements that we have of them are only accurate up to 10 khz, and even then, they're still smoothed over. There's tiny little differences in the response that account for a driver's properties, which is why with current tech, we can't EQ KSC75 to sound like Susvara.

Then, you start getting into the fact that some drivers, measurably, objectively, distort the more you mess with them, compared to others. Planars TEND to distort less, but there are plenty of dynamic drivers that are fine too.

In my experience, the HD6X0 series is not a driver type that handles EQ well, at least below about 400 hz. Treble/Mid EQ works just fine on it, which is why you can fix the recessed treble the 6XX has without issue.

But the bass... good god. It becomes a mud canon with only a little bit of a boost... Then again, it's a mud cannon at stock too, it's just bloated and has no definition whatsoever. HD600 handles this far far better, though the bass overall is reduced.

No, the reason why it sounds that way to me on some headphones is because a lot of driver adjustments are done with dampening, and the 6XX (my main dynamic drivers I personally own) are over-dampened, and it's very obvious when you listen to them.

Like you said, all that really matters is FR at the eardrum. My Ananda are heavily EQ'd, and even when using the same exact setup, measurements, target, etc etc, the Ananda do not have any of the negative qualities I'm used to hearing from the 6XX.

And I know it isn't in my head, because I have level-matched tests (done within 0.1 dB with an SPL meter) with them for people who have ZERO idea about how anything audio-related works, not told them what's what, and they report to me the exact same thing I hear. As in, my fucking mom noticed what I said without me asking or prompting anything related to the sound, and she barely understands how to open files on a computer.

[deleted] t1_j9xr234 wrote on February 25, 2023 at 9:11 AM

Planars are not inherently better at delivering more linear FR. The roll of in bass is a function of the resonance frequency and unsealed front volume. Modify either and you get linear bass on a dynamic driver. Alternatively EQ cam get you there as well.

Rough treble can happen with planars just as well as with dynamics. also measurements up there are unreliable and smoothed, so you don't really know whats going on.

I never said we could get a KSC to sound like speakers (well in theory you could but thats like arguing that you could also in theory create a black hole on earth) or whatnot, I just argued driver types don't matter, FR does. Your ear does not give two fucks whether a tone is generated by bird, human vocal chords or a speaker.

Ah yes, your golden ears can hear the "overdampned" driver and presumably you can aslo hear the grass grow.

I'm out fam. People who think their human ears are the end all be all of measuring instruments, like you, are not the type if crowd I want to associate with.

I mean,TO MY EYES the earth is flat sigh.