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atyne_mar t1_itrc3zu wrote

Let me give you an example.

The FR of Susvara and Nan-6 is almost the same. In fact, there is more variation between different units of the same model than between them. And yet they sound completely different. Yes, they sound very similar in tonality but that's literally the only thing that's similar between them. The spatial qualities, resolution, or dynamics aren't things you can read from the FR graph.

These talks about headphones being minimum phase systems and that FR is the only thing that matters are all just theoretical. In practice, the FR graph doesn't tell you anything but tonality. And even the tonality is only relevant to the specific measurement rig, headphone unit, and position on the rig.

That's also why headphone measurements by ASR are not very reliable because Amir only measures 1 position. And that's also why 5128 is the best rig ever only theoretically. It's so incredibly sensitive to positional variation without having stable resonations it's more practical just using Gras...

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KenBalbari t1_itri5wc wrote

Yes, the ideal headphone would be a minimum phase system. But manufactures go to a lot of trouble to design them to be as close as possible to minimum phase, and still come up short. For one, minimum phase systems don't have nonlinear distortion. Headphones do.

The "headphones are minimum phase systems" arguments tend to remind me of the old joke about the theoretical physicist hired to consult on how to improve milk production efficiency on a dairy farm. When time to report his solution to the farmer, he begins "First, we assume a spherical cow...."

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blargh4 t1_itrfmk0 wrote

Well, except the FR is not the same at all. I'd expect the overall tonal signature to be be fairly close, but all those little squiggles are audible qualities of the sound, with some fairly low-Q >3dB differences exactly where your ear is most sensitive.

But what are you going to do about it, have some kind of EQ with dozens of high-Q filters that would be completely different on your particular cans/ear or even headphone seating? Ultimately the FR measurement is only useful to a point.

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Then-Effective5434 OP t1_itrl8fz wrote

With headphones I have understood, that you really can't EQ 6xx to the Susvara sound, due to so much variables and differences between them, but still interested in Elex/Clear/Utopia case, because except pads, they all have same housing, and overall very very similar to each other

Also as I understand with IEMs it should be easier to recreate sound of one IEM to the other, even if one of them have 1 driver, and other 12 for example?

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atyne_mar t1_itty98s wrote

Let me give you another example. 58X and 660S have the same signature with very similar tuning and spatial qualities. 58X has just more bass and treble. But even if you EQd them to have the same FR, 660S would still sound miles better in terms of resolution and dynamics.

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blargh4 t1_itro9p2 wrote

I think you could get them to sound very close to each other in terms of their broad tonal signature, but the devil's in the details, which show up as those little narrowband wiggles in the FR plot. For the most part that stuff is simply not amenable to correction via EQ. The Utopia and Clear may be similar, but the drivers are made of different materials, they probably differ in the finer points of their driver/enclosure design. Some driver distortion mode may very well show up in an FR, but you can't really fix it without fixing the driver - at best you could reduce whatever frequency excites that distortion, thereby probably doing more damage to the sound.

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