Submitted by TheFrator t3_z6wmyt in headphones
Yelov t1_iy522ia wrote
This is what I don't like about this hobby. Everyone says different things, you can't objectively compare audio quality like you can compare other products. I'd like it if FR was the only thing that mattered, but it seems more complicated than just FR. I want an explanation why eg HD800 sounded way more detailed to me than every other headphone I've heard. Same with the soundstage. I don't think there exists an EQ where my DT1990 would have the same amount of perceived detail as the HD800, but I don't know why. What makes the HD800 sound more detailed than other headphones? Sure, EQ does change the perceived detail. Lowering the treble on HD800 also removes some of the detail, but it's still better than a different pair of headphones with more treble.
Rogue-Architect t1_iy5wazg wrote
So what often gets lost in translation when people say that FR contains everything about the headphone is that, while that is true, we are not able to measure FR well enough or interpret it well enough to understand all of those nuances. When I am searching for headphones, I look to the FR graph for one thing, overall tonality. What you cannot glean from our current smoothed graphs is things like detail, imaging, soundstage, slam, etc.. That is what makes Audeze headphones so interesting to me. If you are willing to EQ the headphones more to your preferred tonality, they have some of the best technicalities for my taste being extreme detail and that sense of slam. It also helps that they have some of if not the lowest distortion drivers on the market which makes them perfect for EQ. So in my experience you can typically EQ a headphone to your preferred target but you cannot add technicalities like soundstage and slam. And before someone says that you can add more detail by adding a high shelf, detail retrieval impacts mids and the bass as well so while it would increase your ability to hear the high frequencies more compared other frequencies, it does not change the overall resolution across the entire FR.
KiyPhi t1_iy5y6v1 wrote
FR is the most important thing for tonal perception which is 99% of headphone sound. If you really get into it, is actually the only thing that matters. Most people say FR to refer to a graph someone posts. That graph that you see can give you an idea of the tonal balance with the conditions it was measured on (hopefully a good seal on an average pinna with a specific acoustic impedance).
In reality, what you hear will be different. Some headphones will interact with your ear better than other headphones, some headphones will have peaks and dips where you would normally hear peaks and dips and that would make the headphone sound wider or more natural than another headphone. The HD800/s have an upper mid dip that makes music sound further away along with excellent pinna interaction. This makes the headphone sound wide and naturally so. Rtings has a measurement for this but it doesn't necessarily tell the whole story every time but I've yet to see a better method.
Your ears alter the FR of everything you listen to. Things in front of you have a dip around 8-10kHz because the high frequency waves bounce off the ridges in your ear and cancel out around that frequency. A headphone that either has a dip where you have or interacts with your ear to make that dip naturally would sound more in front. Image example of what I'm talking about here.
Some headphones also are super hard to seal on anyone's head. If the headphone was measured on a head simulator with a good seal and it seals on your head very poorly, what you hear will be dramatically different from what was measured. Closed back and DCA open back headphones are notorious for this. There are some other headphones, like most Hifiman and the Meze Empyrean that are designed so that they don't have such a big change with a break in the seal, often times getting a small boost follow by roll off below the driver's resonance frequency. Examples: DCA, Meze, Hifiman.
All of these things are FR but not what you see on most FR graphs. Distortion affects FR, soundstage comes from FR, the natural feeling of a headphone comes from FR, it just isn't something you can point to on the usual graph and say "that's soundstage" because it is often different for each person the headphone is put on. You can see how a headphone interacts with the measurement fixture to see if it is just the innate peaks and dips of the headphone making it seem that way to one person or actual interaction with the measurement rig's ears. This requires multiple measurements most of the time and isn't normally shown with a regular FR graph.
Hearing is fairly well understood and is the effect of pressure at certain frequencies on your ear's sensory parts. The measurement of this pressure at a given frequency is what a FR graph is and why it is generally the main important part of a headphone but you have to understand what the graph means, what it can tell you, and what it can't tell you. Often times You pretty much always need much more than just one measurement though.
Why we perceive these things are also fairly well understood and I have a playlist of really nice lectures if you are genuinely interested in learning. It is some really cool stuff.
Yelov t1_iy78jdr wrote
I'm interested in the lectures, this is what I was looking for, but didn't know where to look. Sounds really interesting.
KiyPhi t1_iy79gfz wrote
The AES does presentations open to the public and archives them here. There is another by JJ that is going to be added soon on signal bandwidth.
For headphone design principles, you can search for the book "Headphone Fundamentals" by Carl Poldy. Toole's book covers headphones to some degree as well.
I also have a copy of "Loudspeaker and Headphone Handbook: Third Edition" that I managed to get cheap and use as a reference when I need to look something up. It doesn't have everything and I don't quite understand everything but it has a lot of info, lol.
Quick edit: Here is another neat YouTube channel. And two videos on the basic backbone of digital audio: 1 2
fukinKant t1_iy5ob5x wrote
Construction, if a headphone leaves more room around you ear it appears wider…
my2dumbledores t1_iy6wec0 wrote
Sean Olive also speculated this.
fuazo t1_iy640in wrote
im just interpret freuqency response as like the brightness of a rainbow..the more detail the headphone are the cleaner and higher the resolution of a rainbows are
let say for example...a v shaped headphone it brighter on both end of the spectrum but that doesnt mean the quality of both end are better..it just that contrast is more towards both end then a neutral one
fr can correlate to technicality but it never is the full picture
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