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Author Topic: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs  (Read 4193 times)

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donunus

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #10 on: August 29, 2013, 02:10:04 AM »
Quote from: purrin on August 28, 2013, 11:21:50 PM
Exactly. While speakers can measure neutral according to the Stereophile method of using anechoic measurements - hanging the speaker up in the air and using a measurement mic 1 meter away - there's no guarantee they will sound even neutralish when in placed in most real rooms.

Add to that... calibrated speakers with different dispersion characteristics (ex. magnepans vs typical box speakers) measured at 1m ala stereophile will never generate the same raw curve in the ear with each other unless maybe the measurement was done at the same distance of 1 meter. If an in-room response at 2 to 3 meters were made with those speakers with mics in the eardrums, they would surely give us a different resulting raw curve.

By the way, about speaker measurement, it is actually also even a mystery how they came up with the frequency response of the magneplanar speaker for example since with the stereophile 1m method, they dont measure nearly as flat vs typical box speakers yet they usually sound more natural in most environments I heard them in. I wonder if they tuned the maggies by ear or by measuring from the sweet spot of a typical room.
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OJneg

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #11 on: August 29, 2013, 03:19:39 AM »
Quote from: donunus on August 29, 2013, 02:10:04 AM
Quote from: purrin on August 28, 2013, 11:21:50 PM
Exactly. While speakers can measure neutral according to the Stereophile method of using anechoic measurements - hanging the speaker up in the air and using a measurement mic 1 meter away - there's no guarantee they will sound even neutralish when in placed in most real rooms.

Add to that... calibrated speakers with different dispersion characteristics (ex. magnepans vs typical box speakers) measured at 1m ala stereophile will never generate the same raw curve in the ear with each other unless maybe the measurement was done at the same distance of 1 meter. If an in-room response at 2 to 3 meters were made with those speakers with mics in the eardrums, they would surely give us a different resulting raw curve.

By the way, about speaker measurement, it is actually also even a mystery how they came up with the frequency response of the magneplanar speaker for example since with the stereophile 1m method, they dont measure nearly as flat vs typical box speakers yet they usually sound more natural in most environments I heard them in. I wonder if they tuned the maggies by ear or by measuring from the sweet spot of a typical room.

Some interesting thoughts from Linkwitz and Mike Gough on the matter. Look at what JA measured on the previous page for context.

http://www.stereophile.com/content/magnepan-magneplanar-mg36r-loudspeaker-more-comments
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funkmeister

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #12 on: August 30, 2013, 03:47:13 PM »
Since low tones reflect more and higher tones are more easily absorbed, how come we don't have colorized charts to display a headphones characteristics in that regard? Well... CSD does that to a certain extent but I'm thinking in terms of 2D and with and indicator as to where the crossover point should be. Take that and compare to the CSD and you'd have a way figured out to immediately discern and improve on structural deficiencies.
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xnor

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #13 on: September 04, 2013, 09:45:20 PM »
Quote from: purrin on August 28, 2013, 10:47:51 PM
Those searching for the holy grail of absolute measurement perfection citing a myriad of authorities, methods, etc. are doomed to fail, or at the very least are not seeing the forest for the trees. It's like those fuckers looking for the "God" particle. What a fucking waste of human thought, time and money. What would be funny if after they "discovered" the God particle, some other random fucker physicist hypothesizes about a "Super-God" particle. And you know that's going to happen.
I disagree strongly, but that's quite off-topic. It's the most important discovery of the 21th century so far. Btw, most physicists hate the nickname "God particle" and Lederman wanted to call it the Goddamn particle. It has nothing to do with fairy tales.

Quote from: funkmeister on August 30, 2013, 03:47:13 PM
Since low tones reflect more and higher tones are more easily absorbed
Well, isn't it kinda the other way around with headphones? At low frequencies it works more like a hydraulic brake while at high frequencies there are waves that are being reflected from the ear cup, pinna, ...

What do you mean with crossover point?
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ultrabike

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #14 on: September 04, 2013, 11:01:55 PM »
Quote from: xnor on September 04, 2013, 09:45:20 PM
Quote from: purrin on August 28, 2013, 10:47:51 PM
Those searching for the holy grail of absolute measurement perfection citing a myriad of authorities, methods, etc. are doomed to fail, or at the very least are not seeing the forest for the trees. It's like those fuckers looking for the "God" particle. What a fucking waste of human thought, time and money. What would be funny if after they "discovered" the God particle, some other random fucker physicist hypothesizes about a "Super-God" particle. And you know that's going to happen.
I disagree strongly, but that's quite off-topic. It's the most important discovery of the 21th century so far. Btw, most physicists hate the nickname "God particle" and Lederman wanted to call it the Goddamn particle. It has nothing to do with fairy tales.

For amplifier and DAC characterization (on their own), setting flat frequency response and practically non-existent levels of distortion for a target set of loads and dynamic ranges maybe yield an arbitrary absolute one dimensional performance goal (maybe two for stereo). It is still a little arbitrary since it fails to account for whatever is down the chain (headphone/speaker, room/head...), but it maybe generic enough.

Transducers however seem to interact with the medium quite a bit, the problem is basically three dimensional and not completely individual/room and headphone/speaker type independent. There are different design goals: radiation pattern, coherence, distortion, sensitivity... Relative impressions and measurements become useful in such cases, while absolute may help set a reference.

In speakers it maybe possible to find a particular build that would perform well +/- 45 degrees horizontal and vertical in anechoic conditions,  but perform poorly on a particular (and not necessarily small) set of real world rooms... One could equalize to perfection at one location and fail miserably in all the other non-sweet-spot locations... One may not be able to equalize to perfection anywhere in some rooms and with some headphones as well...

It doesn't mean we shouldn't try to figure things out, but resources should be wisely allocated... Perhaps instead of figuring out absolute perfection on every single room/headphone geometry condition and location, some research could be done on finding an independent of head/room (a la anechoic room) and convenient standard metric for headphone characterization, along with it's subjective sound quality perception variance, which seems to be getting current research attention attention anyway. Perhaps some research on particular frequency range masking would be useful... dunno.

Quote from: xnor on September 04, 2013, 09:45:20 PM
Quote from: funkmeister on August 30, 2013, 03:47:13 PM
Since low tones reflect more and higher tones are more easily absorbed
Well, isn't it kinda the other way around with headphones? At low frequencies it works more like a hydraulic brake while at high frequencies there are waves that are being reflected from the ear cup, pinna, ...

What do you mean with crossover point?

Probably the ones used for those Magnepan transducers from the Stereophile linky.
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Marvey

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #15 on: September 04, 2013, 11:15:17 PM »
Quote from: xnor on September 04, 2013, 09:45:20 PM
I disagree strongly, but that's quite off-topic. It's the most important discovery of the 21th century so far. Btw, most physicists hate the nickname "God particle" and Lederman wanted to call it the Goddamn particle. It has nothing to do with fairy tales.

We'll see. The discovery of Higgs and validation of the standard model, unification of electromagnetic / weak forces, how particles get mass, etc. - it better result in warp drive or a photon torpedo we can ram up Assad's ass - otherwise's it's just intellectual masturbation for theoretical physicists. I suspect there will be no practical application of this scientific discovery because of the high energies involved at which these models work, unlike quantum mechanics, e.g. tunneling, wave functions, etc.
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ultrabike

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #16 on: September 04, 2013, 11:28:06 PM »
OMG, and how gravity tightly fits inside all of it...
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funkmeister

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Re: HRTF doesn't matter for headphones, only IEMs
« Reply #17 on: September 05, 2013, 12:43:05 AM »
I've long been preaching my theory among those who will take time to hear my theories that the 4 forces in the universe are all the same force which simply abides behavior appropriately.

Anyway, the more I think about my proposed graphing techniques the more arbitrary my crossover point seems. I can't quite work out a model with only two main frequency groups.
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