Marv collects the ears of vanquished head-fi shills and marketing department heads, vitrifies them, and while the lucky few get to make it to his pirate necklace, the rest are stapled to microphones and forced to listen to Ultrasones and Grados.

You can't just sign up and demand information without any interest in this community or ever introducing yourself as per the rules set out clearly here.

My name is Rick and I'm a Texan. I found this site from the Innerfidelity article about it. I have used the Headroom measurements and then the Innerfidelity measurements because they seem more detailed than Headrooms. When I saw the measurements here and noticed differences between Innerfidelity and Changstar measurements I became more interested in why.

I'm reading and searching as much as I can to avoid asking dumb questions and am enjoying the information I'm finding so far.

The measurements will differ if different measurement rigs, processing, or data presentation methods are used. This is why HR measurements differ from IF and IF measurements differ from here, etc.

I don't use a dummy head (though I could and have access to several). I use a set of couplers to take several measurements of each headphone and combobulate the results into graphs. The reason for this is because I believe that the ear-brain mechanism is smart enough to filter out certain early reflections, refractions, and resonances which are ear of part of the earcup or inherent in our ear canals, especially at high frequencies. I do apply compensation to the graph to make it a very rough approximation of what the listener hears as if the listener was hearing a neutral speaker.

The compensation curves were arrived at as follows: I used 1/3 octave white-noise and calibrated by ear to my reference, a nearfield custom made monitor which is essentially flat at 0 degrees at 1 meter. For listening purposes, the nearfield monitors are actually only slightly rotated inward, so the combined response with both monitors playing white noise slightly slopes downward from the bass to the treble. We are talking -1.5db.

A headphone with a flat line on the FR graph here should sound ever so slightly bright, like an expensive monitor in the studio.

The measurements aren't perfect, and those who have been paying careful attention may have even noted that I have tweaked the FR graphs a little bit now and then when I "discover" better compensation curves or errors.

Headphone measurements are complex and not as as straightforward as speaker measurements which are commonly taken nearfield at 1m 90db in an anechoic room or at least with the data gated to eliminate reflections.

Whatever measurement systems you decide to use, make sure that they are only used within their framework. Do not compare my with GE's or GE's with HR's or HR's with IF, etc. It's important for you to take time to learn each system. Within a framework, carefully study the graphs of headphones which you are familiar with. Note relative differences between the measurements. Over time, you will get a deep understanding of how each framework works.

For example, even though the IF system is quite different from mine, I've actually taken the time to study the IF system, so I can generally get a good sense if I will like a headphone or not.