This is kind of a cool discussion. I am so glad that a lot of you guys are going about and experimenting. One of the reasons I didn't want to reveal my rig is that I had to deal with too many armchair quarterbacks who read more than they did. There are a lot of nuances learned when you start doing measurements.

For the purposes of my V2 rig, I elected not to use an ear. Why do you ask? Because the use of an ear may require compensation. I wanted to get fast results that did not need compensation. Also, think about this: when we measure speakers, we measure with a bare microphone wand. If we measure speakers with an artificial head, we will need to compensate or every element (pinna, canal, head, etc.) to arrive at the equivalent microphone measurement.

What I wanted was a measurement that was equivalent to a standard speaker measurement at the listening position.

One good read might be this:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/grado-hp-1-headphones-measurements

The goal was to measure the cans free space for the upper mids and treble since not a lot of acousitc impedance is needed at those frequencies. For these ranges, measurement performance may be similar to speakers. For the lower frequencies, the baffle was used to approximate required driving volume for bass reproduction.

The goal of some rigs which provide added absobtion material in the baffle is to try to get both measurements in one rig instead of having to merge the two separate measurements.

The added benefit of the different baffle approaches is that measurements are much less positionally sensitive. This may be indeed one reason of why speaker measurements themselves don't get measured with an ear simulator either. Another problem is the fact that different shapes of ears affect sound differently, and compensation is therefore not universal. Yet, the baseline for audio reproduction is external to the head: live sound, which is universal. By this I mean that if two different people were seated in the exact same location in a concert at the same time, the audio signal sources will be the same. The equipment is responsible to reproduce the single source of the signal, not model the different receivers of it.

Here's mine. Using Panasonic WM61a and DIY preamp circuit with shoddy wiring. There's a bigger block of foam that accompanies it. Build for uber-cheapness and versatility (it measures speakers too!). It's still evolving because I'm looking to up the performance of the whole system.

You need to understand the technology and then you shall get all the insight you need. (:blu winky smiley:)