Topic: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality. (Read 9556 times)

omegakitty · « **Reply #10 on:** July 24, 2012, 02:57:30 AM »

I listen to a lot of stand up acoustic bass, and I agree the atonal-ness is there to some minute degree with the HE-500 (velour pads, old version), though it was really insignificant when I drove them with a Beta22.

It's not to the point where you can't make out what bass notes are playing or anything IMO.

I have owned YH-100 and HP-1 and pre modded the bass on those is really muddy.

Anaxilus. · « **Reply #11 on:** July 24, 2012, 09:26:38 AM »

I recall hearing the mids, specifically the vocal ranges, having a weirdness going on in the 400. It would seem to be distortion then.

kurwazajebista · « **Reply #12 on:** July 24, 2012, 10:27:29 AM »

Quote from: rhythmdevils on July 23, 2012, 08:03:24 PM

The HE500 bass sounded kind of like underdamped ortho bass to me esp considering the driver size, which should put out ze crazy man bass. And since it has no damping, and the pads aren't sealed, I'm guessing the driver is a bit out of control.

The HE500 has a very weird bass effect I've never noticed in any other headphone. When you take them off and they're a few inches from your ears (headphones removed with a few inches of space from ears) the bass volume actually increases significantly and looses all definition or detail, and you get this intense flabby sub effect. I'm guessing this is a symptom of whatever is going on with the HE500 bass. They break a lot of conventional ortho rules with the HE500 -no pad seal, no damping, not to mention what others have mentioned about the diaphragm and traces design. FWIK, an "air damped" ortho like this is actually ideal but I'm skeptical the HE500 is making it work in an ideal way. If that makes sense...

I actually enjoy my HE-500's a few cm's away from my ears. Bass retains impact but the whole forward 'in your face' sound eases into something much more natural. I made a thread about it once on HF but no one replied

*so alone*.

I've always maintained that the HE-500's sound weird... they have nice impact and all but just sound artificial to me, especially in comparison to LCD-2 rev 2's.

TMRaven · « **Reply #13 on:** July 24, 2012, 01:00:49 PM »

Quote from: purrin on July 23, 2012, 07:50:09 PM

I'm not sure that the mid distortion is even really that audible or more precisely objectionable. THD (not pictured but probably something close to the D2 line) is probably not that much higher than 1%. However during a direct comparison, the HE500 did sound more refined, crisper, and more detailed in the mids than the HE400.

I must admit, when I first picked up and listened to my HE-400s I immediately noticed its lack of pure black noisefloor. After listening to a 650 weeks earlier, which I found to have a very black background and very snappy in its transients, the HE-400 just seemed to smooth over the transients with a syrupy feel, yet retain a wicked amount of detail and instrument separation, I took this for a planar magnetic trait. It actually wasn't a subjectively bad rendition of the audio either, in my opinion. Now after looking at the HE-400's non linear distortion in its mids, I can now see how that affects sound.

When I first tried the velour pads I kept mentioning on Head-fi that I thought they were like a damping mod to the HE-400. One of the immediate first things I noticed was a minimizing of their 1khz peak, and some smoother mids, which I thought was a faster decay and less distortion, but your measurements actually had the mids being smoother frequency response wise, and not transient wise.

anetode · « **Reply #14 on:** July 25, 2012, 02:27:23 AM »

Quote from: Sforza on July 23, 2012, 06:13:10 AM

So I reckon we should take these measurements are further supportive evidence that higher distortion, even if it's 3rd order, would have a detrimental effect?

Hmm. I was previously working with the assumption that anything below .5 would be subjectively insignificant, so I guess I ought to consider revising my opinion on the topic It'd be nice to have more objective basis for the bass quality though. Thanks for taking the time to make these.

The usual goal post for that assumption is 1%/-40db. Unfortunately surveys of hd audibility show inconsistent results based on the freq. of the fundamental and the distribution of harmonics. A few years ago I ran some tests using vocal samples and found that I had to struggle to decipher anything under -30db, which became my goalpost for casual listening. With bass it's odder: you're unlikely to run across speakers that can keep sub-bass harmonics to below -30db, only high quality servo subs even approach -40db (90db+ measurements). The qualitative difference in sub-bass between headphones and speakers leads me to wonder if people aren't less picky about bass hd performance simply because they are so used to hearing it in almost every system. That's actually why I love listening to electronic music through headphones, I'm a sub-bass junkie and HD800/SR009 do it so cleanly. (only orthos I've heard so far roll off below 100hz)

jerg · « **Reply #15 on:** July 25, 2012, 03:42:39 AM »

I can't help but notice that you are comparing the HE500 THD plots measured with velour pads, against HE400 THD with pleather pads. If it's not too much work, would you mind doing HE400 velour THD? This would help minimize variables that aren't the part of the focus here.

LFF · « **Reply #16 on:** July 25, 2012, 05:53:58 AM »

Awesome post Purrin!

Makes sense as to what we have personally observed regarding the HE-500 and HE-400.

I wonder how Schitt's would measure up.

grev · « **Reply #17 on:** July 26, 2012, 08:44:36 AM »

So the HE-500 would have better mids but flabbier bass... I don't know if it's worth it.

jerg · « **Reply #18 on:** July 26, 2012, 11:19:09 AM »

Quote from: grev on July 26, 2012, 08:44:36 AM

So the HE-500 would have better mids but flabbier bass... I don't know if it's worth it.

Depends on your musical priorities.

Don't forget that they are voiced very differently also.

grev · « **Reply #19 on:** July 27, 2012, 12:14:29 AM »

^ You just want me to buy it!

Author Topic: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality. (Read 9556 times)

omegakitty

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

Anaxilus.

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

kurwazajebista

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

TMRaven

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

anetode

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

jerg

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

LFF

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

grev

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

jerg

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

grev

Re: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality.

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Author Topic: HE400 vs. HE500 Non-Linear Distortion and Correlation with Bass Quality. (Read 9556 times)

omegakitty