CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Music and Recordings => Topic started by: Anaxilus. on May 06, 2012, 04:58:43 AM
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Been lightly following the 'iTunes Mastered', DSD, subjective, objective thing for a bit so I figured the time was right to prime the well here. Since Herr Hertsens and Herr Guttenberg are feeding the beast and Neil Young forgot he was a musician I figured it only made sense. Even Schiit might feel obliged to drop a load. Since we have a semi-literate, post adolescent population (Rex excluded) this seems like a good place to have constructive dialogue.
To start off:
http://arstechnica.com//apple/news/2012/04/does-mastered-for-itunes-matter-to-music-ars-puts-it-to-the-test.ars (http://arstechnica.com//apple/news/2012/04/does-mastered-for-itunes-matter-to-music-ars-puts-it-to-the-test.ars)
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/why-neil-young-hates-mp3-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/ (http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/02/why-neil-young-hates-mp3-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/)
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience (http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience)
Anybody feel free to link relevant neutral/natural threads if they like.
Have at it!
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FIRST!
Placeholder...while I cool down and put down some notes.....
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I chimed in on the objective/subjective Innerfidelity thread. Guttenberg would not let it go and kept going in the lightly commented Innerfidelity review about the Philips L1:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/handsome-philips-fidelio-l1#comment-483189
However, I'm not sure how honest Guttenberg is about his own position. He keeps putting down measurements, and keeps advocating that their are completely unnecessary. But he is very careful about his words. He avoids a direct confrontation about measurements ability to predict sonic characteristics. One of his strongest arguments is how Grado, which he argues is a great can, is developed by ear. To start of, he kept saying in the past that he review amps with his well regarded HD580, so obviously he is not a Grado man. Second, most people have not heard half of the headphones available in the market and do not have access to most of them anyway (I've yet to hear an HD600 for example), so most of us go by word of mouth. Easy to think that Grados are the best thing there is if you come from ibuds, and headbands...
I would be surprised if someone like Guttenberg honestly believes measurements are unnecessary. On the other hand, I can see how an article like that is aimed at producing controversy and increase reader contribution and why not say it: $$$. I don't know, it just sounds like a waste of time to me. It seems to me Guttenberg believes he has little to lose by supporting the subjective stand (which I again, I don't really think he believes himself) because he might feel his reviews are typically cursory and apparently aimed at more casual readers... I would be careful about that if I was him though.
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While I think there is an honest disagreement between the two I do think there is quite a bit of theater going on. It's better to focus on the more central core of the debate rather than the extremes. Saying measurements are useless is as equally worthless as saying the ear is completely unreliable so we should avoid that. Maybe that should be a parameter.
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SG is the master of nebulousness. I've never seen SG truly criticize a product or even explain anything on how a headphone sounds like. Believing in objective measurements would suddenly put him in the awkward position of having to explain himself.
At least he's not as bad as Robert H Levi of Positive Feedback.
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While I think there is an honest disagreement between the two I do think there is quite a bit of theater going on. It's better to focus on the more central core of the debate rather than the extremes. Saying measurements are useless is as equally worthless as saying the ear is completely unreliable so we should avoid that. Maybe that should be a parameter.
+1
I haven't read through the articles yet, but this is a good thought to consider going forward. Too often this subjective vs. objective thing turns into extremism.
What's the general consensus and basic assumptions around these parts?
1. Objective measurements are an extremely useful tool to provide insight on what we're hearing.
2. Measurements aren't the final word, and in its current understanding may provide an incomplete picture of what we hear
3. Subjective impressions can be very susceptible to bias, and can be unreliable
4. There are ways to mitigate bias and unreliability of subjective listening (training, testing against reference, blind testing etc.)
Not exactly sure if #2 and #4 are necessarily a consensus here.
I guess most of the friction comes when objective measurements don't coincide with subjective listening. I tend to believe in those cases that maybe measurements don't tell the whole story.
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I think if a headphone sounds good and measures poorly you either have crap ears or there's something wrong with the measurement system (bad data or missing data). Around here, I'd tend to blame the measurements. On head-fi I'd be a bit more inclined to blame the ear at least partially.
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Please explain Wharfedale ID-1. Kthxbye.
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Measurements are a form of communication. It does take a some effort and learning to understand the language of measurements.
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience#comment-483209 (http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience#comment-483209)
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience#comment-483210 (http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/are-objective-headphone-measurements-relevant-audiophiles-subjective-experience#comment-483210)
If it seems like I'm needling SG a bit, it is. As reviewer, he should understand the need to effectively communicate to his... Oh WTF. I'm not going to bother.
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Maybe it is that SG is old and inflexible in his views. However, he is a professional audio reviewer. Even if his background is not technical, he should make an effort on evaluating equipment from all angles. One cannot dismiss other metrics of evaluation EVEN if in the reviewer's flawed subjective view they "don't bring anything else to the table." I often find it elegant when a system scores high in almost all types of evaluations. I don't know, SG has been in the field too long for him not to give objectivity its dues, regardless of his background.
Subjectively reviewing and developing an audio product is dangerous. From what I've learned we are not all sensitive to the same frequency response issues. A headphone with NO issues is likely to appeal to a broader audience, and outperform its pears. A headphone with certain issues at 6kHz but not at 2kHz may appeal to a narrower audience that is insensitive to 6kHz... Steve's sensitivities are likely not universal... I find that believing one has universal reference level golden ears that will catch any offending issues in a headphone is a bit arrogant and flawed. Even when doing objective evaluations, one can make mistakes or incorrect assumptions.
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Please explain Wharfedale ID-1. Kthxbye.
:) Yeah, that's a great example. I haven't heard them so I can't make any guesses. But I can say that we haven't seen CSD's of them. Square waves is only one aspect. I'm pretty sure I could make an ortho nail the square wave and sound like rubbish. But still, if all the measurements we can do come out poorly with the ID1 and they sound good, then we clearly aren't measuring everything.
The Sextett is another good example. Sounds a lot better than the CSD's here suggest.
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I think Stevesie might be speaking out against measurements because he's scared of being held accountable and looking bad for something like praising Grados as "neutral" or "accurate" and he'd rather have free reign to say whatever he wants.
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BTW... Here is another opinion:
http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/odac-released.html?showComment=1335703416203#c6528402386841868823 (http://nwavguy.blogspot.com/2012/04/odac-released.html?showComment=1335703416203#c6528402386841868823)
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The Sextett is another good example. Sounds a lot better than the CSD's here suggest.
i think so too. might have lp's instead but i don't think they would measure too different compared to your EP's. only gripe i have with my LP's is around 8k slight peak. it's only noticeable with certain tracks. also not really being too picky but i wished the treble/top had bit better clarity like my 240DF's as well, but from the low-bass to the midrange my LP's are glorious sounding and still one of my favorites right next to my DF's.
i also have a feeling something like the pioneer monitor 10 wouldn't measure too well either maybe but do sound very good to me and one of best closed headphones i ever used that i remember. sucks i sold it though.
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As for the Sextetts, it's matter of interpreting the measurements. The ringing is at 4k and 12+kHz. Ringing in these areas is much more benign than ringing from 6-11kHz. Also the Sextett's have a broad bass bump that integrates smoothly into the mid-range. FR + CSDs should explain almost everything.
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And distortion right? Those Coby's measured fairly clean but sounded like a muffled resonant mish mash
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Measurements are good I reckon, if they can be related to what we hear. Too often people argue for or against them, neither having a clue about what they mean and only wanting to be right, rather than actually learn anything.
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The best way to use measurements is to find something you like and then use it's measurements as a reference point to estimate how well you'll like other things.
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And distortion right? Those Coby's measured fairly clean but sounded like a muffled resonant mish mash
They had good treble though.
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Please explain Wharfedale ID-1. Kthxbye.
:) Yeah, that's a great example. I haven't heard them so I can't make any guesses. But I can say that we haven't seen CSD's of them. Square waves is only one aspect. I'm pretty sure I could make an ortho nail the square wave and sound like rubbish. But still, if all the measurements we can do come out poorly with the ID1 and they sound good, then we clearly aren't measuring everything.
anyone want them measured? I know where to find them.
I would best describe myself as being on the fence. This applies to headphones and most any audio equipment. I do believe that the appropriate measurements can identify some areas of deficiency and that extreme badness in measurements usually tells the truth. The trouble comes from , for the sake of argument, the LCD3 FR plots - people making comments about which ones are inflected versus the chosen subspecies. The CSD plots provide a lot of data, not all of which I understand but I can see how ringing at certain frequencies relates to the audio truth. Perhaps even more difficult to interpret are the THD measurements of amplification devices. I know for a fact that I frequently prefer amps that have a "higher" THD ( 0.001 ) versus those that are 0.00000000001% , yet most people balk at the notion that any given amplification device have as high a distortion rating as 1/10% . Nelson Pass's FirstWatt series would be popular examples here. There are so many extreme views, I believe we need to learn to give ourselves more credit and trust what we hear, regardless of confounding data. This will mean that we will have different opinions as to what sounds good and that's ok..dB
edit - reading this before I posted makes me sound more in the SG camp , but I am not anti measurements. I can see the benefit especially if you know something is "off" but can't pinpoint it and the data then identifies a quirk which you can relate to your experience. Bottom line is that not everything that measures well sounds great and vice versa
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"THD specs" as used in the industry are fairly useless. For amps, it doesn't make as much sense because distortion at the transducer is a magnitude higher or more. I would prefer to see full spectrum distortion graphs at pre-defined sets (several single and multi-tones). They are much more useful than a number. To a large extent, it's the quality of distortion that counts more than quantity.
For transducers, three measurements will tell you a lot: frequency response (mildly smoothed at most), CSD, and some good non-linear distortion plots like this. These three measurements have never failed me in helping me select a speaker driver for use (there are a few netizens out there who have put together quite a lot of data on speaker drivers.) They have saved me quite a bit of time and money. And believe it or not, I can tell you how a driver will sound like based on these three measurements.
The problem comes when people use the wrong graphs, i.e. overly smoothed FR, square waves, etc. and interpret or use them incorrectly.
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Zaph's distortion graphs are a great example of doing it right. There's also the GedLee metric - http://www.gedlee.com/downloads/Distortion_AES_II.pdf - which, sadly I've never seen in use.
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It's only recently that I've found any measurement to be very useful. The Headroom FR + square wave + distortion graphs were cool, but didn't correlate that well to my experience with a headphone- they could measure really well and sound terrible, and vice versa. Marv's CSD's are the first measurements I've ever found useful as an indication of how I will like a headphone. Which may be because they are measuring the aspect of a headphone's performance that I'm most concerned with, and which is most often very problematic. They've actually provided solid proof of why I've been so frustrated trying to find decent sounding headphones, and why I've had such an easy time finding a decent pair of speakers (only ever bought one pair of speakers in my life, and I've gone through probably a hundred headphones) It still isn't perfect whether it's the measurements, or more likely my ability to read them I'm not sure. I have noticed that I can be quite confident in knowing that I won't like a headphone based on serious resonance problems in these CSD's, but headphones that measure pretty well are more ambiguous to me. Though I'm getting better at combining FR with the CSD's to know better. The HD800 is a good example because it's really clean but has FR issues that bug me. I've learned things like a dip in the lower mids/upper bass seems to wind up sounding bad to me- cold or lacking warmth/body. While dips in the upper mids aren't necessarily a bad thing for me. And jagged FR in the treble or upper mids isn't a good sign even if it's not elevated. etc...
I have no idea how to read distortion graphs, but have no reason to at this point. There are so few headphones that have clean response in terms of resonances, that it's pretty easy to just listen to them myself. It's only a small handful, most of which I've heard already.
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On the topic of measurements, what's the significance of phase response measurements? How do we interpret them?
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On the topic of measurements, what's the significance of phase response measurements? How do we interpret them?
That is a very good question. JA makes a mention of it here:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs5-loudspeaker-measurements-part-2
http://www.stereophile.com/content/thiel-cs6-loudspeaker-measurements-part-3
Also, what would happen if the phase of the left driver is different from the one in the right driver?
I know there are some all pass filters whose job is to affect the phase:
https://ccrma.stanford.edu/~jos/pasp/Allpass_Filters.html
http://www.prosoundweb.com/article/demystifying_and_overlooked_tool_using_all_pass_filters_to_improve_directiv/
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Different phase response between L+R would throw off soundstage big time. I've intentionally tried it.
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Imaging as well I'd suspect.
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Yeah, like the singer coming from 270 degree behind you.
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I can see 2, 3, and 4 way IEM having to overcome phase issues due to the cross overs.
How about the bast majority of single driver headphones? My only guess is that phase issues may happen due to internal reflections in the cups (dampening and stuff). Phase issues may be worse here since reflections can introduce standing waves producing large peaks and suck outs. Ultrasone would be an interesting study can given it's amazing 3 tap impulse response (two reflections even coming at 180 degrees!)
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Dual BAs are surprisingly coherent. Triples/3 ways are the worst for me.
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I was close to buy the Triple-Fi's. But decided for the single BA Phonak PFE, and there went my chance to listen to 3 way BAs... I can develop painful wax build up with IEMs, and I shy away from them for that reason.
I would like to post this interesting reading which focuses on objective and subjective headphone evaluations (personally not done reading it)... Some of our favorite cans measured there as well... Hope you guys enjoy:
www.acoustics.hut.fi/publications/files/theses/hirvonen_mst.pdf
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It's only recently that I've found any measurement to be very useful. The Headroom FR + square wave + distortion graphs were cool, but didn't correlate that well to my experience with a headphone- they could measure really well and sound terrible, and vice versa. Marv's CSD's are the first measurements I've ever found useful as an indication of how I will like a headphone. Which may be because they are measuring the aspect of a headphone's performance that I'm most concerned with, and which is most often very problematic.
Yeah, same here. The CSD thread on HF was the first time I truly felt that measurements provided an intuitively illustrated correlation of what we hear with headphones, other than FR graphs on Headroom and IF. Admittedly, I still can't truly read a square wave response graph (or correlate it to how I should be hearing it), but I can't imagine it being as intuitive as a CSD, where you can easily spot problem areas at certain frequencies.
My earlier comments about objective measurements not yet providing the whole picture had more to do with things like how you can't tell how big a headphone's soundstage is, or the effect of different amps on headphones (as two examples). Or how perfectly measuring amps don't necessarily equate to a great listening experience. There's still some domains where your ears will ultimately must be the judge.