CHANGSTAR: Audiophile Headphone Reviews and Early 90s Style BBS
Lobby => Headphone Measurements => Topic started by: Marvey on July 23, 2012, 05:28:58 AM
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Thanks to LFF for loaning me his HE500. I've long been curious to see these distortion measurements against each other. A few people have commented at how the HE500 bass is a little bit muddy or atonal. Not annoyingly so, but just a little bit. I know it didn't bother RD or me, but we also felt it was definitely there.
I actually own the HE400, and have always felt that the HE400, despite its much lower price, had better quality bass than the HE500. Having made a substantial effort to demonstrate to yet another one of those know-it-all-noobs on HF: (http://www.head-fi.org/t/595683/fostex-th900-impressions-discussion-thread/1350#post_8550368 (http://www.head-fi.org/t/595683/fostex-th900-impressions-discussion-thread/1350#post_8550368)) the correlation between distortion and bass quality, it would indeed be embarrassing to me if the harmonic distortion measurements didn't pan out in this case. Whew! Good thing that they did. (I really wasn't that concerned as I've been taking similar types of measurements on speaker drivers years ago.)
The first set of two are the HE500 measurements (channels don't match well, but I ran the measurements twice to confirm they are legit). The second set are the HE400 measurements. In REGARDS TO THE BASS (< 70Hz): While 2nd order harmonic distortion remains the same, we see much more 3rd order distortion (orange line) on the HE500. 3rd order distortion actually hits 0.1% by 70Hz on the HE500. Whereas for the HE400, 3rd order distortion remains visibly lower and consistent between 0.02% to 0.06%.
The HE500 does seem to fare better throughout the rest of the spectrum however. The HE400 seems to choke in the lower mids.
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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 :-Z It'd be nice to have more objective basis for the bass quality though. Thanks for taking the time to make these.
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Purrin, do you see any noticeable difference between the grills of both units ? Some believe there was a change during production that yields lower resonance on the HE500. Maybe there's a link there.
Nice measurements by the way. I'm getting to know my headphones better and better thanks to you.
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I don't see a difference in the grills of these two units.
Whatever order the distortion, as long as it's high enough, is detrimental. Some feel that odd order distortion (3rd) sounds worse than even order (2nd). There's an old argument that SE tube amps which have artificially high 2nd order distortion are euphonic. Personally I think this is BS, and any kind of distortion at a high enough level sounds bad.
People think of distortion as crackling, fuzziness, etc. But that's gross distortion. Lower levels of distortion can still be audible and translate into more subtle effects such as lack of clarity or a dirtiness with the sound-floor (a grey instead of a black background so to speak.)
Bass distortion is easily heard as muddiness, thickness, indistinctness with tone, etc. or worse!
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Thanks for checking the grills Purrin. Much appreciated.
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Yeah, the HE400s grills are also made of steel, I thought they were plastic but after doing the grill mods (linked in the HE400 velour thread here), I realized that it's metallic underneath the black paint. The issue with mids/highs distortion with HE400 is entirely driver-related, as everything else is identical to the construction of the HE500s.
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I think it was discussed somewhere else on this site that the distortion was because of its very coarse trace pattern on the diaphragm. The fact that the HE400 even makes noise, much less sounds good, is a wonder.
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.
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just for comparison, can u post the NLD graphs for lcd2/3...to see if they correlate with their famed low frequency reproduction...
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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...
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If I have time, I will try the same measurement without a seal or placed a cm away from the coupler. Should be interesting.
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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.
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I recall hearing the mids, specifically the vocal ranges, having a weirdness going on in the 400. It would seem to be distortion then.
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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.
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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.
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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 :-Z 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)
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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.
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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. :)p10
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So the HE-500 would have better mids but flabbier bass... I don't know if it's worth it.
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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.
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^ You just want me to buy it! :)p2
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IMO midrange is much more important than bass. So I wouldn't jump to that conclusion just from the distortion measurements. But I haven't heard the HE400 yet
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I guess I'm the opposite. :P But I guess I'll buy the HE-500 sooner or later.