There's Something About Ultrasone… - Page 7

Nice one, bizkid!

Good photos too, especially enjoy the side-by-sides with the AT, making the PROline 750 look veritably svelte and portable by comparison. Sure beats the heck outta staring at frequency curves, don't it?

All you need now is a decent tissue box!





Best, Dex

I must confess that I feel somewhat conflicted about the whole S-Logic business since it inevitably gets misconstrued as gimmicky and artificial even though it appears to be based upon nothing more fancy than innovative acoustical engineering:

Problem: headphones fire sound directly into ear canal, while sound in nature is processed by the ear in its entirety, utilizing the outer ear as a receptor for spatial orientation and information.

Solution: offset the drivers to also bring the outer ear into play and voice them to take headphone-cup reflections into account.

Simple enough, no? Well, no, not when people interpret it as sonic voodoo.

And no one is more to blame for this than the marketing department at Ultrasone. By applying a vague, computer-ish sounding name to their concept and further muddying the waters with the suggestion that their headphones achieve something approaching "surround sound", they inevitably invite skepticism.

If they had chosen instead to introduce their product simply as "the headphones that sound more like loudspeakers", which is arguably true IMO, I believe folks here might be more receptive. But to a marketing team, this would be dull and unexciting. In this age of lightening speed technology, consumers expect nothing less than magic.

So by coming up with the S-Logic hook, Ultrasone have chosen a marketing tack that mystifies rather than clarifies. And, to be fair, what else could they do? A relatively unknown company, just beginning to reach out for a global market in only the past 5 years, and trying to compete with brands established for better than 30 years.

By opting for the gimmick in order to differentiate and distinguish themselves, the basic and most easily understood concepts behind the engineering simply get lost in the shuffle.

For what it is, as opposed to what it claims to be, S-Logic works. As always, YMMV. It is not an effect, it is a presentation.

Unfortunately, the marketing creates unreasonable expectations and confusion, so reviewers interpret the concept as anything from "crossfeed" to "passive noise-cancellation", to "surround sound". And hype-wary members here seem to either turn and run away or give a cursory listen at a meet and pronounce Ultrasone to be crap.

I kinda makes me wonder if a forum such as Head-Fi was around when electrostatics were introduced whether they would have ever had the opportunity to gain acceptance after running the gauntlet of people disinclined to give anything outside the established status quo a fighting chance.

Of course, Ultrasone is partially vindicated by their having achieved some degree of acceptance in the studio and professional community. And undoubtedly, there are consumers who are impressed by their marketing gibberish.

So hopefully, Ultrasone will continue to grow and innovate. And be comfortable enough in their own skin to tone things down a bit on the marketing front and concentrate on their genuine strengths.

Best, Dex

Much to my own embarrassment, I've just realized that I've been calling the HFI-2200 ULE throughout this thread HiFi-2200 ULE.

And it appears I've got others doing it as well:

Oh well, live and learn.

I'm all for it! Perhaps something along the lines of these, only with offset-driver headphones:









But then how might we best convey the wonderful, mystical magic that is S-Logic???

Until then, I suppose this is the closest we have:

Cheers, Dex

Well, however they've managed to achieve it, they are to be congratulated, as the additional presence has an entirely organic quality to it and better conveys the qualities of a musical performance in space than any conventional cans I've heard.

Dex