MDR-SA5000... Can they be bettered? - Page 16

They have absolutely no trace of harshness and they let the music through as if the components aren't there at all.

It's funny that you mention Research Methods. I took three semesters of Research Methods in University and if I had to single out a single series of classes that really highlight the scientific method, and produce life-changing ways of thinking, those would be it.

BRAVO BRAVO! Well said - I could not have said it better.

That's the second best description of science I've seen - Richard Dawkins had the best.

I see you chose not to address any of my brilliant points in my previous post, but no matter...

Funny, I do many of these things every day without making a single measurement. I think what you mean was that someone at one point had to make measurements to make these things possible. True that.

Measurements are just measurements. I know that because I used to do them for a living. The question is how to interpret the results and there can be considerable subjectivity there.

Even the people who determine the standards argue about how a headphone should measure! If you have read this already, forgive me, if not this may shed some light.

Stereophile: Between the Ears: the art and science of measuring headphones

And if you told me "the signal is attenuated by 3db at 250hz" I would ask relative to what.

Psychoacoustics is not a "a confounding variable" to scientists in the field, it is part and parcel of the science (and part and parcel of the "thing itself", human hearing and perception), but I guess it is to you.

As a physicist friend of mine used to say, "Rocket science is not rocket science, you know".

I don't know how many people on Head-fi are "anti-science" and I am not aware of any study done on this. Perhaps you see anti-scientists under every rock, but I am not anti-science. I have worked in technical and scientific fields most of my life. But I don't have to make measurements to listen and comment on headphones and I can respect other people's perceptions.

In the case of the measurements on Headroom, while I am grateful for them and do consult them, are not anything like peer reviewed. Scientific papers would require measuring multiple samples and much more stringent measurement conditions. But that's not what the Headroom measurements are, they are "for educational and entertainment purposes only, please, no wagering".

And I treat them as such.

Kevin

By anti-science he means we're not trusting measurements as much as he'd like. But it's not that simple, he has to reconsider his belief that measuring headphones with a microphone is 100% accurate, which can only be true if every person on the planet has the same exact ear shape, or the measuring method is just that amazing. If he can scientifically prove that everyone has the same exact ear shape or that headroom's SA5000 graph is 100% accurate for every ear shape, then I'll say he's right.

True, nothing has any "meaning" without a mind assigning meaning. But music is not "just sine waves". It is particular combinations of sine waves. Some evoke emotion and meaning, some combinations don't. It's their arrangement by a thinking mind that counts. People who see music as "just a bunch of sine waves" miss a lot of enjoyment and beauty in their lives, in my view.

Hmmm... can a person's perception be incorrect? It's just their perception. It may differ from a external standard but... ahhh too philosophical for a Saturday morning.

The "factual data" is important to designers, reserchers and wise asses like me, but the ultimate purpose of music is not to have something for us to measure. It's to evoke emotions and reactions in the mind of the listener.

Well, it wouldn't be sound then, would it?

The sound they desire is the sound they desire. Some people desire a literal re-creation of the original musical event. Some people desire a reproduction of the recording, for better or worse. Some people want a beautiful sound that evokes a pleasureable sensation. They are all reasonable approaches to the enjoyment of music with their own strategies to achieve their goal. I respect them all...

Kevin

Sorry, but I didn't mean what I wrote as rebuttal, just as an exchange. And, believe it or not, I actually agree with you quite a bit and try to inject a bit of the science of things (as I have come to understand it) into my posts, anything that fosters greater understanding is certainly a good thing, which is presumedly why people post on Head-fi.

My point is that none of this invalidates poster's experiences (and I suspect you would agree with this). Experience is how we get from where we are to where we are going and as people learn more I think they tend to integrate the science and art of the matter more.

There is every level and strategy of understanding here on Head-fi. I think there is something to learn from all of it, though I would never insist that they are all of equal value. Which is, in itelf, a subjective assessment, I guess...

Kevin

I'm short on time so I'll answer your most basic question. The signal attenuated at 3db at 250hz is relative to the input signal on the recording. Simple as that. Arguing that science is wrong because measuring devices are innacurate is a cheap way out of a scientific discussion. It's the best apparatus we have, and certainly more accurate than human ears.

All human ears are different, as are all human test subjects, but you can't control for them perfectly; the best you can do is sample enough of them, create an artificial standard, or cancel that variable out. Saying "we can't argue this because everyone's ears are different" creates a reality whereby you can't falsify a hypothesis, and therefore you can't have a scientific discussion. It's a logical fallacy if I've ever seen one.

We're not arguing that science is wrong "because measuring devices are inaccurate", just that a one-size fits all headphone measurement isn't easy to do when considering everyone has unique hrtf's that can be very different. Dr. Florian Koenig, the lead engineer of Ultrasone, says that which headphone is best for you would depend very much on your individual hrtf, and that he uses an old HFI-2000 adapted to his individual hrtf as opposed to say one of Ultrasone's top tier studio headphones.

If you grilled Koenig or the engineers at Sony about why their headphones often have crazy graphs and the subjective impression of a recessed midrange, I'm sure they could provide you with their scientific data, assuming they cared enough to.

You still haven't really told me anything. Is this a high Q, sharp resonance or a wideband dip? Very different things.

I am not arguing that the science is "wrong" concerning headphones, just that it's incomplete. The idea that our measuring devices have inaccuracies, that there can be errors in measurement technique and that there is no real consensus in the literature on how a headphone SHOULD measure is the heart of the scientific matter, at least at the present state of the art.

In the meantime, our ear/brain system is the "thing itself", it's the reason we make and care about measurements in the first place. The point is not to ignore measurements, but to understand their limitations. Listening is in the great scientific tradition of observation, we need to understand the limitations there, also.

So you are saying that measurements are not definitive. I agree!

We can (and do) argue technical standards and we are right now having a scientific discussion, therefore there is no logical fallacy. But we can't argue away the idea that everyone's ears are different, that is a scientific fact, both observable and measurable. From a scientific viewpoint, that (and other factors concerning our perception of sound through the medium of headphones) complicates our models, to be sure. The complications are enough that the reserchers in this field haven't come to firm conclusions (as noted in the article I referenced earlier), so I am not so egotistical as to think I can .

Kevin

Kevin

Greetings,

These are a special HP... I'm about 1/2 way thru my burn in... I've been listening to every thing from Mozart, to ACDC... I love them...

What I believe is called the sound stage is some where around row 10, right now... I expect to get to row 6... The clarity is WOW... on the bright side... The bass is there but will pick up as they age... I'm using a FUBAR 4+ amp thru my computer sound card... I'll report back on these SA5000's later on...

I'm burning some of my CD's to both 320 & FLAC... I really can't tell any difference...

hagatha

I've just pulled the trigger on a pair of new MDR-SA5000s and they are on their way here as we speak!

I've been looking for a pair of full-sized cans that share the exact same qualities as the UM3X that i so dearly love and after reading this thread as well as the other 2 MDR-SA5000 impressions threads, i'm really looking forward to them arriving sometime early next week.

With terms like transparency, detail, clarity, speed, resolution tossed around and used so liberally in describing these cans, i think i may just have gotten my own personal holy grail of full-size cans.

Only time will tell!

Not to mention comfort and looks.