Slowest headphones you've ever heard? - Page 5

the stock apple earbuds

I hope to not ruffle too many feathers here...

But first, a funny thing I read on a speaker forum about "fast woofers". A "fast woofer" would be a tweeter.

(BTW, the following is a very rough explanation of what is going on.)

While you can get a subjective impression of speed from a phone, that's really not literally what you are hearing. The speed (time) of a waveform is related to it's frequency spectrum. Take a piano note struck on Middle C. The fundamental is at about 260 Hz. If it were a totally pure note, it would look like a sine wave on an oscilloscope (and sound nothing like a piano). But piano strings vibrate on their fundamental and on the harmonics of the fundamental, such as 2 times (520 Hz), 3 times (780 Hz), 4 times (1040 Hz) etc (more or less). This is called the harmonic series. The relative levels of the fundamental and it's harmonics determine the characteristic tone of a particular instrument. This is why many instruments can play middle C, but they all produce a different characteristic tonal quality playing that note.

So the "speed" of a musical note is limited by it's highest significant harmonic. And the "speed" of a transducer is limited by the highest frequency it can reproduce in any significant amount. And the "speed" of our hearing is limited by the highest frequency one can hear. So basically, a phone that can reproduce above the highest frequency humans can hear is as fast as it needs to be!

So why do some things sound "fast"? There can be a number of possibilities. A bright phone will strike us as fast (because it accentuates those high harmonics) and conversly a duller phone can seem "slow". The same thing can happen at the low frequency end. A phone with an accentuated bass can sound slow, a less full phone can sound fast. These are frequency response effects, but subjective speed can also be a matter of undesirable resonances in the diaphragm. Also, stored and later released energy can make a phone (more so a speaker) sound slow, in the bass especially. A phone with higher intrinsic harmonic distortion can also sometimes seem "fast".

A perfect transducer would sound neither "fast" nor "slow", just natural. Really, the use of "fast and slow" can be more confusing than anything else, though I understand why it's used.

Best, Kevin

Kevin, what is that the highest significant harmonic? Is it depending on the instrument type?

(this is why I really want to learn acoustic physics, but life does not luxurious enough to have me enough time to learn...)

Just MHO, but Orthos are faster than most any dynamic, coming close to the best stats. However, there are some stats (because they're so many of them?) that are not that stupendous. Some of the better Grado's are better than low-end stats (Stax Lambdas?). Personally, I think it's a lazy criticism to say that Grados are just "peaky" and "strident." Some of them may be, but the better ones are truly fast, period. Yes, the peak is still there, but that doesn't mean it's masking slowness - just the opposite. Same for the K701 - often derided because of its amplifier sensitivity, IMHO, it's a truly fast dynamic headphone. Still, orthos are faster. It's just that except for the HE-5 and the Audeze, the only current examples are the Fostex T-50rp (terrible housing and resonance) or vintage phones that were not very well tuned or damped. That may lead to the conclusion with some that they are not very fast - wrong!

Wow, this thread has so much misinformation that it is almost laughable. It was my impression that the speed of a headphone has to do with how responsive the diaphragm is, how fast it can respond to changes in the signal. Factors affecting speed include thickness/weight of the diaphragm. It is for this precise reason that Sennheiser decided to go with a ring driver -- to obtain benefits from a large diameter driver while retaining speed. It is also for this reason that Stax phones are the fastest since their diaphragm is by far the thinnest/lightest.

The reason why planars (orthos/stats) are faster than dynamics is because the diaphragm is controlled in a 2 dimensional plane rather than one-dimensionally like a dynamic. This results in a diaphragm that is more responsive and hence faster.

What if we replaced the term "fast" with "agile"?

I think most folks are referring to the ability to cleanly articulate fast transients in music. This requires a driver that has low mass, high rigidity and durability. A driver that is accurate must also be considered fast, a driver that is not agile will not be accurate. Right?

Yes, it depends on the instrument.

Here is an explanation of two instruments from Wikipedia:

The relative amplitudes (strengths) of the various harmonics primarily determine the timbre of different instruments and sounds, though onset transients, formants, noises, and inharmonicities also play a role. For example, the clarinet and saxophone have similar mouthpieces and reeds, and both produce sound through resonance of air inside a chamber whose mouthpiece end is considered closed. Because the clarinet's resonator is cylindrical, the even-numbered harmonics are suppressed, which produces a purer tone. The saxophone's resonator is conical, which allows the even-numbered harmonics to sound more strongly and thus produces a more complex tone. Of course, the differences in resonance between the wood of the clarinet and the brass of the saxophone also affect their tones. The inharmonic ringing of the instrument's metal resonator is even more prominent in the sounds of brass instruments.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

How fast a driver can respond equates to it's high frequency response. If the ortho/stat measures as having more extended high frequency response than some other phone, then it's has the potential to be "faster", assuming the signal that drives it contains energy high enough in frequency. Of course, beyond a certain frequency, we can't hear the effect of that directly anyway.

How responsive a driver is (to me) how little signal it takes to deflect the driver from it's resting point (you have to exceed the restraining forces due to mass, friction etc). A lighter diaphragm has the potential of being easier to deflect given a particular magnet/electrostatic field strength. But there is a whole slew of other considerations (driver break-up modes, maximum SPL, LF response, etc) and the research involved in designing drivers is not for the faint of heart.

Kevin

You are forgetting the fact that orthos and dynamics are much lower impedance and take a lot more current than an electrostatic. More power = you can move heavier things around just as fast.

Let's look at things at the most basic level.

If you had a 20khz signal being fed to a transducer and there was any significant lag time in reaching that state, in any given second you would have a signal slightly less than 20khz...say 19.8khz for arguments sake. This phenomenon would manifest as a change in FQ response.

People seem to forget that a frequency is a number of cycles per second and any delay would change that. Frequency IS the time domain. Hence there would be resonant artificats all over the place if a transducer was incapable of hitting target frequencies due to significant delays to an impulse.

Electrostatics transducers were (ages ago) terrific at producing high frequencies because of their low mass and ability to vibrate at high frequencies (cycles per second), but were limited in their ability to produce high bass amplitudes because of limited excursion. Dynamic transducers have since advanced to be able to produce both low and exceptionally high frequencies with terrific amplitude; hence their common usage nowadays.

Thanks Kevin, this info and your other posts point me towards information I've been after to understand what is going on with instrument sounds and headphones/speakers.

This thread needs a fire blanket, a fire extinguisher, and a bucket of water.

my friends sa5000 sounded fast to me, havent got to compare with my ad700s but compared to my ath-m50 i can tell a difference in speed. But i think thats just the same concept as a ported sub, the open headphones will probably all sound a bit faster then the closed phones when the dynamics of the music get complex

Is there a guideline of how high the order would it the harmonic still be significant to affect the "intelligibility" of an instrument? (say up to 5th order or higher?)


I think lots of people (including myself) misunderstand or even mixed the concepts of the fastness (which equal to speed) and the responsiveness of the driver... and what we think about "fast driver" is actually should be "responsive driver"... Responsive in this case should still be differentiate between the responsiveness to start and the responsiveness to stop... (the former heard as "dynamics" and the later heard as "decays"?)

This is also what use to be confuse me... how come a driver (say driver on HD650) that can vibrate at 15KHz, still I feel less "fast" (read: slower) then other driver (say ortho on vintage Yamaha HP50) that just barely reach 10KHz... So, from now on, I should think that it is the responsiveness of the driver that is perceived as fastness/slowness of a certain driver...

Thanks a lot for sharing...!

I think sinner6 telling well with the proper term...

To answer the question in the thread title: Beyerdynamic DT880 and Denon AH-D2000 come to mind.

I did not own all 3 of those at the same time, but I did own AD2K & W5K at the same time, and now have AD2K and SA5K. I never did a formal listening comparison between AD2K/W5K or AD2K/SA5K, but I'd say they're all pretty close to each other in terms of their impulse response - which means they're all fast. I'd say the only reason to get either the AD2K or SA5K if you already have the W5K would be for the change in sound quality.