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Possible explanation for CD3K's huge soundstage - Page 2

post #16 of 21
12/17/03 at 12:46pm
hmmm, I seem to have caused a bit of confusion. The effect that I was refering to is not crossfeed. It is a delayed reflection of the back side emission from the same driver. I was trying to point out that the end effect is perceived much like crossfeed.

Many open headphones use this effect as well (including the HD600/650).

As far as the K1000 go, I have found no evidence of crossfeed. I went so far as to cut a block of acoustic foam to fit around my head to nullify any effect that was there. No change. What I did find was that there is a significant amount of signal reaching the right ear from the back side of the right driver (with the same happening on the left side). To Geek's point, this effect is maximal when the drivers are folded wide open, and minimal when they are right against the pinea.

Sorry to muddy the waters, but it is a fun discussion.

gerG
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post #17 of 21
12/17/03 at 6:29pm
Quote:
Originally posted by gerG
Doing some uncoupled measurements with a test mic I found that a lot of that signal was coming out of the "windows" which surround the drivers. My first thought was: "those sly bastards!". They are letting some of the backside signal back in to create an effect that is much like crossfeed.
Fascinating. Must have been a narrow-dispersion mic you used in order to isolate the sound coming from the "window surrounding the drivers" from the sound coming from the driver itself.
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post #18 of 21
12/17/03 at 8:40pm
You know the other sly trick headphone designers could use to create an illusion of a larger sounstage? By having only one earcup (either left or right) diffuse field equalised, but not the other side. When left and right sides are phase-mismatched or frequency-mismatched, you get this strangely warped soundstage, which for some listeners could lead to an illusion or interpretation of an increased soundstage size.
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post #19 of 21
12/17/03 at 9:11pm
Music Fanatic,

That's why there's an "almost" in the "almost no crossfeed" phrase: it implies that you can dramatically reduce crossfeed by angling the earcups differently, which is a consensus amongst most K-1000 owners (and a truly useful plus to owning one: don't like the soundstage being so vast? angle the earcups inwards).

The point is that crossfeed between the channels of an HD600 does not naturally occur much at all; the effect is too insignificant to be noticed, and that the K1000 is designed with natural crossfeed in mind whereas the HD600 is definitely not.

Cheers,
Geek
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post #20 of 21
12/17/03 at 9:29pm
An interesting trick with the K-1000 is to slowly increase, then decrease the angle of the drivers. What you hear with the drivers close is a very compressed sound stage. As the angle widens, the staging will spead until you hit the sweet spot, and the acoustic area is right there with you. The openness of the headphone can create the very eerie illusion that you're in two acoustical spaces at the same time (one is the room surrounding you, and the other is the space of the recorded music). If you widen the angle past the sweet spot, the coherence of the image is lost, and the illusion of reality disappears. Sounds become diffuse instead of focussed, and the magic of the headphone is lost.

The sound when you've got the angle just right, when the image is large and clear, just before it starts to spead too far and come apart, is equalled by no other headphone.
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post #21 of 21
12/17/03 at 10:25pm
Fascinating observation.
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