Multi-Custom In-Ear Monitor Review, Resource, Mfg List & Discussion (26 reviews: UM PP6 added... - Page 142

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Originally Posted by tomscy2000 

BTW, does anyone know what happened to FreQ as a brand? I can't seem to find anything about them, except on ancient head-fi threads...

As a former SuperFreq owner, I'm pretty sure they closed up shop about 2 years ago - their website certainly hasn't been operational in a long long time.

True. They closed for "retooling" in late 2008 "in an effort to make our growth as successful as possible". Their temporary splash page mentioned that they hoped to reopen after New Year. They didn't specify which year though, and this page remained up for several years before they finally stopped paying for the domain name. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by piotrus-g 

If I may add my 5 cents here.

 

The frequency graph basically tells you nothing about actual sound unless you had cascade response graph. Because only the CSD can tell you how sound propagates in time. The quarter wave graph can tell you how accurate the bass is. But the simple FR doesn't.

Also each manufacturer measure it's earphone in different conditions thus you can't compare some graphs to other.

There's also no way to make an avarage to the description of the sound. In this case people' ear canals and tympanums has different shape hardness etc. that said one can hear very differently from another.

There are certain IEC recommended ear couplers - that'd make for at least comparable results if identically compensated. Very easy construction too. Not that great for very high frequencies. (Also, I have acquired HEAD ID decoder ring too.)

The static and dynamic behavior can be analyzed separately - it's the static part that causes coloration.

Inordinate amount of high frequency ringing can sound pretty bad without any coloration present though (even if equalized, e.g. GR07 sibilant 6 kHz ringing; RE272 had 4k ringing giving it bell-like "electric" sound).

Similarly "weird" decays can be caught, e.g. "slowness", reverberated ranges, "bass bleed" - these don't apply to BAs usually.

Also CSDs cannot be really made for low frequencies, as that'd require super low noise very long impulse response measurement.

Sometimes resonant peaks can be noted directly in the frequency response - but I'd be careful about it in BA IEMs.

THD/frequency charts work relatively well for detecting audible bass/mids distortion, but seem to not be too predictive of higher frequency behavior. (grain or warmth depending on the order.)

The reason why in case of BAs CSDs likely don't matter is that they just don't ring due to the tiny size of the driver moving tiny volume of air and relatively large amounts of mechanical and/or magnetic dampening applied. At least not the newer wideband models, or even older when shelved by an n-way crossfeed below or above resonance.

And if there is resonance, it's in multiple tiny peaks it seems, much less obtrusive than long ones of large magnitude.

Undampened BA models probably have one ringing spike, in 3-5kHz range? (I've heard 2 with this feature)

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Originally Posted by nyonya   As a former SuperFreq owner, I'm pretty sure they closed up shop about 2 years ago - their website certainly hasn't been operational in a long long time.

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Originally Posted by project86   True. They closed for "retooling" in late 2008 "in an effort to make our growth as successful as possible". Their temporary splash page mentioned that they hoped to reopen after New Year. They didn't specify which year though, and this page remained up for several years before they finally stopped paying for the domain name. 

Ah. Thanks. That's what I figured; I really only asked because of its name. JH Audio debuted 'new technology' that they call Freq phase/time or whatever, and it reminded me of the brand. Anyway, JH is now saying that the JH13 and JH16 are the only CIEMs on the planet that are proven to be perfectly time and phase aligned. Apparently, Jerry Harvey seems pretty proud of that fact, because he keeps mentioning that it took him 16 years to figure out how to do it, but I really don't know whether it's all that significant or whether Jerry Harvey is just blowing a lot of smoke (which has been known to happen). He mentions that a 'competitor's' 6-driver 3-way design has bass that is almost 180 degrees out of phase, while his JH13 isn't. The only real thing that it proves is that the competitor has a poorly designed crossover circuit. With regard to time alignment, I imagine that he managed to get the tubing length/diameter ratios correct. I guess it's an achievement, but at the same time, I don't know how much more benefit it'll reap. No matter how disparate the time alignment is inside customs, it doesn't differ by much. Yet, JH is claiming that, with perfect phase/time alignment, you'll get a lot more clarity and resolution out of the 10 to 2 o'clock positions of the stereo image. I want to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt, but something smells weird.

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomscy2000 

Ah. Thanks. That's what I figured; I really only asked because of its name. JH Audio debuted 'new technology' that they call Freq phase/time or whatever, and it reminded me of the brand. Anyway, JH is now saying that the JH13 and JH16 are the only CIEMs on the planet that are proven to be perfectly time and phase aligned. Apparently, Jerry Harvey seems pretty proud of that fact, because he keeps mentioning that it took him 16 years to figure out how to do it, but I really don't know whether it's all that significant or whether Jerry Harvey is just blowing a lot of smoke (which has been known to happen). He mentions that a 'competitor's' 6-driver 3-way design has bass that is almost 180 degrees out of phase, while his JH13 isn't. The only real thing that it proves is that the competitor has a poorly designed crossover circuit. With regard to time alignment, I imagine that he managed to get the tubing length/diameter ratios correct. I guess it's an achievement, but at the same time, I don't know how much more benefit it'll reap. No matter how disparate the time alignment is inside customs, it doesn't differ by much. Yet, JH is claiming that, with perfect phase/time alignment, you'll get a lot more clarity and resolution out of the 10 to 2 o'clock positions of the stereo image. I want to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt, but something smells weird.

 the sennheiser guy said this on gizmodo the other day, so i can't say for jerry's solution, but the problem does exist:

AxelGrell

Balanced armature drivers were originally developed as small, high efficiency narrow band transducers for hearing aids. There undistorted maximum SPL is limited. you have to use sveral of them for a good wideband sound reproduction. Multiway systems have the disadvantage of time differences between the signals from the different drivers (a well known problem with loudspeakers). A single, well engineered dynamic driver can do it better

Quote:

Originally Posted by tomscy2000 

 

Ah. Thanks. That's what I figured; I really only asked because of its name. JH Audio debuted 'new technology' that they call Freq phase/time or whatever, and it reminded me of the brand. Anyway, JH is now saying that the JH13 and JH16 are the only CIEMs on the planet that are proven to be perfectly time and phase aligned. Apparently, Jerry Harvey seems pretty proud of that fact, because he keeps mentioning that it took him 16 years to figure out how to do it, but I really don't know whether it's all that significant or whether Jerry Harvey is just blowing a lot of smoke (which has been known to happen). He mentions that a 'competitor's' 6-driver 3-way design has bass that is almost 180 degrees out of phase, while his JH13 isn't. The only real thing that it proves is that the competitor has a poorly designed crossover circuit. With regard to time alignment, I imagine that he managed to get the tubing length/diameter ratios correct. I guess it's an achievement, but at the same time, I don't know how much more benefit it'll reap. No matter how disparate the time alignment is inside customs, it doesn't differ by much. Yet, JH is claiming that, with perfect phase/time alignment, you'll get a lot more clarity and resolution out of the 10 to 2 o'clock positions of the stereo image. I want to give Harvey the benefit of the doubt, but something smells weird.

Even if there is some truth to this, it strikes me as disingenuous just based on the source. 

Is Jerry really telling us that all those "breakthrough" products such as the JH13 and JH16, which at the time he called "revolutionary" and such, were actually quite flawed due to phase issues? Funny how he didn't mention that at the time. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by project86 

 

Even if there is some truth to this, it strikes me as disingenuous just based on the source. 

 

Is Jerry really telling us that all those "breakthrough" products such as the JH13 and JH16, which at the time he called "revolutionary" and such, were actually quite flawed due to phase issues? Funny how he didn't mention that at the time. 

I think it really is a mixture of Harvey sincerely wanting to get everything aligned and another matter their trying to trademark whatever they were trying to do with the JH3A and getting it to be a marketable 'feature'.

My guess is that JH learned a lot of stuff with the JH3A, and have been able to trickle down improvements to their stuff since then. How much improvement, I don't know. At the same time, however, they're trying to emphasize their 'achievement' because it's marketing fodder, just as they did so back in the day. He claimed that he was able to time/phase align the JH13 and JH16 back in 2010 as well, though he didn't claim that it was perfect. A lot of what he says is indeed marketing; he doesn't mince words when he claims that he makes a 10 dB bump to the JH16 at 50 Hz, but then he claims that it goes back down to accurate at 125 Hz, which is clearly not true, if we base off GE's measurements and the impressions of users. Then again, the words that he uses are always within the 'grey area' when it comes to truth and marketing. In the end, I guess we just all have to trust our own ears.

Quote:

Originally Posted by project86 

 

 

Even if there is some truth to this, it strikes me as disingenuous just based on the source. 

 

Is Jerry really telling us that all those "breakthrough" products such as the JH13 and JH16, which at the time he called "revolutionary" and such, were actually quite flawed due to phase issues? Funny how he didn't mention that at the time. 

Remember how Jerry used to claim that his armatures [from Knowles and Sonion] were "two times faster" than everyone else's [from Knowles and Sonion]?

Yeah, Jerry straight up lies in his desire to sell. It's a serious character flaw. The whole JH3A debacle was rife with Jerry saying things that just weren't true and he knew that they weren't true.

Having said that, as I've said many times, he's the one who basically opened up the ciem market to audiophiles and began to really focus on non-professional users. So, he deserves respect for that. Rawrster was the one who originally pointed that out to me.

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Originally Posted by Kunlun 

Remember how Jerry used to claim that his armatures [from Knowles and Sonion] were "two times faster" than everyone else's [from Knowles and Sonion]?

 

Yeah, Jerry straight up lies in his desire to sell. It's a serious character flaw. The whole JH3A debacle was rife with Jerry saying things that just weren't true and he knew that they weren't true.

 

Having said that, as I've said many times, he's the one who basically opened up the ciem market to audiophiles and began to really focus on non-professional users. So, he deserves respect for that. Rawrster was the one who originally pointed that out to me.

Agreed on the respect/distrust dichotomy.

He obviously knows how to make IEMs that people enjoy listening to - I wish he'd just stick to that instead of all the marketing BS. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by castleofargh 

Balanced armature drivers were originally developed as small, high efficiency narrow band transducers for hearing aids. There undistorted maximum SPL is limited. you have to use sveral of them for a good wideband sound reproduction. Multiway systems have the disadvantage of time differences between the signals from the different drivers (a well known problem with loudspeakers). A single, well engineered dynamic driver can do it better

Originally yes. However, since then there are some pretty wideband balanced armatures - and to reduce distortion you can just combine more of them, assuming they're well matched. (THD is increased though.) Some crossovers and BA transducers have lots of phase shift, others not as much. May cause slight comb filtering, but usually not audible due to narrow band of effect. (unlike the following test) Phase shift is even harder to hear.

This is not like in speakers, where there can be weird interference patterns off-axis due to differing speaker polarity compounding the effect.

Usually multi-way IEMs have phase shift in the range where the ear is more sensitive, but it still doesn't matter - this is little.

Anyway, phase shift is easy to correct with an all-pass filter (anticausal if there's no other way), but fitting one into an IEM might be tricky - it's hard enough to fit crossovers, plus it will increase general impedance and might worsen THD if certain low quality capacitors are used. (but it'd be silly to do so regardless of application)

The main important part is to match any crossfeed and filter resistors very well to limit inter-channel phase shift, which does affect stereo imaging. Digital filters don't have this kind of problem.

Here's a sample phase chart (second from top on the left, pink curve) of:

- a single BA IEM (Knowles ED, pretty common for others too): http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/MEEA161P.pdf

- 2-way BA IEM: http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/JaysqJAY.pdf

- 2-way BA IEM with dual tweeters: http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/ShureSE535.pdf

- 3-way BA IEM with dual bass armatures: http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/LogitechUE900.pdf

Here's some "lots of phase shift" test. It's barely audible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ#t=2864s

Have a crossover phase shift blind test too. Good luck with this one: http://mark.hayenga.com/audio/phase_shift/

And analysis by prof. Linkwitz: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/x-phs-dist.htm

--

A single dynamic driver is pretty hard to tune and will lag behind balanced armatures in higher frequency reproduction. (mostly either will get resonant or will be slow decay)

What they do best is moving lots of air - such as bass and subbass. They can also be more wideband, but then the driver will likely be resonant.

The problematic part is that dynamic drivers depend mostly on mechanical and acoustic dampening, which is by nature nonlinear.

So no, they cannot do it better than proper set of armatures with the above exception.

Electrostatic IEMs could perhaps do that, but the only I know of is Stax SA-003 (or the combo set with the amp, SRS-005S). It's pretty large, expensive, requires an expensive special amplifier (all electrostats do) and is open back. Also is inverse phase, which you might want to correct by a trivial filter. The amps are not portable either. (good luck trying to run 580V bias from anything portable)

Similarly orthodynamic IEMs, the only one I know of is Yamaha YH-5M, quite unavailable anywhere? Also huge.

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Originally Posted by average_joe   I can't seem to find the release of new JHA products anywhere.  Is this just a new marketing angle, or did they really change the JH13 and JH16?  If they did change the actual products, shouldn't they change the name to something like JH13p (for phase) to differentiate?

I think they're sticking with the original model numbers and just incorporating the 'new technology' into newly-built models.

Here's the YouTube video announcement, and here's a video of Jerry doing his elevator pitch.