Hearing new details in new headphones is a myth - Page 8

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovleylady 

Blackbeardben:

 

Your graph is flawed. The x-axis says 0 all the way and therefor, so does the entire graph.

(maybe it just on my computer it says 0 all the way? if that's the case how much more "sweet time" does the Lady Gaga take? can that difference in any case make a difference on sound?)

 

"...look at how fast the HD 800 driver responds to the DC impulse of the square wave - near instantaneously.  The Lady Gaga instead takes its own sweet time..."

 

Rest of the thread and head-fi.org:

I think there's lots of different definitons on the word "detail" here.

 

"Yes, the details are more detailed, as in better defined and easier to spot."

 

 

Have a nice weekend all of you.

 

 

 

That's a 50 Hz square wave, so you can calculate the total time shown on the graph (0.05 seconds).  Tyll Hertsens or one of his minions at Headroom performed those tests and set up the graphing function - and I'm assuming left the labels of the x-axis to only display whole numbers.  It's a display option error, not anything wrong with the data.

50 Hz is a very slow frequency for a sound wave - it's low bass.  However, since this is a square wave it's composed of an infinite series of sine waves of higher frequencies.

The difference between the HD 800 and the Lady Gaga is huge - the Lady Gaga's maximum amplitude is barely even a third of the HD 800s', and just reaching the Lady Gagas' maximum amplitude takes a whole eighth of the frequency.  That's absolutely horrid.  You can go ahead and throw the Beats by Dre in there an you'll see that while those are much improved with regards to the impulse response, but they're way under-dampened.  That's probably the cause of the massive and bloated bass of the Beats.

This is a semantics issue, not an audio one. 

Blackbeardben:

Thanks for your reply.

Should I interpret the graph as:

The HD 800 sends out a 50 hz wave in less than 1 ms and the Lady Gaga does it in aprox 3ms?

And in that time between the HD 800 has time to send out more sound waves and therefor produce more "detail"?

Quote:

Originally Posted by lovleylady 

Blackbeardben:

 

Thanks for your reply.

 

Should I interpret the graph as:

 

The HD 800 sends out a 50 hz wave in less than 1 ms and the Lady Gaga does it in aprox 3ms?

And in that time between the HD 800 has time to send out more sound waves and therefor produce more "detail"?

 

 

Not that it's sending out more sound waves (what does that even mean?), but that it's faster in following the signal given to it: your music.  The tracking is better.  If you are looking for high fidelity playback, you want the headphones to acoustically reproduce whatever electrical waveform they produce.  Different headphones fail at this task in different ways and to varying degrees

Quote:

Originally Posted by Uncle Erik 

Frankrizzo: the Sopranos? You have no idea how close I've come to whacking this thread.

Also, stand down, Grammar Nazis.

Everyone else, calm down and return to civil discussion.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Uncle Erik, 

Whacking ? NOOOOOOH. Your permission , please. Let's open a non-constructive, endless and "scientific" threads as :

1 . All headphones sound the same.

2. Amps are amps. Triple blindfold test for non-blinded folks.

2. Wires are wires. Chicken wires or cloth hangers sound as good as Kimber or Harmonic Tech,....

3 . Al CDPs sound alike. DACs are snake oils.

This will be fun since I am bored. I promise just to open a can of worms but I will stay out of the discussion. 

Oh, yeah. This is no myth.

If you have issues with a Mod, please take it to the PM (or better, the Jude) level.

That said, drivers have a mass and speed issue. Some are simply not fast and/or light enough to react. There's a reason why electrostatic headphones convey details better than most dynamics.

No, I do not have issue with Uncle Erik. I 'm just trying to have fun with Myth and Scientific facts in Audio. I love Uncle Erik for almost whacking the thread. I'd like being sarcastic when I am very bored with some debate that is as old as the earth I live in.  

The age of the planet Earth is at around four point five to four point six billion years old. This thread only several days old. Your explanation is invalid.

Quote:

Originally Posted by TrantaLocked 

Lol, he meant the debate, not the thread, but he was also exaggerating.

Headphones were invented in the early 20th century. Realistically, the debate is only 100 years old.

As to the debate itself, better headphones do produce details that bad ones cannot. BlackbeardBen said it nicely with the square wave. A headphone driver can only produce as many sounds as its speed allows. Slow headphones won't be able to produce the vibrations of a violin or guitar string, or separate the notes of a fast death metal kick drum.

In very simplified terms, say you're rocking to a tune with 120 beats per minute on a cheapo pair of headphones. These headphones can only keep up with about 300 distinct notes per minute. But for every beat of the song there is a guitar note and a drum hit, and every other beat there's a bass note and kick drum hit. In total, there's 360 distinct notes per minute. When you upgrade to a faster headphone with the ability to produce 400 notes, there's 60 new notes being played. They were always there, obviously, but with the slow headphone they sounded like part of another note.

A real life example would be the Imperial March by John Williams. Before the HF2 I never noticed that the flute notes starting around 50 seconds were all trilled. I can't hear them on my old headphones even now. They aren't fast enough to produce the trill and produce everything else at the same time. It all sounds like one note. Instrument separation relies on speed as well. Faster decay means more space between the notes of individual instruments and the band as a whole.

You won't have an entire instrument pop out of nowhere unless its frequency was gone before. You will get individual notes and the small details of those notes, like how they're being played. Small things disappear first.

I'll keep you posted on everything new I hear when my LCD-2s arrive, fast as they are