The Treblehead Club - Page 6

and sharks aren't dolphins.

so wat?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parall3l 

Bassheads don't always want exaggerated low end, sometimes extension is all a basshead need. It all depends on one's personal preferences. Personally I prefer extension over emphasis, thats of course, if I can't have both. The same should apply to trebleheads, at least IMO 

Point taken. I'm just trying to wrap my head around all this, especially when the same headphone shows up in two or possibly all three camps.

Extension's certainly not a bad thing. Who wouldn't like a headphone that could reproduce a wide spectrum of sound without much effort?

As for exaggeration, that's what the EQ and DSP effects are for in my book. Color to taste.

Even so, there's still the general fact that these camps are divided into frequency response groups, possibly overlooking other traits of sound reproduction. Is there such a thing as a "detailhead" or a "clarityhead"? That's probably where I'm starting to fall after getting a taste of Stax for a month.

Ever heard of the STAX mafia ?

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikp 

They have no relevance. Unless you're just trying to say that they look the same.

 

That's only your opinion, if you think lots of flagship headphones have spikes similiar to the equal loudness contour by pure coincidence, up to you.

I think it's interesting a $700 flagship headphone has a similiar frequency response to the average equal loudness contour. For example: If our ears have low sensitivity below 60Hz, then wouldn't boosting those frequencies result in a more linear response, in our perception?

What about Etymotic? They think the red dotted line here is the most accurate earphone FR:

I don't see how my high school and university stuff is related to this topic.

Just putting this out there, this is not for or against anyones viewpoint, but our brains change the FR a lot more than we think.  For example i started my audiophile journey with XB500's amp'd by cmoy(=super-bass) and a pair of 15"s for home use.  When i moved up to K240 i could absolutely not tell what anyone meant when the said the K240 had a midbass hump, hard as i tried to find it, the bass just wasn't there, any of it.  Now two weeks ago i took another step up to the 940, after a week of listening to nothing but them i decided to put my K240's back on to see how much i still liked them. Sure enough as soon as i started playing music i noticed a obvious and large mid-bass hump. All of the bass was just A LOT more there than what i remember.

From another posters 50/50 split of how the headphones sound to how they get to your ear ill change it to a 33/33/33 split of those two plus how your brain decides to perceive that sound, actually its probably a 40/20/40 split (headphone/ear/brain respectively).
 

Totally agree, I call that acclimatisation.

I'm acclimatised to brighter sounding IEM's, but when I listen to bass heavy speakers (where bass is supposed to exist) and then I go back to let's say a basic earbud it sounds a bit shrill and flat.

Just theory, but in a physical sense I think less bass is nicer to our ears.

Don't get me wrong, I love bass, I just don't want it in my face unless it's coming from a speaker, in the literal sense.

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikp 

 

Yes it does, but I prefer to think the scientific way. Ideally, the flatter the more accurate audio is reproduced.
 

 

I would agree with that too.  I just wonder how headphones would sound after spending a few days in one of those super quiet rooms anachronic chambers i believe?

Quote:

Originally Posted by nikp 

 

Yes it does, but I prefer to think the scientific way. Ideally, the flatter the more accurate audio is reproduced.

 

That's one of the main reasons why I decided on the Audio Technica CK10, it probably has the flattest FR of all IEM's.

After listening to it for 7 months, and studying FR graphs of EX700 and EX600 (which I also own), and the Etymotic ER-4PT (which came with a hand matched graph), I eventually decided FR graphs are quite useless in understanding how an IEM sounds.