Ask one of the world's top headphone engineers whatever you want at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time! - Page 5

Take a look at the "unanswered questions" - many of them were technical in nature, and most of those were from members here or there.

Actually, I'd read those questions before posting here and a number of them illustrate my point (comparative shoppers' concerns rather than questions pertaining specifically to the headphones which Grell helped to create):

   Quote:

    Quote:

Okay...  I found a couple that discuss his reasons for doing things one way over another in past designs, as well as his overall engineering outlook and how it shapes the design of Sennheiser headphones.

(There are also quite a few questions about future Senn headphones, but I suppose we already know he wanted to dodge those questions from his terse answers about stats/orthos.)

Admittedly a couple of these quotes sound a bit accusatory, but all the better for him to clear things up.

Your recent flagships (HD700 and HD800) have been noticeably brighter (particularly the 6K Peak) than your previous flagships (HD600 and HD650). Was this done with a certain goal or target demographic in mind or is it a byproduct of the design? I am particularly interested where your new electrostat will fall in line with regards to FR balance...

...From the initial to the final product, I'd imagine that there are revisions and tunings that goes into these headphones or IEMs and have them sound with what you have in mind. What are those procedures? Is it a lot of listening and tuning them subjectively or are there objective methods to tuning headphones as well?

...Also - there is a popular mod floating around to tame the treble on the HD800 called the Anaxilus mod. Have you heard of it and is there a reason you didn't utilize a similar damping scheme to minimize reflections and reducing the "bite" of the treble peak?

...On some headphone sites there's a running battle between users who look at measurements to determine a good headphone and those who count on their listening experience. How do you as designers and manufacturers weight the objective and subjective aspects?

...How useful are frequency response charts of headphones when dealing with design that is meant for the ear and is this an accurate representation of the performance?

...Why was the HD700 tuned with such uneven treble frequency response? The HD800 is a bright headphone, but has a very even frequency response throughout the spectrum. Along the same lines, the HD600 and 650 are both very even, smooth, headphones with a slightly darker signature.

With the HD700, though, there is elevated mid-bass and a very uneven, "peaky" frequency response in the upper mids leading into the treble region. Was this done to make a more "fun" sound signature?

.

..

What were your FR objectives when designing the HD800 vs the HD6x0 series? Free-Field, Diffuse-Field, Independent of Direction? 
If the FR objectives where the same, based on your measurements, did you improved your tonal goals with the HD800 vs the HD6x0 series? 
I would imagine that the larger driver of the HD800, with all it's advantages, could have posed more challenges in terms of dampening.

...How does Sennheiser test their headphones for comfort, being that there are so many ear and head shapes out there?