If it graphs bad then it is bad; yes or no? | Page 5 | Headphone Reviews and Discussion - Head-Fi.org

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 12:10 PM

Quote:

eddiee said:
There is no "ideal frequency response" to headphones. This is where obsession with measurements just gets silly.

Beg to differ here. If you're going for neutrality, the targets are well known. If not, well, subjectivity is what marketing is all about.

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 12:12 PM

Quote:

scuttle said:
..So my ***extremely*** tentative hypothesis is that a good 50Hz sq wave result is necessary but not sufficient for well defined bass.

What would a 50Hz square wave test show you about bass that a waterfall wouldn't?

chewy4 · Feb 12, 2013 at 12:32 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
What would a 50Hz square wave test show you about bass that a waterfall wouldn't?

Have you ever seen a waterfall plot that goes into 50Hz?

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 1:14 PM

chewy4 said:
Have you ever seen a waterfall plot that goes into 50Hz?

Yes, but I admit the time resolution is terrible down there. That's not the point, though. Many people look at the messed up square wave and get confused as to the correlation between the graphs and the sound. I was trying to zero see if that understanding exists here or not.

Here's a 10hz waterfall plot for your viewing pleasure:
http://www.winmls.com/Applications/Wizards/General_Waterfall%20CSD%20(loudspeaker)en%20-%20English.html

xnor · Feb 12, 2013 at 1:27 PM

Unless you know that a square wave can look anything but a clean square wave even though each harmonic is reproduced at the proper level you really shouldn't try to read anything into them..

phase shift

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 2:16 PM

Quote:

eddiee said:
There is no "ideal frequency response" to headphones. This is where obsession with measurements just gets silly.

It would be nice if you explain your argument for that belief. Which, to be honest, seems ridiculous to me on two grounds:

1. An ideal fr isn't necessarily determined to the last dot, but I think we'd agree that eg any absolute holes in the audible part of the spectrum are a bad idea! After this, everything is about how exactly we can define the ideal fr, not whether we can or not.

2. I'd need a reasoned argument to convince me that anything but neutral is ever best: any desire for eg a v shaped signature can be taken care of with EQ

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 2:19 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
What would a 50Hz square wave test show you about bass that a waterfall wouldn't?

The answer to that might depend on the value of "you":

- I certainly can't read waterfalls as well

- I can't hold of them as easily, whereas eg Headroom has square waves for most of the devices it sells

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 3:32 PM

scuttle said:
The answer to that might depend on the value of "you":

- I certainly can't read waterfalls as well

- I can't hold of them as easily, whereas eg Headroom has square waves for most of the devices it sells

I'm not saying this is true in your or anyone else's case in particular, but there is a lot of misunderstanding about what a square wave test is actually showing. When I try to explain it to people I find it's harder to come up with explanations than it is to explain a waterfall. Simple concepts often reduce to inaccuracies, like "tilt is bad" or "ringing is bad" etc. Whats even worse is the disconnect between how it looks and how it sounds. Nobody's actually heard a real square wave of course, but how much waveform change results in a change in SQ? Very hard to quantify, other than to cite the extremes.

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 4:21 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
Many people look at the messed up square wave and get confused as to the correlation between the graphs and the sound. I was trying to zero see if that understanding exists here or not.

Very few if headphones will show a true sq wave at 50Hz; you have to understand what you are looking for, which is where that headroom text and looking at graphs of headphones you've heard, with varying clarity to their bass, is useful.

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 4:40 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
I'm not saying this is true in your or anyone else's case in particular, but there is a lot of misunderstanding about what a square wave test is actually showing. When I try to explain it to people I find it's harder to come up with explanations than it is to explain a waterfall. Simple concepts often reduce to inaccuracies, like "tilt is bad" or "ringing is bad" etc.

It's easy to understand what a waterfall graph is, but that does not mean it is easier to to use for the purpose I am interested in - that of spotting well formed "punchy" bass. And a waterfall doesn't even try to track what will happen when a headphone gets successive impulses.

Whats even worse is the disconnect between how it looks and how it sounds. Nobody's actually heard a real square wave of course, but how much waveform change results in a change in SQ? Very hard to quantify, other than to cite the extremes.

Used intelligently this doesn't matter: you simply learn what to look for in a graph and look for it. This gives you a valuable tool for eliminating some headphones at very little effort, so a couple of minutes learning what an ok sq wave graph looks like is a reasonable investment.

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 5:56 PM

Quote:

xnor said:
Unless you know that a square wave can look anything but a clean square wave even though each harmonic is reproduced at the proper level you really shouldn't try to read anything into them..

phase shift

That's pretty much what I'm getting at...+1

Even if you did take a perfect square wave and, without any phase shift, removed harmonics above the audio band, it would have what would look like ringing and overshoots and wouldn't look very square anymore. That's something best done in simulation, of course. The frequency of the square wave also tends to over or under-emphasize whatever anomaly it's showing.

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 6:00 PM

Quote:

scuttle said:
Used intelligently this doesn't matter: you simply learn what to look for in a graph and look for it. This gives you a valuable tool for eliminating some headphones at very little effort, so a couple of minutes learning what an ok sq wave graph looks like is a reasonable investment.

I love stuff like this....

"Used intelligently this (referring to "the disconnect between how it looks and how it sounds") doesn't matter: you simply learn what to look for in a graph and look for it."

Ok, on behalf of the readers who don't get where this is going...i'll bite... How?

jaddie · Feb 12, 2013 at 6:22 PM

Here are 3 50Hz square waves. Tell us how they would differ in sound.
Edit: Also, tell us how they would relate to the overall sound quality of the device that produced them.

You can refer to them as Top, Middle and Bottom.

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 6:24 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
I love stuff like [used intelligently]

What's so hard to understand about this? You said that there were stupid ways to a 50Hz square wave (right after you proposed using a CSD instead, forgetting that CSDs that go as low as 50Hz are rare, and that they don't show multiple pulses...) and I'm simply saying, "Yes, there are, but ASIDE from that..."

"Used intelligently this (referring to "the disconnect between how it looks and how it sounds") doesn't matter: you simply learn what to look for in a graph and look for it."

Ok, on behalf of the readers who don't get where this is going...i'll bite... How?

In exactly the manner that what was explained with the quote from Head Room, along with the several illustrative graphs... I'm sorry: I don't get why this is hard to understand or why you can't remember what was on the last page of the thread???

scuttle · Feb 12, 2013 at 6:31 PM

Quote:

jaddie said:
Here are 3 50Hz square waves. Tell us how they would differ in sound.
Edit: Also, tell us how they would relate to the overall sound quality of the device that produced them.

You can refer to them as Top, Middle and Bottom.

I'd be delighted with any of those. If you'd spent a few minutes looking at sq wave graphs - intelligently, of course - you'd realize that they'd all be pretty damn exceptional! If you gave me these three headphones then I certainly wouldn't be able to match the sets with graphs by listening. Even the worst of these make the best of the real graphs I posted look awful. I think you're confusing the fact that you haven't managed the minimal accomplishment of knowing what a reasonable real world square wave graph looks like with the idea that doing so is impossible. No.

Now take a look at the graph for the 668B and read what I wrote: I *would* be pretty damn sure that I could tell the Fantastic Three from the 668B. But from the HD25s with their excellent bass, end if the graph isn't as "good"? I don't know. (Especially as you have removed large chunks of information by not having a scale!)

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