[Sinocelt]

Very interesting review, professionally written, spoken, and illustrated.
 
Three remarks:

• You mention a $150 price point for the ATH-M50x but sell it for $275 on your website.
• You mention the ATH-M70x, but ... that's it. A more detailed comparison would be welcome.
• Yes, you did manage to get me interested in your software. I'll read more about it.

 
Regarding #1: It's a reminder that I should take the time to read, rather than scan, before I take the time to post. As RudeWolf politely pointed out, $275 is the price for an individually calibrated M50x with a licence for the plug-in.

 

[kraken2109]

How did you measure the headphones?

 

[RudeWolf]

Thanks, Sinocelt. The $275 price on our page is for a pair of M50x, individual calibration service and a licence for our plug-in.
 
Now regarding - measurement equipment, in the past two years we have tried out all of the headphone measurement rigs on the market and none of them performed to our satisfaction. The problem is that currently available equipment for headphone measurements is mostly meant for measuring SPL and isolation. Therefore we had to spend some time to develop our own measurement system and method.
 
Basically our main goal at first was not to get perfect measurements, but rather get perfect translation between speakers and headphones. That is - when we do our calibration we strive to make every headphone sound like tonally flat speakers in a well treated room. We haven't invested much into HRTF yet, but in terms of tonal balance we are very close. One of the key components in developing our method was blind testing between speakers and headphones - the only thing you should notice when switching to headphones from speakers should be a lack of bass impact and different soundstage.
 
The guys at Sound on Sound were pretty impressed with what we have achieved so far as well as many other studio professionals.
 

 

[Sinocelt]

  Basically our main goal at first was not to get perfect measurements, but rather get perfect translation between speakers and headphones. That is - when we do our calibration we strive to make every headphone sound like tonally flat speakers in a well treated room.

 
Isn't that something the Harman curve is supposed to achieve (though that isn't the premise on which it was developed)?
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/harman-researchers-make-important-headway-understanding-headphone-response
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-target-response-curve-research-update

 

[RudeWolf]

Our goals are rather similar - my colleagues have talked with Sean Olive to confirm this. The difference currently is that we have a technology to implement this curve on every headphone out there.

 

[Mike F]

This is very interesting and exciting! It changes the question from 'which is best' to 'which is potentially the best'. Frequency extension, THD, isolation, comfort..... in fact just about everything suddenly becomes more important than actually frequency response, which is probably the only thing that most people look at when they research headphone measurements.
 
Let us know when you've calibrated some Sony MDR-7520's. I bet they have great potential!

 

[RudeWolf]

It is really the physical design of a headphone that sets the performance ceiling for us. We can make a Superlux extremely neutral, but there's a nasty resonance which keeps us from pushing them too hard. Otherwise we get a very severe THD peak at the resonance point. Usually planar magnetics are very easy to calibrate with terrific results, they have very low natural THD and good power handling. HE500 and LCD-2 were the best we've had.

 

[Sinocelt]

  Our goals are rather similar - my colleagues have talked with Sean Olive to confirm this. The difference currently is that we have a technology to implement this curve on every headphone out there.

 
Very interesting. Does Tyll Hertsens know about this? You'd think he'd be all over it.
 
 

  This is very interesting and exciting! It changes the question from 'which is best' to 'which is potentially the best'. Frequency extension, THD, isolation, comfort..... in fact just about everything suddenly becomes more important than actually frequency response, which is probably the only thing that most people look at when they research headphone measurements.

 
+1
 
 

  It is really the physical design of a headphone that sets the performance ceiling for us. We can make a Superlux extremely neutral, but there's a nasty resonance which keeps us from pushing them too hard. Otherwise we get a very severe THD peak at the resonance point. Usually planar magnetics are very easy to calibrate with terrific results, they have very low natural THD and good power handling. HE500 and LCD-2 were the best we've had.

 
What about the cheapest of all planar magnetic headphones: the Fostex T50RP?

 

[kraken2109]

Do you have a thread about this anywhere else on the forums? I reckon this is interesting enough to make a new thread about. If we're not careful this thread might end up being all about your software.

 

[RudeWolf]

Sure, let's move over to - http://www.head-fi.org/t/762969/sonarworks-headphone-calibration-software
 
And no - haven't pestered Tyll yet. So far we didn't have much exposure on audiophile sites, but there's plenty to read on GearSlutz.
 
I have calibrated my T50RP Paradox, which needed a lot of bass boosting. I'm not sure if T50RP is a good representation on what can be achieved with orthodynamic drivers. It surely isn't bad!

 

[appsmarsterx]

 
Hey guys, thought this might be useful to you! We just finished our first headphone review.

To me m50/x is already obsolete in this price range due to the higher competition these days  Is it really worth paying that extra $$$ for the detachable cable ? I don't think so ... imo overall resolution of M50 is not even better than Takstar Pro 80, HM5, and the congested in your head soundstage is the other main drawback. I don't think you can technically measure those aspects.. .All due respect I don't even bother EQing that thing..  M50/x's competition goes way beyond dt770 or HD25-II these days, seriously you can get something technically better like cd900st, k550, A900x,  SoundMagic HP150/100 and MT220 for around $150. I think you guys would also prefer those options over m50x for $150.

 

[inthere]

Sorry for the late arrival to this thread but I wanted to read all the responses before posting my opinion. I've been a music business professional for 30+ years. Done over 200 records and well over 1000 recording and mixing sessions in many legendary studios. 
 
 In those 30 years I have never ever EVER seen an expensive pair of headphones or anything resembling what one would call "audiophile" headphones. This is because as RudeWolf mentioned, headphones have always been considered an unreliable monitor source, no matter the price and no matter the measurements. 
 
Now RudeWolf claims to have headphone calibration software and while it's a noble goal, I have a very hard time believing him because I've personally never seen it done well enough for me to say I'm selling my speakers and getting rid of my treated room. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's very difficult to do. 
 
That said, right now there is NO, absolutely NO headphone on the planet that is suitable for mixing and mastering as a sole monitoring source. As an alternate source sure, but always make sure you have
others sources if you don't have a treated room. I've seen engineers rush out to play mixes on the car stereos, boom boxes, TV's, just about everything with speakers. 
 
So with mixing and mastering taken out of the equation, you'd have to think of what useful function a studio headphone should have. For me, it would be vocals and live instrument recording. For that purpose, I find Marshall Monitors to be the best choice because there's almost no leakage. With low leakage, vocalists and players can turn up their cans to almost max volume for a little boost in inspiration and not bleed over the mic. Open cans are not suitable for this purpose and you wind up having to use noise reduction to get rid of the music coming out the cans. 

 

[RudeWolf]

  Sorry for the late arrival to this thread but I wanted to read all the responses before posting my opinion. I've been a music business professional for 30+ years. Done over 200 records and well over 1000 recording and mixing sessions in many legendary studios. 
 
 In those 30 years I have never ever EVER seen an expensive pair of headphones or anything resembling what one would call "audiophile" headphones. This is because as RudeWolf mentioned, headphones have always been considered an unreliable monitor source, no matter the price and no matter the measurements. 
 
Now RudeWolf claims to have headphone calibration software and while it's a noble goal, I have a very hard time believing him because I've personally never seen it done well enough for me to say I'm selling my speakers and getting rid of my treated room. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I think it's very difficult to do. 
 
That said, right now there is NO, absolutely NO headphone on the planet that is suitable for mixing and mastering as a sole monitoring source. As an alternate source sure, but always make sure you have
others sources if you don't have a treated room. I've seen engineers rush out to play mixes on the car stereos, boom boxes, TV's, just about everything with speakers. 
 
So with mixing and mastering taken out of the equation, you'd have to think of what useful function a studio headphone should have. For me, it would be vocals and live instrument recording. For that purpose, I find Marshall Monitors to be the best choice because there's almost no leakage. With low leakage, vocalists and players can turn up their cans to almost max volume for a little boost in inspiration and not bleed over the mic. Open cans are not suitable for this purpose and you wind up having to use noise reduction to get rid of the music coming out the cans. 

 
Those are fair points. I'm not telling anyone to sell their monitors and get a pair of cans instead - headphones will NEVER provide a tactile full body bass impact (and neither will small near field speakers, btw) and without a HRTF simulator they won't be able to project a speaker-like phantom stereo image.
 
Regarding cross checking - our software has a few emulation options for various speakers (NS10 for example) and headphones which can provide good insight. Most of our clients report that they still need to do a final check on other systems, but no more running around to check many times (which means that they get it right on first time). Usually that makes their work much faster.
 
I really understand your point about there being no perfect headphones for any price. There are reasons behind this - first off there has been very little research work done in this field. Expensive (>100$) headphones have started to sell well only in the last decade or so. Until then they have been largely seen as listening accessories save for a number of models from higher price range. Secondly - due to a lack of research there is no reference to which one would compare headphones.
 
This is why we at Sonarworks decided to spend three years and north of $1M on R&D to come up with a complete software package to make one's monitors sound more precise and make just about any headphone a worthy companion to studio speakers.
 
P.S. I totally get your disbelief for our product as it is something that no one has been able to pull off. Luckily we designed it for pro use, therefore it doesn't need the user to believe in it to work properly.

 

[inthere]

Well, HRTF has been a fascination of mine for some time now and it's great in theory, but in practice it falls way short. If I understand correctly, your software is going in a different direction-away from HRTF? If so that would be interesting. 

 

[RudeWolf]

We are going in a different direction in a sense that we haven't invested any time in implementing it in our software. As you most likely know, HRTF simulation is largely a hit and miss affair - it sort of works for some headphones and others just end up falling short. For a proper HRTF simulation you would need to know the dimensions of the users head and the AFR of the headphones to be used. HRTF largely consists of doing EQ and delay adjustments. So far you'd be able able to implement the head dimension input (just let the user to measure his head), but headphone performance is a black box. Luckily for us we have software which is able to equalize all headphones to a known reference, so HRTF is something we could do in the future, but honestly - it will take many R&D hours to pull off right.