[ruinedx]

Great thread idea: so let’s bring it back! Soundstage hands down for me, but without decent imaging, it doesn’t really work: thankfully the HD800S both images well and has an unmatched soundstage. Highly technically accomplished headphones without the soundstage seem rather pointless to me because they just don’t “enthrall” and the presentation isn’t engaging, which is what I want.

Yes, I think the HD800, HD800S, HD820, and even HD700 have an excellent combination of soundstage and imaging. My personal favorites from the group are the HD820 and HD700 for different reasons, but the HD800S comes in very close behind those two in my book [note- hd800s sounds much better than hd700, I just feel it doesnt sound as good as the HD820 while also not being as portable as the HD700, making it finish 3rd]. The HD800 I loved the soundstage - I actually think the HD800 had the best soundstage, moreso than any of the others... but HD800 was just too fatiguing for long term use and had to sell it.

I actually would not bother listening to headphones at all in most cases other than these three models (HD820, HD800S, HD700) because every other one I've heard has an artificial sounding presentation that makes the sound unappealing. The HD820 I actually prefer over speakers which is an incredible feat for a headphone manufacturer to accomplish in my book.

The fact is, in real life there are zero natural sound sources whose primary sound point emanates a few inches from one's eardrum. Maybe when a bee flies by your head but that's it. Thus, the typical "headphone experience" is artificial sounding as it fails to emulate how we naturally hear sound, which is typically reflected and diffused in the environment; this is also why traditional headphone measurements are woefully inadequate, as they fail to capture this metric. I'm not sure how Sennheiser did it with these 4 models, but they have done a fantastic job of presenting a realistic soundstage that pretty much no other headphones I've heard (including any of the other models in Sennheiser lineup) can match.

 

[Sefelt103]

Well if you own the 600 ohm variant then it is tuned similarly to the HD800, small dip in the upper midrange before the big boot of energy in the treble. The place where our ears are the most sensitive is in the midrange and we detect even small corrections to the frequency response quite clearly, simply because we’re wired to listen to the human voice via communication. When you then drop the amplitude of certain frequencies there, the human brain naturally deduces said sounds to originate slightly further away than the rest of the sounds.

I do have the hard to drive 600Ω version. So all these headphones with boosted treble are there not for artificial detail or brightness associated with clarity but to enhance the sound field and make sounds seem slightly further away. Never made that association.

 

[Kammerat Rebekka]

I wouldn’t go that far tbh. The soundstage phenomenon is largely something that exists within it’s little cocoon on Head-Fi and similar places. I don’t think you will ever find a well-respected sound-engineer who has ever used the term when working on X headphone. They work with frequency response and distortion numbers.

Edith: Working with a frequency response emplies tuning the headphone. If we’re talking studio headphones, especially old school ones, they’re often fairly bright which make them pretty good for picking up stuff in the mix...but you can’t really mix on them. So different tools/sound sigs for different jobs.
The same goes for tastebuds over the audio community. I don’t think headphones are tuned in order to ‘work on the soundstage’ - mostly because sound-engineers know that it’s the musical cues within the mix which are responsible for this perceived soundstage and that you really need speakers in order to achieve something worth calling a soundstage to begin with. Tuning with regards to the consumer market is entirely for flavour

 

[ruinedx]

Well if you own the 600 ohm variant then it is tuned similarly to the HD800, small dip in the upper midrange before the big boot of energy in the treble. The place where our ears are the most sensitive is in the midrange and we detect even small corrections to the frequency response quite clearly, simply because we’re wired to listen to the human voice via communication. When you then drop the amplitude of certain frequencies there, the human brain naturally deduces said sounds to originate slightly further away than the rest of the sounds.
BUT you actually (indirectly) managed to touch upon another factor I forgot to mention, which made a huge impact on the way I think about this stuff: the difference in wearing comfort. I first noticed this whilst owning what you own, the HD580. I thought it had a slightly wider soundstage than my HD600, which basically is the same headphone. Yet the HD580 was an old used pair with hardly anything clamping down on the sides of my skull whereas I very often was reminded about the fact that I was wearing a headphone with the newer 600. When the headphone disappears the ‘soundstage’ naturally grows wider. You stop thinking about the fact that music is originating from somewhere - it merely ‘is’. I felt the same thing happening with my R70x as I wore in the headband actually.
When you combine all these things together, it’s actually not that strange that the HD800 is hailed as the ‘soundstage king’: biggest cups on the market, dipped upper midrange before the big treble and most folks I know of simply adore the lightweight and luxurious comfort that ultimately makes them forget that they’re wearing anything.

I do have the hard to drive 600Ω version. So all these headphones with boosted treble are there not for artificial detail or brightness associated with clarity but to enhance the sound field and make sounds seem slightly further away. Never made that association.

There is more to it than just frequency range/curve. That is just a slice of the pie, and also why using this as a primary basis for reviewing a headphone is a highly flawed and invalid methodology.

In a natural sounding soundstage the sound is not beamed directly into your ear canal. The sound reflects off many surfaces and is diffused by many surfaces before reaching your ear. This is part of the reason some headphones use angled drivers, to try and reproduce that reflected sound and mask the pinpoint aural location of the driver; thus simply tuning the frequency curve cannot fix the physical location of the headphone driver in relation to your ear.

 

[Mink]

Difficult to answer. As long as there is a sense of space that is accomplished by a satisfying level of instrument seperation and when that space is evenly filled between left, right and the middle than I'm fine. My ears crave for an overall fullness. If the sound is too panned between left and right with nothing in between or if most of the sound is centred, without any sense of width than I am not happy. But most of the times it is the recording that decides this.
To me imaging is a result of instrument separation and I take this for granted. If I sense a pair of headphones have really good imaging than I am starting to wonder if it's because they are very transparant and true to the recording or if it's because they do something extra.
To me a pair of headphones must follw the music and not the other way around. To give an analogy: in an orchestral work the conductor decides what is important in a musical passage, what must given the full attention and weight. I sense that some very technical advanced headphones try to give equal weight to everyting in the recording. I don't like my Ravel Daphnis et Chloe to sound like an atonal piece where only sound and dynamics matter. In my favorite recording of Daphnis (by Pierre Boulez) there are parts in where some instrument groups blend so well that it is perceived as one instrument. This was intentionally. I don't want my pair of headphones to artificially seperate those instruments just for the sake of superior resolution, detail, instrument seperation and with it imaging. If I don't want the sound to be blended I will play a different recording of Daphnis et Chloe.
So, I think a sense of 'soundstage' or space is more important to me than a sense of good imaging. To me imaging shouldn't be obvious. But I'm not a gamer.

 

[ruinedx]

Difficult to answer. As long as there is a sense of space that is accomplished by a satisfying level of instrument seperation and when that space is evenly filled between left, right and the middle than I'm fine. My ears crave for an overall fullness. If the sound is too panned between left and right with nothing in between or if most of the sound is centred, without any sense of width than I am not happy. But most of the times it is the recording that decides this.
To me imaging is a result of instrument separation and I take this for granted. If I sense a pair of headphones have really good imaging than I am starting to wonder if it's because they are very transparant and true to the recording or if it's because they do something extra.
To me a pair of headphones must follw the music and not the other way around. To give an analogy: in an orchestral work the conductor decides what is important in a musical passage, what must given the full attention and weight. I sense that some very technical advanced headphones try to give equal weight to everyting in the recording. I don't like my Ravel Daphnis et Chloe to sound like an atonal piece where only sound and dynamics matter. In my favorite recording of Daphnis (by Pierre Boulez) there are parts in where some instrument groups blend so well that it is perceived as one instrument. This was intentionally. I don't want my pair of headphones to artificially seperate those instruments just for the sake of superior resolution, detail, instrument seperation and with it imaging. If I don't want the sound to be blended I will play a different recording of Daphnis et Chloe.
So, I think a sense of 'soundstage' or space is more important to me than a sense of good imaging. To me imaging shouldn't be obvious. But I'm not a gamer.

I think this demonstrates why headphones are a very personal thing and reading a review or looking at a frequency graph is pointless, if not counterproductive.

You won't know if a headphone/amp combo hits the sweet spot for that one particular recording unless you personally listen to it for yourself.

Thus, individual trial and error - while being the most expensive and most time consuming route - is the most successful route in finding the best headphone.

 

[descloud]

I think this demonstrates why headphones are a very personal thing and reading a review or looking at a frequency graph is pointless, if not counterproductive.

You won't know if a headphone/amp combo hits the sweet spot for that one particular recording unless you personally listen to it for yourself.

Thus, individual trial and error - while being the most expensive and most time consuming route - is the most successful route in finding the best headphone.

I think reviews and a compensated frequency graph can be useful tools in determining how a headphone could sound, but of course it's not the most accurate representation of what you actually hear once your brain adjusts to the headphone sound signature. A compensated frequency graph is especially useful when picking out peaks that I hear and where to EQ if I wanted to fix those peaks. This is all under the assumption that you're using an amp that does not introduce any audible colouration or distortion to your output signal. Then a reviewer that you find matches with your own findings of certain headphones can you give you a good idea of how one headphone can sound, but it's not always consistent with all gear you will try (i.e. for me is some of Tyll's reviews I find accurate while others I feel he's a bit off the mark), so it's not always a hit either. Always better that you can demo it yourself, but we don't always have that option.

As for the topic about determining head stage or sound stage, I find that frequency response does affect the stage to an extent (usually playing with midrange and treble to upper-treble frequencies), but it does not paint the whole picture of how one headphone would have a larger head stage than another given that you try to match another headphone's frequency response. I'm still in search of which measurements can give a better idea of the head stage, irrespective if the drivers are angled or not.

Regarding the topic thread, I'm in the camp of having a good balance of imaging with the head stage the headphone can present. I don't mind a narrow head stage width for closed-back for example, so long as it can present the instruments and pieces properly from the recordings I am well familiar with against open-back headphones that have good stage. But I would rather have an average head stage width that reaches my shoulders based on my perception of how wide the audio is played.