[Tim D]

I was also suprised by the results by many of the electrostatics. They all seem light on bass, have some 2-4k suckout and very prominent upper treble. They also don't seem to make much better looking square waves than dynamic phones either. Course theres probably plenty of bugs to hammer out. Of most curiousity to me would be results from amps and cables. For example the Creek OBH-11 seems to test completely flat, yet paired with the HD600 seems to create an even more prominent mid-bass hump and diminished highs! Almost correlating with peoples findings!

Also suprising is I remember seeing the MG-Head giving a flat response too which is terrific for the tube amp. It also makes sense since I remember people saying the Corda sounded similar...and Jan says that measures flat as well. What I find interesting is how these amps take on different characteristics with phones like the midbass boost from Creek.

I'm also annoyed at what seems to be left/right channel imbalances in some of those amps.

Hmmmmmm actually after going back and forth between MGHead and Creek they seem freakishly similar...

 

[Eagle_Driver]

If the response was normalized to 1kHz, then the Sony MDR-V600's frequency response only measures from 75-12,000 Hz... screw its 5-30,000 Hz claim!

And the MDR-V900, despite its "oversized" 50mm "evaporated diamond amorphous" diaphragms, only measures 50-15,000 Hz! The Koss Porta Pros have bass response that measures below 20 Hz, but highs top out at about 16,000 Hz.

 

[ai0tron]

Hey tyll the new website kicks ass. I totally dig the black and white design. Most of the art I do is black and white... Why? Because the more colors I use the more it looks like I was tripping out of my mind when I made the thing, and I really wasn't tripping out of my mind and I don't like to send that impression. So I try to keep it simple and elegant. When I do a portrait in Illustrator I take an emotion and I turn it into stone. I freeze it in time at a point so precise that it becomes cut off from itself and loses it's emotional impact while retaining the symbolism of emotion. Black and white is the purist form of symbolism and in my opinion the most beautiful!! Black and white is free of the confusion of colored emotions, sort of liek a really good headphone. Mayeb thats why you chose those colors, at any rate I have to say: Nice choice!! Plus nothing beats a simple unassuming "color"(black and white are not colors) scheme in the oversaturated MTV universe that the internet is slowly becoming.

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

There are soooo many good comments I won't even bother trying to respond at the moment. Danny is going to flip when he gets back. But, I feel compelled to make an observation: We've got time to measure the stuff but we really have a hard time taking the time to look at the graphs. In 12 hour or so, you guys have really started to disect and discuss what appears to me to be legitimate observations in a relevent way. The conversations you are having feel very important to me in that it it seems like the graphs are providing a common ...errr...vehicle for carrying meaning. I sense that given better graphs and better tools to access views of the data, the community here will be providing a broader and stronger awareness of the relative value of headphones.

Todd and I have that here in a very finite way. We DEFINITELY see strong relationships between what we hear and what we see on the graphs. It's certainly not the whole picture, but it a big chunk of it. Especially when soooo many headphones are obviously defficient in a variety of ways. But it feels very comforting to begin to believe that the Todd/Tyll opinion that I rely on to write product review copy on my web may now have a broader range of calibrated experience to draw from.

Headphone amp measurements are there too and of course we will be doing more. One thing we found, not surprisingly, is that they measure WAY flatter. If you use a simple swept signal frequency response you basically can't tell a Creek from a Max. But when you use multi-tone tests (a complex signal with many frequencies in it) you stress the amp more and you see more artifacts. (you can see this if you go to product stuff/headphone amps/pick amp/select graphs). We believe that we will be able to develop a series of graded complex loads that simulate various imedance and resonace headphones in a predictable way, and then measure the amps performance as they drive these complex loads.

I'm sure this will also stir up another round of objectivist/subjectivist debate. WELL GET OVER IT! You absolutely need both. You need objective measures to get close, then you need to do a bit of subjective tweaking. For example: Danny, when getting the Total Airhead together, was working on the decoupling values around the unit and found that he had a hard time deciding on what basis to make the tradeoffs. He saw all the pros and cons of the various value settings but didn't know how to decide which to pick based on his scopes. He had his preference, but it was a bit too intuitive for his liking. He built four units, maked them A B C D and gave them to me and Todd. Todd listend and picked his order in secret, then I listened and picked mine. We matched. And the result was that we picked what Danny figured but had no sure way to know technically. This method was so sucessful that we did it on two other ocasions, that I remember, on the TA befor we called it good. You really need good objective and subjective evaluation techniques.

And am I missing something or is there no spell check thing on this board? Jude!!! Help!!!

 

[thomas]

Tyll, can we also send in our DIY headphone amps for measurement?

 

[Tyll Hertsens]

I think that's a great idea. But it will be a while. I'd guess it could go as much as 6 months out before we're doing it. And you might have to pay the shipping both ways on them because the measurements won't have nearly as much commercial value to me. That might also be true on discontinued headphones.

 

[aos]

I have one more idea. Once you guys have the time, you could measure a few headphones out of the box and after a few days/weeks of "breaking-in", thus putting an end to the debate about burning-in the headphones.

Ok, I know it's not actually going to put an end to the debate (like that's ever going to happen), but still it might be an interesting experiment.

 

[AndreYew]

Tyll,

The new website looks really great, and I can't wait for it to go online. I have a suggestion about the Product Measurements page --- when I press Back from the page displaying the comparison graph, it would be nice to have the headphone picking page remember its settings, because I want to compare different measurements of the same set of headphones. Alternatively, if there was a way to show all the measurements (FR, CCIF, FFT, SMPTE) for a set of headphones, that would work for me, too.

--Andre

 

[AndreYew]

Tyll,

Another question for you: how were the AKG K1000's driven? It looks like it has relatively high distortion in all the relevant graphs, and I'm wondering if you guys used one of those single-ended tube amps to drive it.

Other measurements that may be nice to have:

1. multi-tone measurements for headphones as well (you mentioned using this for amps earlier).

2. THD+N vs. frequency.

--Andre

 

[lini]

Gluegun: The SL-CT570 is discontinued, too. Nevertheless, EP Netshop might still have some left (I bought a few units a few days ago, there) - but it's the european version (small remote). They had it for 239 DM (incl. 16% VAT), though I don't know whether they do international orders...

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[jude]

Tyll,

Any chance that that impulse test graph will make it as one of the graphing options? I found that an interesting one.

 

[KR...]

Everything looks very nice!

However about the measurements, I am clueless to what I am looking at. It's all greek to me.

Can someone please explain to me what they mean?

 

[jude]

KR,

Tyll explains it earlier in this thread. Look further up the thread. It's a helpful post in understanding all that stuff.

 

[KR...]

thanks for pointing that out!

BTW, I wonder if you know who would be willing to send the R-10's and HP-1's over to headroom for testing?

 

[jude]

Quote:

Originally posted by KR... BTW, I wonder if you know who would be willing to send the R-10's and HP-1's over to headroom for testing?

Hmmmm.......let me think about that one.......who owns both?......heheheh.

I'm sure whoever does own both would probably reply in kind that a Grado HP-2 testing session might be just as intriguing! LOL!