[Brandon7s]

I've been using my new HD8XXs for about 4 hours so far today and so I figured I should post follow up for those who might be interested in how my experience is going so far with them in comparison to my Anandas.

First things first: their stock, un-equalized frequency response is complete garbage for me. It's one of the muddied headphones I've ever used right out of the box. I honestly have no idea what on earth they were thinking when they were running these, the FR is honestly terrible. I've not tried the sticker mods yet and likely won't since I use Impulcifer with them so their stock FR doesn't really matter. I did try EQing them to the Harmon target and that is a significant improvement. It's very difficult for me to discern technical abilities of headphones without customized speaker virtualization though, since I don't experience soundstage without it - and despite these being lauded as the most wide and expansive soundstage available in headphones, these were no exception. Instruments sound randomly placed and very much in my head as usual.

As a result result I wasted little time with them being taking a 7.1 measurement with Impulcifer using my Kali LP-6s in a nearfield configuration. The results were fantastic, though I did need to do a little manual channel balancing but that's normal for me.

I definitely think there's improvement in detail retrieval vs. the Anada but I'm having to rely on memory since I'm still waiting on their replacement pads to arrive. Once they are in I'll be able to A/B them.

Interestingly, headphone.png measurements of this 8XX measurement has much less variance about the 1000hz range compared to the inconsistent and extreme variation I get with my Anandas, and I've taken 110 Ananda measurements. Each one has different spikes and dips in the low channels above 2000hz, and between 1000 to 2000hz has significant distended from measurement to measurement as well, though to a lesser extent. The low end variance between left and right channels is similar to what I get with my Anandas though so that's likely just the nature of the shapes of my ears, which makes me feel better about the Anandas. The higher frequency variation with them is something that puzzles me though. Maybe I'll see more of those differences with further 8XX measurements, only time will tell.

I'm any case, the first measurement with the 8XX was on par with the best measurement I've ever gotten out of the Anandas after over 100 of them, so that's promising. Maybe their cup shape just works better on my head or perhaps I just got lucky. I'll take some more measurements later this week to find out.

 

[reter]

Are you sure you have hearing loss in your left ear or is that just a guess? That's usually in the higher frequencies as far as I know, unless it's a severe case. If not I would try adding a small delay (like 0.1 ms) to the left channel in EqAPO and see if that makes a difference to you, that has worked for other people on this forum.

If your normal head posture is tilted slightly left or right, your brain will eventually accept that position as neutral. If your head is tilted left and sound is hitting your right ear slightly sooner than your left, simulating the delay that your brain is expecting will most likely fix your issue.

Anyways, removing the mic casing fixed my issue thankfully

sadly i'm sure because i did the audiometric test before getting a job, also i don't have to test it, it's so noticeable for me even in real life, i can test clapping my hands left and right and i can hear the difference... i was thinking on some left audio correction but as it is i'm so much used in real life that i can be used in my "virtual" one too, if you know what i mean

 

[Sekka]

I just found out that if you run the headphone measurement with HeSuVi activated and your HRIR selected, and you have the default input device set as your surround virtualizer (Cable Output for me), plotting the headphone graph will show the combined frequency response of the HRIR's speaker + headphone measurements as received by the input device.

This makes it much easier to EQ the HRIR to your liking. If you had a smoothed version of the graph you could even run it through AutoEQ to match a target curve.

 

[musicreo]

I just found out that if you run the headphone measurement with HeSuVi activated and your HRIR selected, and you have the default input device set as your surround virtualizer (Cable Output for me), plotting the headphone graph will show the combined frequency response of the HRIR's speaker + headphone measurements as received by the input device.

If you have measured your PRIR and headphone you already have their combined frequency response. I don't see any sense in your measurement.

 

[Joe Bloggs]

I just found out that if you run the headphone measurement with HeSuVi activated and your HRIR selected, and you have the default input device set as your surround virtualizer (Cable Output for me), plotting the headphone graph will show the combined frequency response of the HRIR's speaker + headphone measurements as received by the input device.

This makes it much easier to EQ the HRIR to your liking. If you had a smoothed version of the graph you could even run it through AutoEQ to match a target curve.

Combined as in downmixed to stereo? That's a nice idea. Taking the idea further, I often had a test set of music played through a certain PRIR / whatever playback chain I had and measured the FR of the whole track compared to the input, and EQed the result back towards the original using statistical methods. Call it statistical PRIR tonality correction? At the end of which you pretty much hear your headphones as they originally sounded but with spatialization.

 

[Sekka]

If you have measured your PRIR and headphone you already have their combined frequency response. I don't see any sense in your measurement.

The difference is that the measurement will react to and allow you to visualize any change you make as far as EQ, downmixing, upmixing, adjusting virtual speaker position, etc. Basically anything that alters the digital audio signal.

 

[reter]

sadly i'm sure because i did the audiometric test before getting a job, also i don't have to test it, it's so noticeable for me even in real life, i can test clapping my hands left and right and i can hear the difference... i was thinking on some left audio correction but as it is i'm so much used in real life that i can be used in my "virtual" one too, if you know what i mean

i tried the channel balance to raw reduce the decibel in my right ear to fix my left ear problem, i was mistaken! IT DOES A LOT, i fixed using channel_balance=-1.1 so i have 1.1db less on my right and it's like i've restored my left ear, omg so good, sure impulcifer does a lot of stuff to help

before, with 7.1 virtualization i could ear the left side of the stuff more far than the right side, now i can hear both sides localized well



EDIT: I have to correct myself, after some tests i found that it's worst in localization, i shouldn't correct by raising or lowering the volume, instead i should raise only the frequencies i lost on my left ear

 

[Iohfcasa]

There shouldn't be any channel disbalance caused by measurements below ~1000hz, because the brain can't utilize level differences (ild) in that range very well and therefore is limited to evaluation of phase diffences (itd) for left/ right detection.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
(Itd and ild)

 

[Brandon7s]

I got my Ananda's replacement pads in last week and so I tried making measurements with both my new HD8XX and the Ananda in order to compare them as closely as possible.

Long story short, the HD8XX's results with Impulcifer are just flat-out better. They sound sharper, have stronger localization, and have less issues with rogue treble spikes. They also measure more consistently; if measure the Anandas in two different sessions, the results of the headphone measurement will vary significantly, especially above 3000hz. The HD8XX's measurements are much more consistent from session to session, both in the final results and in the headphone measurements. There's some slight variations above 3000hz but it's far more slight than the differences between Ananda measurements.

Here's where it gets weird. See how smooth the graph lines are in this HD8XX measurement compared to the Ananda graph? This is from the same session, same exact settings on everything, same mic placement for both headphone measurements.

HD8XX headphone.png:

Ananda headphone.png from same measurement session.

See how the Ananda's graph is so "hairy" and saw-like at above 1000hz? I think that this could be a part of why the HD8XX results with Impulcifer are a significant step up in localization sharpness and clarity. I thought that this could be caused by distortion from driving the headphones too hard or from digital clipping so I tried reducing both the audio output to ensure digital clipping wouldn't occur and I also dropped the SPL of output of the headphones by turning the amp down and it made absolutely no difference. This is a real puzzle to me.

 

[simplefi]

Very interesting observations with your 8XX. I picked up some HD800s to experiment with Impulcifer and my findings are similar to yours. Localization is excellent, as is technical performance. My headphones plot is a little "hairier" than your 8XX but not as bad as the Anandas. Not sure how this plays into the result but I am getting great results.

Another thing I have been experimenting with is amplification and have found that the choice of amp does indeed make an impact depending on what your goal is. Making measurements with one amp and then playing back with another, or making different measurements using different respective amps all impact the end result. My theory is that certain aspects like frequency response and localization can be well captured with the impulse response measurement, while other aspects of the sound cannot be captured. If you have ever compared two amps and have been able to hear that one has better imaging or dynamics than the other, or hear the differences between a tube vs solid state amp, these are things that may not be measureable with a sine sweep. Thus these qualities will also contribute to the final sound.

My takeaway is that for multichannel use, frequency response and localization are the most important factors and Impulcifer measurements excels at this. For two channel critical listening, the other factors mentioned above may also come into play depending on your system and ears.

 

[reter]

Very interesting observations with your 8XX. I picked up some HD800s to experiment with Impulcifer and my findings are similar to yours. Localization is excellent, as is technical performance. My headphones plot is a little "hairier" than your 8XX but not as bad as the Anandas. Not sure how this plays into the result but I am getting great results.

Another thing I have been experimenting with is amplification and have found that the choice of amp does indeed make an impact depending on what your goal is. Making measurements with one amp and then playing back with another, or making different measurements using different respective amps all impact the end result. My theory is that certain aspects like frequency response and localization can be well captured with the impulse response measurement, while other aspects of the sound cannot be captured. If you have ever compared two amps and have been able to hear that one has better imaging or dynamics than the other, or hear the differences between a tube vs solid state amp, these are things that may not be measureable with a sine sweep. Thus these qualities will also contribute to the final sound.

My takeaway is that for multichannel use, frequency response and localization are the most important factors and Impulcifer measurements excels at this. For two channel critical listening, the other factors mentioned above may also come into play depending on your system and ears.

Wonder if this is because jakko uses the same headphones so he calibrated impulcifer basically for his headphones, but i could be wrong

 

[castleofargh]

Wonder if this is because jakko uses the same headphones so he calibrated impulcifer basically for his headphones, but i could be wrong

Solid no on this.

 

[reter]

guys, i want to buy another pair oc headphones do try with impulcifer, do you know what's the best to use with impulcifer? closed or open back? planars? should be closer to the harman curve or doesn't matter?

i have the sennheiser 660s, i would like to try something else to see how it changes

 

[simplefi]

guys, i want to buy another pair oc headphones do try with impulcifer, do you know what's the best to use with impulcifer? closed or open back? planars? should be closer to the harman curve or doesn't matter?

i have the sennheiser 660s, i would like to try something else to see how it changes

HD800 has been proven to work well for speaker virtualization and is what Smyth Research recommends for the Realiser (along w Stax). Open back seem to work the best IME.

 

[simplefi]

I’ve started experimenting with room measurements using the UMIK-1. I’ve found that the sensitivity is quite low for my normal listening volume. I am getting headroom readings in the 30db range. Are the results more useable if the digital gain in windows is turned up or is it ok to use the recordings as is? I have it set for 0db.