mvw2
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2007
- Posts
- 1,879
- Likes
- 106
I recently have been toying around with my IEMs with video. My new phone came with the new Tron trailer, so I've been playing around with my earphones with this little video. I don't typically use earphones for movie watching, so there have been a lot of aspects that I have not really looked at critically. One of these aspects is sound stage, mainly how correct the layout is represented. For music, this isn't really a concern. More left-right, more depth, more of anything typically is good as it helps separate and space out the presentation. However, when toying with video I started realizing how the stage was off. I'll explain further.
In the basic sense, the sound stage consists of a full left earphone, full right earphone, and a mix of volume of both in between that allows the perceived location to pan across the stage space. Depth is largely controlled via dynamic range. Very loud information is perceived close while very quiet information is perceived far. We have a relative sense of close and far when compared to an average noise level of the audio we are listening too. The greater the dynamic range, the greater the depth.
To make a good sound stage we need additional things. First we need transparency. We need the earphone to produce audio without it sounding like the audio is coming from the earphone. If we notice the source, we will be forever drawn to it. Essentially we want the earphone to disappear from our perception. Drivers with lower distortion help the driver disappear. Minimizing driver vibration of the earphone housing helps the driver disappear. Eliminating any additional resonances or noise sources in the earphone from the driver helps make the earphone disappear. When done right, all we hear is sound and we have no perception of a driver/earphone creating that sound.
Second, we need to present enough detailed information to provide locational cues, size, and spacing. While much of this comes from simply panning left to right and changing relative volume, a lot of locational cues are also mixed into the audio in the form of small noises, echos, reverberations of the instruments and room. Much of this information can be presented or lost depending on the earphone's ability to present a high amount of detail as well as present a significant amount of note texture/articulation. A driver that is too sluggish or muddy might not be capable enough to portray some of the smaller details. A driver that is to short and clean not may cut a note so short that there is little articulation and a lot of data simply can't be presented in the note time.
Third, we need everything to be linear. We need the panning from left to right even. Believe it or not, some earphones have very little sense of direction outside of very left, very right, and somewhere in the center. Sometimes the very left and very right are overly dominant but with a smaller sense of directions in between. This kind of has to do with the ability for the earphone to scale linearly in volume from quiet to loud, and it may have some to do with linearity of dynamic range. Speaking of dynamic range, depth is also an area where linearity is important. Some earphones have a relatively compressed range where quiet is medium in volume and loud is medium loud. Sometimes notes can be presented overly aggressive and loud can be quite loud. Sometimes earphones have trouble presenting very quiet information and distance is lost. The more dynamic range and the more linear the range, the better the sense of depth will be, including both close proximity and great distance.
I also want to note that frequency response does play a role in all of this. Our minds use tonal changes to gauge relative location, example behind or in front. You can change the frequency response of an earphone and effectively move locational cues of sounds around in the stage space. While I don't specifically say that an earphone should be ruler flat in response, linearity of this response does aid the mind in evaluating the sound and placing it more correctly.
In the end, we want to see all of these aspects put together. We would prefer to have an earphone that is fast and highly detailed, clean in note but with lengthy attack and decay to allow texture/articulation, and a very capable driver that isn't dynamically constrained. All at the same time we want the ranges of volume and the dynamic range to be linear in breadth. It's kind of a hard task in the end to simply do everything right.
So back to the movie watching...
Well, as I was dinking around with my various earphones I started to realize that some were a bit off. Now many of the earphones I have do have good sound stages in the sense that you get good space, depth, locational placement, at least in songs with no visual reference. However, once I tied an image to the sounds, specifically an image that was purposely dimensional like a movie(versus something like a concert), locational perception was off with many of my earphones. Many ended up tossing the perceived location of the act pretty much off screen. You may get a good center and a strong left and right, but for something that is halfway left on the screen, the earphone throws the sound to the left edge or in some cases beyond the screen. I ended up only having a couple earphones that were good about putting the sound and the picture in the same perceived place with both the eyes and the ears. It was certainly an interesting experience given that I never really looked at sound stage as having to be correct. A lot of what I prefer has typically be exaggerations of the stage space, wider and deeper than what is realistic. For some earphones it's not always a matter of being too left or right but also too close or too far away from what the image indicates. Effectively the earphones that are more spot on are the ones that are more correct in range that offer both good linearity as well as appropriate intensity. I'm a big fan of having a solid sound stage in earphones. It just adds so much to the experience. I have certainly been intrigued by also now evaluating earphones effectively for accuracy of placement. It's something I just haven't done before, and it's shedding some new light on the products I own.
In case you're wondering:
Well synced locational cues
-Ck100
-OK1
-e-Q7
Not so well synced (although good sound stage from a musical sense)
-RE-ZERO
-UM3X
-Custom 3
-Triple.Fi 10
I found it interesting, especially since I do like the sound stage presentation of pretty much all these. Each are different, but they all do function well in their own ways. It is interesting how they do stack up once an image is involved. I've been a long time fan of the OK1, so that wasn't a big surprise. The CK100 is new to me but it's growing on me. These two represent the most balanced and linear of the bunch and end up putting the audio cues and video most in sync. The RE-ZERO isn't half bad actually, just not as good. It is interestingly aggressive at louder volumes. The UM3X was a surprise, awesome sound stage for pure audio, but it ended up being much stronger left and right and the response seemed to change distancing some. I was expecting the Custom 3 to be stellar as it is incredible for music. It's simply just a little off from the picture. The Triple.Fi 10's dynamics aren't as good, a little compressed, so it was as expected, love it for audio though, especially techno.
I wish I could toss up more earphones, but I don't have more to try out though. Feel free to find some movies/trailers, and start listening to some of your earphones.Get an idea of where the earphone places sound relative to the movie. Is the left-right panning decent? How about proximity and distance? Anywho, comment away, add your own experiences.
In the basic sense, the sound stage consists of a full left earphone, full right earphone, and a mix of volume of both in between that allows the perceived location to pan across the stage space. Depth is largely controlled via dynamic range. Very loud information is perceived close while very quiet information is perceived far. We have a relative sense of close and far when compared to an average noise level of the audio we are listening too. The greater the dynamic range, the greater the depth.
To make a good sound stage we need additional things. First we need transparency. We need the earphone to produce audio without it sounding like the audio is coming from the earphone. If we notice the source, we will be forever drawn to it. Essentially we want the earphone to disappear from our perception. Drivers with lower distortion help the driver disappear. Minimizing driver vibration of the earphone housing helps the driver disappear. Eliminating any additional resonances or noise sources in the earphone from the driver helps make the earphone disappear. When done right, all we hear is sound and we have no perception of a driver/earphone creating that sound.
Second, we need to present enough detailed information to provide locational cues, size, and spacing. While much of this comes from simply panning left to right and changing relative volume, a lot of locational cues are also mixed into the audio in the form of small noises, echos, reverberations of the instruments and room. Much of this information can be presented or lost depending on the earphone's ability to present a high amount of detail as well as present a significant amount of note texture/articulation. A driver that is too sluggish or muddy might not be capable enough to portray some of the smaller details. A driver that is to short and clean not may cut a note so short that there is little articulation and a lot of data simply can't be presented in the note time.
Third, we need everything to be linear. We need the panning from left to right even. Believe it or not, some earphones have very little sense of direction outside of very left, very right, and somewhere in the center. Sometimes the very left and very right are overly dominant but with a smaller sense of directions in between. This kind of has to do with the ability for the earphone to scale linearly in volume from quiet to loud, and it may have some to do with linearity of dynamic range. Speaking of dynamic range, depth is also an area where linearity is important. Some earphones have a relatively compressed range where quiet is medium in volume and loud is medium loud. Sometimes notes can be presented overly aggressive and loud can be quite loud. Sometimes earphones have trouble presenting very quiet information and distance is lost. The more dynamic range and the more linear the range, the better the sense of depth will be, including both close proximity and great distance.
I also want to note that frequency response does play a role in all of this. Our minds use tonal changes to gauge relative location, example behind or in front. You can change the frequency response of an earphone and effectively move locational cues of sounds around in the stage space. While I don't specifically say that an earphone should be ruler flat in response, linearity of this response does aid the mind in evaluating the sound and placing it more correctly.
In the end, we want to see all of these aspects put together. We would prefer to have an earphone that is fast and highly detailed, clean in note but with lengthy attack and decay to allow texture/articulation, and a very capable driver that isn't dynamically constrained. All at the same time we want the ranges of volume and the dynamic range to be linear in breadth. It's kind of a hard task in the end to simply do everything right.
So back to the movie watching...
Well, as I was dinking around with my various earphones I started to realize that some were a bit off. Now many of the earphones I have do have good sound stages in the sense that you get good space, depth, locational placement, at least in songs with no visual reference. However, once I tied an image to the sounds, specifically an image that was purposely dimensional like a movie(versus something like a concert), locational perception was off with many of my earphones. Many ended up tossing the perceived location of the act pretty much off screen. You may get a good center and a strong left and right, but for something that is halfway left on the screen, the earphone throws the sound to the left edge or in some cases beyond the screen. I ended up only having a couple earphones that were good about putting the sound and the picture in the same perceived place with both the eyes and the ears. It was certainly an interesting experience given that I never really looked at sound stage as having to be correct. A lot of what I prefer has typically be exaggerations of the stage space, wider and deeper than what is realistic. For some earphones it's not always a matter of being too left or right but also too close or too far away from what the image indicates. Effectively the earphones that are more spot on are the ones that are more correct in range that offer both good linearity as well as appropriate intensity. I'm a big fan of having a solid sound stage in earphones. It just adds so much to the experience. I have certainly been intrigued by also now evaluating earphones effectively for accuracy of placement. It's something I just haven't done before, and it's shedding some new light on the products I own.
In case you're wondering:
Well synced locational cues
-Ck100
-OK1
-e-Q7
Not so well synced (although good sound stage from a musical sense)
-RE-ZERO
-UM3X
-Custom 3
-Triple.Fi 10
I found it interesting, especially since I do like the sound stage presentation of pretty much all these. Each are different, but they all do function well in their own ways. It is interesting how they do stack up once an image is involved. I've been a long time fan of the OK1, so that wasn't a big surprise. The CK100 is new to me but it's growing on me. These two represent the most balanced and linear of the bunch and end up putting the audio cues and video most in sync. The RE-ZERO isn't half bad actually, just not as good. It is interestingly aggressive at louder volumes. The UM3X was a surprise, awesome sound stage for pure audio, but it ended up being much stronger left and right and the response seemed to change distancing some. I was expecting the Custom 3 to be stellar as it is incredible for music. It's simply just a little off from the picture. The Triple.Fi 10's dynamics aren't as good, a little compressed, so it was as expected, love it for audio though, especially techno.
I wish I could toss up more earphones, but I don't have more to try out though. Feel free to find some movies/trailers, and start listening to some of your earphones.Get an idea of where the earphone places sound relative to the movie. Is the left-right panning decent? How about proximity and distance? Anywho, comment away, add your own experiences.
