I presume that symphonic peak is referring to ear-shattering orchestral cymbal transients while on the stage. As for continuous peaks, I'd pin the loudest orchestral tutties I've encountered at upwards of 100 dBA.

I'm not yet sure if there is an Idagio or Quobuz counterpart to this full compilation. Otherwise, it sounds plenty excellent, textured, and dynamic where called for. Presently just getting to the fifth symphony.

I'd say it can remain on topic if not overly generalized, focusing on the speculation of how the removal of the "window shade grilles" would be affecting the SUV. Firstly, chargedcapacitor would be right to say that the back reflections from the grilles should not be referred to as distortions...

I'd say the big thing is the difference in comfort style and the massive increase in the amount of space around your ears (though I still found the Utopia impressively open-feeling, but described the presentation as being like having fuzzy tubes of sound driven into the head). When auditioning...

Silver is similarly very malleable and has almost have the density, perhaps? What other headphones use silver traces?

Time to refer folks back to the following video where I in detail document the process of measuring headphone cables acoustically (to prove that the headphone load itself at least for these flat impedance planars does not have an effect, for those objecting against measuring just the wire)...

And it never seems to be the fault of how the headphones couple with their ears to produce a certain frequency response.

I consider https://www.klippel.de/listeningtest/ to be an even worse offender, yet some folks on ASR still got impressive results. Now, my tinnitus might also be limiting things.

From my experience, my 2.1 W FiiO K9 Pro ESS can get the DCA Expanse over XLR plenty loud enough on high gain, whereby to get something like Mahler Symphony No. 5 close to concert levels (at least 94 dBA explosive tutti), I do need to max out the volume knob. At that point, I would be pretty...

I'd say indeed tonality does not necessarily improve with price, but distortion performance for a given headphone size (where larger pads and drivers can be for a number of folks subjectively beneficial) can, though as I have been saying in...

Distortion measurements in this regard are mainly for seeing what said flagships have purportedly "innovated" on considering that for tonality, I am of the stance that virtually every headphone needs EQ if what you are looking for is simulation of truly neutral speakers (more on that in...

I myself elsewhere had noted that Amir's distortion measurement for the Susvara was not at all "bad" and is probably inaudible, whereby I guess things got blown out of proportion after the expectation of something of that price measuring as well as or better than the DCA Stealth (which sounded...

When I had a chance to measure them with in-ear mics, the FR was pretty reasonable, though with some small peaks, the main issue being the inconsistency of the bass; the Expanse and E3 having been much better in that regard. The E3 was probably overall the closest to my actual speaker HRTF, but...

"Smaller soundstage" and "more intimate" could mean the 1 kHz to 3 kHz "HiFiMan dip" was filled to be closer to neutral, which is a good thing for my preference and EQing.

Can you share which track(s) you heard that "static" on? I had shared my distortion QC concerns for three HE1000se units in https://www.head-fi.org/threads/totl-disappointments.925164/page-63#post-17949397 (post #936), whereby while it looks quite bad compared to other headphones I've measured...

Have you tried https://abx.digitalfeed.net/, particularly for 320 kbps MP3 versus FLAC?

Heh. I mean, if you've seen my headphone measurements and "raving" about the Meze Elite's EQed distortion performance (e.g. https://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/master-complaint-thread-about-headphone-measurements.18451/post-1956895 (post #1,210)), I too am afflicted by a...

Do you consider "sound" like in the below representation as being separate from the "sound" that you perceive? Figure 1: 5-second except of the opening of Mahler Symphony No. 5. Figure 2: Fast Fourier transform of the waveform from around that point in the symphony. Under the case that your...

Ah. Excuse my shallow misinterpretation of "dark matter". Otherwise, your latter statements seem to be in agreement with the view that if your products and some others' are in fact not producing electrically or acoustically measurable differences, then the primary mechanism of influencing the...

Mahler Symphony No. 6, Tomáš Netopil, Essen Philharmonic Orchestra / ℗ 2020. Sounds fantastic with my binaural head-tracking. https://app.idagio.com/recordings/35453136 https://open.qobuz.com/album/hb39d81n0r9cb

So you mean such issues in regard to details not known about pre-existing blind tests. Nothing's stopping you or others from revisiting those tests and accounting for all of the above, no? Someone else can list for me the plethora of things that can go wrong (which of course includes the above...

Can you expound on "all the things that can and do go wrong with testing audio devices of any kind" and how that is relevant to not knowing what tweak you are listening to or whether that tweak is currently being applied?

The blind test here is the method for eliminating psychological influences on the perception of sound, yet you vied that it doesn't "prove anything"; could you elaborate on what your preferred testing methodology is? I vie that if on being properly double-blinded (not necessarily a literal...

There is certainly a decent sample size of folks on this forum who seem to completely reject controls as simple as volume-matching. The point then is whether their "controls" are flawed or enable any hint of psychological suggestion. And don't forget the "...and the individual still perceives a...

tl;dr: Yes I'm being anal about distortion performance. I have admitted before that while I as in the figures in my links can definitely measure the presence of distortion in varying quantities for different units of the same headphone model as well as show other headphones that have more or...