[Me x3]

Grados are mid-bassy with massive harmonic distortion in the bass which normally makes the sound slightly warmer and more diffuse. That alone can mask dryness quite effectively. Going up in the FR you'll find Grados with differently sized treble peaks and placed at different frequencies so that makes them sound different from each other. Sr125i sounds different from RS1 and RS1 different from PS1000.

There's quite a lot of information that can be derived from FR and THD, but it's not as straight forward as some would like to. It's important to consider evrything as a whole while paying attention at how each part of the spectrum affects sound.

It's always a nice excercise to pick a high quality parametric equalizer like DMG Equality for instance and tweak the sound for the sake of checking the results. Boost the bass on HD800, calm down the 6kHz region and you end up with a completely different headphone.

In other words, it's not as simple as treble peaks = dryness. Treble peaks at different frequencies affect the sound in different manners. Same can be said from the rest of the spectrum. Add harmonic distortion on top of that, especially when looking at headphones with big amounts of it. Even then there's further analysis to be made since second orden harmonic distortion affects sound different than third order and so on...

 

[mocenigo]

   
HD800 has a notable bump in the frequency response in the 6kHz region so it has a tendency to sound dry and clinical.
When you boost the bass and lower midrange the dryness is somehow masked, same happens when using an amplifier with high output impedance.
In that sense warmer HD800 (higher bass and lower mids in the FR) tend to sound less dry, while cooler HD800 tends to sound drier.
 
I could have said "warmer" and "cooler", but the dryness is what stands out more to my ears when using HD800 (especially with less than perfect recordings)

The HD800 bump sound 6Khz is indeed known, which means that the first harmonics of the mids are exalted a bit, so the crucial detail in this range will overshadow other frequencies, this explains the "dry and clinical".  I get this, thank you for pointing that effect.  But then, what is the effect of the similar bump of the K812 exactly one octave lower (around 3Khz)?  That one has more visibility in the micro details of lower instruments, I guess - that's why following cellos and violas in complex orchestral textures is a bit easier with the K812?
 
Some ppl say that measurements are not important, but I do not agree. The problem, is that we do not always know how to read them and correlate with subjective listening experience. The case you make is one of the exceptions to this.
 
 Roberto

 

[mocenigo]

We have different gears, but me it's a little different. I'm a t1 guy. Love the t1 (both v1 and v2) more than the akg still i like the k812 a lot. I think i only listened the hd800 once or twice since i got the akg

 
I was indeed careful, I wrote "and I discarded the T1 almost immediately" not "the T1 seemed crap"  I am happy you are happy with your T1 and it did not seem a bad object at all, simply with the gear I have at home it did not work well at all. It was also uncomfortable to wear for me (I wrote my head must be strange). I have looked at your profile and you have a lot of headphones and amps. Which amp do you use with the T1?
 
 Roberto

 

[up late]

Grados are mid-bassy with massive harmonic distortion in the bass which normally makes the sound slightly warmer and more diffuse. That alone can mask dryness quite effectively. Going up in the FR you'll find Grados with differently sized treble peaks and placed at different frequencies so that makes them sound different from each other. Sr125i sounds different from RS1 and RS1 different from PS1000.

There's quite a lot of information that can be derived from FR and THD, but it's not as straight forward as some would like to. It's important to consider evrything as a whole while paying attention at how each part of the spectrum affects sound.

It's always a nice excercise to pick a high quality parametric equalizer like DMG Equality for instance and tweak the sound for the sake of checking the results. Boost the bass on HD800, calm down the 6kHz region and you end up with a completely different headphone.

In other words, it's not as simple as treble peaks = dryness. Treble peaks at different frequencies affect the sound in different manners. Same can be said from the rest of the spectrum. Add harmonic distortion on top of that, especially when looking at headphones with big amounts of it. Even then there's further analysis to be made since second orden harmonic distortion affects sound different than third order and so on...

 
and the information that cannot be derived from a frequency response (fr) graph is whether a headphone sounds dry and analytical or not, which is my point. as i said in my previous post, an fr measurement can't show us whether a headphone will sound dry, humid or wet. nor can it provide us with any indication of a headphone's timbral, imaging and "soundstaging" capabilities - that's where our perception comes in.
 
with regard to harmonic distortion, yes it can add a pleasant warmth but clarity can suffer as a consequence. the k812's total harmonic distortion (thd) measurement may give some indication as to why it didn't sound as clean to me as the hd800. that said, even tyll hertsen cautioned that we should not place too much stock in his thd measurements because they can be affected by the vibrations created by a truck rolling down his street.

 

[fhuang]

I was indeed careful, I wrote "and I discarded the T1 almost immediately" not "the T1 seemed crap"  I am happy you are happy with your T1 and it did not seem a bad object at all, simply with the gear I have at home it did not work well at all. It was also uncomfortable to wear for me (I wrote my head must be strange). I have looked at your profile and you have a lot of headphones and amps. Which amp do you use with the T1?

 Roberto

You're entitled you opinion. Maybe your t1 is faulty or maybe you do think t1 is not very good. It's all good. And i love my t1 with wa5. And wa5 also sounds great with the k812. The dynamic is incredibly good while still musical. Gsx is nice too but sometimes feel lack life a bit.

 

[mocenigo]

   
Which is ironic because the K812 actually produce more distortion than HD600, CMIIW.

Which, as we know, does not matter much unless we are talking about really huge amounts of distorsion at normal listening level. Most of us would pick a tube amp over a SS one even if the former has 100 times more THD..
 
 Roberto

 

[Me x3]

   
and the information that cannot be derived from a frequency response (fr) graph is whether a headphone sounds dry and analytical or not, which is my point. as i said in my previous post, an fr measurement can't show us whether a headphone will sound dry, humid or wet. nor can it provide us with any indication of a headphone's timbral, imaging and "soundstaging" capabilities - that's where our perception comes in.
 
with regard to harmonic distortion, yes it can add a pleasant warmth but clarity can suffer as a consequence. the k812's total harmonic distortion (thd) measurement may give some indication as to why it didn't sound as clean to me as the hd800. that said, even tyll hertsen cautioned that we should not place too much stock in his thd measurements because they can be affected by the vibrations created by a truck rolling down his street.

I don't think your point is correct.
If you over-isolate variables then you won't reach useful conclusions looking at a FR and or THD graph.
If you analyse K812 THD alone then best chances are you'll be end up being wrong. Same if you want to know if a headphone is dry or not looking if it has treble peaks or not.
 
I've measured my headphones personally and compared my own measurements with others with similarly calibrated setups. I've made many of them for the sake of understanding the limitations of my setup, the variability with placement, loudness and more. Even then Tyll's measurements are normally quite well so there aren't many tucks rolling down the street or they don't affect measurements that much.
 
Its as simple as picking a quality parateric equalizer to make the HD800 sound less dry by increasing the bass a lower mids and decreasing the 6kHz peak.
Timbral properties are mostly related to FR, there's some remaining qualities that can not be adressed by EQ or modding, but these have less of an impact than FR alone.
You can take an HD800 and make it sound like an AKG K702 or even K712, I've made that a few times.
 
With regards to K812 THD, it's important to understand what those numbers mean and at what point we are able to perceive them. For moderate listening levels 70-75dB average, THD on K812 is mostly below 1% even with peaks hitting 85-90dB. If you crack the volume because you happen to be a loud listener, then you'll get higher distortion in the bass. Even then THD at the very low bass is not that easy to hear and become masked pretty easily. Understanding what measurements show and don't show is quite a tricky task, that's why I normally prefer critical listening + deep measurements analysis over just one of these.
 
You'll find awful headphones that measure very well in terms of THD. Take this as an example:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/PhilipsCityscapeDowntown.pdf
 
With regards to soundstaging, that's more tricky to derive from measurements than timbre and dryness.
A neutralish response is more often than not, needed for big soundstage, a big bump in the bass, or treble will make the soundstage naturalness collapse. Other important factor is the presence region between 2.5kHz and 4.5kHz, headphones with softened response here tend to move the image further away or at least present the mids in a non intrussive fashion that's often perceived as bigger stage, that's exactly the way HD800 and HD700 are tuned, which is by the way the same as DT880, and not that far from K702/K712 besides the slight bump at 2kHz. On the other hand, headphones with flatter or even boosted precense region tend to sound more intimate just like the Senn HD600, Shure SRH 1840, etc.
Again, it's as simple as picking a quality parametric equalizer and play with the control to see what happens with soundstage. Even then, it's very hard to get the full picture looking only at FR/THD measurements because the positioning and size of the drivers play certain role as well as some other variables including some that are related to the listener's shape and loudness preference.

 

[Me x3]

 
The HD800 bump sound 6Khz is indeed known, which means that the first harmonics of the mids are exalted a bit, so the crucial detail in this range will overshadow other frequencies, this explains the "dry and clinical".  I get this, thank you for pointing that effect.  But then, what is the effect of the similar bump of the K812 exactly one octave lower (around 3Khz)?  That one has more visibility in the micro details of lower instruments, I guess - that's why following cellos and violas in complex orchestral textures is a bit easier with the K812?
 
Some ppl say that measurements are not important, but I do not agree. The problem, is that we do not always know how to read them and correlate with subjective listening experience. The case you make is one of the exceptions to this.
 
 Roberto

Well, picking a quality parametric EQ and playing back and forth to hear what certain frequency hump does is always a good excercise.
The hump in the 3kHz region on K812 make the sound more direct, more raw from time to time. It's right there at the presence region.
Following the sound of cellos is indeed easier on K812 next to the more distant and smoothed out HD800 to my ears as well.
The price K812 pays is the more inmediate presentation that's often harder to rationalize as a concert hall next to the more expansive HD800.
It's like, being at row 3 vs being at row 10, you know... Personal preference plays the bigger role in the end, and EQing is always a possibility anyway (with its pros and cons).
Pick HD800 and place a +5dB peak (Q=2) at 3kHz and you'll be closer to K812 in that regard.

 

[62ohm]

 
Which, as we know, does not matter much unless we are talking about really huge amounts of distorsion at normal listening level. Most of us would pick a tube amp over a SS one even if the former has 100 times more THD..
 
 Roberto

 
rofl why are you quoting posts from 3 years ago mate...

 

[up late]

I don't think your point is correct.
If you over-isolate variables then you won't reach useful conclusions looking at a FR and or THD graph.
If you analyse K812 THD alone then best chances are you'll be end up being wrong. Same if you want to know if a headphone is dry or not looking if it has treble peaks or not.

I've measured my headphones personally and compared my own measurements with others with similarly calibrated setups. I've made many of them for the sake of understanding the limitations of my setup, the variability with placement, loudness and more. Even then Tyll's measurements are normally quite well so there aren't many tucks rolling down the street or they don't affect measurements that much.

Its as simple as picking a quality parateric equalizer to make the HD800 sound less dry by increasing the bass a lower mids and decreasing the 6kHz peak.
Timbral properties are mostly related to FR, there's some remaining qualities that can not be adressed by EQ or modding, but these have less of an impact than FR alone.
You can take an HD800 and make it sound like an AKG K702 or even K712, I've made that a few times.

With regards to K812 THD, it's important to understand what those numbers mean and at what point we are able to perceive them. For moderate listening levels 70-75dB average, THD on K812 is mostly below 1% even with peaks hitting 85-90dB. If you crack the volume because you happen to be a loud listener, then you'll get higher distortion in the bass. Even then THD at the very low bass is not that easy to hear and become masked pretty easily. Understanding what measurements show and don't show is quite a tricky task, that's why I normally prefer critical listening + deep measurements analysis over just one of these.

You'll find awful headphones that measure very well in terms of THD. Take this as an example:
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/PhilipsCityscapeDowntown.pdf

With regards to soundstaging, that's more tricky to derive from measurements than timbre and dryness.
A neutralish response is more often than not, needed for big soundstage, a big bump in the bass, or treble will make the soundstage naturalness collapse. Other important factor is the presence region between 2.5kHz and 4.5kHz, headphones with softened response here tend to move the image further away or at least present the mids in a non intrussive fashion that's often perceived as bigger stage, that's exactly the way HD800 and HD700 are tuned, which is by the way the same as DT880, and not that far from K702/K712 besides the slight bump at 2kHz. On the other hand, headphones with flatter or even boosted precense region tend to sound more intimate just like the Senn HD600, Shure SRH 1840, etc.
Again, it's as simple as picking a quality parametric equalizer and play with the control to see what happens with soundstage. Even then, it's very hard to get the full picture looking only at FR/THD measurements because the positioning and size of the drivers play certain role as well as some other variables including some that are related to the listener's shape and loudness preference.

i feel it's become necessary to remind you of how our exchange began. i responded to your post in which you said that you had seen warmer and drier hd800s in sennheiser's plots, but not in third party measurements yet. i asked how you could tell that headphones sound warmer and drier from measurements alone. i was specifically referring to fr measurements, and you appeared to understand that judging from your reply.

so the focus of our exchange was fr measurements in isolation. now you seem to want to broaden the scope of the discussion by bringing in other variables that inform the totality of your assessments. however, my query was confined to fr measurements and i thought that was apparent.

i'm happy to concede that you are probably more skilled at reading fr graphs than i am, and i know of others here who are too. i very much doubt, however, that any of them would claim to be able to tell how well a headphone reproduces timbre and soundstage from them because they know that fr measurements do not contain that information. i understood this to be a given and not up for debate - until now. anyway, i suggest that we agree to disagree about this.

 

[Me x3]

i think it's become necessary to remind you of how our exchange began. i responded to your post in which you said that you had seen warmer and drier hd800's in sennheiser's plots, but not in third party measurements yet. i asked how you could tell that headphones sound warmer or drier from measurements alone. i was specifically referring to fr measurements and you appeared to understand that in your reply.

so the focus of our exchange was fr measurements in isolation. now you seem to want to broaden the scope of the discussion by bringing in other factors that inform the totality of your assessments. however, my query was confined to fr measurements and i thought that was apparent.

i'm happy to concede that you are probably more skilled at reading fr graphs than i am, and i know of others here who are too. i very much doubt however, that any of them would claim to be able to derive how well a headphone reproduces timbre and soundstage from them. i understood this to be a given and not up for debate - until now.

anyway, i suggest that we agree to disagree about this.

 
The thing is I'm not talking about HD800 without having listened extensively to it.
More so I've played quite a lot with HD800 and DMG Equilibrium which is probably among the finest equalizers out there.
 
In that context, I've chosen the words "warmer" and "drier" used as opposites for HD800 plots for the reasons explained somewhere in on of my previous posts. Here's the explanation again with todays words: HD800 has a tendency to sound dry, mainly due to the particular shape of the frequency response between 2kHz and 11kHz, where you have a softened presence region followed by a big raise starting at 5kHz followed by an extended and relatively well behaved upper treble.
 
I know what happens when you boost the bass and lower mids on HD800, it becomes warmer and gives the impression of being less dry.
I also knows what happens when you lower the bass and lower mids on HD800, it becomes even drier. That's my experience and that's why I've classified warmer HD800 plots as less dry and viceversa.
 
Same happens with other headphones like K702 (drier) vs K712 (less dry).
Overdamped response and slightly raised treble in the 5 - 8kHz region lends to perceived dryness in my experience.
 
If I were talking about the Focal Utopia which I've never heard so I don't have a single idea of how it sounds, then going blind by FR measurements alone saying it's dry or not would have been very risky on my part.
 
On the other hand saying (a well known headphone for me as) the HD800 with added +3dB in the bass sounds warmer and less dry than flatter HD800, that's a safe claim in my book. If you think that's a risky or unfounded claim, then you have the right to believe so.

 

[up late]

i'm afraid that you have misunderstood my first post and our exchange has proceeded from there. i thought that i had made myself clear during the course of our discussion but apparently not - nvm.

 

[mocenigo]

rofl why are you quoting posts from 3 years ago mate...

I am reading the whole thread and sometimes I cannot resist

 

[sanjeewasam]

Please provide you comments on "Most Musical HP (Open) and IEM"
http://www.head-fi.org/t/840625/most-musical-hp-open-and-iem
Much appreciated

 

[mocenigo]

  [...] which is why I bought the K812. It fills a niche (rock music) that I felt my current headphones were lacking in.

 
Really? Guess what, I picked the K812 over the HD800 listening mostly to classical. Tastes are really different.
 
 Roberto