Pharmaboy
Headphoneus Supremus
The electric bass guitar is a pretty good demonstration of bass. The lowest note is ~41-42 Hz, near the upper limit of what we consider headphone sub-bass. There are instruments that can play below that, typically synthesizers & church organs that can go down to the upper teens to upper 30s Hz. The bass guitar's top note is ~625 Hz, which = upper bass to low midrange.
There isn't much music below 40 Hz, practically speaking. Sure, some music genres contain ultra-low bass engineered in (typically via synth) for effect. But in music played on actual instruments, there's not much musical content in the lowest range, aside from massive church organs that play with stunning power at the bottom of human hearing. We actually listen to & enjoy plenty of music in which the very lowest bass notes are absent. Anyone with a pair of good 2-way speakers is settling for a lower limit of ~50 Hz to maybe 60 Hz -- and even there the speakers' power/impact is dropping off.
Perception of those lower bass notes isn't just about tonality & timbre (ie, identifying notes as coming from an electric bass vs upright string bass). How low notes sound also depends on the power with which they're reproduced. Power & dynamics (in electronics as well as tranducers) can make low notes really pop, hit w/impact. This is the province of subwoofers in 2-channel setups. Subs can actually shake your body (& pictures on walls) when the lowest bass notes are played.
Getting back to headphones--a headphone like the Eikon, which can reproduce sub-bass w/power & has a relatively flat, powerful bass range in general, can be thrilling. All the bass notes, top to bottom, are conveyed with power & impact, particularly at higher volumes. You not only hear the lowest notes but also feel them shake your head (an addicting sensation).
The Atticus (which I don't have) & Aelous (which I do have) don't go quite as far down to the sub-bass as the Eikon. But they elevate, at least to a degree (pad dependent in the case of the Aeolus) the power & impact of the mid-bass. So getting back to the bass guitar, all those notes in the middle ~1/2 of the instrument are reproduced with real punch & volume by the Aeolus--as are other instruments like kick-drum. Despite reproducing somewhat less sub-bass, the entire bass range seems to pop more.
This deviation from ruler-flat in the mid-bass can sound very pleasing, as well as be suggestive of music IRL, where bass notes propagate quite differently from high notes, w/those long wavelengths bouncing around longer. In live music, the entire bass range to lower midrange is very present & powerful (live music in acoustic space never measures flat).
There isn't much music below 40 Hz, practically speaking. Sure, some music genres contain ultra-low bass engineered in (typically via synth) for effect. But in music played on actual instruments, there's not much musical content in the lowest range, aside from massive church organs that play with stunning power at the bottom of human hearing. We actually listen to & enjoy plenty of music in which the very lowest bass notes are absent. Anyone with a pair of good 2-way speakers is settling for a lower limit of ~50 Hz to maybe 60 Hz -- and even there the speakers' power/impact is dropping off.
Perception of those lower bass notes isn't just about tonality & timbre (ie, identifying notes as coming from an electric bass vs upright string bass). How low notes sound also depends on the power with which they're reproduced. Power & dynamics (in electronics as well as tranducers) can make low notes really pop, hit w/impact. This is the province of subwoofers in 2-channel setups. Subs can actually shake your body (& pictures on walls) when the lowest bass notes are played.
Getting back to headphones--a headphone like the Eikon, which can reproduce sub-bass w/power & has a relatively flat, powerful bass range in general, can be thrilling. All the bass notes, top to bottom, are conveyed with power & impact, particularly at higher volumes. You not only hear the lowest notes but also feel them shake your head (an addicting sensation).
The Atticus (which I don't have) & Aelous (which I do have) don't go quite as far down to the sub-bass as the Eikon. But they elevate, at least to a degree (pad dependent in the case of the Aeolus) the power & impact of the mid-bass. So getting back to the bass guitar, all those notes in the middle ~1/2 of the instrument are reproduced with real punch & volume by the Aeolus--as are other instruments like kick-drum. Despite reproducing somewhat less sub-bass, the entire bass range seems to pop more.
This deviation from ruler-flat in the mid-bass can sound very pleasing, as well as be suggestive of music IRL, where bass notes propagate quite differently from high notes, w/those long wavelengths bouncing around longer. In live music, the entire bass range to lower midrange is very present & powerful (live music in acoustic space never measures flat).
great looking cups!
