[Hifiearspeakers]

Your imagination is creating the illusion of space. It’s all secondary distance cues that are embedded in the mix of the music. You’re attributing it to the headphones, but that isn’t something the headphones are able to control.

Typical people rely on subjective impressions that are colored by bias and perceptual error. When you talk about things that make no objective sense and can’t be measured, you should consider the possibility that your subjectivity might be giving you the wrong idea.

You've been wrong about this for years, and you're still wrong. Please just stick to speakers for the love of God.

 

[vergesslich2]

Your imagination is creating the illusion of space. It’s all secondary distance cues that are embedded in the mix of the music. You’re attributing it to the headphones, but that isn’t something the headphones are able to control.

Do you think a headphone like the HD 600 is equally good as the K701 concerning the imaging? I recently had the idea that I could just try to find music that has enough spatial information so that it doesn't need any wider presentation of this, roughly said.

PS: Once I have tried to produce music and mixed to much reverb into it when using the HD 600, so that with the speakers I would correct that and lower the reverb level. Happened every time I tried producing (well... I gave up, for the good). Could it be that the view of a mixing engineer or producer is complicating the talk about the imaging matter? Anyways, I'm agreeing to your statement as far as I think I understand it.*

*Are secondary distance cues in the source (the data in my mp3 file) or is it physics that goes on in the ear cups?

 

[castleofargh]

Do you think a headphone like the HD 600 is equally good as the K701 concerning the imaging? I recently had the idea that I could just try to find music that has enough spacial information so that it doesn't need any wider presentation of this, roughly said.

people often won't agree on what good imaging should be or why.

 

[vergesslich2]

people often won't agree on what good imaging should be or why.

I'm really not sure, but the book from Toole until page 15 already helped me, I believe. If I understand it correctly, recording an orchestra was more doable with microphones being not in the position of the listener in the hall, and not two at the ears, but near the instruments. Thinking about this I must agree. So that's a (insufficient) way recordings have been done a lot, because it had to be. (?)
On the other hand (I guess) artistic production would include using effects that sound pleasant with presentation systems that adds no reverbration, e.g. HD 600 or speakers in a treated room (?).
So the imperfect orchestra recordings are to dry, the artistic production may be (too) wet.
And it could be the other way around: A live recording may include enough spatial information, and the artistic production on the other hand might be made so dry that is works almost for exclusively for speakers. "The magic key" - the dry and loud drums fatigue my ears very quickly, it's so dry and 'impulsive'. Better listen to that song on speakers.
I mean, somehow I think I understand why it's hard to agree on anything, because it depends. But I need to go on reading that book. In a video he talks about different frequencies taking their inherent place around the head, from inside to outside. Problably makes it even more complicated. Probably covered in the book.

 

[bigshot]

Imaging is created by the sound engineers using hall ambience, mike placement, placement in the mix and added reverberation. The soundstage is designed to work properly on a standard triangulated speaker system. Headphones are not the intended playback medium, so with cans you are getting an approximation of what the intended sound image was. But it can still sound good.

The factors that affect imaging are channel separation (not a factor with headphones since their channel separation is perfect) and the interaction of the sound with the space of the listening room (which headphones are incapable of reproducing). Speaker systems can adjust the sound image by altering the separation by means of adjusting the distances of the triangle, or altering the physical characteristic of the room. The only thing that headphones can do is to alter the seal, making the sound more enclosed, or more open. The listener can have preferences about which is better- open or closed- but neither way is wrong. And neither way presents the sound image any more accurately. It's just personal preference.

Of course that doesn't stop people from incorrectly describing degrees of openness or closed off sound as "imaging". And the purely subjective preference of one over the other is presented as an objective description i.e.: "This set of headphones has better soundstage than the other."

 

[vergesslich2]

Sorry if I write much about my non-knowledge.

@bigshot

So, it's really hard to tell whether one headphone is better at something here. The seal makes the most difference in how the sound is presented, if I understand correctly, concerning imaging; the distance of the driver to the ear makes less of a change, if I understand your post correctly.

In my mind, not skilled in math, knowing very few headphone facts, I just head the idea that I'd prefer the driver near my ear. One thing is that I wonder how big the driver would need to be when it is quite far away from the ear, so ... I don't want to suggest that I know anything about planar headphones or how much air they can move. It's just my naive thinking that I could be helping the system when I allow it to be near my ear. I often felt like a customer that has to accept that the driver touches his ear and then concluded that the manufacturer sees something good in it. The material costs for more space for my ears wouldn't be so high, actually just much thicker pads would do it, if it was not the driver that also needed to be changed then. So maybe I "help the system" when the driver is near the ear.

And another probably naive thing is that the driver, when I think of it as a plane that has a certain distance to my ear, could be better or worse in presenting spatial noise fragments in the music file, because they may be translated to the same distance unit. So, in general, if noise arriving earlier or louder indicates to my brain that some reflection is different, the distance to the driver would rival this? My math problem here is that when I say there are those distances encoded into the music file, that their proportion - compared to distance to the driver - would become lower when the distance to the driver gets higher. Yet, I believe K701 (?) or other headphones with more space in the cups are (?) said to be better for judging about these distances that are put into the music file. Maybe the brain starts to be more judging about distances when it notices big distances that are worth to be judged about at all, or something?

 

[Hifiearspeakers]

Imaging is created by the sound engineers using hall ambience, mike placement, placement in the mix and added reverberation. The soundstage is designed to work properly on a standard triangulated speaker system. Headphones are not the intended playback medium, so with cans you are getting an approximation of what the intended sound image was. But it can still sound good.

The factors that affect imaging are channel separation (not a factor with headphones since their channel separation is perfect) and the interaction of the sound with the space of the listening room (which headphones are incapable of reproducing). Speaker systems can adjust the sound image by altering the separation by means of adjusting the distances of the triangle, or altering the physical characteristic of the room. The only thing that headphones can do is to alter the seal, making the sound more enclosed, or more open. The listener can have preferences about which is better- open or closed- but neither way is wrong. And neither way presents the sound image any more accurately. It's just personal preference.

Of course that doesn't stop people from incorrectly describing degrees of openness or closed off sound as "imaging". And the purely subjective preference of one over the other is presented as an objective description i.e.: "This set of headphones has better soundstage than the other."

Your understanding of headphones is subjective. Objectively, you don't have the first clue what you're talking about; all freaking noise and very little signal.

 

[bigshot]

So, it's really hard to tell whether one headphone is better at something here. The seal makes the most difference in how the sound is presented, if I understand correctly, concerning imaging; the distance of the driver to the ear makes less of a change, if I understand your post correctly.

There are things that are easy to measure and define... Frequency response, distortion, sensitivity, etc. Those are things we can speak of more confidently. But when you get into things like the distance from the ear, seal around the ears, pads, and how the sound is directed into the ear, you're talking about the fit, not fidelity. The sound can depend on the shape of your head and the shape of your ear canals as much as the output of the headphones. What may sound one way to one person may sound totally different to another.

The distances from a transducer to the ear are very small. It isn't like sound in a concert hall where the decay may go for several seconds, and it isn't like speakers in a room where the reflections off the wall can create significant timing changes. With headphones, it's more of a matter of how the bones in your ears are arranged, what kind of pads are around the ear cups, open back vs closed, and how well the headphones clamp on your head.

When people talk about headphones in forums, you will see some people saying that a certain model sounds great and other people say they sound terrible. They may both be right. But the difference isn't the headphones... it's their particular head. We can take measurements with dummy heads, and that might predict how headphones will generally sound to most people, but it won't be true for everyone. That's why it's best to audition headphones before you buy to make sure they work well for you. There are too many unique variables to really predict it.

I suspect it's even worse with in-ears. I am in a forum for Apple Air Pods Pro and there are people who can't get them to do noise cancelling at all, the response is tinny and thin. and the pods fall out of their ears... Then there are people with snug fits who hear full sound and fantastic noise cancelling. I think that is definitely a problem maintaining a seal, not a problem with how far in the ear the pod sits.

 

[vergesslich2]

The distances from a transducer to the ear are very small. It isn't like sound in a concert hall where the decay may go for several seconds, and it isn't like speakers in a room where the reflections off the wall can create significant timing changes.

True. My "math" picture was actually wrong because the numbers were flipped. If there's really a number like 2 meters encoded in the file, then 1 centimeter more distance to the transducer would change almost nothing. Maybe only, if at all, when someone created their own artistic work with their headphone and some digital spatial effect would only sound as they intended when the headphone sits right. Maybe that could be what some refer to as imaging, but most probably refer to the imaginary concert stage or something, not purely artistic works.

Off-topic: Are actually other things than the distance to the driver, like impulse response, responsible for the imaging? I believe I heard people saying or writing that, and it seems for me to correlate with bright headphones. I'm not sure what headphone to look for anymore, though, I don't want to bring the thread off-topic.

 

[bigshot]

Imaging refers to the placement of sound between the two speakers, so channel separation would be the function that determines it. Headphones have perfect channel separation by definition, but the soundstage created by the engineers and embedded in the mix isn't meant to be heard with perfect separation. It's meant to mix and inhabit space in a listening room. You can crudely approximate this with crossfeed, but it isn't quite the same because the perception of distance involves more than just blending the two channels.

 

[vergesslich2]

Imaging refers to the placement of sound between the two speakers, so channel separation would be the function that determines it. Headphones have perfect channel separation by definition, but the soundstage created by the engineers and embedded in the mix isn't meant to be heard with perfect separation. It's meant to mix and inhabit space in a listening room. You can crudely approximate this with crossfeed, but it isn't quite the same because the perception of distance involves more than just blending the two channels.

When the word imaging refers to a placement between to things, then I understand this. But if I was looking for the placement in a two-dimensional area, could headphones represent that? Or could they only represent this as I would hear it, if I never moved my head? I should admittedly try it myself with some headphone, but I have never heard any sound stage at all, to be honest. The K701 to me sounded only like further away.

 

[bigshot]

Headphones are one dimensional- a line through the middle of your head between two points, your right and left ears (headstage). Stereo speakers are two dimensional- left right with distance from the listener (soundstage). 5.1 and quad are 2 1/2 dimensional- left right and front back (sound plane). Dolby Atmos is three dimensional- left right, front back and up down (full sound field).

 

[vergesslich2]

Yesterday I saw an interview with Floyd Toole from this year, and it was about one of their tests. Unfortunately I don't know what the equipment was, but I believe it was one speaker or a headphone. And he said and gestured that different test frequencies lead people to believe the tone was at a position on something like a curve around their head. Well, he only gestured. And he said something like "from inside to outside".

So I assume, the problem, in any effort to make use of this phenomenon, is, that most of the time a music production would not result in the same as test tone. Nor would any sophisticated digital effect. I mean, it maybe serves as a talking point, but one probably cannot 2d pan a channel by increasing the level of certain frequencies? Or at least not without destroying some music. I just wanted to say, that this lead me to believe "something" could be possible in theory.

 

[bigshot]

Well, a test tone wouldn't create a sound field. You need a much more complex signal for that. And yes, each individual will have different results. I've listened to a lot of binaural recordings. None of them put sound any further from my head than a few inches. And sometimes it flickers from right in front of my eyes to immediately behind my head. It doesn't sound at all real. I don't think dimensional sound will exist until there is a process for calibrating to an individual's HRTF. Head tracking is required too. It exists in theory, but it hasn't been put into practice in any practical way yet. Maybe in the next few years.

 

[castleofargh]

I'm really not sure, but the book from Toole until page 15 already helped me, I believe. If I understand it correctly, recording an orchestra was more doable with microphones being not in the position of the listener in the hall, and not two at the ears, but near the instruments. Thinking about this I must agree. So that's a (insufficient) way recordings have been done a lot, because it had to be. (?)
On the other hand (I guess) artistic production would include using effects that sound pleasant with presentation systems that adds no reverbration, e.g. HD 600 or speakers in a treated room (?).
So the imperfect orchestra recordings are to dry, the artistic production may be (too) wet.
And it could be the other way around: A live recording may include enough spacial information, and the artistic production on the other hand might be made so dry that is works almost for exclusively for speakers. "The magic key" - the dry and loud drums fatigue my ears very quickly, it's so dry and 'impulsive'. Better listen to that song on speakers.
I mean, somehow I think I understand why it's hard to agree on anything, because it depends. But I need to go on reading that book. In a video he talks about different frequencies taking their inherent place around the head, from inside to outside. Problably makes it even more complicated. Probably covered in the book.

Sound localization is another mind bending topic you might enjoy looking into. Here is wiki as an appetizer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization
not short summary: A great deal of how we locate a sound source has to do with interaural time difference(ITD) and interaural level difference(ILD). Each ear receive the sound at a different moment in a different way, based on where we're looking, our own head, ears(and shoulders...) that will obstruct or deflect the sound differently depending on position and frequency. So each ear will end up with a different FR along with the different timing. with experience the brain gets pretty good at locating sound thanks to those cues.

-With a real sound coming from almost a single spot, this is mostly how it goes.

-With speakers... well, a mono sound comes equally from 2 spots, which is not natural at all. Relying on ILD and ITD system to place instruments on the album would make a mess. So instead, most of the job is done with simple panning (making one speaker louder with an otherwise identical signal, to position a given instrument). It's ILD simplified to the max. An easy cue for the brain and it fools us pretty well within the 60° angle between speakers. We can count ourselves lucky on that one, because something pretty wrong, turns out to work well. More importantly, most people will place sounds pretty much the same way, which is good.
Other tools are used to make us feel stuff, like boosting a certain frequency to push the center further away. But I’m no mixing or mastering engineer so I won't pretend to know or understand all that. It's not just psychoacoustic, it's psychoacoustic applied to speakers playback.

-With headphones, the "speakers" are on the ear at about 90° on each side. Obviously, basic panning gets spread over 180° instead of 60°. And because of that head sandwich, it's likely that panning will place instruments not around us, but on a line directly between the drivers(so called lateralization effect when listening to usual stereo albums with headphones).
That part varies greatly from listener to listener and what makes predictions difficult is that we mostly know about normal hearing. Here the brain has to invent an interpretation from cues that make little sense. Someone's brain might notice that the sound turns perfectly with the head and conclude that the source has to be inside the head. Some other brain might get that sounds are coming from the drivers and ”hear” most sounds located around them.
Another brain might just have decided from experience that instruments are at some distance in front, and place them there no matter how many contradicting audio cues come its way.
A lot is beyond the control of headphones, or sound engineers making a typical stereo track when it comes to headphones.
But wait there's more!
Our experience of locating a sound in general, involves how the sound is altered by our own body(ILD ITD... how the sound changes depending on direction is defined by HRTF head related transfer function, and is pretty unique to you, as is your body). Headphones bypass some of that by emitting sound right on the ears, so sounds don't get to be altered by your head and torso or where you're looking at. The ears do alter the sound but in the way it would for a transducer stuck on it, so that's not great.
The brain missing some cues will still try to find them withing the sound. But of course they're not there. So we can rapidly start to mistake something for a localization cue. Like taking the frequency response for elevation cues, and finding ourselves thinking that this instrument, EQed that way on the track, altered by the headphone on our head, plus a certain amount of panning, feels like the piano is about 40° up and 80° on the right when no cue of elevation was ever contained in the stereo track. Another headphone with a different FR might let you place that same piano somewhere else. Which is in part where @Hifiearspeakers is right to disagree with @bigshot on headphone having no control to change imaging. They have very little control, but they will alter the perceived presentation in some ways.

Maybe not seeing a sound source, stops you from imagining that there can be one in front of you(relatively rare but documented).
Many things become quite uncertain at this point. And that is the reality of unprocessed stereo audio on headphones. It's not so much that we don't understand how to do it well(but for that we need custom measurements and processing). Until then, once many things go wrong, we can't always predict what plan B will be imagined by the brain as it tries to make sense of something that does not make any.
Different headphone listeners might get from an almost identical experience, to vastly different ones. And back to some idea of space, distance, or even elevation, how can we tell when one presentation is better? Beyond a completely personal opinion, it can be tricky. Should we assume that hearing a sound further away is always a sign on better imaging? Was that sound intended to very far away? If we reference a speaker playback(we should at least do that for old albums), then anything going up or passed 30° on the side is an aberration.

I hope I conveyed the notion of complexity without losing you entirely. Not sure I would read such a long and disorganized post...





The idea of recording at the position of the listener is so that we can get the sound the way it is from that position. In principle it seems like a very good idea. An even better one is to record sound at the ears of the listener. If that was done well and the track was more or less tuned for the headphone that would be used, we'd come pretty close to the sound like we had that day. That's ideal binaural recording including your HRTF. The problem is, well everything I just explained. If you do that super well for one listener, it probably won't be that good for the next listener because the recorded sound will have been altered by listener A's head and ears. Listener B's brain knows nothing of how to interpret those changes, because it just spent its entire life using listener B's head and ears^_^.
as a result binaural albums makes some people delighted, and others like me tend to go "meh!", when listening to them.

Recording near the instruments allows to capture them cleanly with better SNR. So it's usually preferred. Very few sound engineers try to capture a position for the instruments anyway. They usually make it themselves later on, artificially. Even if it's to end up recreating something like the original placement. All the Atmos stuff were supposed to change that, and motivate people to capture ”3d sounds”. but so far it mostly brought cleverer ways to create whatever positioning as a post process from good old mono tracks.