[purrin]

LOL. You like headphones that measure well, at least with my measurements. The exception is the D5000. The immense bass and bass distortion of the D5000 tends to mask everything else that isn't so well.
 
Sony R10

 
HD800

 
TH900

(A clean floor considering it's a closed headphone)
 

And as you said, the TH900 does have notable frequency response irregularities. However I feel it has certain qualities (clarity, low non-linear distortion, articulation, fast decay, detail extraction) which allow me to overlook its non-flat response. I'm sure you agree.
 
 
The D5000 will not measure flat on my rig. Here is the D7000 (which from my subjective guess has about 5-6db less bass at 50Hz than the D5000)

 

[k3oxkjo]

Quote:

LOL. You like headphones that measure well, at least with my measurements. The exception is the D5000. The immense bass and bass distortion of the D5000 tends to mask everything else that isn't so well.
 
 
And as you said, the TH900 does have notable frequency response irregularities. However I feel it has certain qualities (clarity, low non-linear distortion, articulation, fast decay, detail extraction) which allow me to overlook its non-flat response. I'm sure you agree.
 
 
The D5000 will not measure flat on my rig. Here is the D7000 (which from my subjective guess has about 5-6db less bass at 50Hz than the D5000)

 
Ironically, the D-5000 is the one I bought based on measurements! If you dig Tyll's compensation curves, the resultant curve is pretty flat (as headphones go). Looking at your D-7000 curve, 50 hz is roughly 3 db higher than the 1 khz level, which is about the same as the D-5000 curves, again D-5000 w/Jmoney pads. Here are his measurements:
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/DenonAHD5000JMoneyPads.pdf
 
I would like the bass THD to be lower, but still it's only gets to 1% at 40 hz for 90 db level, so it's not disasterous.
 
Interesting to see your measurements on the other phones I mentioned. I had a feeling the TH-900 would not measure spectacularly well, but, as you say, it has its compensations. And I would argue (but not to strenuously

 ) that some of it's charm may be in it's strategic deviations from measuring objectively "flat".
 
To get back to the point of the thread, I think measurements can point out the general nature of a phones sound and help one to filter out phones from consideration that probably won't be to one's personal liking, but listening is still the final arbiter. Which I suspect is pretty close to your POV...
 
Kevin 

 

[TMRaven]

What's with all the talk about the Denon's low bass distortion?  They distort about as much as any other dynamic driver on the market.  It's a limitation of the technology for headphones it seems.  Even the HD-800, with its ring radiator to minimize distortion, still shows signs of this.

 

[k3oxkjo]

Quote:

What's with all the talk about the Denon's low bass distortion?  They distort about as much as any other dynamic driver on the market.  It's a limitation of the technology for headphones it seems.  Even the HD-800, with its ring radiator to minimize distortion, still shows signs of this.

 
Yes, LF distortion is not an uncommon occurance in headphones, but some others (such as the HD-800) do have less distortion and that's the point.
 
And there are plenty of phones that do worse (often significantly so), that's why I said it wasn't disasterous.

 

[purrin]

Quote:

What's with all the talk about the Denon's low bass distortion?  They distort about as much as any other dynamic driver on the market.  It's a limitation of the technology for headphones it seems.  Even the HD-800, with its ring radiator to minimize distortion, still shows signs of this.

 
Referring to non-linear distortion (harmonic, intermodulation, etc.) vs. linear distortion which is frequency response. Just conjecture of mine that the Denon D2000/5000 and to a lesser extent, the D7000, have higher non-linear distortion in the bass compared to the TH900. The Denons' bass sounds muddy in comparison to the TH900's. Lowest non-linear distortion (in the bass) headphones are the Audeze's. The HD800 also has fairly low non-linear distortion figures for the bass. The huge drivers of Audeze's and the HD800 helps alot.

 

[TWIFOSP]

Very interesting thread purrin.  I've been toying around with the idea of creating an experiment that would measure at just what point we can detect changes.
 
Off-topic to your thread, but semi relevant to the spirit behind it:
 
It is my opinion the methodology surrounding the double blind tests that have been done in the past have been really sloppy.  One should never conduct a test with a hypothesis such as "Can audiophiles tell the difference between x and y" without a proper measurement system analysis of what your testers (your measurement systems) are capable of accurately detecting in the first place.  
 
To my knowledge, no one has ever conducted a proper statistically valid measurement system analysis, prior to conducting an "audiophile" double blind a/b test.
 
I wish I didn't have a conflict for the Los Angeles meet in August.  I have a methodology in mind* and would love to have that many head-fi members in one place to conduct an experiment. 
 
*I am a statistical analyst by trade and my background is in creating design of experiments for medical device studies.  

 

[Sonic Defender]

That is a very important consideration TWIFOSP, I don't think I have ever read about a pre-test design being used before either. I can't imagine how difficult it will be to (a) operationalize what "qualified hearing acuity" is, and (b) how to ensure that all participants are assessed in the same manner, on the same measures, and in a very similar time-frame. That said, any attempts to improve the quality of these subjective measures will go a long way to allowing us to determine what if any correlation exists between the objective frequency response profiles of headphones, and the subjective experience of users. Man it would be nice to see some of the larger equipment manufacturers get behind such an initiative and provide funding. Not to likely I think as they have a great deal to lose if their products don't measure up to their expectations. Who knows, we need to have dreams after all.

 

[TWIFOSP]

Those are valid points, but you don't necessarily need to compare all listeners to each other.  That's the point of a measurement system's analysis.  Once you've determined a measurement systems precision and accuracy, you can measure the results against themselves.  Accounting for hawthorne and other psychological effects should be easy enough with false positives.  My hypothesis is that experienced listeners are far more capable than past a/b "tests" have let on.  
 
What I have in mind could easily be accomplished at a large head-fi meet with borrowed equipment.  

 

[thune]

Quote:

That said, any attempts to improve the quality of these subjective measures will go a long way to allowing us to determine what if any correlation exists between the objective frequency response profiles of headphones, and the subjective experience of users. Man it would be nice to see some of the larger equipment manufacturers get behind such an initiative and provide funding. Not to likely I think as they have a great deal to lose if their products don't measure up to their expectations. Who knows, we need to have dreams after all.

 
I'd like to see what Sean Olive at Harman comes up with, if he gets the chance:
 
youtube.com/v/cV0S7BTMMV0?start=2426&end=2511
Wilkinson: Does Harman test headphones, like you do speakers?
Sean Olive: Yeah, we do. A lot of the testing, right now, is done over in Vienna Austria, where AKG is located. Here in Northridge (CA) we want to get more involved in the actual subjective testing; because compared to loudspeakers, headphones (in terms of scientific research) [are] about the same place where we were 15 years ago with loudspeakers.
 
Olive on subjective testing and the importance of meaningful measurements in headphones:
youtube.com/v/cV0S7BTMMV0?start=2580&end=2690
(note/apologies: couldn't get embedding to work with start/end times)

 

[zazex]

Going back for a moment to the OP:

Do Objective Headphone Measurements Correlate to the Audiophile's Subjective Experience?

in all honesty, I can only reply "sometimes".
 
 
Also - there's no known way of measuring the output of a set of headphones, and then interpreting the data received,
which will indicate exactly how those headphones sound.
 
There's simply no substitute (yet, anyway) for careful, attentive listening.

 

[tinyman392]

Here's my opinion on the subject.  Objective information cannot tell you what something will sound like, it can confirm what others hear though.  Subjective information can confirm other subjective information.  EG, if 10 people say it sounds like this, and 1 person says otherwise, it's more likely that the 10 are right. Objective can confirm subjective, if a few people say it sounds like x, and the graph confirms that it's possible for it to sound like x, then it is confirmed.  It is useful, and just creates more accuracy in people's ears.

 

[Magick Man]

That's true. The first time I listened to the ED10 I knew something was off, then I saw Tyll's charts and thought, "well, that'll do it".

 

[Mkubota1]

I came across this interesting bit of info on Sean Olive's blog:  http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2012/05/more-evidence-that-kids-even-japanese.html
 
This is a slide from a presentation that he made.  I think the sample size of the study was a little small and the group was not really random.  But it's still telling.
 

 

[purrin]

Very interesting and consistent with the results of my own informal study. They've obviously got more data points. Another difference is that I only allowed people who I considered "trained listeners" vs. random Head-Fi'ers. Similar to my own informal study, the least accurate headphone (A) had the most variance in opinion.
 

 
May be interesting to conduct a more controlled test at the August meet.
 
P.S. Good to know that my UCI friends have good ears

 

[kiteki]

LOL. You like headphones that measure well, at least with my measurements. The exception is the D5000. The immense bass and bass distortion of the D5000 tends to mask everything else that isn't so well.
 
 
And as you said, the TH900 does have notable frequency response irregularities. However I feel it has certain qualities (clarity, low non-linear distortion, articulation, fast decay, detail extraction) which allow me to overlook its non-flat response. I'm sure you agree.
 
 
The D5000 will not measure flat on my rig. Here is the D7000 (which from my subjective guess has about 5-6db less bass at 50Hz than the D5000)

 
Ironically, the D-5000 is the one I bought based on measurements!
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/DenonAHD5000JMoneyPads.pdf
 

 
Yup, that PDF and the discontinuation is what propelled me to buy the D5000 with J-money pads as well, from 30Hz to 16kHz that's very flat.
 

 
 
Edit: D5000 left, HD800 right.
 
Like others are saying the bass isn't something to write home about, but it's a very musical headphone imho.