Quote:
Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek /img/forum/go_quote.gif
To all of the people who keep saying that true neutrality doesn't exist, stop. It does exist, and can easily be measured. A neutral headphone will have a flat line all the way across the graph. This would be an example of "true" or "absolute" neutral.
Now, whether or not this will sound neutral is another story entirely. It probably won't. This is where things get a little confusing. But even now, a truly neutral sounding headphone wouldn't be difficult to design, although it would have to be designed for a specific individual's ears. Measurements would need to be taken to discover this individual's person ear effects, and the headphone can be designed accordingly.
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I'm sorry, I haven't read every post in this thread, but forgive me if this has already been discussed.
Piccolo's statement above is partially correct. I believe true neutrality can be achieved in headphones, but the fact of the matter is, that, it's not as simple as presenting a flat line frequency response.
A headphone that measured with a ruler flat frequency response would sound very, very bright to most ears. When you are listening to anything from any distance (far field) the little bump of flesh partially covering your outer ear canal opening creates an acoustic shadow for all sounds reaching your outer ear. This "shadow" actually makes a dip in the frequency response of your ear. Your brain uses this dip in frequency response coupled with phase and amplitude and FR differences between what both of your ears hear, and integrates all of that to allow you to determine sound direction, width, height, and depth of sound sources.
Because we are all built just a little differently, the acoustic shadow that our ear's pinna (that little bump is part of the pinna) creates, differs slightly from person to person. Our brain compensates for this alteration in frequency response to far field sounds so that what we hear, and how we hear becomes the "norm" that our brain tells us is right, real, natural, accurate.
Headphone manufacturers strive to approximate this dip in frequency response for the average human so that what you hear from the headphones which are right at your ear canal, and thus unaffected by your pinna.
So, to say it another way, headphones have their frequency response altered from flat to approximate the dip in FR that the average human pinna creates in far field environments.
This fact is another reason why one headphone might sound just right to one person and sound bright or dull or otherwise "off" to others. Just as no two ears are alike, the far field EQ imposed by various headphone manufacturers differ from can to can.
So besides our differing physiologies, we each have differing tastes and preferences. This makes lots of room for many headphones on the market.
