[Mochan]

It's just how the hobby is. Audiophile purists who demand the best equipment et al expect a flat response, this is the golden standard set by audiophiles in the sound world everywhere, be it speakers or headphone. 
 
However the "younger" generation of audio lovers are not so easily convinced, especially with today's culture where strong bass is prevalent in the most popular music. As a result, the audio world got divided between the classical audiophile who demands flat response, and the newer breed that can't be satisfied with such a thing, because the kind of music they listen to needs a more colored sound.

But to avoid the schism and make everyone feel bad, the ideology that cans can be "fun" instead of "flat" and still be legit in this hobby was created. It's a euphemism more than anything else in the world of pure classical audio. 
 
That suits everyone fine, nobody is gonna make an issue over it, it's better than classical audiophiles calling basshead cans as junk because they are imbalanced or muddy or whatever else you want to call it. Much better to call it "fun" than "muddy."
 
But if you want to expand the schism even further and get into an argument in semantics by saying "flat is fun, too!" then by all means.
 
 
Quote:

I just don't get this whole headphone review mindset of "these are great b/c of the ultra flat freq response". Flip side...these are fantastic because of the warm "fun" sound they portray...far from a flat response, but very desirable. 
 
So which is it? I hear people who praise the flat sound say..."those are great...a really warm and fun sound" about something unflat.
 
So basically what I guess I'm asking...if you get a really flat freq...and that's what you're really wanting...when you listen to them, is it not fun? Critical listening...a term I don't quite get, I suppose. You have to be alert to enjoy these excellent cans. The flip side, these cans have that "fun sound" that you don't have to really be 100% alert and can just sit back and "chill" to.
 
 
 
Help?

 

 

[Mochan]

Quote:

The problem with "fun" headphones is that they aren't fun in the long term. You either get bored with the coloration or it starts to irritate you.

That's when most people decide to buy a more expensive colored headphone.

The only way out of the cycle is to get something accurate. Unless you want to start a collection, that is. The colored gear is more fun at first, but it won't stay that way. Get something accurate and concentrate on the music. You'll be happy. Otherwise, you'll be on the upgrade treadmill forever.

 
 
I don't believe this at all.
 
So people get tired of a headphone's "fun" sound and buy a more expensive fun headphone?
As if people who go for "flat" sound don't go around buying more expensive "flat" headphones either. It's funny actually, people who buy "flat" gear tend to spend more than those who buy "fun" gear.
How many "flat" headfiers drooled over the "ruler flat" LCD2 last year and bought these $1000 cans AND $2000 worth of amp/DAC/cables built around it? I bet they spent more than the guy who upgraded from a "fun" headphone.
This point makes no sense to me whatsoever.
 
Maybe a "flat" headfier would tire of a "fun" headphone quickly. But of course! Because a "flat" person prefers "flat" sound!
 
I've been using XB700s for ages, I have yet to grow tired of them. I am still prone to wanting a better set... but aren't we all. There isn't a headfier in existence who is immune to upgraditis.
 

 

[goodvibes]

There's so much more to goodness than flat or not and the entire IEM/DAP scenario is somewhat limited in noise, prat, linearity, environment etc. Flat can be more fun or v shaped can be more fun to the right listener but beyond linear, there is no standard. Some will find a thin phone that enhances detail more fun. There's no wrong to an individual's personal preference but once everything in a chain gets very good and you've got all your ducks in a row, deviating too much from right will lose you musical insight and rob you of prat. In fact, when I'm really serious I wont use anything but a wav file. For my carry along portable I use FLAC. In my home system, anything deviating to far from flat ruins it. In my portable, anything goes. I personally still can't listen to the Uber bass items but that's just me. I've also listened to some flat phones and they sounded well, flat as in no boogie. That wasn't a result of their linearity it was simply that they lacked prat which isn't mutually exclusive but some think is the case. Problem with an accurate phone, linear, deatiled, phase correct with prat, is that it can point to other problems in the setup where a less demanding phone may cover it's tracks better and be more enjoyable. I've always said that a 'classical' transducer is one that can't play rock and a rock transducer is one that can't play classical. I good transducer should be able to do both quite well, given a proper source.

 

[AstralStorm]

 
Quote:

It's kind of true that a headphone with ruler-flat frequency response will sound coloured but isn't it because we all generally listen to music mastered for speakers?If gear is technically speaking flat, it outputs data perfectly as it was recorded which in case of speakers allows you to hear it with your own HRTF since the sound is captured somewhere in between you and instruments. In case of headphones music should theoretically be recorded through binaural recording with a head dummy in order to capture the music "as it would sound in/on your ear" but then it uses some standarized HRTF, not ones own. Thus being said (written) I assume the only way to have "flat" sound through your headphones is to equalize speakers mastered music with your own HRTF. Then, if gear (headphones included) add nothing to the recording it should sound as if recorded by your own ears, which leaves no space for pointless discussions of how we all hear different etc.
 
That much for theory. In practice, yesterday I tested a plugin for foobar which emulates room accoustics and HRTF. Even as it was not mine, one could think that in case of headphones even approximated HRTF would be better than none, add to this simulated reflections from walls etc and the effect should be close to the one of listening to speakers.To be honest, it sounded as if I wore speakers, not headphones, on my head. Strange as it felt, it came nowhere close to soundstage from my speakers which are very badly positioned. not to mention poor accoustics of my room, so nothing really spectacular to beat. Yet speakers won.
 
Sad as it is, I'm leaning towards a feeling that headphones, no matter how high-endish, loose to even medicore speakers just becaise they can't sound "right". Maybe I have yet to listen to headphones that would give me an illusion of "being there" by reproducing room accoustics and all the compicated stuff. That I would put them on and say "He's singing from over there, and percussion is where the kitchen would be, guitar is placed there, ops, that's behind the wall"

Good speakers don't have any coloration at all, as in flat frequency response. That makes speaker design far simpler than headphone and IEM design.
 
Flattening IEMs would best be done via deconvolution, but slightly different fit might mess up the attempt. Oh, and you need a measurement head too. This is the same technology as used for room correction, but easier to pull off and not position dependent.
 
As for HRTF, the main difference is resonant frequency of ear canal, depending on its depth, width and the insertion depth of the IEM. This is typically in 3-9 kHz range, most people have it around 7 kHz (quoting some research from 90s, mind you). Other differences are hard to notice  +/- 2 dB - threshold of audibility. Most speakers have larger humps than that.
Outer ear and head shadowing are more important for correct soundstaging.
Someone should really produce IEM/headphones with this tunable, it's enough to provide one parametric eq for this purpose. It's pretty hard to do it fully mechanically, as opposed to tuning bass. Some IEMs are already going that way: Sleek Audio and Audeo selection, Sennheiser IE8 to name the most important ones.
Another way to go is via custom IEMs - the manufacturer can derive the ear canal resonances from the impression using a mathematical model.
 
I suppose you've tried the Dolby Headphone plugin? I had pretty mediocre results with it, unlike with Bauer Stereophonic to Binaural (which I've cloned into hardware) and Electri-Q equalizer to "flat sound" after BS2b (the order isn't important, neither is tuning these together or separately). Right now my SA6 sound like studio monitors in a very dampened room, due to missing reverberation. If you've ever been to an anechoic chamber, you know what I mean.
The main advantage of BS2b is that you can tune the crossfeed knee frequency and amount (up to 15 dB) until positioning is correct - this is dependent on head size and shape. Oh, and it doesn't color the sound much if at all.
 
Now I have to simplify (a tiny bit) and clone this equalizer into two pieces of hardware - one flat eq for the IEM, the other my HRTF.

---

goodvibes, I don't know what "prat" is (perhaps low end?), but source isn't too important as long as it's not lacking current - is able to drive your headphones - and isn't limited in bandwidth. Noise floor isn't nearly as annoying as other distortions, such as mains hum. Of course, noise shaped in a weird way can sound annoying.
Oh, and good compressed audio isn't bad. Those psychoacoustic models have come a long way - I'd challenge you to ABX (double blind test) a sample of your choosing at higher bitrate, but I'm far too lazy for this. Older and low bitrate MP3 is lowpassed and can have various ugly artifacts. MP4 AAC and Ogg Vorbis are far more resilient and the artifacts sound more "natural", thus are harder to spot even if you know what you're looking for.
In fact, it gets harder to spot artifacts with good hardware than with lousy, as it matches psychoacoustic model's assumptions better.

 

[MaciekN]

Actually Bauer s2b plugin was my first headphones dedicated plugin in Foobar. It moves the "soundstage" a bit forward, so it is somewhere near my nose rather than in the center of head. It doesnt change the sound like that HRTF plugin which imitates speakers' sound. ElectriQ is also in use for some time now. No experience with Dolby though.
 
PRaT is Precision Rhythm and Timing as far as I remember.

 

[yepimonfire]

ATH AD700s sound super close to speakers IMO because of the angled drivers. also, when it comes to imaging, yes speakers almost always do better, but when it comes to room acoustics and other unwanted problems speakers impose (like multiple drivers etc) headphones always win. atleast in my opinion. i've never heard a speaker with the clarity and resolution high end headphones can have. as far as your statement about a flat headphone sounding colored, well that depends on what you mean by flat, headphones must compensate for the closeness they are to the ears. our ears modify frequency response due to the bends and folds in the outer part. basically a good headphone will drop like a rock about 15dB at 10khz and then gradually slope back up until it is about -5dB at 20khz. this is perceived as flat. a headphone that was truly flat from 10khz+ would be excruciatingly bright.
Quote:

It's kind of true that a headphone with ruler-flat frequency response will sound coloured but isn't it because we all generally listen to music mastered for speakers? If gear is technically speaking flat, it outputs data perfectly as it was recorded which in case of speakers allows you to hear it with your own HRTF since the sound is captured somewhere in between you and instruments. In case of headphones music should theoretically be recorded through binaural recording with a head dummy in order to capture the music "as it would sound in/on your ear" but then it uses some standarized HRTF, not ones own. Thus being said (written) I assume the only way to have "flat" sound through your headphones is to equalize speakers mastered music with your own HRTF. Then, if gear (headphones included) add nothing to the recording it should sound as if recorded by your own ears, which leaves no space for pointless discussions of how we all hear different etc.
 
That much for theory. In practice, yesterday I tested a plugin for foobar which emulates room accoustics and HRTF. Even as it was not mine, one could think that in case of headphones even approximated HRTF would be better than none, add to this simulated reflections from walls etc and the effect should be close to the one of listening to speakers.To be honest, it sounded as if I wore speakers, not headphones, on my head. Strange as it felt, it came nowhere close to soundstage from my speakers which are very badly positioned. not to mention poor accoustics of my room, so nothing really spectacular to beat. Yet speakers won.
 
Sad as it is, I'm leaning towards a feeling that headphones, no matter how high-endish, loose to even medicore speakers just becaise they can't sound "right". Maybe I have yet to listen to headphones that would give me an illusion of "being there" by reproducing room accoustics and all the compicated stuff. That I would put them on and say "He's singing from over there, and percussion is where the kitchen would be, guitar is placed there, ops, that's behind the wall"

 

 

[ZeNmAc]

Quote:

It's just how the hobby is. Audiophile purists who demand the best equipment et al expect a flat response, this is the golden standard set by audiophiles in the sound world everywhere, be it speakers or headphone. 
 
However the "younger" generation of audio lovers are not so easily convinced, especially with today's culture where strong bass is prevalent in the most popular music. As a result, the audio world got divided between the classical audiophile who demands flat response, and the newer breed that can't be satisfied with such a thing, because the kind of music they listen to needs a more colored sound.

But to avoid the schism and make everyone feel bad, the ideology that cans can be "fun" instead of "flat" and still be legit in this hobby was created. It's a euphemism more than anything else in the world of pure classical audio. 
 
That suits everyone fine, nobody is gonna make an issue over it, it's better than classical audiophiles calling basshead cans as junk because they are imbalanced or muddy or whatever else you want to call it. Much better to call it "fun" than "muddy."
 
But if you want to expand the schism even further and get into an argument in semantics by saying "flat is fun, too!" then by all means.
 
 


 

 
That's not true at all.  I'm 19 and I try to get a flat response for any sound system I'm listening to.
 
You make it sound like the cool open minded 'younger generation' is being martyred by some stuffy elitist audiophiles that sit around listening to classical music and looking down their noses at irrational teens.  In the speaker world if people heard you were intentionally designing speakers to be colored they'd laugh.  If you browse through threads about speaker design, you'll never see anyone consider music genre as part of the design process.  Because it shouldn't matter if the speakers are good enough.
 
I see this on this forum all the time.  Mention anything about anything sound related being bad and everyone jumps on you claiming 'personal preference' like you're some sort of religious persecutor.  Of course nothing is perfect, you can enjoy colored sound etc.  But IDEALLY, you want to hear flat response at your ear.  That might mean your 'ruler flat' headphones need a ton of eq'ing to sound flat to you.  Again, sure you might turn up the sub bass a little for a bass heavy song once in a while but that has more to do with how the music was recorded.  Bass FEELS good if you've ever listened to decent speakers

(and flat bass feels good too).  There's a difference between that and intentionally choosing a permanently colored response.
 
I also see people saying you can't trust graphs, 'use your ears'.  I definitely disagree (most of the time), however graphs don't always tell the whole story since there are so many little details that a single graph or even many graphs can't properly display.  Your ears and mind can deceive you.  With that said, not only do the speakers have to put out good sound, but you have to consider how humans perceive sound, how your body affects it and many other facts.  That's no easy thing to do.  You can't entirely tell how something is going to sound by a very approximate frequency response graph.  On the other hand, you could spend literally a book trying to describe what you hear and still the graphs will be more accurate.  It's not about getting a pretty graph, it's about understanding how the human ear and mind works in order to get the maximum sound quality.
 
On a side note, muddy indicates distortion which no one's going to argue is good.  Clear bass is better than muddy bass.  The discussion is more about amount of bass which is what we've been talking about.  I'm not sure if that's what you were talking about though, I don't mean to nitpick.
 
It is not about making anyone feel bad or good, (most of the idea behind flat not being good comes from misconceptions) it's about finding the best sound quality.

 

[AstralStorm]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ZeNmAc /img/forum/go_quote.gif
I see this on this forum all the time.  Mention anything about anything sound related being bad and everyone jumps on you claiming 'personal preference' like you're some sort of religious persecutor.  Of course nothing is perfect, you can enjoy colored sound etc.  But IDEALLY, you want to hear flat response at your ear.  That might mean your 'ruler flat' headphones need a ton of eq'ing to sound flat to you.  Again, sure you might turn up the sub bass a little for a bass heavy song once in a while but that has more to do with how the music was recorded.  Bass FEELS good if you've ever listened to decent speakers

(and flat bass feels good too).  There's a difference between that and intentionally choosing a permanently colored response.
 
I also see people saying you can't trust graphs, 'use your ears'.  I definitely disagree (most of the time), however graphs don't always tell the whole story since there are so many little details that a single graph or even many graphs can't properly display.  Your ears and mind can deceive you.  With that said, not only do the speakers have to put out good sound, but you have to consider how humans perceive sound, how your body affects it and many other facts.  That's no easy thing to do.  You can't entirely tell how something is going to sound by a very approximate frequency response graph.  On the other hand, you could spend literally a book trying to describe what you hear and still the graphs will be more accurate.  It's not about getting a pretty graph, it's about understanding how the human ear and mind works in order to get the maximum sound quality.
 
On a side note, muddy indicates distortion which no one's going to argue is good.  Clear bass is better than muddy bass.  The discussion is more about amount of bass which is what we've been talking about.  I'm not sure if that's what you were talking about though, I don't mean to nitpick.
 
It is not about making anyone feel bad or good, (most of the idea behind flat not being good comes from misconceptions) it's about finding the best sound quality.

Using ears is actually the best way to equalize headphones/earphones for yourself, since those are so heavily dependent on head, ear and ear canal shape. Graphs that measure headphones show some measurement that's been done using some measurement reference head. This might or might not correspond to your own perceived response.
The graphs are good for comparison purposes though - to see which headphone is brighter and where, show the extension.
Unfortunately, the best headphone graph source, HeadRoom, has some issues with low frequency measurements of IEMs - they don't correspond to reality at all!
 
Of course, you should equalize objectively, that is using (many) tones, tone sweep and pink noise.
 
In speaker world, it's far easier - just make the speaker that is ruler flat at desired sweet spot, but make sure you document 3 important things:
1) angle between speakers
2) distance from walls and floor
3) distance from listening position
Of course, building something that precise is pretty expensive. (mostly R&D costs)
 
By the way, muddy bass can mean one of two things:
1) too much harmonic distortion (you mentioned it)
2) mid-bass boost causing midrange bleed
 
--
It should be possible to manufacture the perfect custom IEM given enough information - head size, shape, ear size (best done using a 3/4 face picture) and the ear impression...
That needs some pretty hardcore mathematical model though.

 

[goodvibes]

Don't forget damping factor and phase shift of some reflex systems.

 

[AstralStorm]

Quote:

Don't forget damping factor and phase shift of some reflex systems.

Well, that'd be some pretty lousy system if it has noticeable phase distortion at low frequencies. Perhaps mistuned or bad crossover multi-armature/multi-driver?
Or incorrect design of the case...
 
Damping factor is important, but that is one of the causes of the midrange bleed I've already mentioned, so you want to make it as high as possible without compromising bass quantity and impulse response.
More relevant in case of IEMs - it's partly why BA IEMs and some planar armature (Ortofon) have "fast" bass. Such bass is not accurate actually, it's just ringy. Correct bass is not ringy at all. Some people consider such bass preferable as it gives an impression of clarity. Overdampened bass is slow and smooth, also sounds a bit weaker, which might cause some to increase the volume. My own preference is for slower bass without ringing. (e.g. Sennheiser IE8)

 

[goodvibes]

 
Sorry but you don't know what you're talking about. Ported home speakers (reflex) use the back wave from the cone to enhance bass. It starts out of phase and is generally a cycle behind to be in phase. That's still phase shift. It's variable by frequency of how well it times up. Over 95% of modern speakers are reflex and most are under damped. A BA is not a planar armature, whatever that is.

It's a motor like a dynamic but with the coils stationary and a hard armature disc on a suspension working as a piston. You also have a poor concept of damping. Too much is tight and fast but will lack fullness.
 
Here's your IE8 vs a MA at 50hz. The slight wiggle they both have at the edges are not bass related. The long nonlinearities are. Tilt is related to low extension bandwidth. Flatter is better and the fact that the edges of the wave are less separated vertically on the GR8 means it actually goes lower. The MA has a fabulous looking square without any bass ring and they are noted for good bass character by most.

 

[AstralStorm]

Nice cherry-picking there. However, you forgot to note the ringing also known as overshoot. Grado GR8 doesn't have too much at 50 Hz, but some other BA IEMs have far more.
(Check Shures SE425 for example, or SE535, those have lower ringing amplitude, but have preringing, which is even more noticeable. For a good mark in this regard, take a peek at Sleek SA1 or Klipsch X-10i charts.)
Not to mention this ringing gets worse the higher the amplitude/frequency ratio is.
Should I mark it for you?
 
Note I didn't say Senn IE8 has the perfect bass, but it doesn't have the ring (it has a bit but it's obscured), instead has a smooth transition. It is in fact overdriven, and that's the reason for the hump and skew. HeadRoom didn't measure IE8 at the minimum bass tuning, but at medium.
 
Best transition would look like an ideal square wave, but a very good typical should look like this (pardon my Paint, also I'm overemphasizing transition here, should be steeper):

 

[goodvibes]

You dumped on the ortofons which use the same tech as the GR8. You picked those cherries, not me and none of what you just wrote addresses phase in home speaker bass. The overshoot that you're describing isn't bass ringing. You can count how many oscillations would span the horizontal line and multiply by the test frequency to know what frequencies those oscillations correspond to and it's not bass which is the current discussion. The IE8 would actually look better with the vent wide open as it extends the mid bass bump to the low fequencies. Closing it just narrows the band of emphasis and makes it less even in the bass. Better to compare items without crossovers when talking drivers.

 

[AstralStorm]

Derp. I said Sleek SA1 not SA6. Also bass crossover would be far higher, somewhere around 250 Hz at lowest.
In fact, I've checked in the great search engine that should not be named and X10i has crossover frequency of 1500 Hz.
 
Also, as you can easily see, all of the above show more or less ringy response. SA6 and GR8 are pretty decent in this regard. Shure SE425 and SE535 aren't.
Etymoic MC3 is horrible. You can also plainly see that many high end headphones have highly ringy response which is partly responsible for the "fake bass" feeling some report.

 

[goodvibes]

I know what you said but the SA6 is a true single driver BA. The way that the 425 works is a full range driver with a bass unit added so it does effect the bass. 535 works the same but with 2 added woofers. The overshoot you're descibing relates to frequncies many mutiples of the arbitrary 250hz you mentioned. I see you noticed the MC3. It's a dynamic driver.

We can always find examples but the premise that "it's partly why BA IEMs and some planar armature (Ortofon) have "fast" bass. Such bass is not accurate actually, it's just ringy." is absolutely wrong. If you knew how to read the graph more accurately you'd understand that to be true. You can absolutely prefer dynamic driver bass but it's not because of you reasoning.