[Frankie D]

I was hoping this would be understood to be a joke. It's actually a batman reference: "You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain"

Very much a joke.

I think maybe you should have stated below the statement that it was from Batman. I did not remember it.
Now if you quoted from “The Godfather” that I would remember: The Storm now sleeps with the fishes!

 

[Doltonius]

I guess I'll die an audiophile, at least I'll be listening instead of looking and analyzing!

And from the wise words inside the KZ package:

You can be an audiophile and a squiggly science guy at the same time. At the moment, it changes nothing significant when it comes to the appreciation of iems and headphones. As many have said, there is still no way we can just look at a graph and deduce all the auditory effects that an iem has, even if you are committed to the idea that "FR at the eardrum provides basically all the information". The problem is that we don't have that information, and we even if we do, we don't know how to interpret it fully.

The only things that change are the two corollaries: 1: that if FR at the eardrum (or a close approximation) is obtained, then one can indeed eq one iem to another very accurately and reliably (assuming low distortion, phase mismatch, etc) and 2: that you are paying most for the tuning, however expensive the iem is. These two things do trouble a lot of people and may be the fundamental reasons why they want to reject the "FR at the eardrum" thesis.

 

[dleblanc343]

Not really a suitable analogy, a dyno of known calibration to iso376 uk/europe will tell you the power curve and torque curve which will directly translate to the track, it will not tell you anything regarding setup of suspension/brakes etc

That’s exactly the point I was making There are many more outliers beyond the objective measurement at play, that could yield a better experience with a different calibrated vehicle/ IEM.

Like you mention, the suspension, the brakes, are all very crucial secondary components (think eartip, distance from bore to eardrum, some might downplay). Then comes the user error/ control, tons of variables at play, all must be accounted for.

 

[listenerwww]

I always aim for tips wider than nozzle and wear the IEM as deep as I can. The logic is to preserve the treble response and push the resonance peak up into upper treble

Yeah, I'm basically never trying to "preserve" the treble response; most IEMs are *way* too bright for me above 8kHz.

The other day, I found that I can accidentally change the upper mid and lower treble by inserting some IEM at certain depth, thus changing the shape of the soundstage entirely.

Insert depth matters yo! As does (IMO) the deformation of the tip itself.

Reviewing IEM is a nightmare especially the ones with shorter nozzle from our favourite Singaporean boutiques. Same problem with the treble vs fit on Crimson as well

I didn't have as many fit issues with Crimson as I did with Storm, are they the same shell? Or just similar?
Regardless, I love that Symphonium is always taking feedback and trying to improve this aspect of their IEMs. The jump from Helios/Triton shell to Meteor & Crimson shell was a massive upgrade for me. Just waiting for them to come out with something less airy and bass-focused so I can finally throw money at em

 

[aaf evo]

I didn't have as many fit issues with Crimson as I did with Storm, are they the same shell? Or just similar?
Regardless, I love that Symphonium is always taking feedback and trying to improve this aspect of their IEMs. The jump from Helios/Triton shell to Meteor & Crimson shell was a massive upgrade for me. Just waiting for them to come out with something less airy and bass-focused so I can finally throw money at em

They just released the Titan which is exactly that, or you could EQ your Kinera Urd.

 

[listenerwww]

They just released the Titan which is exactly that, or you could EQ your Kinera Urd.

Sorry I meant less air and less bass-focus, wording was a bit confusing, my bad. Waiting for something with roughly the mids + bass of Storm but less treble. Mega5EST is close to that, but still too bright for me (and a few others, it seems).

URD is well tuned up there, but the ergonomics are a nightmare for me, hence looking for something in a better-fitting shell (ideally from a company run by great people like Symphonium or Nightjar).

 

[Chang]

I'll chime in just once. We have been following the research as well and though there are indicators that FR at DRP is a large contributing factor to the listening experience, the notion that it is the be-all and end-all is far from conclusive.

This is something we have tested internally because if it was in fact the reality we would just close shop. No point investing this amount of time and energy if that level of performance can be achieved purely through FR. By that notion the most effective means of achieving TOTL audio would be TWS with a reasonably low distortion driver and full DSP. Or get a Q5k with any budget chi-fi and EQ with sweeps to your personal HRTF and be done with it.

And in fact that's the exact thing I did with several IEMs both budget and high-end. EQ them with sweeps, white noise and music to as close as I could get to STORM, while cross-referencing measurements on a both a 711 and a KB501x equivalent. The counterclaim is that this can't be done without measurements with the specific IEMs with my personal HRTF, but this is as close as I can get with the resources on hand. The listened experience tonally was within margin of error closer than 1db variance compared to when we're doing listened QC after doing measured QC when we batch our IEMs. Either way, what myself as well as the rest of the team heard when we did this led us to continue our development. I think a quick test anyone can do is just EQ a low pass on STORM with a 5db reduction on everything after 10k as suggested by Resolve's 5128 measurement and you'll find that a lot of the resolving ability is retained, still surpassing most IEMs with more upper treble energy, sustained or otherwise. Curiously enough our internal definition of true resolution is ability to render detail sans frequency response. Meaning to say that if the detail can be EQed in or EQed away then that perceived "detail" was artificially induced to begin with or brought to attention via FR emphasis as Resolve described.

I think my two takeaways from the objective space of the hobby in general are 1) I like that it's pushing for more research, because research as it pertains to better understanding our psychoacoustic system with regards to experienced sound quality and understanding of the correlation between in-ears, earbuds, headphones and speakers has been sorely lacking. The 5128 standard has been huge leap in this aspect but I still don't think averaging a population sample in the way that it was done is particularly effective for IEMs. I also like that the objective space better aligning the research space with industry in aspects to index for. And in general the more quality data we have available the more we are able to improve what we make.

And 2) I really don't like the dismissal of qualitative inputs, just as I don't like the dismissal of quantitative representations and data. I think it's quite foolish to presume that millions of years of evolution in our auditory system and our brain's ability to do signal processing can be captured in a single metric. While the current research does support this idea to an extent and point in the general direction of FR at DRP being a huge contributing factor to perceived sound quality. I think it's far from conclusive that it's the only relevant metric, and to presume so is quite foolish and arrogant in my opinion. I think that research in any area, and especially in understudied niche areas like audio as pertains to sound quality, has a tendency to go through cycles of accepted schools of thoughts before new paradigms are introduced. Historically research in any field is based on research that has previously been done and as such has a precedented tendency of having some inbuilt confirmation bias, so that's also something that is worth considering. Bias against qualitative data as inferior to quantitative data is also a particular sore spot for me as it has delayed research in mental health by decades, something that has affected me personally, and has also resulted in things like reports of pain and symptoms by minorities being more commonly dismissed, resulting in systematic level corrective changes taking far too longer than needed to be implemented because qualitative evidence wasn't taken seriously. Of course that's not to say that all subjective opinions are equally valuable, relevant or valid, but simply that those that considered and deliberate in controlling for variables should not be so simply dismissed.

I think a simple question we can ask is what we want out of this hobby, and by extension why we make the purchase decisions that we do. If you do buy into the idea that FR at DRP is everything, then great, the natural conclusion to this assumption is buy a $300 Topping stack or Q5k with any cheap, low distortion transducer and EQ with sweeps to your preferences and quit. Why buy Susvara when there are cheaper Hifimans that essentially measure the same. Or why buy any modern amp, DAC or cable when all of them have essentially zero impact on frequency response. Soundstage is also not a thing so just buy a cheaper IEM for the most bang for buck. Congratulations, you've just saved yourself a ton of money and concluded audio, and 95% of the headphones.com store is now irrelevant to you and spending a dime more is a fool's errand.

But for the rest of us that's not enough, and we'll have our fun continuing to explore the space. With our money. That we earned. That we are spending. You have finished audio and that's great, feel free to see yourself out. But for the rest of us there is still plenty we'd like to explore and continue to chase our unicorns of "perfect" and "better", whether anyone else sees it as placebo or not, my listening enjoyment and the peace and happiness it brings is enough for me.

Also mods, I think this discussion is an interesting and healthy one to have but I'd like to humbly request it be moved to a separate thread if it continues so as not to detract from the STORM discussion

 

[Yifang]

I'll chime in just once. We have been following the research as well and though there are indicators that FR at DRP is a large contributing factor to the listening experience, the notion that it is the be-all and end-all is far from conclusive.

This is something we have tested internally because if it was in fact the reality we would just close shop. No point investing this amount of time and energy if that level of performance can be achieved purely through FR. By that notion the most effective means of achieving TOTL audio would be TWS with a reasonably low distortion driver and full DSP. Or get a Q5k with any budget chi-fi and EQ with sweeps to your personal HRTF and be done with it.

And in fact that's the exact thing I did with several IEMs both budget and high-end. EQ them with sweeps, white noise and music to as close as I could get to STORM, while cross-referencing measurements on a both a 711 and a KB501x equivalent. The counterclaim is that this can't be done without measurements with the specific IEMs with my personal HRTF, but this is as close as I can get with the resources on hand. The listened experience tonally was within margin of error closer than 1db variance compared to when we're doing listened QC after doing measured QC when we batch our IEMs. Either way, what myself as well as the rest of the team heard when we did this led us to continue our development. I think a quick test anyone can do is just EQ a low pass on STORM with a 5db reduction on everything after 10k as suggested by Resolve's 5128 measurement and you'll find that a lot of the resolving ability is retained, still surpassing most IEMs with more upper treble energy, sustained or otherwise. Curiously enough our internal definition of true resolution is ability to render detail sans frequency response. Meaning to say that if the detail can be EQed in or EQed away then that perceived "detail" was artificially induced to begin with or brought to attention via FR emphasis as Resolve described.

I think my two takeaways from the objective space of the hobby in general are 1) I like that it's pushing for more research, because research as it pertains to better understanding our psychoacoustic system with regards to experienced sound quality and understanding of the correlation between in-ears, earbuds, headphones and speakers has been sorely lacking. The 5128 standard has been huge leap in this aspect but I still don't think averaging a population sample in the way that it was done is particularly effective for IEMs. I also like that the objective space better aligning the research space with industry in aspects to index for. And in general the more quality data we have available the more we are able to improve what we make.

And 2) I really don't like the dismissal of qualitative inputs, just as I don't like the dismissal of quantitative representations and data. I think it's quite foolish to presume that millions of years of evolution in our auditory system and our brain's ability to do signal processing can be captured in a single metric. While the current research does support this idea to an extent and point in the general direction of FR at DRP being a huge contributing factor to perceived sound quality. I think it's far from conclusive that it's the only relevant metric, and to presume so is quite foolish and arrogant in my opinion. I think that research in any area, and especially in understudied niche areas like audio as pertains to sound quality, has a tendency to go through cycles of accepted schools of thoughts before new paradigms are introduced. Historically research in any field is based on research that has previously been done and as such has a precedented tendency of having some inbuilt confirmation bias, so that's also something that is worth considering. Bias against qualitative data as inferior to quantitative data is also a particular sore spot for me as it has delayed research in mental health by decades, something that has affected me personally, and has also resulted in things like reports of pain and symptoms by minorities being more commonly dismissed, resulting in systematic level corrective changes taking far too longer than needed to be implemented because qualitative evidence wasn't taken seriously. Of course that's not to say that all subjective opinions are equally valuable, relevant or valid, but simply that those that considered and deliberate in controlling for variables should not be so simply dismissed.

I think a simple question we can ask is what we want out of this hobby, and by extension why we make the purchase decisions that we do. If you do buy into the idea that FR at DRP is everything, then great, the natural conclusion to this assumption is buy a $300 Topping stack or Q5k with any cheap, low distortion transducer and EQ with sweeps to your preferences and quit. Why buy Susvara when there are cheaper Hifimans that essentially measure the same. Or why buy any modern amp, dac or cable when all of them have essentially zero impact on frequency response. Soundstage is also not a thing so just buy a cheaper IEM for the most bang for buck. Congratulations, you've just saved yourself a ton of money and concluded audio, and 95% of the headphones.com store is now irrelevant to you and spending a dime more is a fool's errand.

But for the rest of us that's not enough, and we'll have our fun continuing to explore the space. With our money. That we earned. That we are spending. You have finished audio and that's great, feel free to see yourself out. But for the rest of us there is still plenty we'd like to explore and continue to chase our unicorns of "perfect" and "better", whether anyone else sees it as placebo or not, my listening enjoyment and the peace and happiness it brings is enough for me.

Also mods, I think this discussion is an interesting and healthy one to have but I'd like to humbly request it be moved to a separate thread if it continues so as not to detract from the STORM discussion

He spitting FACTS.

 

[Doltonius]

I'll chime in just once. We have been following the research as well and though there are indicators that FR at DRP is a large contributing factor to the listening experience, the notion that it is the be-all and end-all is far from conclusive.

This is something we have tested internally because if it was in fact the reality we would just close shop. No point investing this amount of time and energy if that level of performance can be achieved purely through FR. By that notion the most effective means of achieving TOTL audio would be TWS with a reasonably low distortion driver and full DSP. Or get a Q5k with any budget chi-fi and EQ with sweeps to your personal HRTF and be done with it.

And in fact that's the exact thing I did with several IEMs both budget and high-end. EQ them with sweeps, white noise and music to as close as I could get to STORM, while cross-referencing measurements on a both a 711 and a KB501x equivalent. The counterclaim is that this can't be done without measurements with the specific IEMs with my personal HRTF, but this is as close as I can get with the resources on hand. The listened experience tonally was within margin of error closer than 1db variance compared to when we're doing listened QC after doing measured QC when we batch our IEMs. Either way, what myself as well as the rest of the team heard when we did this led us to continue our development. I think a quick test anyone can do is just EQ a low pass on STORM with a 5db reduction on everything after 10k as suggested by Resolve's 5128 measurement and you'll find that a lot of the resolving ability is retained, still surpassing most IEMs with more upper treble energy, sustained or otherwise. Curiously enough our internal definition of true resolution is ability to render detail sans frequency response. Meaning to say that if the detail can be EQed in or EQed away then that perceived "detail" was artificially induced to begin with or brought to attention via FR emphasis as Resolve described.

I think my two takeaways from the objective space of the hobby in general are 1) I like that it's pushing for more research, because research as it pertains to better understanding our psychoacoustic system with regards to experienced sound quality and understanding of the correlation between in-ears, earbuds, headphones and speakers has been sorely lacking. The 5128 standard has been huge leap in this aspect but I still don't think averaging a population sample in the way that it was done is particularly effective for IEMs. I also like that the objective space better aligning the research space with industry in aspects to index for. And in general the more quality data we have available the more we are able to improve what we make.

And 2) I really don't like the dismissal of qualitative inputs, just as I don't like the dismissal of quantitative representations and data. I think it's quite foolish to presume that millions of years of evolution in our auditory system and our brain's ability to do signal processing can be captured in a single metric. While the current research does support this idea to an extent and point in the general direction of FR at DRP being a huge contributing factor to perceived sound quality. I think it's far from conclusive that it's the only relevant metric, and to presume so is quite foolish and arrogant in my opinion. I think that research in any area, and especially in understudied niche areas like audio as pertains to sound quality, has a tendency to go through cycles of accepted schools of thoughts before new paradigms are introduced. Historically research in any field is based on research that has previously been done and as such has a precedented tendency of having some inbuilt confirmation bias, so that's also something that is worth considering. Bias against qualitative data as inferior to quantitative data is also a particular sore spot for me as it has delayed research in mental health by decades, something that has affected me personally, and has also resulted in things like reports of pain and symptoms by minorities being more commonly dismissed, resulting in systematic level corrective changes taking far too longer than needed to be implemented because qualitative evidence wasn't taken seriously. Of course that's not to say that all subjective opinions are equally valuable, relevant or valid, but simply that those that considered and deliberate in controlling for variables should not be so simply dismissed.

I think a simple question we can ask is what we want out of this hobby, and by extension why we make the purchase decisions that we do. If you do buy into the idea that FR at DRP is everything, then great, the natural conclusion to this assumption is buy a $300 Topping stack or Q5k with any cheap, low distortion transducer and EQ with sweeps to your preferences and quit. Why buy Susvara when there are cheaper Hifimans that essentially measure the same. Or why buy any modern amp, dac or cable when all of them have essentially zero impact on frequency response. Soundstage is also not a thing so just buy a cheaper IEM for the most bang for buck. Congratulations, you've just saved yourself a ton of money and concluded audio, and 95% of the headphones.com store is now irrelevant to you and spending a dime more is a fool's errand.

But for the rest of us that's not enough, and we'll have our fun continuing to explore the space. With our money. That we earned. That we are spending. You have finished audio and that's great, feel free to see yourself out. But for the rest of us there is still plenty we'd like to explore and continue to chase our unicorns of "perfect" and "better", whether anyone else sees it as placebo or not, my listening enjoyment and the peace and happiness it brings is enough for me.

Also mods, I think this discussion is an interesting and healthy one to have but I'd like to humbly request it be moved to a separate thread if it continues so as not to detract from the STORM discussion

Well, you talked about eq-ing down 10k+ by 5db does not diminish details on the Storm; that may well be true; the Storm has ample 10k+ levels to begin with, and 5db less is probably still a healthy amount. Now try reproducing the large hole in the pinna gain of the IE 900 on the Storm. Do you still believe that all the details are retained? Or more extremely, eq the Storm to complimentary airlines earbuds. How much detail do you think will be kept? The idea that resolution is the details reproduced that are not affected by FR is really an untenable definition. Your engineering and tuning are magnificent; but much of it indeed is represented in the characteristic frequency response of the Storm.

 

[warrenpchi]

Also mods, I think this discussion is an interesting and healthy one to have but I'd like to humbly request it be moved to a separate thread if it continues so as not to detract from the STORM discussion

Yes, that's my stance as well. A worthy discussion to be had for sure, but perhaps one best had in its own thread so as not to derail this one further.

 

[Doltonius]

Bias against qualitative data as inferior to quantitative data is also a particular sore spot for me

If anything, the predominant bias in the audiophile community is against quantitative data, for decades. It is only in recent years that quantitative data is taken seriously at all.

 

[Chang]

Well, you talked about eq-ing down 10k+ by 5db does not diminish details on the Storm; that may well be true; the Storm has ample 10k+ levels to begin with, and 5db less is probably still a healthy amount. Now try reproducing the large hole in the pinna gain of the IE 900 on the Storm. Do you still believe that all the details are retained? Or more extremely, eq the Storm to complimentary airlines earbuds. How much detail do you think will be kept? The idea that resolution is the details reproduced that are not affected by FR is really an untenable definition. Your engineering and tuning are magnificent; but much of it indeed is represented in the characteristic frequency response of the Storm.

If you EQed STORM to IE900 or airline buds, STORM would be more resolving than the IE900 or airline bud when heard next to each other is what is being posited. Not that FR has absolutely no impact on perceived resolution.

 

[Chang]

If anything, the predominant bias in the audiophile community is against quantitative data, for decades. It is only in recent years that quantitative data is taken seriously at all.

I'm referring to science in general, and here the conclusions that are being drawn by folks based on the available research clearly exhibits a similar bias.

Also, wild guess but I gather that the folks writing papers for B&K are more closely aligned with academia than audiophile forum gossip.

 

[Doltonius]

Of course that's not to say that all subjective opinions are equally valuable, relevant or valid, but simply that those that considered and deliberate in controlling for variables should not be so simply dismissed.

One way to make subjective evaluations much more powerful is indeed to embed them in an experimental setting, with other factors tightly controlled for. So double-blind ranking tests, double-blind ABX tests, etc. Then they are as important as any objective data, maybe even more important, because not everything measurable actually has an impact on human hearing. However the difficult thing is ensure that the FR at eardrum is really the same, and manipulate the other variables. We don't have the technology to do that yet.

 

[listenerwww]

Interesting, I feel like Storm sounds even plenty dynamic from the iPhone dongle (sacrilege I know)

Fwiw, this was also my conclusion, but I also don't listen super loudly, so wasn't too limited by the dongle's limited output power.