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Originally Posted by majkel /img/forum/go_quote.gif
So it looks like we hear the same things but interprete them in a different way. I agree that free air orchestra performance might sound like on the HD800 but it's not the lack of room echo only. In outdoor conditions there is a considerably high noise floor which causes quieter sounds to disappear quicker due to masking effect. But there is no audiophile beloved black background which IMO never appears in reality. Sure a colored background is even worse, but what I find natural in headphones is sonic continuity and AFAIR it's preserved also in electrostats. Enough to say the OII MkI/SRM-007tII driven from a high-end vinyl setup was amongst the best headphone experiences I have ever heard, sure not worse than those involving the K1000 and the PS1000.
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Again, I'm not criticizing your position, but we should verify if we're talking of preserved signal accuracy or compensational effects making for a more pleasing interpretation of the original signal. Of course with a headphone you have a dryer sound than through speakers to begin with (lacking room reflections), but no headphone housing can really compensate for that without adding coloration and signal smearing: The few microseconds of reverberation delay it's capable of producing are nothing compared to the 1/50 s and the like of room acoustics. Any sort of electronic/digital reverberation would provide a better effect if you really need this sort of compensation. Headphone-earpiece «reverberation» means mere early reflection and thus signal smearing. BTW, I don't consider common room acoustics an adequate substitute for concert-hall acoustics; they're rather necessary evils – and admittedly the ear would miss the reflected sound waves from multiple directions in an anechoic chamber.
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Originally Posted by AC1 /img/forum/go_quote.gif
If you want a prime example of a sound that is lacking this decay it is the Ety er4's.They cut a lot of harmonic information out which makes instruments sound super focused where you can hear the layering very clearly due to very little decay information interfering with each other. This is why people consider them "detailed" but in reality it is losing detail.
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That's a misconception. Technically it's virtually impossible for a driver to artificially shorten the decay of a signal. What's happening with the Etys and most IEMs in general is the bypassing of the pinna and the consequential lack of reflections on it. Which makes the sound unnaturally dry and may lead to the impression of sound emanating directly from the brain.
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| This harmonic information is what also makes tube gear sound warmer, more lush, or a type of bloom (and I don't mean just mid-range emphasis usually associated with bloom). The HD800s is very focused in this regard so their harmonic window is shorter. I have a Black Dragoned GS1000 which is in contrast to that. Which one is "correct" is hard to say, but they are both enjoyable in their own way. |
As has already been stated, tubes (may) add artificial overtones – in many cases with the result of a more organic and richer sound.
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Originally Posted by Kees /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Do you mean the very subtle tail end of the note is being cut off by the HD800? Could it be that the damping factor is actually too high? Like stopping the motion of the driver too quickly, just before the last little bit of the sound is actally finished?
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It's not possible for a driver to stop when it still gets an electric signal. The ideal scenario would be a massless membrane stopping immediately after signal stop. There's no sense in claiming for delayed decay, as it equates with lack of control and signal accuracy.
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Originally Posted by b0dhi /img/forum/go_quote.gif
They don't "cut out" harmonic information. In fact they add a lot of harmonics:
The reason they're called detailed is because they have a very short (compared to full size headphones) decay time, they're bright, and they have a lot of odd harmonics.
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I don't entirely agree on this. Firstly, all balanced-armature drivers have relatively high harmonic distortion. Secondly, it doesn't have much audible effect (at least with the ones I've heard). Thirdly, the ER-4P isn't bright to my ears. Actually it's almost dull on top. The ER-4S borders on brightness, though. And fourthly, it does sound «dry» in some way. IMO there are two reasons: a) excellent transient response with very short decay (but note that the postulated signal cut-off doesn't apply!), b) like all IEMs the sound waves bypass the outer ear and therefore reach the ear drum more directly than with full-size headphones or speakers.
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Originally Posted by majkel /img/forum/go_quote.gif
No, I just think it's attenuated too aggressively, in a non-linear manner. Kind of AC1's theory. Going more technical, I guess the HD800's transfer function is non-linear towards a power function with basis slightly above 1.
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To me that's an unrealistic and absurd theory.
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Originally Posted by Kees /img/forum/go_quote.gif
...The ideal damping factor would be different for different frequencies, depending on the ability of the driver to perform in the specific frequency areas. he mass and stiffness of the driver is dictating that. For low frequencies you would typically need a higher damping factor than for high frequencies (more mass, a bigger surface, a larger amplitude to handle). That could easily mean that for a proper handling of the lower frequencies you need a bigger damping factor than would be ideal for the high frequencies. That is one of the problems you have if you use one driver for the whole frequency spectrum I guess.
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The damping factor is greatly overrated with headphones. It only has an audible effect in the area around the bass resonance. And even there it can be handled like a simple impedance rise which interacts with serial resistance without separately respecting transient control. And think it over: Your above statement is a quasi postulation of arbitrarily sacrificing signal accuracy in the interest of delayed decay.
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Originally Posted by RedBull /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Couldn't agree more. 'Room' accoustic is very important to any sound system. Having too short or no decay from a 'dead' room is like having a very good sound system but played in the open air, imagine how will it sound like?
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It won't sound like in the open air – unfortunately! –, because an anechoic chamber only manages to absorb high frequencies to about 99.9%, whereas low frequencies are far from being absorbed that perfectly. Which leads to an almost painful acoustic experience, like a pressure in the ears. Speakers playing in the open air would sound clearly better, although I agree that they need the room acoustics the recordings are made for to sound good. On the other hand, when i was a bass player there was nothing more fun than playing on an open-air concert: Finally I could hear my own play clearly, as well as that of the whole band!
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| In a small listening room, overuse of absorptive material for reflection control can result in a room that is too acoustically "dead." Music lacking the richness contributed by the room effect is less involving. |
I agree. But that doesn't mean that even a passably prepared listening room is an ideal precondition. The theoretical ideal would be a perfectly anechoic chamber and several effect speakers distributed all over the room for providing «reflected sound» from dedicated recording channels.
However, in the real world we have to cope with room acoustics to get the reflected sound from different angles, without which the music wouldn't sound natural. But keep in mind that the listening-room acoustics will be imposed on the spatial information (reverb) on the recording and make it sound smaller than intended (if we suppose a concert hall as recording location). Moreover it will dilute some of the spatial cues on the recording, depending on intensity and delay of the room reflections. The worst-case scenario in this regard is a combination of strong, long reflections with a
short delay with respect to the original sound waves produced by the speaker membranes. Early reflections are a critical point, because the closer to the original signal, the less they can be identified as such and the more they melt together with the original signal, making for a smearing of the signal.
A decisive measure for avoiding early reflections is to dampen the reflective areas in immediate proximity of the speaker membranes with sound-absorbing materials. It pays off sonically, exactly in view of threedimensionality and transient response.
Now it's funny to read about the wish for exactly the opposite of a clean, accurate and controlled reproduction of the original signal, just because it's allegedly a better approximation to speaker sound in a common living room. It's sort of like giving up the only advantage of headphones with respect to speakers: excellent transient response independent of room acoustics.
That said, I understand that a puristic approach like mine is not anybody else's, also it has its price in the form of a less relaxing and lush sonic characteristic. But don't pretend to get a more accurate sound by introducing signal smearing! I'd rather recommend electronic devices for 3D enhancement and the like if you need more than the signal on the recording (which admittedly is made for speaker reproduction, unless you have a collection of binaural recordings).
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Originally Posted by skace /img/forum/go_quote.gif
However, couldn't the effect be emulated post processing?
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Yes, that's my recommendation.
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