[purrin]

RS1 (semi-vintage: nice old style beautiful wood cups with the buttons)

Pads disintegrating - might be better this way. Pad crumbs all over my ears and face. A little shouty in the midrange. It's been a long long time since I've owned these (1998.) Did I say shouty in the midrange? Has similarities to AD2000, which sounds like a refined, delicate, pass the Grey-Poupon version of RS1. Good treble - no wierd spots unlike many other Grado models I've heard. Extremely open sound. Good at extraction of musical information. Clarity is a plus, but "blackground" kind of grey. Classic Grado articulate bass - I love that. Has it's charms. More midrangy than trebly - lower Grados can be just more trebly. The wood must do some funky stuff to hide the ringing that's more obvious in lesser models, or maybe the drivers more damped. Great match with the BA (and current tube compliment.) Still listening and having a fun time. Must be doing something right. Yeah, this headphones does extract real information, otherwise they'd be off my head now. I suspect their FR may be better than other headphones with this batch. The midrange glare is starting to get to me - it's ringing for sure. Wierd, not as much treble ringing heard - the cups have got to be doing something. Oh! My head is starting to hurts. I like the sound of these, but I'm not as young as I used to be. Hmmm, I would buy these at $500.
 
Messed up looking plots coming up:
 
 
This one is an oddity. It sounds much better than it measures. It is far superior to the HF-2 and SR80i in terms of refinement. The 2kHz ridge is what's responsible for the shoutyness. The 5kHz ridge didn't bother me too much - it needs to take it's time to do that. It's possible I'm less sensitive to ringing at 5kHz than compared to 7kHz or 10kHz.
 
Very interesting compared to HF2. HF2 has more ringing at 9kHz (which I hear and don't like), but equal (L) or more (R) around 5kHz. HF2 lacks the honk-honk, but I liked the way this effect was implemented on the RS1 with the wood cups.

 

[anetode]

Quote:

Originally Posted by purrin /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
The 5kHz ridge didn't bother me too much - it needs to take it's time to do that. It's possible I'm less sensitive to ringing at 5kHz than compared to 7kHz or 10kHz.

Just speculating here, but since the spike is right in the middle of the big hump in the treble used in most headphone frequency compensation curves, it might attract less attention once it gets through your ear canal. The function of your ears' specific curve could be naturally more forgiving of 5khz rather than 2khz (right at the foot of the hump) or 7-10khz (at the receding edge of the hump).
 

taken from http://www.head-fi.org/t/361303/ideal-headphone-frequency-reponse-graph/15#post_7703526
ironic twist: "if you take that and start comparing it to headphone measurements done by others, you can easily lead yourself astray. The proof is in the pudding"
If so, then the RS1's are delicious pudding.

 

[purrin]

Quote:

Just speculating here, but since the spike is right in the middle of the big hump in the treble used in most headphone frequency compensation curves, it might attract less attention once it gets through your ear canal. The function of your ears' specific curve could be naturally more forgiving of 5khz rather than 2khz (right at the foot of the hump) or 7-10khz (at the receding edge of the hump).
 

taken from http://www.head-fi.org/t/361303/ideal-headphone-frequency-reponse-graph/15#post_7703526
ironic twist: "if you take that and start comparing it to headphone measurements done by others, you can easily lead yourself astray. The proof is in the pudding"
If so, then the RS1's are delicious pudding.

Very very interesting. The HD650 exhibits a similar FR at that spot.
 
One more headphone to go.
 

 

[purrin]

Denon D7000

Last one. Call it fatigue or whatever. Too bright. Too airy. A little too much bass, although doesn't have the bad sub-woofer quality of the D2000/5000. Can't crank these up loud. They have serious serious serious ringing at the "tape hiss" region. Like a screwdriver being shoved into my ear. I can't just enjoy it or listen to it more to evaluate other aspects. A bad match with my equipment. I don't recall the modded D5000s, which were my primary cans for almost year, sounding like this. My tastes could have changed.
 
OK, let's fire it up (note my measurement setup under-reports bass response from closed cans - in any event the the plot only goes down to 200Hz):
 
 
OK, so that's what was bothering me. It looks razor sharp.
 

 

[dogears]

Do you have any plots for T5p?

 

[anetode]

5 headphones with varying signatures must make for an intense listening session. Thanks for the undertaking!

 

[Anaxilus]

Quote:

Do you have any plots for T5p?

Take the T1 plot and make it worse.  

 

 

[dogears]

^Oops, I hope someone don't get to read this page

 

[purrin]

 
Quote:

The T1 channel differences are quite a surprise. Inner Fidelity also shows two notably incongruent sets of measurements for the pair of T1s, so there may be batch variations. The early ones, like the one I sent you, may be the runts of the litter.

I just pulled up Tyll's T1 measurement sheets. The one with the serial # is more linear than the other. Channel matching on both pairs is just unacceptable, 2db-3db off at certain points is not acceptable for a $1000+ headphone. I think your pair is even more screwy (I'll normalize the T1 CSDs in a minute so you can see this better.) I looked a Beyer's T1 materials, at least they never promised any channel matching.
 
Quote:

5 headphones with varying signatures must make for an intense listening session. Thanks for the undertaking!

 
Thank you! Lots of folks had requested measurements of the headphones you provided. I have a few more follow-up measurements. Will ship back on Thursday.

 

[Zuglufttier]

Thanks for these measurements! I'm still waiting for a high end HD650... Maybe I'll get to see them here once you measured enough headphones

 

[electropop]

Wow, very interesting to read. Thank you!
 
Purrin, you use the word "musical information". I'd be interested to know what you mean by this. I use it a lot because it's a priority for me in audio reproduction. What I personally mean with this wording, is absolute pitch articulation: it's easy to tell whether an instrument is in tune, easier to tab notes and the "message" behind a musical piece is apparent. You don't have to pinch your ears to hear it. Some headphones that don't measure optimally, might do this much better than headphones that do.
Might there be a factor in your, or someone else's, measurements that constitute this? I'd be interested to know Beyers in general, for instance, have a hard time hitting a bass note right, or at least discerning them in complex modal music.
 
Thoughts?
 
When I compared the K701 against a HD600, the 701's were simply better at extracting musical information. Tonal/timbral differences aside (for which there can be many opinions), bass for instance was awfully monotonic on the Senns while with the K701's everything was there laid out in front of you, "to pick". A much better option for a musician. ... Could of course be that the upstream set was more optimal for the 701.
 
Sorry, don't mean to turn this thread into a rant about subjective experiences. Just wanted to make my question more clear with an example.
 
Thanks again!

 

[Anaxilus]

Haha, listening impressions.  Genie's out of the bottle now.  Gratz!
 
HD700 should be revealed by about mid January.

 

[electropop]

Quote:

Haha, listening impressions.  Genie's out of the bottle now.  Gratz!

What do you mean? Purrin stated his 'listening impressions' prior to the measurements. One strange instance being the RS1, which was actually pretty contradicting.
 
I was merely asking his opinion on my stated factor. When you forget about sound itself, it becomes a pretty evident value in audio reproduction. And it's also more objective than much of the rest of the hifi-phoolery found on this site, hence my leap

 

[kiteki]

 
If I can notice distortions in the image on my TV while watching TV with the T5p... I don't think I'm going to trust any measurement equipment either.
 
 
 

 

[electropop]

Quote:

I don't think I'm going to trust any measurement equipment either.  

Was that a reference to my post? I didn't say that I asked what it could be in measurements (any) that constitutes to good pitch articulation. Obviously decay and FR-coloration within acceptable limits help, but there must be something else as well.