[pataburd]

The HEDDphone wiring scheme at the minis is different from Audeze, for example. The differences were noted earlier on these threads. Whether that actually translates to audible differences has not yet been scientifically demonstrated.

 

[Najam]

I've found cables for Audeze LCD series (Audeze LCD-3 LCD-2 LCD-X LCD-XC 4z MX4 GX) will they work with the Hedd? I know the polarity is different.

 

[Bucketron]

I've found cables for Audeze LCD series (Audeze LCD-3 LCD-2 LCD-X LCD-XC 4z MX4 GX) will they work with the Hedd? I know the polarity is different.

They will work.

 

[newworld666]

With neutron for Windows or Android we can reverse polarity with a switch... And it's impossible to catch any différence.

 

[silversurfer616]

I use all my Audeze aftermarket cables( Forza, Cardas and Toxic) and can’t tell the difference compared to stock...which is actually really good.
At first I was biased against the stock cable after reading all the comments here but as they say...you have to listen with your own ears.

 

[iFi audio]

Love the shot and that Sony beast

 

[KaiSc]

With neutron for Windows or Android we can reverse polarity with a switch... And it's impossible to catch any différence.

With my RME ADI-2 Pro I can reverse polarity (for left and right together of course).

I've been very skeptical about this - "common knowledge" is, that the ear is not able to perceive an absolute polarity difference.

To my own surprise I get a clear preference - depending on the individual piece of music.
One way the bass sounds deeper, softer, the other polarity sounds more punchy, upper bass tight.
In the majority of cases positive polarity is preferable, which is what usually is done in the recording studio, all microphones and signal path's are prepared to be (correct) positive polarity.

I hear this with different headphones, even with my ERGO A.M.T. (the 2nd headphone ever created with full range A.M.T. driver, HEDDphone is the 3rd, the 1st was built by ESS company in the 70's in small amounts).

I will get the HEDDphone next week, will check how it comes out on that one.


BTW: I can easily measure the absolute polarity, quite some headphones are wired with reversed polarity.
For example all STAX headphones and even the ERGO A.M.T.

 

[LCMusicLover]

...I've been very skeptical about this - "common knowledge" is, that the ear is not able to perceive an absolute polarity difference.
.
.
.
I will get the HEDDphone next week, will check how it comes out on that one.

Can I play?

Seriously, I'll my compare Hedd w/ my Auteur cable vs with the stock Hedd cable and see if I can hear the difference.

Like you, I'm skeptical. When I first learned about phase errors w/ speakers (as a teenager, in the crawl space under our living room, running wires to my Dad's system in our new house) I understood that absolute polarity didn't matter, only relative polarity. And I've carried that certainty ever since -- darn it all, you've destroyed my complacency

 

[LCMusicLover]

Can I play?

Seriously, I'll my compare Hedd w/ my Auteur cable vs with the stock Hedd cable and see if I can hear the difference.

Like you, I'm skeptical. When I first learned about phase errors w/ speakers (as a teenager, in the crawl space under our living room, running wires to my Dad's system in our new house) I understood that absolute polarity didn't matter, only relative polarity. And I've carried that certainty ever since -- darn it all, you've destroyed my complacency

Well, that was pointless. I compared my stock 1/4” cable vs a silver cable I got from Ted Allen for my Auteur from my Hugo2go. The silver cable is 2.5mm TRRS-terminated but I used a 2.5 balanced-to-single-ended 3.5mm adapter, and so plugged both into the Hugo and moved the Hedd from one to the other.

I don’t actually know what ‘defect’ I should have expected to hear. If I had been testing/comparing for relative phase inversion, I would expect to hear diminished bass and a less coherent/precise headstage. Didn’t hear any of that when comparing.

What I did hear was expectation bias confirmed — I definitely preferred the non-stock silver cable to the stock cable. More detail, more open/airy headstage which also seems a bit more precise.

Bottomline the silver vs copper differences masked any artifacts the polarity ‘errors’ I might have heard.

(Channeling M.A.S.H.) That is all!

 

[KaiSc]

Well, that was pointless. I compared my stock 1/4” cable vs a silver cable I got from Ted Allen for my Auteur from my Hugo2go. The silver cable is 2.5mm TRRS-terminated but I used a 2.5 balanced-to-single-ended 3.5mm adapter, and so plugged both into the Hugo and moved the Hedd from one to the other.

I don’t actually know what ‘defect’ I should have expected to hear. If I had been testing/comparing for relative phase inversion, I would expect to hear diminished bass and a less coherent/precise headstage. Didn’t hear any of that when comparing.

What I did hear was expectation bias confirmed — I definitely preferred the non-stock silver cable to the stock cable. More detail, more open/airy headstage which also seems a bit more precise.

Bottomline the silver vs copper differences masked any artifacts the polarity ‘errors’ I might have heard.

(Channeling M.A.S.H.) That is all!

That's a misunderstanding:
Diminished bass and uncoherent soundstage appears with speakers where ONE SIDE, e.g. left speaker, ist polarity reversed to the other.
Working in the same room, in this case the speakers cancel out their bass and partly some midrange frequencies.

With headphones, ONE SIDE polarity reversed, bass is not canceled out, because left and right signal stay separated on their respective ear.
But the soundstage gets strange, and this effect is clearly audible.


I was talking about a polarity flip for left and right TOGETHER, so their relative polarity stays the same.
The effect is not night and day, best recognized if you have a switch to go back and forth without hearing break.

If you have to remove the headphones from the head, replug a cable, then reposition the headphones (to a likely slightly different position) and go on listening, then the break's too long to reliable hear any difference.

I just lately, that way, compared stock Sennheiser HD-800S cables against 5OCC pure silver - a combination that's said to be "very different" - but after one hour back and forth I gave up, I could not hear any difference.

 

[IgeNeLL]

Depth of stage with headphones is an illusion, anyway, compared to speakers in 3D space that can resolve depth. I find the Heddphones seem to present each instrument in the mix as if you were at the mic position. But they still do offer the complete sense of space and reverb for each instrument. For live acoustic, of course, you will get the most natural presentation. Multi mic’d and mixed will be different. FWIW, I think using crossfeed helps, and on the Chord TT2 xphd 2 (of 3) seems to work best for me.

For the speaker, it is an illusion too with addition room acoustic reverb/reflection.
The sound stage is not the dimension of the room it is the illusion , in which attribute has been altered by real room.

 

[LCMusicLover]

...If I had been testing/comparing for relative phase inversion, I would expect to hear diminished bass and a less coherent/precise headstage...

That's a misunderstanding:
Diminished bass and uncoherent soundstage appears with speakers where ONE SIDE, e.g. left speaker, ist polarity reversed to the other.
In this case the speakers cancel out their bass and partly some midrange frequencies.

With headphones, ONE SIDE polarity reversed, bass is not canceled out, because left and right signal stay separated on their respective ear.
But the soundstage gets strange, and this effect is clearly audible....

So my expectations were 1/2 right

...I was talking about a polarity flip for left and right TOGETHER, so their relative polarity stays the same....

I got that — just didn’t know what I should be listening for.

...I was talking about a polarity flip for left and right TOGETHER, so their relative polarity stays the same. The effect is not night and day, best recognized if you have a switch to go back and forth without hearing break...

Reading your post, I still don’t know what the possible effects of global polarity ‘error’ would produce. But whatever, I couldn’t hear anything. And I get that the effect might be too subtle to discern given the steps I had to go through to test.

But the real point of my post (which I obviously didn’t communicate clearly) was that the substantial differences between the stock and my upgrade cable most likely would mask any subtle differences which the polarity flip might have caused.

So my experiment demonstrated nothing.

 

[KaiSc]

For the speaker, it is an illusion too with addition room acoustic reverb/reflection.
The sound stage is not the dimension of the room it is the illusion , in which attribute has been altered by real room.

Even in the outside, real world, hearing a "soundstage" is an illusion our brain creates out of the little information it gets from the hearing apparatus.

In natural environments distant sounds usually contain more reflections and less treble information than close sounds. Up/down information is derivied out of concha-related frequency response differences, and so on...
The whole process is complex.

The brain uses what it has learned during our synaptic development from childhood on and interprets the (relatively little) incomming information, in it's neuronal network, then presents us with a "result" that's a virtual picture of the reality.

If you "train" it with artificial sound reproduction, it will do this better and better even there.


Recording engineers intentionally try to catch or recreate some of those effects to generate an artificial soundstage for the listener.
On the consumers side of the chain the reproduction of this artificial soundstage works best if the headphones (or speakers) sound neutral according to the listener's personal experience.
If a transducer (or the room it's located in), has lot's of irregularities it might substract (or add) to this intended soundstage in a recording.

 

[iFi audio]

For the speaker, it is an illusion too with addition room acoustic reverb/reflection.

Yup, at times we hear more sound bouncing off walls than what's coming from speakers.

 

[silversurfer616]

Anybody tried the original Hedd balanced cable? Despite the fact that the Heddphone sounds great with all my Audeze aftermarket cables and I can’t detect any polarity issues, I have decided to get the balanced Hedd cable.