[71 dB]

Sound mixers generally sculpt the soundstage using speakers, not headphones.

This is less true nowadays as people listen to headphones more than in the past and technology allows control of spatiality compared to the 20th century.

So with headphones, you are never going to get the intended stage presentation.

Depends on what was intended. Speaker-like soundstage is near-impossible, but miniature headphone soundstage is achievable. The challenge is to have the same mix work for both speakers and headphones. Binaural recordings work the best on headphones (soundstage-wise), but don't work well for speakers.

Headphones can sound open or closed, depending on their design and by means of signal procesding, but that isn’t the same as soundstage. Soundstage is about precise placement of sound objects in physical dimensional space (the room), and headphones present them along a straight line through the middle of the head. Openess can make for a wider sense of air around the sound, but the sound objects are still placed along the line between the ears.

You are contradicting yourself here. How can headphones sound open or close, if they all present sound along a straight line through the middle of the head. If that is "closed sound", how can you have "open sound?" In reality, headphones have differences in how capable they are in creating miniature headphone soundstage and this makes them appear to have "closed" or "open" sound. Structurally open headphones leak sound more than closed headphones creating a situation were at high frequencies almost natural amount of ILD happens at more or less natural ITD helping spatial hearing making the sound feel more "open."

In cases were the spatiality in the recording is very simple such as amplitude panned sounds, the perception of a soundstage relies almost completely on having room acoustics with speakers and such recordings tend to give "between the ears" spatiality on headphones, but when the spatiality of the recording is more sophisticated (say modern pop music employing bells and whistles such as binaural panning + high quality delay/reverb effects), spatial hearing starts to interpret the sound being located outside the listeners head. There seems to some differences in how people hear these things, but I would say, if recordings with high quality spatiality only appear to be located inside your head only, your brain is "stubborn" and unable to interpret the sounds correctly (no sound can be inside head!)

 

[bigshot]

Is it remarkable that champion skiers can tell the difference in subtle performance envelopes between one ski versus another? Is it remarkable that an automobile enthusiast can tell the difference in subtle differences in handling between one car and another that have the same skid pad results but are probably completely lost on the average automobile driver? Is it remarkable that a 4 star chef can tell the difference between subtle seasonings that are hard for the average person that eats food to delineate let alone describe? Because all people with functioning hearing can hear sounds, therefore all people can tell the difference between one DAC or cable? Is it possible that audio enthusiasts spend lots of time listening to their systems and obsessing over how they sound because they care more than the average person? Is it possible at least some of them care more because they can tell the difference subtle differences make to their system either through acquired listening skills, some fluke of hearing or perception, or a combination of all?

You ask too many questions at once. I'm not going to tear this apart and reply line by line, because that's rude and it only serves to splinter the context of the conversation. But I will make a general comment.

There are two aspects involved in listening to music on a home audio system: appreciation and fidelity.

Appreciation involves the subjective nature of music and the creative choices made in the mix. Music and mixing involves balancing a lot of disparate elements in a creative way to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. It's impossible to measure creativity. You can train yourself to separate these elements, and you can analyze it and break it down, but at the end of the day, it's a million little decisions and compromises that end up creating a very complex whole. Soundstage is just one part of those creative choices.

Fidelity involves reproducing a signal accurately. Ideally, you want the audio signal coming from the source to be the same audio signal that goes out to the transducers, just in a different format (digital/analog). Creativity isn't involved here. It's an objective process. It's either the same or it's different. You can measure differences on a variety of metrics: frequency response, signal to noise, dynamic range, distortion, timing, etc. We are able to do that very accurately using measurements, ABX tests and null tests.

Ultimately though, we don't hear with electronics and transducers. We hear with human ears. Human ears have their own range of fidelity and the parameters of that have been studied for over a century. We have reached a time where recording technology is able to reproduce sound with more fidelity than human ears can hear. Digital audio is capable of noise floors far beyond the dynamic range of human ears, and it can reproduce frequencies that we can't hear. Add to that rock solid timing clocked to computer perfection and vanishingly small percentages of noise and distortion, and you end up with transparent sound... all of the differences fall below the threshold that our ears can hear. You can train yourself all day long, but you aren't going to hear a difference because your ears aren't made to hear differences that small.

As a listener who is interested in achieving optimal sound, appreciation is important for the subjective emotional impact music can have on you. It's good to study music and analyze it to better understand and appreciate it. That is a lifelong journey. It's important to have equipment that can accurately reproduce the music, so its impact isn't blunted. When it comes to DACs and amps, that is drop dead easy because their specs exceed the specs of the human ear. But it isn't easy with transducers. Their specs are all over the place, and they can change simply by dropping a speaker in a different room, or by putting headphones on a different shaped head and ear canal.

Taming transducers is the area to focus on, not amps, DACs and wires. There's a LOT more room for improvement with transducers than there is with electronics. That should be self evident to anyone with any experience with home audio. The trick is to keep subjectivity and objective fidelity separate in your head. If you allow your feelings to color your perception, then you will have a hard time telling if you're getting high fidelity sound or not. That is why we put controls on listening tests. Save the subjectivity for the appreciation of music. That is where it does the most good.

 

[KinGensai]

@knownothing2
This contention you are pushing runs into a complication in the form of acclimatization. Are you proposing this is the missing element in a long term analysis, or is this a complicating variable in your analysis? If so, how do you propose to control for it, if at all?

 

[bigshot]

How can headphones sound open or close, if they all present sound along a straight line through the middle of the head. If that is "closed sound", how can you have "open sound?"

Because "open" and "closed" don't involve the placement of sound objects between the two channels. They involve the degree of envelope of sound around the sound objects. A vocalist smack dab in the middle of the mix is going to be smack dab in the middle with both open headphones, and with closed sounding ones. For lack of a better word, the difference is the "air" around the sound, not the sound itself.

With speakers, soundstage involves the triangulation of space between the two channels and the listening position. This is an established standard, and it places sound objects at a fixed distance from the listener and spread along a left/right axis, just like if you were sitting in an auditorium hearing a performance on a stage a distance in front of you. The triangulation is scalable, so if the distances are increased, the relationship between the three remains the same and the soundstage is maintained. All mixing stages are set up to do this. The room itself adds a further element of reflections that add realism to the dimensional cues.

Headphones can present "headstage" which involves the envelope of air around the sound, but they can't provide the dimensional triangulation of soundstage, the perception of physical distance, and the room reflections the way speakers can. Instead of presenting the left/right placement at a distance in front of the listener, they present it as a straight line through the middle of the head. That is a separate thing than the feeling of open or closed.

Secondary depth cues are the spatial indicators embedded in the recording itself... reflections and reverberation added in the mix itself, phase tricks, that sort of thing. Those can create a feeling of space, but that is not a product of the playback equipment. It's created in the mix and simply recorded as the signal. Normal aspects of fidelity, like frequency response, distortion, signal to noise, etc. will reproduce that with accuracy just like any other kind of sound. Both headphones and speakers can present secondary cues equally well.

 

[knownothing2]

Well no, we don’t have to agree to disagree here, this is the sound science discussion forum and science automatically wins over any unsupported opinions, and even more so over unsupported opinions that contradict the established science.

I disagree. I am at a science conference now, and several speakers are taking experimentally valid arguments based on narrow studies and extrapolating them far beyond the the scope in which they are relevant and arriving at ridiculous generalizations and conclusions. Hallway discussions support this assessment.

Your “science” ignores the fact that thousands of audio enthusiasts believe they hear differences between different electronics and cables, and there is an entire industry catering to these first world tastes. Many of us have significant training in scientific method and practice and are of the opinion that you are missing some important elements in the methods and rigor in testing human subjects ability to distinguish differences in HiFi equipment performance in real world applications. To say that the issue and “science” on the topic is settled without a single publication in a refereed scientific or technical journal, let alone and entire library of such refereed data, reports and conclusions is irresponsible in western civilization in 2024. No. I disagree.

 

[knownothing2]

@knownothing2
This contention you are pushing runs into a complication in the form of acclimatization. Are you proposing this is the missing element in a long term analysis, or is this a complicating variable in your analysis? Of so, how do you propose to control for it, if at all?

Exactly. Bigshot says this is easy and settled. It is not. It is complicated and has not been attempted with any rigor.

 

[bigshot]

Which science conference? Are there any interesting speakers?

 

[KinGensai]

I disagree. I am at a science conference now, and several speakers are taking experimentally valid arguments based on narrow studies and extrapolating them far beyond the the scope in which they are relevant and arriving at ridiculous generalizations and conclusions. Hallway discussions support this assessment.

Your “science” ignores the fact that thousands of audio enthusiasts believe they hear differences between different electronics and cables, and there is an entire industry catering to these first world tastes. Many of us have significant training in scientific method and practice and are of the opinion that you are missing some important elements in the methods and rigor in testing human subjects ability to distinguish differences in HiFi equipment performance in real world applications. To say that the issue and “science” on the topic is settled without a single publication in a refereed scientific or technical journal, let alone and entire library of such refereed data, reports and conclusions is irresponsible in western civilization in 2024. No. I disagree.

I've been waiting for a while to see if you rectify the strawman you are arguing against, you still persist. Impedance matching is something you have to do with electronics and cables because capacitance, amperage, and voltage all have effects on the resulting sound produced by the transducer. Gregorio does not contest this, he didn't when I had my disagreement with him on sound stage either. The relevant question here is if the differences reach audibility thresholds and, if they do, what the causality of that change is and if said change affects the perception of sound stage at all.

Exactly. Bigshot says this is easy and settled. It is not. It is complicated and has not been attempted with any rigor.

Ok, I'm still not sure if there actually is a relevance, either beneficial or detrimental, to this factor, but I will agree that this particular subject is not extensively covered audio wise in literature I'm familiar with. It will certainly be complicated to do any investigation into that question just due to logistical concerns.

 

[knownothing2]

The argument here is that electronic components have to first be proven to have an objectively measurable delta from a point of reference (the digital signal or another component) that crosses a theoretical threshold of audibility, this would make your positive claim of knowledge (this DAC affects soundstage differently from another) valid.

To prove that this valid hypothesis is sound, you have to then apply this difference in vivo using DBT to control for bias and see if the hypothesis survives the null hypothesis, I.E. you get a statistically significant correlation between the difference and correct answers.

Yes.

 

[bigshot]

Exactly. Bigshot says this is easy and settled. It is not. It is complicated and has not been attempted with any rigor.

The reason you don’t see a lot of recent studies is because it’s easy and settled.

But a simple google search will turn up tests by audiophile clubs and individuals that will tell you what you need to know.

 

[BS5711]

Knownothing2,

I am not going to go through and reply to all your various comments or questions, the general gist is the same throughout.

I get the rationale of your argument and on the face of it your logic seems sound. That is, you and a lot of other audio enthusiasts claim to hear clear differences with various equipment changes and are adamant that what you hear is real and correct.

The extension of that is that others that don't hear the same sonic changes due to changes in equipment that science indicates should make no sonic difference (cables, DACs etc - not transducers obviously) are wrong and the science is wrong.

I understand your position because I have been there myself, I have heard changes in perceived sound due to a cable change for example. The difference is that the change was not permanent and when I dug deeper I realised the change was in my head.

However, and that is the big however ..... science can also explain why you and I might hear something that doesn't exist and that is all down to the weaknesses of the human auditory system. Did you see the little video I posted several pages back ? The eyes fool the brain into hearing what they see rather than what the ears pick up. It is a very basic little example but if it is so easy to fool the auditory system by input from the visual system it is pretty apparent that our auditory system is a long way from a fine tuned testing medium which it seems you believe it is.

It seems to me, based on simple logic, that when you assert something to be true but it is outside of what science can explain, and science also has an explanation for why you might perceive a difference that doesn't exist, the onus is on you to robustly prove that what you claim to be real is in fact correct. And saying "I hear it so it is real" is not robust in the slightest.

It seems very plain and simple and frankly I don't get how an obviously intelligent human beaning cannot see the situation for what it is and at the very least acknowledge the weakness of our abilities rather than keep grasping at the notion that you hear it so it has to be real even if that flies in the face of the science.

I hear things as different sometimes just the same as you do, I don't trust that my ears and abilities of perception are so good that I I reach for an explanation in the towns power supply on a given day to explain it as you indicated earlier. I understand that my human abilities can simply be different one day to the next which explains it for me. I generally use battery powered gear at my desktop with IEM and headphones on a daily basis while I work. The power supply has no impact on the sound, nothing changes in the gear I pull out to listen with at the start of any given day and yet some days things just sound different. That might be right at the start of the day or things might change over the day. Frankly I can make something that is sounding really good all of a sudden sound not so good just by thinking about the sound and overanalyzing it and messing with my own mind.

 

[knownothing2]

Make no mistake, you are the one making the positive claim of knowledge in this situation, the preponderance of the facts in evidence is that electronics like DACs and Amps deviate from each other in amounts that are several orders of magnitude below even generous theoretical thresholds of human perception.

For what variables are components potentially relevant and below the threshold for human perception? Frequency? Timing? Loudness? Signal/Noise and distortion? Channel separation? Timbre? I think there is a mishmash here of classic bench measures of things like frequency response, thd, and jitter with the aggregate sonic performance of a piece of gear in a system as perceived by a listener in a room or via a pair of headphones. The original Benchmark DAC 1 measured very well, but nearly every reviewer reported that it sounded noticeably different from the Benchmark DAC 2 and DAC 3 variants, even though the designer said the “improvements” should be generally inaudible.

kn

 

[knownothing2]

O

Knownothing2,

I am not going to go through and reply to all your various comments or questions, the general gist is the same throughout.

I get the rationale of your argument and on the face of it your logic seems sound. That is, you and a lot of other audio enthusiasts claim to hear clear differences with various equipment changes and are adamant that what you hear is real and correct.

The extension of that is that others that don't hear the same sonic changes due to changes in equipment that science indicates should make no sonic difference (cables, DACs etc - not transducers obviously) are wrong and the science is wrong.

I understand your position because I have been there myself, I have heard changes in perceived sound due to a cable change for example. The difference is that the change was not permanent and when I dug deeper I realised the change was in my head.

However, and that is the big however ..... science can also explain why you and I might hear something that doesn't exist and that is all down to the weaknesses of the human auditory system. Did you see the little video I posted several pages back ? The eyes fool the brain into hearing what they see rather than what the ears pick up. It is a very basic little example but if it is so easy to fool the auditory system by input from the visual system it is pretty apparent that our auditory system is a long way from a fine tuned testing medium which it seems you believe it is.

It seems to me, based on simple logic, that when you assert something to be true but it is outside of what science can explain, and science also has an explanation for why you might perceive a difference that doesn't exist, the onus is on you to robustly prove that what you claim to be real is in fact correct. And saying "I hear it so it is real" is not robust in the slightest.

It seems very plain and simple and frankly I don't get how an obviously intelligent human beaning cannot see the situation for what it is and at the very least acknowledge the weakness of our abilities rather than keep grasping at the notion that you hear it so it has to be real even if that flies in the face of the science.

I hear things as different sometimes just the same as you do, I don't trust that my ears and abilities of perception are so good that I I reach for an explanation in the towns power supply on a given day to explain it as you indicated earlier. I understand that my human abilities can simply be different one day to the next which explains it for me. I generally use battery powered gear at my desktop with IEM and headphones on a daily basis while I work. The power supply has no impact on the sound, nothing changes in the gear I pull out to listen with at the start of any given day and yet some days things just sound different. That might be right at the start of the day or things might change over the day. Frankly I can make something that is sounding really good all of a sudden sound not so good just by thinking about the sound and overanalyzing it and messing with my own mind.

That’s all very good. I have done limited DBT/ABCDEX tests with electronics and cables in my system with a small number of subjects and asked the subjects to take notes and they confirmed my sighted assessments with remarkable fidelity. I have done other tests of interconnects where the subjects (including me) could not hear any difference. So in that system, I accept that result. In any case, these tests do not come close to to meeting the standard I am suggesting is required to refute the null hypothesis of no difference that would turn the tide in this discussion or in general. But they do provide enough support for me to persist in building different power cables to achieve greater levels of insight in my systems. I respect your knowledge and logic but based on the sum of my experiences, I am not swayed that the differences are entirely in my head and not in the sound being reproduced.

kn

 

[knownothing2]

Logical calisthenics to stretch the truth to match your false beliefs. It isn’t easy to be wrong over and over and over.

Well, I am generally struggling to agree with you, so there’s that.

 

[knownothing2]

Which science conference? Are there any interesting speakers?

The World Fisheries Congress. I just left a session on “Evolutionary effects on species distribution shifts: building conservation capacity for conservation and management”. Yes, interesting human speakers, not interesting complex transducers.

kn