[brunobm]

I'm very skeptical when I hear reviewers describe a particular headphone or IEM as "natural" or with "correct timbre". To me something natural is what I hear with my bear ears. For instance, I know what my wife's voice sounds like. Ignoring the effects of how it's captured, I feel like it would be fair for me to be able to say that headphone X or Y reproduces it more naturally.

But I don't see how the above can possibly apply to music, especially given reviewers naturally use a wide variety of music to reach their verdicts. Let me use 3 examples here:
1. There's a big YouTube reviewer that always mentions the drum intro on Led Zeppelin's When The Levee Breaks. Unless he was in the studio when that was recorded, which I'm pretty sure he wasn't, how the heck does he know what it should sound like? Not picking on that reviewer in particular, just one fun example.
2. That there is a range of what each instrument could sound like. Take pianos for instance, which are simple enough to take amplification out of the equation. Different pianos sound vastly different. Maybe the tuning on headphone X favors a more high fidelity reproduction of piano A, but headphone Y favors that of piano B. So how is it that reviewers can generalize how strings, brass, voices, etc sound oh so natural on a certain phone?
3. I love The Killers and have heard a lot of their albums repeatedly over the years. The same album sounds different in my car, played through the speakers I had in my room growing up, playing through my headphones now.. and there's no "correct" or "natural" way it should sound, other than the way I'm used to it. I've even gone to several concerts and it very much depends on the speakers being used, how the sound technician set everything up, if it's out in the open or in a stadium, etc.

Anyway, I think you get the point. And let's assume we're talking about decent headphones here, not the stuff Delta Airlines gives you, of course.

 

[bagwell359]

Best case is a performance in an excellent hall - no amplification, 3 mics, hi-res recording media, and you sitting in row H dead center.

The further you get from that, the less likely you are opining on natural. Lots of folks here think Steely Dan 'Aja' is a great recording - outside of the fact it was not ever played live, and it had a dozens of mics, 64 or more tracks, artificial echo, and a pile of other not natural effects. All you can say is it sounds better on X than Y - but, it's subjective since nobody actually knows.

From what I can see - and not including musicians, the amount of live unamplified music in peoples background seems to have decreased steadily over the past 55 years.

 

[brunobm]

Best case is a performance in an excellent hall - no amplification, 3 mics, hi-res recording media, and you sitting in row H dead center.

The further you get from that, the less likely you are opining on natural. Lots of folks here think Steely Dan 'Aja' is a great recording - outside of the fact it was not ever played live, and it had a dozens of mics, 64 or more tracks, artificial echo, and a pile of other not natural effects. All you can say is it sounds better on X than Y - but, it's subjective since nobody actually knows.

From what I can see - and not including musicians, the amount of live unamplified music in peoples background seems to have decreased steadily over the past 55 years.

I agree with that, but even then, different orchestras and different halls will sound different. So it's very hard to say that recording so and so sounds natural, unless you were there for it. And even then, if you're listening to something on a headphone or speaker, it was recorded and there's everything from how it was captured all the way to mastering, then your DAC, Amp, etc there are going to interfere.

I just think it's complete BS when people say that voices sound natural, guitars sound natural, timbre is correct, etc. I mean, I love listening to Norah Jones for instance, but f*ck if I know what her voice sounds like whispering in my ear.

 

[TheDecline01]

Hi, interesting question and nice point actually. To me, it's borderline marketing communication. Why? As you mentioned, "natural" will vary considerably from one person to another. What's natural to one, won't be for the other because of different listening habits, different equipment and so on...

In the end, I tend to assimilate "natural" with "organic", or to put it bluntly, smooth and therefore easy on the highs (while of course not being overly warm and bassy). Well, precisely what one would say is characteristical of a vinyl sound.

 

[bagwell359]

I agree with that, but even then, different orchestras and different halls will sound different.

Certainly, which is why I specified one would be present for the recording - best case. I use recordings made in halls I have been in, and even orchestras that I heard with the same people as the when a recording was made (at least the conductor and main chairs)

But I do use other modern recordings that I wasn't there for and have a good amount of after recording manipulation because they are still good for A/B comparisons. and some better than that (see my comments on Doug Sax below)

So it's very hard to say that recording so and so sounds natural, unless you were there for it.

Right, but if the hall and conductor is the same and the recording techniques used are the same, then one can correlate fairly well.

And even then, if you're listening to something on a headphone or speaker, it was recorded and there's everything from how it was captured all the way to mastering, then your DAC, Amp, etc there are going to interfere.

Right again which is I specified the purest techniques - half speed mastered, 15 ips tape, etc. using the least amount of ribbon mics. There is no real way to get 100% there, just the best approximations you can afford/discern.

I like lots of recordings that are nearly useless for comparisons of natural - like Agnes Obel. It's a tendency I fight to only listen to the best recordings, and leave behind stuff I like because its obviously not well recorded. There is music one likes/loves and there are very good or better recordings - lucky when they tally up as winners in both realms.

I just think it's complete BS when people say that voices sound natural, guitars sound natural, timbre is correct, etc. I mean, I love listening to Norah Jones for instance, but f*ck if I know what her voice sounds like whispering in my ear.

I have a great deal of faith in the naturalness of analog and digital recordings done by mastering engineer Doug Sax for instance. Started with debuts of the Doors until his death almost 9 years ago. Because much of it (not all) rings true to my ear.

I know this - people weaned on walkmans or ipods and almost all recorded music - unless more work done later - are liable to have opinions/likes that deviate from mine.

 

[bagwell359]

Hi, interesting question and nice point actually. To me, it's borderline marketing communication. Why? As you mentioned, "natural" will vary considerably from one person to another. What's natural to one, won't be for the other because of different listening habits, different equipment and so on...

It goes to exposure/study as well - like wine tasting. Habits - that to me is taste in music. I wouldn't go to a death metal fan for advice on elite midrange headphones and they ought not listen to me on some other question.

In the end, I tend to assimilate "natural" with "organic", or to put it bluntly, smooth and therefore easy on the highs (while of course not being overly warm and bassy). Well, precisely what one would say is characteristical of a vinyl sound.

I was a vinyl head for a long time, it took a long time until i could stomach digital. Only DAC's I like are all R2R. Some people do digitial with tube amplification to get there, or EQ. That's the art/difficulty/pursuit of good pleasing - but accurate sound after all.

 

[IXOYE]

Curiosity : The iconic drum sound in "When The Leave Brakes" came from just 2 microphones set up in a stairwell, Bonham set up his kit at the bottom of Headley Grange's three-story stairwell, and the engineer Andy Johns recalls placing two Beyerdynamic M160 ribbon microphones at the top of the stairwell in a stereo configuration to achieve the iconic sound.

 

[SolarCetacean]

I used to have the same hangup on the term "natural" as the OP did. I wasn't there when the recording was made, so how do I know if a headphone renders it accurately or not? But I've found a pretty handy definition of "natural". Natural means, quite simply, "sounding like what the listener expects an instrument to sound like".

I played piano throughout grade school. I'd say I have a decent idea of what a general piano should sound like. Of course, every piano sounds different and plays differently, but I have a general idea of what a piano sounds like from having played it and listened to others play it for a considerable time. If I were to sit down at a random piano, I'd probably notice if it was out of tune. Does the headphone render piano notes in a way that resembles what I expect a piano to sound like? If so, then it's natural. I've encountered headphones that render piano notes without the decay I expect, so that scales - where the notes should blend together to an extent - are played almost like they're staccato, which I find unnatural. For that given piece, I would not expect that scale to be played staccato. It defies my expectation of what that piece sounds like and how the performer would play it. And other headphones do not produce that ultra-separated staccato sound to that same scale, so I rank those headphones as more natural.

I only played 2 years of trombone, but I've been to several brass band performances over the years, and so I have a sense of what brass should sound like. Some headphones emphasize the "honk" of a trumpet or trombone note more, while others emphasize the "squeak" or "air" or "body" of those notes. If a headphone emphasizes one of those aspects to excess, such that the resulting sound no longer fits what I expect that trumpet to sound like, then it has unnatural timbre.

Unnatural doesn't necessarily mean unenjoyable. The Stax SR-L700 has a honk in the midrange that makes vocals raspier than I would expect, and brass instruments honkier than I would expect, but it gives a "raw" feel to the sound, like I'm listening directly to the mic feed instead of processed and produced tracks.

So "natural" is for most people (except for those who were involved in the recording or production of a track) a subjective descriptor. But that doesn't make it useless. It's the same as if I said a dress looked "elegant", or a building looked "modern", or a sculpture looks "lifelike". In fact, the sculpture or painting analogy works best. I don't know if a given painting of a person is actually what they looked like; I cannot know for sure if the Mona Lisa is an accurate portrayal of the subject. But I can still tell if a portrait is a convincingly natural rendition of a person's likeness. "Mona Lisa" looks natural. "Girl with a Pearl Earring" looks less natural than Mona Lisa, but still within the realm of natural. "The Scream" does not look natural.

 

[catscratch]

OP is correct in that you never know what things in the studio sounded like. Which is why "natural" to me simply means "believable." You're not asking "is this how things sounded in the studio" but rather "could they have sounded like that" and does the music sound, for lack of a better word, normal.

This is easy to do with voices. There's a bunch of different colorations headphones often have when it comes to voices and "natural" here simply means the absence of these colorations.

Do the vocals sound nasal? Then you probably have emphasis around the 1k region with a dip around 2k. Do some of the vowels stick out? Does the "ah" sound stick out? Then you have peaks around 1-1.5k. Does the "oh" sound stick out? Then you have peaks or resonances around 800-900hz. Do the consonants sound weird? Is it sibilant? Then you have peaks around 6-7k as well as 10-11k. Do "sss" sounds come across more like "thhhh"? Then you have a dip at 6-8k. Etc, etc.

"Natural" here simply means not having said colorations. This means that you could have vocals with a fairly thin presentation sound natural and vocals with an overly warmed over presentation also sound natural. Here, "natural" becomes less of a specific sound but a preference/believability boundary. And anything within that boundary sounds natural.

So in a broad sense, "natural" means sounds fall within the admittedly broad believability boundary and "unnatural" means that are overt colorations that fall outside of it.

Because headphones are by and large SO badly tuned, even this very broad definition is able to separate headphones into pretty small and specific groups. And also, as you listen to more and more different recordings, you start understanding in what ways they can sound different, and in what ways they don't, i.e. what mistakes good sound engineers usually avoid making. So when you hear said colorations - that basically shouldn't appear on the recording - then you can guess that it's the system that's causing them.

Of course, sometimes a system is so revealing that it'll pick up very subtle issues that other systems will miss. Then it's easy to assume that this system has issues - but when you listen to more recordings on it, and as you get more experience with it, you start to tell whether or not it's imply picking up existing issues, or causing them.

Obviously, this is all very subjective. What you're used to matters a lot. I had a friend who'd go to a lot of jazz concerts in small venues and stand close to the drum kit, and he'd use the drums to evaluate what sounded natural to him or not. This meant that only very bright stuff like Beyers or the HD800 sounded natural, cause he's used to the sound of cymbals piercing through everything else. To me what he thought was natural was unlistenable, but this is why it's - partially - a subjective hobby. And why we have a million billion posts of endless, interminable arguments.

 

[ThEvil0nE]

You really don't need to decipher anything beyond your reach, how it's recorded, mixed and mastered. Play a music file on good studio monitors, granting that they have been calibrated and room corrected, and compare the sound between your headphone/iem and that of the monitor speakers.