[SkyZippr]

I've read many headphone reviews describing how they have height in their sound. Some say they hear the bass at mouth level, or the cymbals above their heads.
I've never experienced those. I do hear width and depth, but they're all happening at my eye level.
Do I need:
A. Special training
B. Special recording
C. Better headphone or amp
to hear the height? I'm using HD598 right now, but I've auditioned headphones like R70x, SRH1840, HD 800S, Sundara, Ananda, all with Sony DAP ZX507, but everything was still happening at eye level.

 

[VictorBLR]

I think, you need special recordings

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I've read many headphone reviews describing how they have height in their sound. Some say they hear the bass at mouth level, or the cymbals above their heads.
I've never experienced those. I do hear width and depth, but they're all happening at my eye level.
Do I need:
A. Special training
B. Special recording
C. Better headphone or amp
to hear the height? I'm using HD598 right now, but I've auditioned headphones like R70x, SRH1840, HD 800S, Sundara, Ananda, all with Sony DAP ZX507, but everything was still happening at eye level.

If somebody can hear a height variance on speakers it's likely because of reflections (like bass notes coming out of bass drivers lower down the baffle bouncing some soundwaves off the floor, because they're not as widely omnidirectional as widely believed) or sitting too close that there's enough of a variance in path length between each of the drivers to the ears (most easily heard in a car, but you can always move a seat closer to one tower speaker at home).

If height is audible on headphones, either it's psychoacoustics or you need to test the exact same recording.

 

[SkyZippr]

So what are they referring to when they say, for example, that HD800S have incredible width, depth and height?

 

[ProtegeManiac]

So what are they referring to when they say, for example, that HD800S have incredible width, depth and height?

Same thing I already said.

Either what they're listening to has it or it's just psychoacoustics.

 

[castleofargh]

I've read many headphone reviews describing how they have height in their sound. Some say they hear the bass at mouth level, or the cymbals above their heads.
I've never experienced those. I do hear width and depth, but they're all happening at my eye level.
Do I need:
A. Special training
B. Special recording
C. Better headphone or amp
to hear the height? I'm using HD598 right now, but I've auditioned headphones like R70x, SRH1840, HD 800S, Sundara, Ananda, all with Sony DAP ZX507, but everything was still happening at eye level.

You can look up HRTF(head related transfer function) and the role of ILD, ITD for the basic ways we locate sounds.
Also try this http://recherche.ircam.fr/equipes/salles/listen/sounds.html they are sounds recorded at the ears of listeners with speakers in a circle around them. Each file is a different person but the sound going around them is always the same. So you get to experience how much variations there can be between people purely because of the differences in their body. The sound is supposed to define a circle around you, but you will probably notice that instead you feel the sound source coming closer at certain angles, or going up. A different file will give a different result in some more or less significant ways. I think it's educational to try this at least once in our audiophile life. And perhaps you'll get to sense elevation in your headphone with some of them ^_^.

Now my long and boring attempt to explain what is going on:
Height itself is mostly a matter of signature in the context of hearing a real sound source at a distance. And a great deal of the spectral cues will be caused by the pinna(outer ear) and the head itself. At some angles the ground and your torso/shoulders will also give cues by blocking or reflecting some frequencies. If something sounds a certain way to us, and we see it's up high, the brain will learn to correlate the frequency response and the elevation. With more experiences, it will have a clear notion of the part of sounds which are just sounds of birds, planes, etc. And the components of sound that give locations and elevation angle.

The caveat here being that an impression of elevation is a purely subjective one born from how your own body alters the sounds coming from above. Someone else with another body will get to hear a different sound even if it's the same bird at the same place. So when someone tells you that the headphone places the drum up at 45°, that's entirely his own personal impression, and not that the headphone will feel that way to everybody. It just happens for that person that the signature of the headphone, plus how it bounces on the ear, plus how the drum was EQed, sum up to be a signature close to what he'd get to hear if some drum was hit at 45° above him. And so he gets fooled.
You may have a different experience of that drum sound with the same headphone. 1, because maybe for you a sound from 45° above in that direction does not correspond to that response(body differences). Or 2, because there is no standard about how we will deal with the experience that is headphone listening. It is nothing like hearing real sounds at a distance. The sound source(driver) is not placed in the direction where most sounds are panned to "appear". And when you move your head, your brain has to try and reconcile the idea of sound at a distance, with how it somehow sticks exactly to the head as it turns. for some people it's a detail. for others it's the reason why the brain rejects most location cues and only gives an impression of sound on the head or maybe even in the head.
People who will interpret sound that way will naturally have a real hard time perceiving distance like other people do. It plays a part for distance but also in some ways, it acts on our perception of elevation too, because when you move your head a little, the brain expects the sound coming from above to change with the new angle of the head. That doesn't happen so the brain may very well decide that it's all fake and just disregard most if not all elevation cues from now on with headphones.

We don't all depend on each cue the same way. For humans in general, sight strongly dominates over hearing. But then you find variations between people and some might still believe some audio cues that contradict sight. While morons like me have to close their eyes and stand perfectly still for a while, to start getting more space. And to make things worst, some people will simply have a HRTF where a given direction just happens to be an almost perfect replica of a given headphone's signature at their ears. For them, most sounds will feel like they come from there(only altered by stereo panning). But if your own HRTF doesn't even have a direction/altitude that come close to the headphone's signature, then your brain will have no reason to mistake it for a location cue.
It's subjectivity all the way and on many levels, so it is normal for different people to get different experiences of a headphone. I mentioned panning because if something is louder on the left driver, we'll all feel like it's placed on the left, and if we increase that panning, pretty much everybody will feel like the sound is even further to the left. It's one of those cues that we interpret in a similar way(and why it's used in a universal way when making stereo albums). Elevation is not at all like that. Something could feel up for you but down for me.

And just in case it's not obvious, typical stereo albums were not created with the idea of placing the drum 45°up. In this hobby many tend to favor headphones and IEMs that give them some funny 3D positioning, but as most albums were made for stereo speakers, having an instrument up or down could be considered a mistake.

 

[SkyZippr]

castleofargh, thank you for your detailed explanation. I think I might've understood it a little.

I have nearly zero experience with large speakers, and I've been to concerts, live shows and clubs for maybe 2-3 times only. I've been listening to music predominantly with earphones and headphones. So my brain probably haven't "learned" that music sound may come from up above or down below.
Those who hear the "height" in music might be the result of their experience in lives, concerts, or maybe even churches? I'm not sure.
For them, when a certain instrument echoes/resonates/whatever's in a certain way, their brain would interpret it as coming from a certain height. And certain headphones, say, HD880S, are good at revealing such micro-detailed echo/resonating sound/whatever, leaving the impression of having better "heights" in the music.

This is all I could gather now.
Interestingly, or rather expectedly, I do get a slight sense of height with sound effects like a jet plane. Also I do feel the height with special recordings such as holophonics.

 

[castleofargh]

Here is the frequency response measured at the ear of one person. The speaker is right in front of him and the graphs show when the speaker is placed at an elevation of -30°, 0°, and +30°.

You can find many examples like those, and if we were to oversimplify what's going on here, imagine the sound coming from a speaker and how the direct wave would bounce off your outer ear. Like this:

The outer ear isn't the only part of your body affecting the sound, but you can easily understand why the same sound emitted from different elevation angles could result in a different sound at the eardrum.

When that listener happens to feel like an instrument is above him, it's because between how that instrument was EQed in the mix, and the frequency response of the headphone, the result happens to be like when that guy is hearing a sound from above in front of him. In his case that would probably be something with a boost above 10kHz, a more audible 7 to 8kHz range, and maybe the little attenuation at 700Hz is also part of what makes his brain mistake a signature for something coming from 30° upward in front of him?
All I can say is that someone else with a different head might not perceive those cues as elevation, or maybe he'll mistake them for a different elevation. The listener's body is always going to be part of the equation when it comes to headphone and impressions of "altitude".

For stuff like panning, or the hd800 having a signature that feels like the instruments are more distant overall. Those are more consistent effects and most people will perceive them. Maybe with different magnitudes and slight differences in panning angles. But mostly when you discuss your impressions with someone else, you'll be able to agree about the general psychoacoustic impact. Don't expect the same for impressions of elevation on headphones. Same thing with talks about feeling like we're in the third row in the audience or whatever subjective notion of distance in front of you. Most people will only make that distance up with their strong imagination, and some listeners will simply never feel any distance right in front of them with headphones. This might go beyond sound impressions in some respects(head movement, vision, etc), but you cannot expect some subjective description of a given headphone to be an accurate standard of what to expect in term of elevation or frontal distance. IMO the sound samples in the link of my previous post give a pretty good experience of how much differences we may get compared to another listener.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

I have nearly zero experience with large speakers, and I've been to concerts, live shows and clubs for maybe 2-3 times only. I've been listening to music predominantly with earphones and headphones. So my brain probably haven't "learned" that music sound may come from up above or down below.
Those who hear the "height" in music might be the result of their experience in lives, concerts, or maybe even churches? I'm not sure.

Not necessarily.

If you go to a big enough concert then ALL the music will be above you, because the band is up on the stage with all the speakers. If it's an even bigger concert halfway down where the audience are there's going to be another tower of speakers. But that's not exactly what people are hearing when they claim music sounds like there's a variance in height when listening at home.

That's because music is typically recorded to have everything at the same height. Typically. And then music playback systems components ie speakers and headphones are designed and are supposed to be set up in such a way that you don't hear any height variance...if there isn't any in the recording.

That's why I'm saying that problems arise from

1. Acoustic issues
a. Reflections: Bass driver at the bottom (I'll post a visual aid below) has its output bouncing off the floor, so it sounds like it's coming from the floor.
The speaker

How the sound is dispersed on hard floor (top) and carpeted floor (bottom).

b. If the cymbals sound higher, it could be because of sitting too close that there are pathlength variances between each driver on the baffle to your ear.
The speaker

The problem

2. The recording, since the position of the mic determines where you'll hear the sound from.

What soundstage you're supposed to hear, top view...

How each instrument is recorded, very very roughly and very very generally...

But then again, maybe some recordings might do this, for whatever reason...

Which is kind of like this, sort of, but reversed...

3. Or it's not actually done that way and they're basically just thinking they're hearing it from above because their brain processes it that way, since that also plays a part. Like how your nose is actually in your field of vision but your brain edits what information the other part of the brain will really process for when you think, so you have one less thing to process consciously instead of adding to "is that guy going to cross? will I run him over? IDON'TWANNARUINMYLIFEDON'TJUSTCROSSTHERETHERE'SAPEDESTRIANLANEHALFABLOCKDOWN!!!" which as you might think is already "a lot."

For them, when a certain instrument echoes/resonates/whatever's in a certain way, their brain would interpret it as coming from a certain height.

If it's recorded that way, then it should.

And certain headphones, say, HD880S, are good at revealing such micro-detailed echo/resonating sound/whatever, leaving the impression of having better "heights" in the music.

This is all I could gather now.
Interestingly, or rather expectedly, I do get a slight sense of height with sound effects like a jet plane. Also I do feel the height with special recordings such as holophonics.

If you can hear this...

...chances are not hearing it in any music has more to do with it not being in the recordings you have, and not whether you need training to hear it or new headphones.

 

[TYATYA]

During this video playing, bass ground low at upper jaw (and a little back), female voice at eye level and some high notes - not all, at the brow.