[xnor]

Isone is just a fancy looking crossfeed with EQ and room reverb. The built-in EQ curves (including the "HRTF cues") did anything but work for me.
Imo, you get better results if you do the equalization by hand.

 

[tranhieu]

Quote:

[size=small]Let me add some more explanation as to what I'm trying to accomplish, which I really should have done in the initial post.[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] The motivation is to establish an ideal frequency response for headphones, in terms of subjective preference. For loudspeakers, we already have good research on what this response should be: when measured in-room, it's a flat line sloped downwards (see Floyd Toole's book on loudspeakers). Now, is there an equivalent statement that we can make for a headphone's frequency response?[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] Given the loudspeaker research, we might guess that the ideal headphone response should also be a downwards sloping line like the in-room loudspeaker response. However, we need to account for modifications to the in-room response by the listener's HRTF. To measure the listener's HRTF, we place a dummy head (mine) in the listening seat, and measure how the in-room response with the microphones mounted in-ear differs from the response with the microphones free standing. These were my measurements (a) and (b). Our candidate for the ideal headphone response would be a flat line sloped downwards but modified by this difference. This is why I said the original loudspeakers' and room's frequency response are largely irrelevant: we are only interested in the difference between two measurements.[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] Then we measure our headphones using the same in-ear microphones. These were my measurements (c). The ideal headphone should have a measurement (c) such that:[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] (c) = "flat line sloped downwards" + ((b) - (a))[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] Note that if the room and speakers were ideal, then (a) = "flat line sloped downwards", so we'd want (c) = (b).[/size]
[size=small]  [/size]
[size=small] Hope this clarifies the motivation behind these measurements.[/size]

Sorry there's one thing I don't really get. I'd assume you haven't subtracted the natural crossfeed happening with speaker listening? With (a) and (b) the mic on one ear will record both the sound traveling directly to it and part of the sound of the other mic while that doesn't happen with (c). Unless you want something as an approximate frequency response, that equation for determining (c) doesn't look correct to me.
 
Btw very cool experiment. I thought about grabbing some mic like the one you used but not sure which brand is good.

 

[JMS]

Quote:

Sorry there's one thing I don't really get. I'd assume you haven't subtracted the natural crossfeed happening with speaker listening? With (a) and (b) the mic on one ear will record both the sound traveling directly to it and part of the sound of the other mic while that doesn't happen with (c). Unless you want something as an approximate frequency response, that equation for determining (c) doesn't look correct to me.
 
Btw very cool experiment. I thought about grabbing some mic like the one you used but not sure which brand is good.

 
Only with (b) is the mic mounted in one ear. With (a) it's mounted on a tripod stand. In both cases a stereo sine sweep is played, so sounds from both loudspeakers are picked up by the mic. The difference between (a) and (b) is explained by what the head and torso do to the frequency response.

 

[JMS]

Quote:

You are not bothered by the 6k peak and dip at 2-3k? Cool stuff here anyways. Consider me a fan

 
I've only just started to play with equalization, so I started addressing the bigger issues first, which to me was the broad lower midrange bump. I haven't played with the 6k peak yet, but because it's high-Q (looks like 1/6 octave), it might be relatively benign. I've seen some CSD (waterfall) plots of the HD700's having lots of ringing right around that frequency, but I'm not sure it's as bad a problem as it looks. The research (ref: Toole) tells us that we are sensitive to faults in the frequency domain rather than the time domain, and resonances are less audible in headphones than in loudspeakers anyway.
 
As I just came back from vacation, I'll update after I've had time to play with it more.

 

[tranhieu]

Quote:

 
Only with (b) is the mic mounted in one ear. With (a) it's mounted on a tripod stand. In both cases a stereo sine sweep is played, so sounds from both loudspeakers are picked up by the mic. The difference between (a) and (b) is explained by what the head and torso do to the frequency response.

So you are saying there're only 1 mic recording in both (a) & (b)?

 

[ComfyGrados]

Disregard, I failed at reading comprehension.

 

[ComfyGrados]

Lol, disregard.

 

[tranhieu]

Quote:

So you are saying there're only 1 mic recording in both (a) & (b)?

Ok I think I finally got where I was wrong. It doesn't matter whether 1 or 2 ears are being used here since it's the SPL that is being measured to derive the frequency response (for EQ-ing later?). The effect of time and phase delay is not being considered and thus unaccounted for.

 

[ComfyGrados]

Quote:

 
 
My measurements are made with the mic at the entrance of the ear canal

 
Disregard everything I said. Sorry.
 
I don't know why, but I thought you were using mics at the eardrum. I brain farted and failed at reading comprehension. Are you measuring with a blocked or open ear canal? If blocked, how are you blocking your canal?
 
Does anybody have a target diffuse field EQ curve for blocked meatus measurements at the entrance of the ear canal? I can't seem to find one. I'd be interested in seeing what peaks "are supposed to be there" and comparing them to your measurements if you're measuring with a blocked meatus. I've read that blocked meatus measurements are more repeatable than open. Looking at your mics, it looks like you could plug your ear canals behind the mics rather easily, and those mics appear to put the mic elements in what I believe is the correct place for blocked meatus measurements, close to the tragus.
 
Google says the target curve can be found at:
 
"This will help, Fig.5 on pg.225 & Fig.7 on pg.226:
H. Møller, C.B. Jensen, D. Hammershøi and M.F. Sørensen, “Design Criteria for Headphones” J. Audio Eng. Soc. 43(4), 218-232 (1995)"
 
If you could find a target curve and your measurement technique produces repeatable results which are showing results similar to the target curves (similar but different peaks in similar but different places)... then you might be able to produce some target curve-compensated measurements.
 
Cheers.

 

[ComfyGrados]

oh god how did this get here i am not good with computer why did i hit quote instead of edit why can't i delete my own posts

 

[oblique63]

Apologies if this question sounds naive, as I haven't really studied much about this area of audio (even though I hope to eventually), but would the results be different if this experiment was being conducted with a sub-woofer in the setup?  Intuitively, it seems that would make a difference, and if so, is there anybody currently conducting this type of experiment with such a setup? I only ask cause if this is being conducted with some standard studio nearfields, even a lot of the good ones don't tend to have much of a response in the bass region... Granted, it's not easy to get a good nearfield+subwoofer pair in a studio and have everything will come out 'flat', but when it's done well, it is clearly better for doing audio work (from the limited experience I've had anyway).

Keep up the awesome work though either way. 
 
 
EDIT: nevermind, ignore me. Just looked up the speakers being used here and it seems they should provide good enough bottom end. I'm still curious as to how the characteristic frequency responses of the speakers used in these kinds of tests affect the results though...

 

[MRC001]

I wonder how much the HRTF varies from person to person. I would think it varies considerably. If so, this helps explain why people disagree on how "neutral" or "realistic" the voicing of a headphone is - and more generally its overall sound. And if so, any headphone's FR curve should be taken with a big grain of salt, depending on what HRTF was used to correct it, and whether that curve applies to any given listener.

 

[briskly]

I remember seeing that the standard deviation of the human FR using a microphone at the eardrum was 1 decibel. The variation that we see in listener descriptions has more to do with acclimation, taste, and training more than anything else, IMO. If Harman can get a bunch of testers to hear the same headphone similarly, I doubt that head differences are that big a deal.

 

[MRC001]

The HRTF is affected by many factors - head size, shape, density, ear-to-ear distance, maybe even the volume & shape of sinus cavities. Hard to imagine that with all those factors the STD across broad human populations is only 1 dB at various frequencies. That's virtually inaudible. Individual hearing response and acuity differ far more than that; why wouldn't the HRTF curves as well?
I need to read up on this topic more.

 

[arnaud]

Yeah, 1dB, right ....... You're lucky for the measurement be repeatible within a dB at high frequencies for a single individual. Across a population, we should dig up old posts here but I recall 20dB+ spread for FF or DF HRTFs (some old measurement from the 60s ? ).