Is it time for a new Harmon Curve survey?

[AudioMastermind]

There’s no one size fits all. Each person has their own target. Harman is only an average of most typical people. As such, it’s just a starting point, not necessarily a destination. This is the crux of the misunderstanding of what Harman is and what it is for. Calibrate to flat or Harman or whatever other target you want to choose. Save that as a calibration. Then adjust in small increments, listening carefully to a variety of recordings and you will find your personal ideal response curve. The calibration will act as an anchor so you don’t drift aimlessly. If you go too far in the wrong direction, you can reel back in and revert back to your calibrated curve.

Blind testing is for comparing two similar sounds. That isn’t the way to determine an ideal response curve. It can only compare one response curve to another to see if they are the same or different. If you want to create an ideal curve for you, you need to do it yourself by means of careful analytical listening. You can’t depend on a machine or canned response curve.

You can have the computer program adjust the sound in small increments to find your exact preference

 

[2leftears]

This discussion has made me wonder; is the diffuse field equalisation dead now? My late 80's and early 90's Sennheisers supposedly have that characteristic and it has always worked just fine for me; I still like the way they sound.

 

[AudioMastermind]

This discussion has made me wonder; is the diffuse field equalisation dead now? My late 80's and early 90's Sennheisers supposedly have that characteristic and it has always worked just fine for me; I still like the way they sound.

Equalizing to pure diffuse field has been shown to sound too thin and bright to most listeners in preference tests. I'm not sure what Sennheiser's you use, but HD650/HD600 roughly follow a sloped diffuse field curve.

 

[XTF1]

This discussion has made me wonder; is the diffuse field equalisation dead now? My late 80's and early 90's Sennheisers supposedly have that characteristic and it has always worked just fine for me; I still like the way they sound.

Dead? Why? As @bigshot rightfully said, every target is a starting point, so the question is: is it easier or more difficult to reach your destination—an EQ that works for you—if you start from ‘diffuse field’ rather than another target?

 

[bigshot]

You can have the computer program adjust the sound in small increments to find your exact preference

You still need to listen carefully and analyze what you hear. It isn’t just pushing a button.

 

[AudioMastermind]

You still need to listen carefully and analyze what you hear. It isn’t just pushing a button.

yes, but that is a reasonable thing to do. you can do just that actually, on https://www.peqdb.com/

 

[bigshot]

That reasonable thing to do was what I was suggesting.

 

[AudioMastermind]

That reasonable thing to do was what I was suggesting.

the results are beyond anything like simply equalizing to the Harman Target

 

[bigshot]

For me, Harman with a 1.5dB adjustment in the upper mids is perfect. It took me longer to calibrate to Harman than to tweak that to my ideal curve. Most people will find Harman very close.

 

[2leftears]

Equalizing to pure diffuse field has been shown to sound too thin and bright to most listeners in preference tests. I'm not sure what Sennheiser's you use, but HD650/HD600 roughly follow a sloped diffuse field curve.

HD540 Reference and HD250 Linear are my go-to headphones.

The HD650/HD600 sound a bit to 'warm'/'bass-heavy' for me on the majority of material I play through them; as if they are trying to compensate for the lack of whole-body bass perception by pumping more bass into my eardrums, which to me feels unnatural. But that's just me, others may have a different perception for sure.

FWIW, I am probably in the minority; when I hear a headphone that sounds more 'natural' to me most others generally seem to find them too 'thin'.

Dead? Why? As @bigshot rightfully said, every target is a starting point, so the question is: is it easier or more difficult to reach your destination—an EQ that works for you—if you start from ‘diffuse field’ rather than another target?

I completely got that; it is just that I see the Harman curve mentioned frequently whereas the diffuse field equalisation rarely seems to get a mention these days. Hence I was wondering if the whole headphone industry has pretty much abandoned diffuse field as something no longer in fashion.

 

[castleofargh]

This discussion has made me wonder; is the diffuse field equalisation dead now?

DF is not a preference curve. It is one solution imagined to get a reference target response for dummy heads. Basically big brain guy was like "hey, the headphone covers the all ear so we could set speakers and a room sorta kinda like that with sound coming from everywhere".
It's still a used reference for calibration.

 

[2leftears]

DF is not a preference curve. It is one solution imagined to get a reference target response for dummy heads. Basically big brain guy was like "hey, the headphone covers the all ear so we could set speakers and a room sorta kinda like that with sound coming from everywhere".
It's still a used reference for calibration.

It seems to work well for my preferred genres/styles of music: shoegaze/dream-pop & small orchestral in a reverberant setting (think castle halls, churches). It is rare that I want to hear an imaging that places the musicians some distance in front of me like a pair of speakers would; mostly I prefer to be enveloped by the sound, by lack of a better way of describing it.

 

[GoldenSound]

This discussion has made me wonder; is the diffuse field equalisation dead now? My late 80's and early 90's Sennheisers supposedly have that characteristic and it has always worked just fine for me; I still like the way they sound.

I don't think pure DF tuning or equalisation has ever really been a thing, and the existing preference research we have shows that it's generally not preferred anyway.

At the very least, a 1dB/octave tilt puts it more in line with what we see in preference research for both headphones and speakers, but beyond that as shown by the harman research there are variations in even just broadly speaking the level of bass/treble people enjoy. (See the classification of 'Class 1/2/3' listeners for instance).

Diffuse field HRTF is a good way to get an anatomical baseline to which we can compare the measured response of a headphone and get more useful analysis of how the colourations in FR of a headphone are likely to be perceived, but it shouldn't be treated as a preference target.