[Redcarmoose]

Sennheiser I think has nailed it as far as marketing. They have their audiophile headphones, they have their street headphones. They market to just about everyone out there? You could almost say they have multi-house sounds.



If we are talking about a flat response, I think it would be easy for a company like Sennheiser to just make 50 pairs of headphones all with a perfect close to flat SQ, all in a different style and in graduated price brackets, and call it a day. But they don't. They have come to understand that there are audiophile listeners and Beats listeners. They just look at market share. There must have been a moment in a board meeting where they looked at some retail graphs and saw 50 percent of the sales going south? They had to adapt.


I think many would say that the audiophile industry as a whole has started to gear towards a V signature in the last 10 years. Fun sound sells. Many purists maybe cringe at headphones with giant bass control dials. Just as many audiophiles cringed at tone controls years ago. Still you will see some manufaturers bring them back.

Part of the problem with flat headphones is because the drivers are smaller than full size speaker drivers you loose some of that bass emotional response. What we enjoy as a flat response in a pair of headphones, could come off as bass deficient if the sound was replicated in a full size speaker set- up. We can talk about how extra bass is wrong in SS all day long but the issue is addressing a profound and pandemic problem which has faced headphone science starting at day one.

 

[RRod]

  No transducer (be it headphones -- that includes IEMs -- or speakers) can ever be completely uncolored, but some are a lot less colored than others. There is debate over which compensation curve (such as the diffuse-field flat speaker curve, Harman curve, and so on) is truly neutral for headphones, but since they are fairly similar, if the measurements align well with the curves, you can count on the frequency response being close to neutral.
 
There are other measurements to consider besides frequency response. Here are some links, for further research:
 
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#safe=off&q=interpreting+headphone+measurements
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wi8M-HSeK0JF33P-5ypydQjQ4OshRQhvWM0IX2h0NQ8/edit?pli=1#slide=id.p
 
Just get the most accurate gear you can, make it even more accurate with EQ, DSP, and modifications, and enjoy the music.

 
Careful, that second link of yours almost makes the HD800 sound like a good headphone 

 

[Music Alchemist]

  Careful, that second link of yours almost makes the HD800 sound like a good headphone 

lol.

 
With most acoustic music, it sounds amazing. I'll leave it at that.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  Hi
I joined head fi a couple weeks ago but have been collecting headphones for years. I know lots about them however, i keep coming to the conclusion that there is no such thing as a "color-free" or "flat sunding" headphone. If you think about it, only IEM's are truly capable of no coloration compared to headphones...So what are your thought's?

 
Not with current technology.  The mere fact that the response isn't flat already means they're colored - the best one can do is use the one with the smoothest response.
 
At the same time, what people think of as "accurate and detailed" just has a treble spike. Their claim to being objectivists is rendered doubtful by what is likely some earwax build up in their ear canals (which is why they don't perceive that as piercing).

 

[castleofargh]

age would explain more than wax IMO.

 
but I'm certainly against treble boosted headphones. to me that makes no sense. we try to recreate reality which is music in a room traveling in the air, that's very likely to make trebles quieter than the rest. but then again as explained by others, the enigma is always our body, our head, our ears. so more than looking for a flat headphone, I tend to look for stuff that are pretty smooth over frequencies because it's easier to EQ to my ear.

 

[ProtegeManiac]

  age would explain more than wax IMO.

 
but I'm certainly against treble boosted headphones. to me that makes no sense. we try to recreate reality which is music in a room traveling in the air, that's very likely to make trebles quieter than the rest. but then again as explained by others, the enigma is always our body, our head, our ears. so more than looking for a flat headphone, I tend to look for stuff that are pretty smooth over frequencies because it's easier to EQ to my ear.

 

Depends on the venue - if one's exposure to live music are cheap bars around college campuses for example then "accurate" means "the schiitiest earphones, all the time, driven by the schiitiest source," since those places sound horrible. Soundwaves from the cymbals keep bouncing off the walls that aren't acoustically treated, the place is cramped, and you hear a lot of noise aside from the music.

 

[arnyk]

  I myself believe this to be the correct approach.
 
Yes i suppose...but i think the capacity for coloration on both headphones are minimalistic compared to most. If you compare them to the other headphones available on the graph...
http://www.headphone.com/pages/build-a-graph
Still though, unfortunately the capacity for coloration exists...
 

The only potential problem i can think of with DSP usage is that it can be damaging for headphone drivers and speakers eg clipping/distortion etcetera. But still i think it is a better alternative to buying the wrong equipment for your headphones.

 
Seems like a very narrow view of what can be done with DSPs.As well as equalize they can dynamically monitor signals and make sure that audible clipping and distortion are avoided by means of compression, soft clipping and the like. They can also warn you that you've overstepped reasonable bounds and required such band aids.
 
This statement: 
 

The main issue is getting people out of this mindset of searching umpteen headphones for the "perfect" fit before even considering something like EQ.

 
Seems to be unfortunately validated by the fact that this thread seems to have already slid downhill into a the traditional backward  mindset of searching umpteen headphones for the "perfect" fit. 

 

[JVC steven]

   
Seems like a very narrow view of what can be done with DSPs.
 
Seems to be unfortunately validated by the fact that this thread seems to have already slid downhill into a the traditional backward  mindset of searching umpteen headphones for the "perfect" fit. 

You've lost all respect for this - " Traditional backward mindset"...really? backward...?
Everyone is different but has it not occured to you that some people allready know what you know yet still use that approach?
Perhaps you didn't take kindly to my mentioning of the well known flaws of eq-ing/dsp's which to many (me included) have been off-putting. Even if they can be corrected, off-putting nontheless..
I'm sure 99 percent of people on head fi would disagree about the aforementioned approach being "backwards"..that implies that they are wrong and you are right!
now who's being looking with a "narrow veiw"...your interpreting me the wrong way - i dont disagree with you, i just dont think your solution is the be all and end all...
 
Furthermore - my original query was answered proffesionally/perfectly by Music Alchemist, who enlightened me on the factual impossibilty for no headphone to have zero coloration.
My dear friend Arnyk...try to welcome other people's opinions into your life...

 

[vid]

  You've lost all respect for this - " Traditional backward mindset"...really? backward...?
Everyone is different but has it not occured to you that some people allready know what you know yet still use that approach?
Perhaps you didn't take kindly to my mentioning of the well known flaws of eq-ing/dsp's which to many (me included) have been off-putting. Even if they can be corrected, off-putting nontheless..
I'm sure 99 percent of people on head fi would disagree about the aforementioned approach being "backwards"..that implies that they are wrong and you are right!
now who's being looking with a "narrow veiw"...your interpreting me the wrong way - i dont disagree with you, i just dont think your solution is the be all and end all...
 
Furthermore - my original query was answered proffesionally/perfectly by Music Alchemist, who enlightened me on the factual impossibilty for no headphone to have zero coloration.
My dear friend Arnyk...try to welcome other people's opinions into your life...

 
From what I gather, you made an argument against eq and that argument was countered. Whether you agree with his choice of words, you've either got an argument to defend or opinions to let go of.

 

[JVC steven]

   
From what I gather, you made an argument against eq and that argument was countered. Whether you agree with his choice of words, you've either got an argument to defend or opinions to let go of.

My original query was on the subject of headphone coloration, a specific type of question that Music Alchemist seemed solely to understand and gave me a great answer...
I respect everyone's opinion's and i'm on the fence about it. But i didn't think it very nice to label people's decision's as "backwards", that's just not very respectful

 

[vid]

My original query was on the subject of headphone coloration, a specific type of question that Music Alchemist seemed solely to understand and gave me a great answer...
I respect everyone's opinion's and i'm on the fence about it. But i didn't think it very nice to label people's decision's as "backwards", that's just not very respectful

 
Sure. But that you align to Redcarmoose's notion of 'the way it was meant to sound' means you may have chosen sides too soon. As arnyk pointed out indirectly, headphones have no meaningfully inherent sound, because in interfacing with them you introduce relatively unpredictable distortion (ie. your ear is an acoustic filter). I say unpredictable in the sense that the degree to which the phones interface to a random person can't be known prior to knowledge of the anatomy of their ear - and your ear wasn't scouted out beforehand. For that reason, there's no inherently accurate gear (where gear refers to headphones) nor is there a purity destroyed when you bring in the eq.

 

[JVC steven]

   
Sure. But that you align to Redcarmoose's notion of 'the way it was meant to sound' means you may have chosen sides too soon. As arnyk pointed out indirectly, headphones have no meaningfully inherent sound, because in interfacing with them you introduce relatively unpredictable distortion (ie. your ear is an acoustic filter). I say unpredictable in the sense that the degree to which the phones interface to a random person can't be known prior to knowledge of the anatomy of their ear - and your ear wasn't scouted out beforehand. For that reason, there's no inherently accurate gear (where gear refers to headphones) nor is there a purity destroyed when you bring in the eq.

 
This would explain the whole subject of headphone coloration for me. So i guess, in a sense, that it's the brains interpretation of the sound waves entering your ears that is the biggest factor in determining why one person hears the same headphone differently to another.

 

[arnyk]

   
This would explain the whole subject of headphone coloration for me. So i guess, in a sense, that it's the brains interpretation of the sound waves entering your ears that is the biggest factor in determining why one person hears the same headphone differently to another.

 
Well that and some physical differences in the shape of our outer ears, inner ears, heads and torsos.
 
The left two graphics show variations among 40 individual in some of those things (taken from an earlier HF post http://www.head-fi.org/t/517848/do-we-hear-all-alike-or-different#post_6995171 )
 

 
The differences are easily large enough to be audible in many cases. Call them what you will: soundstaging, tonality,  micro details, whatever.
 
The point being, its not just in our heads but on our heads, shoulders and torsos. 

 

[castleofargh]

I don't see much of what arny's saying that is wrong technically. you can't just disregard the human part and look for a flat headphone. no in fact you can, you could be looking for an electrically flat headphone. it would be flat, like a DAC or an amp(minus some unavoidable roll off at some point). a real uncolored headphone.
but that wouldn't sound flat at all, without a boost in the mid it would be very dull, not at all like real sound. and that's because the headphone is made to interact with the ear and headphone we tend to find neutral have that mid boost. now one of the questions will be, how much boost for me? if you decide to disregard the fact that we all have different body and ears, you miss the very reason why we may all hear different things out of the same headphone. and it is the wrong approach and yes it's kind of backward thinking.
just stop fighting the idea because you feel attacked, it's internet, you don't really care about arny or anything in here, "are there uncolored headphones?" cannot be answered because of how unique our HRTF is. arny is answering your question the best way possible, not forcing his opinion about it, it's just how it is. try to see past your subjective opinion that you don't like him, and look again at what is explained. it does make sense.
 
as for the way to implement the ad hoc compensation for yourself, you can obviously go listen to all the headphones/amp combos in the world and hope to get lucky, or get something 'close enough" that has good specs, and then finnish digitally. I have my opinion on what's making more sense and it's not what most audiophiles do.
 
oh and it's not forcing anything on the headphone, you're wrong about that. when the guy hits the drums, he hits as loud as he want deciding on the loudness. the guy recoding will do the same thing to avoid clipping the signal, then another guy uses an EQ to make the drum track go at a lower loudness to fit the voices and quieter acoustic instruments(and will probably cut some frequencies so that some guitars won't get masked and other stuff. is that forcing the headphone? of course not, you don't even think about it. using EQ unless you use a stupid setting isthe same thing, you change the amplitude of some frequencies that the headhone happened to do too loud or too quiet for your ear. it's simply balancing things to get that uncolored headphone you asked about. for the headphone it makes as much difference as when you click next song.
 
 

  Lets just say we are both as passionate as each other on this. And at the end of the day it don't matter...

 
at the end of the day it matters because the graphs explain something very real, not just an opinion.

 

[RRod]

   
This would explain the whole subject of headphone coloration for me. So i guess, in a sense, that it's the brains interpretation of the sound waves entering your ears that is the biggest factor in determining why one person hears the same headphone differently to another.

 
It's not the brain; the ears, head, and body actually physically interact with wavefronts to change frequency, amplitude, and timing characteristics of the sound before it gets to the eardrum.