In this day and age of digital photography I'm normally pretty good at asking the photographer if the image was shot on film and not digital. I'm right most of the time. It seems film has an inherent contrast that digital has never been able to get to. Maybe for this very reason Tarantino is releasing his new movie on Chrismas day on 70mm Panavision film only? There is just a look that film has over what computers can do. This is maybe a noticeable concept in audio too?
The question is, can you pick out every single special effect that is in frame? You would be surprised at just how much CGI is used, and where it is used. Safety harness are deleted. Smoke and fire are added. Director doesn't like the glow of a cigarette, a new glow is added in.
We are visual creatures, more than auditory. Hollywood has been able to fool our eyes for awhile now.
The question is, can you pick out every single special effect that is in frame? You would be surprised at just how much CGI is used, and where it is used. Safety harness are deleted. Smoke and fire are added. Director doesn't like the glow of a cigarette, a new glow is added in.
We are visual creatures, more than auditory. Hollywood has been able to fool our eyes for awhile now.
I have listened to Taranino talk about the movie to large groups, and I have read a little. The benefits of large format film will most likely come in places like the opening scene of when it shows the snowy mountain side. Then there will be huge amounts of CGI in the gun fights, you can guess?
In many ways I think we take computer manipulation almost for granted now and forget that 40 years ago it was hard to "paint"'a sky green and not blue unless you had a green to clear transitional effect optic glass filter in front of the lens.
I have listened to Taranino talk about the movie to large groups, and I have read a little. The benefits of large format film will most likely come in places like the opening scene of when it shows the snowy mountain side. Then there will be huge amounts of CGI in the gun fights, you can guess?
In many ways I think we take computer manipulation almost for granted now and forget that 40 years ago it was hard to "paint"'a sky green and not blue unless you had a green to clear transitional effect optic glass filter in front of the lens.
No denying that 70 mm is going to be very sweet, visually. The amount of detail captured by the cinematographer will be amazing, and the special effects/CGI will also be great, especially the ones that completely fool our eyes and brains. The last film that I can remember that was all "in camera" was Coppola's Dracula. Comparing that to Cuaron's Gravity or Nolan's Interstellar is very difficult. All three movies are visually stunning and take an immense amount of creativity to set up stationary and tracking cameras for proper angles. Deciding on which movie was harder to make is impossible for me. I am sure each director carefully thought through each scene to ensure that the scene matched the director's vision, utilizing what they thought was necessary technologies.
Bringing this back to audio and something more relevant to the thread, audio has 2 big problems and both are in producing audio. First, audio production has taken many steps backwards. The end product after recording and mixing does not fully utilize the best that current technology has to offer. Much of audio sounds worse now than 20 years ago because the end product released to the public is worse. Second, transducer technology has been virtually unchanged since the development of the voice coil and magnetic panels. How many speakers would it take to adequately recreate an orchestra? I'm guessing it's more than 2 stacks separated by 8 to 12 feet. How many microphones does it take to record an orchestra?
For vision, we have 1080p, 4k, 35 mm, 70 mm, IMAX, Retina Displays, high DPI screens and graphical processors that render visual data in great detail, fidelity, and fluidity. We do not have a similar increase in technology for creating longitudinal waves that interact with the hair cells in our cochleas (yes, there is more than 1 way to stimulate those nerve cells, not just the eardrum). Movies and video games have embraced surround sound. Live audio is engaging because the sound interacts with room (some rooms are even scientifically engineered for sound!) and comes at you from more than 1 direction (forward), yet audio is still generally stuck with 2-channel stereo.
It is exactly an exaggeration and it was meant to prove a point. I agree that graphically many heaphones can be made to sound close to the same. Obviously if DSP can do that it can create a close to colorless signal to the ear, or a quality that sounds flat corresponding to each person and ear topography. I was even shown how different headphone material resonances can be altered to a specific duplicate side by side graph representation with EQ?
But still your going to have a group that feels that each headphone has an inate quality that can only be changed to a point even with the best EQ system.
It would be nice if headphones could be calibrated like they calibrate subwoofers with a microphone and software. Science has even allowed us to do pretty much any graphic property with computers, so is audio processing really that far behind? I'm sure we're going to have statements to the fact computer audio technology has surpassed visual image manipulation? They do go hand and hand if you look at the invention of the camera and invention of the phonographic audio recording/playback cylinder?
In this day and age of digital photography I'm normally pretty good at asking the photographer if the image was shot on film and not digital. I'm right most of the time. It seems film has an inherent contrast that digital has never been able to get to. Maybe for this very reason Tarantino is releasing his new movie on Chrismas day on 70mm Panavision film only? There is just a look that film has over what computers can do. This is maybe a noticeable concept in audio too?
One medium you see with your eyes, one medium you hear, and both can be processed and fine tuned with a computer?
film is dead, the only place it still has a purpose (and a rather limited one) is when you shoot in big formats, as creating something like a 4*5inches sensor would be a serious challenge. even for creative purposes, now that digital simulation of films has become so good, I don't see the point of using films for that purpose. 35mm film has been KOed by 35mn sensors for years. long ago for resolution, and since a few years even for dynamic. once again you talk in clichés, it's the folklore and love of traditional stuff talking, but it isn't factual.
inherent contrast of film... eheh, if you looked a little into what can be done in post processing(from digital pics or scanned films) you wouldn't talk about contrast as determining anything at all.
but you're right that a default digital picture and a default film picture will not look alike. the film will bring a lot of stuff that weren't there when the shot was made, like some colors that will be more saturated than others, and probably what makes all the difference in most films, the non linear contrast(not that digital is perfect in that respect, but usually better). I've been a long time fan of velvia when I was still using films. but the heart of it was wrongness. pleasant but not neutral and certainly not transparent. (and I don't even want to talk about having to keep them in the fridge to slow down the chemicals from making jokes
).
let's go back to around 2000 and I would agree with you, the first digital camera I owned, sucked bad. still changed my life for not having to spend 20mn to scan 4 slides, but it was really inferior stuff. now it's a done deal. I would never go back to films just like I would never go back to tapes or vinyls or tube amps.
and tarantino choices, the guy loves old stuff that's just who he is. that doesn't make any point to me. and coppola's daughter used films too, because daddy gave her is stuff when he went to digital. taking random examples won't make a case.
so yes both audio and video can be processed and fine tuned with a computer. and they are in almost any professional environment.
oh and did I say that DXO corrects geometric and chromatic aberrations from my lenses? and some of the non linearities and color errors from my camera? just like I wish was done on my headphones. again the tech is there, but photography has always striven for objective improvement(not that it ever limited creativity), while audio follows marketing, trends and urban legends.
to make a very simple and obvious parallel with speaker and headphones. you buy a pair of speaker that are super famous and have crazy good specs, the kind some famous studio uses. you put them home and you get, well the sound of your room. you think it's the best you could get? you think the guys in the studio get that sound? of course not. they had some guy measure everything, apply room treatment, etc.
with the same idea, using the hd800 or whatever stax, that's not bringing you the right sound, that's bringing you a sound that's a mix between the headphone coloration, and your room(in this case your ear ^_^). and only by measuring your ear and applying correction can you expect to have a neutral sound. and what silly about it, is that it's much much easier to deal with a headphone than to deal with speakers in a room. yet it's done in rooms and perfectly accepted. but not really for headphones...
and you can argue that you personally prefer this or that, but to me that's wishful thinking. wait till you heard your favorite headphone with a neutral sound to claim you prefer it as it is.
ps: the spelling check of headfi has coppola but not tarantino. I think that makes me the winner of that topic. ^_^
No denying that 70 mm is going to be very sweet, visually. The amount of detail captured by the cinematographer will be amazing, and the special effects/CGI will also be great, especially the ones that completely fool our eyes and brains. The last film that I can remember that was all "in camera" was Coppola's Dracula. Comparing that to Cuaron's Gravity or Nolan's Interstellar is very difficult. All three movies are visually stunning and take an immense amount of creativity to set up stationary and tracking cameras for proper angles. Deciding on which movie was harder to make is impossible for me. I am sure each director carefully thought through each scene to ensure that the scene matched the director's vision, utilizing what they thought was necessary technologies.
Bringing this back to audio and something more relevant to the thread, audio has 2 big problems and both are in producing audio. First, audio production has taken many steps backwards. The end product after recording and mixing does not fully utilize the best that current technology has to offer. Much of audio sounds worse now than 20 years ago because the end product released to the public is worse. Second, transducer technology has been virtually unchanged since the development of the voice coil and magnetic panels. How many speakers would it take to adequately recreate an orchestra? I'm guessing it's more than 2 stacks separated by 8 to 12 feet. How many microphones does it take to record an orchestra?
For vision, we have 1080p, 4k, 35 mm, 70 mm, IMAX, Retina Displays, high DPI screens and graphical processors that render visual data in great detail, fidelity, and fluidity. We do not have a similar increase in technology for creating longitudinal waves that interact with the hair cells in our cochleas (yes, there is more than 1 way to stimulate those nerve cells, not just the eardrum). Movies and video games have embraced surround sound. Live audio is engaging because the sound interacts with room (some rooms are even scientifically engineered for sound!) and comes at you from more than 1 direction (forward), yet audio is still generally stuck with 2-channel stereo.
I have a Jazz club with nightly Jazz a ten minute walk from my house. Sadly the older I get the less interest I have in Jazz. Still I do enjoy listening to sound in the room where the music plays. It's a pretty low key atmosphere and even fiends who play sax can just walk in and are invited by the band to fill in the impromptu open areas of the songs. I have come to realize that even if the building was not created with perfect sound in mind, a lot has been done to absorb reflections. There is also some glass which is a no no most of the time in listening rooms by purists? But it is maybe the roof which is doing so much, also the size is correct. The volume of the band in relation to the room size seems key at the place. Still I'm not a sound engineer or professional. Over the years I have learned to either like a sound set-up live or not like it. There seems to be very few places which fall in the middle. I enjoy 80% of the live music I hear. The bad 20% seems just really bad to me?
I think live jazz has a certain freedom which it enjoys live. At one point it was the best genre for my reference system along with classical. It's a nice backhanded complement when at a Head-FI meet-up your told what your system can do and what it can not do. Again it may be the most important clue to get, allowing fellow members to give you an honest opinion about your rig.
Still we all know that live music can make up for sonic issues. Why, because most of the time and even with the smallest of effort your hearing the instruments for how they sound. If you have been to lots and lots of live shows you just kind of know that there are going to be a sound quality of different levels. They maybe fit a bell curve with 20% on each side being especially bad or good, with 60% dab in the middle. A far better audiophile ratio than we are getting with our multi dollar playback virtual bands playing inside our heads. IMO
Still we know the placebo effect of what we see and its effect on our hearing. How is it that a musical instrument sounds better if it's pretty? At times singers even sound better if they don't look like they just crawled out from under a rock (excluding death metal) ( many front men look like homeless people).
To get to my point here, it seems I actually hear a lot of pretty good sound out there in live avenues. They are using all kinds of different equipment. The only time I have been let down was hearing bands that I normally listen to loud play back on a quiet subpar secondary soundstage. So yes even in live playback volume has the quality of making stuff sound way better at times. The only other bad times are those times where the bass is covering up 40% of the mid detail. Like the sound of music with low bass levels maxed out all over the place? It is the bass energy reverb distortion smearing the mids up, so very commen in bad sound reinforcement.
My question is why are we met with less audiophile snobs in the live avenues? Is it because the sound is more entertaining despite the flaws? Is it that headphone systems are actually sonic microscope which help us to hear deeper into the detail and as a result actually hear the recording flaws. Or is it the issue that has plagued HI/FI ever since it was created, that recorded sound will almost never reach the emotional intensity of a live event?
Are live events flat? If in fact they are less in control that a studio recording, why are we all less critical of them?
film is dead, the only place it still has a purpose (and a rather limited one) is when you shoot in big formats, as creating something like a 4*5inches sensor would be a serious challenge. even for creative purposes, now that digital simulation of films has become so good, I don't see the point of using films for that purpose. 35mm film has been KOed by 35mn sensors for years. long ago for resolution, and since a few years even for dynamic. once again you talk in clichés, it's the folklore and love of traditional stuff talking, but it isn't factual.
inherent contrast of film... eheh, if you looked a little into what can be done in post processing(from digital pics or scanned films) you wouldn't talk about contrast as determining anything at all.
but you're right that a default digital picture and a default film picture will not look alike. the film will bring a lot of stuff that weren't there when the shot was made, like some colors that will be more saturated than others, and probably what makes all the difference in most films, the non linear contrast(not that digital is perfect in that respect, but usually better). I've been a long time fan of velvia when I was still using films. but the heart of it was wrongness. pleasant but not neutral and certainly not transparent. (and I don't even want to talk about having to keep them in the fridge to slow down the chemicals from making jokes:angry_face: ).
let's go back to around 2000 and I would agree with you, the first digital camera I owned, sucked bad. still changed my life for not having to spend 20mn to scan 4 slides, but it was really inferior stuff. now it's a done deal. I would never go back to films just like I would never go back to tapes or vinyls or tube amps.
and tarantino choices, the guy loves old stuff that's just who he is. that doesn't make any point to me. and coppola's daughter used films too, because daddy gave her is stuff when he went to digital. taking random examples won't make a case.
so yes both audio and video can be processed and fine tuned with a computer. and they are in almost any professional environment.
oh and did I say that DXO corrects geometric and chromatic aberrations from my lenses? and some of the non linearities and color errors from my camera? just like I wish was done on my headphones. again the tech is there, but photography has always striven for objective improvement(not that it ever limited creativity), while audio follows marketing, trends and urban legends.
to make a very simple and obvious parallel with speaker and headphones. you buy a pair of speaker that are super famous and have crazy good specs, the kind some famous studio uses. you put them home and you get, well the sound of your room. you think it's the best you could get? you think the guys in the studio get that sound? of course not. they had some guy measure everything, apply room treatment, etc.
with the same idea, using the hd800 or whatever stax, that's not bringing you the right sound, that's bringing you a sound that's a mix between the headphone coloration, and your room(in this case your ear ^_^). and only by measuring your ear and applying correction can you expect to have a neutral sound. and what silly about it, is that it's much much easier to deal with a headphone than to deal with speakers in a room. yet it's done in rooms and perfectly accepted. but not really for headphones...
and you can argue that you personally prefer this or that, but to me that's wishful thinking. wait till you heard your favorite headphone with a neutral sound to claim you prefer it as it is.
ps: the spelling check of headfi has coppola but not tarantino. I think that makes me the winner of that topic. ^_^
Film is dead. I don't use any of my film cameras any more. I spent years taking developing and printing film to a level of expertise that I felt pleased at. You may say it is Tarantino's romantic cause to release this movie in 70mm Panavision only at first. It goes out to movie houses later in digital and on DVD. But he is enticing the public in general to say, if you want to see my movie you need to see it my way.
He maybe wants to let the world know that if they are going to let the format fall away that THIS is what your giving up on. But we must really remember that most people really could care less about quality of media. This world today is about fast digital information transfer and quality is second. Good enough is good enough. I'm just as much to blame due to using digital cameras and not staying with film. Still where I am film is still a nice little gimmick where people pay for good black and white prints shot the old fashioned way.
Part of our flat-earth beliefs come from our romancing of the memories of the past. If Tarantino can get a sector of the population to get a little romance his cause may be a success?
Digitally processing an audio signal was always a no-go zone for me, mostly due to clipping/distortion and mostly compression.
Until i discovered here that such issue's can be fixed. When i bought my first separates system, i was advised that the purest signal could only be acheived by directly plugging your speakers/headphones into the analog output of the cd player. But obviously that wasn't/still isn't possible without introducing some sort of filter. Although you can plug a headphone directly into an iphone, your not free of the digitally processed/compressed music. This is why i've been ignorant to the idea of DSP's, but i suppose it's good for digitally manipulating the sound. When i listen to my hifi separates system ( old fashioned analog), i feel it superseeds the issue of headphone coloration to the greatest degree possible.I tend to use nothing more than a cd player connected to an amp with minimalist circuitry and no tone controls.
I know the cd player add's coloration to the headphones but to the least degree possible. This is an old fashioned way yet still the purest most color-free way possible.
As far as i'm concerned, DSP's also color the sound because they are digital. And now i conclude that although the anatomy of the human ear affects the percieved sound, it doesn't do so enough to warp the overall sound of any headphone to an absurd extent. Speakers yes but headphones...the effect is minimal in my opinion, almost to the point of non-importance.
Your music has already been digitally manipulated. This happens during music production, even before the CD was pressed. It's very odd that people never seem to complain about that part, though.
Actually, your CD player is fully digital. The tone controls on an amp are probably analog.
Not that this matters anyway. Why do you think digital colours the sound? What's the point of a filter (digital or analog) that doesn't color the sound? Things to wonder about.
You're correct that headphones interact with anatomy in a very different way to speakers, but it's important for both of them.
A 'flat' speaker measures flat, but only to a bare microphone in the middle of an empty room. If you measure what your eardrum is actually hearing (by putting a tiny microphone down your ear canal), you get something very different from flat. This is because your shoulders, head, ears, and ear canal all colour the sound, and you get something like this (http://en.goldenears.net/en/files/attach/images/252/464/554421849cb29cdf3175f5a0f414c281.jpg). This curve will be different for every person (and every room and arrangement of speakers). You don't hear this as coloured, though. Your brain is used to your particular curve and therefore music will sound 'off' if it doesn't have these colourations.
Now, when you put on a pair of headphones, this bypasses your shoulders, most of your head, and interacts with your ears and ear canals. So, if you again put a tiny microphone into your ear canal next to your eardrum, you'll get something colored just like the flat speaker, but in a different way. In theory, 'flat' headphones aren't flat - they should look like that graph I linked. Why don't the graphs you posted look like that? They're compensated graphs - they've had that curve already subtracted from them and so they're actually a graph of how much the headphones vary from that ideal.
Your anatomy is still important (arguably, more important) for headphones, but this is really due to their 'absence'.
Think about what your saying...are you trying to tell me that your head, shoulders and external environment really makes a difference when listening to headphones? and also would you agree with Castleoffargh that the room you are listening to headphones in makes a difference? ( for headphones).
Put it this way, i doubt the room or even the geometry of your ear/head would make a worthwhile difference if all headphones where like ear-defenders! Have you ever worn them?...nothing from the
outside environment would successfully influence the music because of the pressure of the tight seal around the head.
Years ago, i took an old headphone of mine that was aesthetically worn, took out the drivers ( to good to bin) and implimented them into a pair of ear defenders. NOTHING FROM THE EXTERNAL ENVIRONMENT COULD POSSIBLY SHAPE THE SOUND. AND THE SHAPE OF MY EARS/SKULL WAS OF ALMOST NO INFLUENCE, DUE TO THE TIGHT SEAL...Its a bit like listening to speakers in an soundproof room. Where thousands of dollars has gone into soundproof technology, in order to hear nothing but what comes from the speaker.
I honestly think that this argument that the external environment/ shape of the body immensley effects our listening experience through headphones is a little on the extreme. Yes measurements can be made...but the same headphone will generally sound the same to one person as it does to another, the effect's of the shape of your ear/head/body/environment really in my opinion are minimal.
Obviously it does apply when listening to speakers, but is it really a significant factor when listening to headphones?....i think thats a bit too placebo to be honest.
Your music has already been digitally manipulated. This happens during music production, even before the CD was pressed. It's very odd that people never seem to complain about that part, though.
Actually, your CD player is fully digital. The tone controls on an amp are probably analog.
Not that this matters anyway. Why do you think digital colours the sound? What's the point of a filter (digital or analog) that doesn't color the sound? Things to wonder about.
I know this...that is why i said that a cd player colors the sound "to the smallest degree possible". I think you'd agree that a cd player is the next best thing to vinyl...
Right from the off, digital has colored the sound signal due to it being digital. this include compression as a form of coloration, have you ever heard a 128kbps mp3? those artifacts color the sound
more than any other external influence (especially when listening to headphones).
To my knowledge, an analog amplifier has very little or no coloration. So connecting it to my cd player makes sense as there is little/no room for colored sound.
I state again that i believe this "external influence" when listening to headphones is insignificant to 2 people deciding over the overall sound signature of the same headphone. I read an article from a previous post that suggested these external factors mostly come into effect only in the high frequencies. That most people ( regardless of head/ear shape/external factors) generally hear the same below 1khz..so if people believe that their external environment really is affecting there headphone listening experience significantly to the point that it wastes it for them, why not just turn the treble controller/dsp to work around this ( non-influential IMO) issue. That way, as long as you have very flat headphones, your hearing as un-colored of sound as possible.
To the people who think that the external environment/headshape/earshape significantly waste's their headphone listening experience, which ( although true) is a little silly, hear is your solution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earmuffs
Quote:
The protection usually comes from acoustic foam – this absorbs sound waves by increasing air resistance, thus reducing the amplitude of the waves. The energy is transformed into heat. Some ear defenders employ active sound protection, in which a microphone mounted in the headset picks up ambient sounds and transmits them through a dynamic range compression circuit to earphones inside. By virtue of the dynamic compression, the headset can be adjusted to allow the wearer to hear sounds at ordinary volumes normally, while attenuating louder sounds. Similar active earplugs also exist, primarily aimed at musicians.
your body and head make a difference because you tend to have them all your life. ^_^ your brain learned everything like that. it doesn't know what real sound is, it never heard it. what it heard all your life is real sound changed by your own HRTF. when you use the headphone you bypass part of it.
and I didn't say the room where you listen to the headphone makes a difference, I meant that the space between the headphone and the eardrum acted like would a room with speakers. in that it changes the sound depending on the shape and size instead of just transmitting the sound of the driver as it is. that's what I meant when I wrote
the video, sorry I stopped after like 25seconds. "I'm not a scientist", "the kind that believes in cable", I imagine at the end he also admit to believing in aliens on earth and that spoon benders have real powers.
each time I see a guy making weird claim like that, he passes a blind test to demonstrate his theory, or he's just a fool talking to the wind. those are the 2 options I have for him.
you suffer from the usual "I want the sound like it was intended by the artist" wishfull thinking. but you act on all the bad parts and use poor method to win your argument IMO. you take out 128kbps mp3, I take out wax cylinders as analog example? is that how we demonstrate something on headfi?
now trying to keep the sound "uncolored": let's say a headphone has a 2db boost at 10khz compared to what it should have to make you hear flat sound(not an unreasonable example IMO). would you rather keep music with a full 2db error even on the loudest sounds at that frequency, or correct those 2db and get 0.05% of distortions from the EQ(made up number, might be even less for 2db)? it's basically asking "do you prefer an error at 0db or an error at -65db?" to even ponder the question, you must realize how much preconceptions and fear you associate with digital signal. because the objective conclusion is pretty obvious.
and headphones are not flat to your ear, we don't say to use EQ to color anything, we say to use it for the exact opposite.
about analog sounds different from digital, it's often because the digital part didn't create as much distortions and noise as the analog counterpart. cd is the next best thing to vinyl?????? april fools? did you ever check dynamic, noise, distortions, crosstalk values on vinyls vs CD? no need to go digging, CD humiliate vinyl on all those values. you will find like a few test vinyls that can do great dynamic, but none of the music ones do that because then the needle would fly. CD is the next best thing, yeah right.
you should drop your general theory and look up the numbers from time to time to get a sense of proportions. because if your aim is really flat sound, you really have the wrong ideas.
Here are my custom built DIY ear defender - headphones. They eliminate 99% of external interference and are unique to the geometry of my head/ears. The driver is also a paper/cone diaphragm so the sound waves entering my ears are completely natural. Furthermore i can modify the sound waves naturally without modifiying them digitally. I can decide on my own dampening material and so on...
This is the best fix available to the "external environment/body shape/ear shape" problem some of us rightly frustrate at. Before i get someone telling me otherwise, bear in mind that you are talking to someone with the knowledge required to build a headphone from scratch. Heck if i wanted to, i could be the next Mr Speakers lol
They are not good to wear for prolonged periods of time though as they neutralise with the Sound Pressure Level inside your head, due to your ears being blocked off from the outside world. But this is as close as it gets to a flat/un-colored sound. And it's pretty close i might add. It is this alteration in Sound Pressure Level that is the key to understanding why ear defenders are perhaps the ultimate way of experiencing the sound waves from the drivers in there purest form, which is relatively flat by nature.Think of it this way,- everything you hear comes from the air. When you put ear defenders on with drivers/transducers implimented inside, you kind of create an un-affected space/portal for the sound to travel directly to your eardrum that is 99% un-touchable from the outside dimension.
The shape of the human ear has little to no effect when the source of the sound waves are this close to your ears, coupled with ear defender - technology.
your body and head make a difference because you tend to have them all your life. ^_^ your brain learned everything like that. it doesn't know what real sound is, it never heard it. what it heard all your life is real sound changed by your own HRTF. when you use the headphone you bypass part of it.
and I didn't say the room where you listen to the headphone makes a difference, I meant that the space between the headphone and the eardrum acted like would a room with speakers. in that it changes the sound depending on the shape and size instead of just transmitting the sound of the driver as it is. that's what I meant when I wrote
the video, sorry I stopped after like 25seconds. "I'm not a scientist", "the kind that believes in cable", I imagine at the end he also admit to believing in aliens on earth and that spoon benders have real powers.
each time I see a guy making weird claim like that, he passes a blind test to demonstrate his theory, or he's just a fool talking to the wind. those are the 2 options I have for him.
you suffer from the usual "I want the sound like it was intended by the artist" wishfull thinking. but you act on all the bad parts and use poor method to win your argument IMO. you take out 128kbps mp3, I take out wax cylinders as analog example? is that how we demonstrate something on headfi?
now trying to keep the sound "uncolored": let's say a headphone has a 2db boost at 10khz compared to what it should have to make you hear flat sound(not an unreasonable example IMO). would you rather keep music with a full 2db error even on the loudest sounds at that frequency, or correct those 2db and get 0.05% of distortions from the EQ(made up number, might be even less for 2db)? it's basically asking "do you prefer an error at 0db or an error at -65db?" to even ponder the question, you must realize how much preconceptions and fear you associate with digital signal. because the objective conclusion is pretty obvious.
and headphones are not flat to your ear, we don't say to use EQ to color anything, we say to use it for the exact opposite.
about analog sounds different from digital, it's often because the digital part didn't create as much distortions and noise as the analog counterpart. cd is the next best thing to vinyl?????? april fools? did you ever check dynamic, noise, distortions, crosstalk values on vinyls vs CD? no need to go digging, CD humiliate vinyl on all those values. you will find like a few test vinyls that can do great dynamic, but none of the music ones do that because then the needle would fly. CD is the next best thing, yeah right.
you should drop your general theory and look up the numbers from time to time to get a sense of proportions. because if your aim is really flat sound, you really have the wrong ideas.
At the end of the day, digital is missing vital parts of the puzzle that analog already has by default. Remember i respect your opinions and this is just my opinion. But i do know what i'm talking about pretty well.
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