[bigshot]

.

 

[Powermankw]

Well, the OPs 1st post does contemplate the questions that have uniformly plagued audio reproduction.

He is questioning a neutral response and the ability to generate a lifelike replay of music.

I read it as opinions are idiotic, everything is pure garbage, and he's the only one that seems to know that.... And he feels better now for saying it....

 

[sander99]

It seems to me that @grapefruit is confusing and mixing up a lot of things. As a result his post reads like total gibberish.

Possible points of confusion:

-Not understanding the difference between sound/music production and playback.
(Effects like EQ, compression, distortion are applied during production to create an intended sound, often different for the individual voices and instruments. If you play it back on a neutral - or reasonably neutral - system you get that intended - or reasonably close to that intended - sound. If your playback system is far from neutral you are applying additional effects thus changing the sound to something different - farther away from the intended sound. That the original musical event is gone or never existed in the first place is another matter.

-Thinking a neutral system somehow "imparts" neutrality on to the recording. (That would be some feat if a system was able to do that with any recording, even if the different voices and instruments had different effects applied to them!) (Copy-paste: Effects like EQ, compression, distortion are applied during production to create an intended sound, often different for the individual voices and instruments. If you play it back on a neutral - or reasonably neutral - system you get that intended - or reasonably close to that intended - sound.)

-Not understanding that neutral for headphones and IEMs (unlike neutral for anything else including speakers in a room) is different for different individuals because playback via headphones or IEMs skips a large part of the listeners Head Related Transfer Function (hrtf), and because everybody's hrtf is different this has to be compensated differently for everybody. Hence any expierence you have with a specific set of IEMs applies to you and does not need to apply to everyone else.

 

[castleofargh]

I'm also not sold on the ER4 compressing the dynamic range by "pushing down" the loud stuff. not that it doesn't happen, no driver is going to be 100% linear. Is OP listening to music very loud?
I could check that compression thing, but I have a hard time thinking it's worth the effort right now. if OP has some serious reason to believe the IEM is compressing louder sounds(again what SPL level are we talking about?), I'd like to hear it and maybe it would motivate me to test that.
I have some idea that may or may not have anything to do with reality. In my mind the type of impact that compression(from the driver not being able to move as much when further away from the resting position) would add IMD and THD. Is that correct? IDK.
I'll go even further in guessing wonderland, thinking that because the ultimate compression is square wave like, increased compression should logically bring more and more odd harmonics. So maybe THD measurements could be enough of a clue to finding out which IEM or headphone causes serious compression(above XXXdB SPL).
It's incredible how creative I get when it's about finding a reason to not work on something. Please anybody with real knowledge, come and pull me out of my dream.

 

[old tech]

Well, the OPs 1st post does contemplate the questions that have uniformly plagued audio reproduction.

He is questioning a neutral response and the ability to generate a lifelike replay of music.

No. Some of these questions and concepts around neutrality may be relevant for audio recording, production/mastering but not for playback.

 

[gregorio]

Everything I present below is standard knowledge for sound engineers, but applied to audiophile topics. I encourage other sound engineers to weigh in.

It's difficult to "weigh in" because you've covered a lot of ground, much of what you've stated are generalisations which aren't always true/applicable and, some of what you've stated appears to be nonsense but that could just be because you haven't clearly explained and/or the context isn't clear. I therefore won't go through every point individually but just pick a few to illustrate these difficulties:

A "natural," "well mastered" record will be around 0.00004x as dynamic as how it actually sounds.

Actually a "natural", "well mastered" record could be MORE dynamic than it actually sounds! It all depends on what you mean by "actually sounds", actually sounds from where? Just a few inches or feet from the instrument/s, from an idealised audience listening position or from a typical audience listening position?

In terms of neutrality and accuracy, most music out there has a pretty offensively mangled sound signature simply because putting sounds together on a record is extremely difficult. Gear that imparts clarity and neutrality onto everything is lying to you point blank.

There is no (reproduction) gear that "imparts clarity and neutrality onto everything". The best gear will simply reproduce whatever clarity and neutrality has (or has not) already been imparted onto the recording. Are you talking about production or reproduction?

To remove sibilance regardless of source material, you cut the 6-8khz range down, or potentially eliminate small chunks of it completely (called notch filtering).

1. No, it's not "regardless of source material", it can vary considerably with different source material, anywhere from around 2kHz to over 9kHz, although 6-8kHz is the most common area.
2. While completely notch'ing out regions in the 6-8kHz range of particular tracks/channels within a mix might be appropriate, it wouldn't be appropriate to apply such a notch to the entire mix. Can you provide any examples of music with regions within the 6-8kHz completely notch'ed out?

Then you prevent sound in that region from moving up or down in loudness through compression—and the way speaker designers do so is pretty unforgivable.

Obviously speakers do output variable levels in that (6-8kHz) region. Simply play various pieces of music and measure the speaker output, content in that region varies significantly. Maybe you haven't explained clearly exactly what you mean or it's context?

G

 

[Whazzzup]

I am not dissing anything but I don’t get the question yet. Idiotic intrigued me but I’m that so there’s that

 

[bigshot]

It helps to focus on what you're trying to say and communicate clearly. Otherwise you end up with word salad.