As for the Harman curve…
Every single freaking time that I apply someone's carefully created parametric EQ to get a certain headphone as close as possible to said "esteemed" curve, I end up with something that sounds so horrid that it makes me want to toss even my otherwise most enjoyable and beloved headphones out the window.
Seriously.
My point? …is that Jason's got a point. Either…
- that Harman curve is merely a marketing schtick à la MQA, meaning a shockingly successful attempt at artificially creating a "unique sales proposal" for Harman that no one actually needs or asked for, but too many are still falling prey to,
- or the good folks at Harman need to have their ears checked,
- or my ears are too far off from what they want you to believe is the "average" that I'm screwed should that curve ever become some sort of real, actual benchmark for manufacturers.
Benchmarks can be very useful
when they make sense. But audio is a field where they just don't. Hearing can't be averaged out and distilled to a common denominator. Everybody's hearing differs (not just in terms of differences in aural anatomy, but also ontologically, meaning how someone's brain ultimately evaluates and interprets the signals it receives from the ears). Everybody's taste differs. Everybody's room differs. Everybody's musical preferences differ. Attempting to find something that'll fit everything inevitably leads to something that will shine at nothing.
You can find an analogy to that in today's cars: Ever since everybody and their grandmas decided to use the Nordschleife as a benchmark, every last car on the market that prides itself to be even just a little bit "performance-y" drives and feels pretty much the same — with exceptions few and far between. And to make things worse, while those cars might indeed handle exceptionally well on the actual Nordschleife itself, they mostly suck at almost everything else. Naturally, since the Nordschleife, as fantastic of a race track as it of course very much is, doesn't actually benchmark anything but the Nordschleife itself.
Don't believe me? Then I invite you to name just
one example where an industry, ANY industry (other than computing and health care), has discovered a supposedly reliable benchmark for their type of product, and it
didn't lead to an utterly lifeless and boring result that the competition then started to gravitate towards, much to the detriment of exceptionality and consumers' choice.
It's somewhat understandable that audio companies and gear heads both keep trying to find that elusive and magical common denominator, or at the very least some form of unit that could quantify the subjective perception of audio somewhat objectively. Businesses feel a pressure to grow, and the easiest way to grow is to appeal to a wider, less niche-y and thus by definition more "average" audience. And gear heads crave for a practical and reliable way to equate and compare gear without having to spend a lifetime on trial and error. Trust me, I absolutely get that.
But at the same time, I very much have to stress: Be
reeeeeally careful what you wish for. Personally, I do
not need that kind of lowest common denominator blandness in my audio gear that such a benchmark will inevitably result in.
