[eruditass]

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Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif Which leads us to the metaphysical question "what does flat sound like".

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Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hardly. They may have roughly mapped out the frequency effects of "typical" human ear canals and made IEMs voiced to approximate that, but issues such as head related transfer functions, soundfield effects, and the complex phase and harmonic spectra relationships between our inner and outer ear are barely understood by anybody. So unless our musical experiences consist soley of listening to binaural recordings of harmonicless test-tones through technically perfect amplification, I feel I can safely say that no one knows what flat sounds like.

and you can safely say that flat sounds different to everyone. and that flat doesn't really matter.

and also colors may look different to everyone, just because you and i agree something is green doesn't truly mean the neurons in our brains are firing the same neurotransmitters to our sensory areas.

anyways, HRTF is more or less the recording or decoding's job. soundfield effects arn't really applicable to a 'flat' sound - or if it is, it is not something that changes or is again recording/decoding's job.

ignoring the fact that an IEM bypasses the outer ear, if we are aiming for the same response from hearing an actual instrument recorded perfectly - wouldn't exact frequency response of "binaural recordings of harmonicless test-tones through technically perfect amplification" be well... perfect? if the way exact synthetic frequencies (keep in mind instruments are essentially combinations of frequencies - all of which are being accurately reproduced synthetically at eaqual frequencies).

taking into account an IEM bypasses the outer ear: which is probably the more inconsistant and different thing about human beings and any sound engineer would want to take their own outer ear out of the equation to result in a more unified agreement on sound.

now don't closed headphones actualy alter the outer ear by pushing on it and making it flatter?

 

[Carl]

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Originally Posted by Wmcmanus /img/forum/go_quote.gif Oh shoot! Look who posted right as I was typing my response! What say you about the 4070, Carl?

As Head-fi 4070 club member #3 (?), you should be the one to answer that question, Wayne!

Anyway, the 4070 isn't an especially flat headphone from a frequency/amplitude point of view, and like most closed headphones it's definitely not flat from a phase point of view. What it does do well is accurately present harmonic nuance in a manner that, for example, the O2 and HE60 simply cannot. Far too many people assume that simply by being able to accurately present the 1st harmonic, the fundamental, that their equipment is thus somehow musically accurate. In reality, music is made up of lots of little bits of harmonics and intermodulations all intermingling to give something its overall sound. Here's a nice simulation, add the harmonics one at a time and you get the gist. ;

http://id.mind.net/~zona/mstm/physic...ingWaves1.html

Either through not knowing how to listen, having equipment that is so sonically smeared through hysteresis and/or negative feedback it can't resolve them, or due to the frontal lobe refusing to accept what the thalamus is hearing for ideological reasons, practically no one in the audio community regards this stuff as musically important. Well, their loss, I guess.

 

[mirumu]

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Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif The FR effect of our pinna and ear canals is of the order of +/- 30dB at varying frequencies (not to mention harmonic distortion in excess of 60%!). The "neutral" FR curve for IEMs, supra-aural, and circum-aural headphones are very much different.

Yes, I don't dispute that, the difference is in the delivery. I agree that achieving a truly flat response is unrealistic. My point is that if there was at least consistency all the way through the chain from mics to the headphone then achieving a reasonably flat response should not be that difficult. It's probably worth pointing out that when I use the term "flat", I mean flat in relation to someone's normal hearing and since the same ears are being used in both scenarios, they cancel out as a factor to some degree (although still a factor in the delivery).

 

[Carl]

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Originally Posted by DoomzDayz /img/forum/go_quote.gif and you can safely say that flat sounds different to everyone. and that flat doesn't really matter.

It matters as a goal, but it's unrealistic as an endpoint.

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and also colors may look different to everyone, just because you and i agree something is green doesn't truly mean the neurons in our brains are firing the same neurotransmitters to our sensory areas.

On a biological level, that is correct. Now if we could only just understand the way our brains work...

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anyways, HRTF is more or less the recording or decoding's job. soundfield effects arn't really applicable to a 'flat' sound - or if it is, it is not something that changes or is again recording/decoding's job. ignoring the fact that an IEM bypasses the outer ear, if we are aiming for the same response from hearing an actual instrument recorded perfectly - wouldn't exact frequency response of "binaural recordings of harmonicless test-tones through technically perfect amplification" be well... perfect? if the way exact synthetic frequencies (keep in mind instruments are essentially combinations of frequencies - all of which are being accurately reproduced synthetically at eaqual frequencies).

If you have sound waves in an environment where there is any reflections or refractions, then you have a soundfield. That affects both the recording and playback side of things. It will affect amplitude and it will affect phase to differing extents at differing frequencies, and will affect partials and fundimentals differently.

It is impossible to design a headphone that does not exhibit this to some extent.

Our body is designed to introduce its own soundfield effects for purposes of pinpointing azimuth and distance. Removing the outer ear from both the recording and playback medium will render a recording artificial. Binaural recordings for IEMs use a dummy head with an artificial pinna to counteract this.

So one has a tradeoff; equalize for soundfield correctness, equalize for frequency correctness, equalize for phase correctness. Even assuming one could perfectly achieve one of these criteria, it is simply not possible to achieve all of them at the same time. Thus one is forced to do what speaker manufacturers have done for all time; voice the speaker to as closely match the designer's goals for correct sound as technically possible.

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and any sound engineer would want to take their own outer ear out of the equation to result in a more unified agreement on sound.

In other words "homogenisation", or if one wants to be really critical; "lowest common denominator".

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now don't closed headphones actualy alter the outer ear by pushing on it and making it flatter?

Assuming that you have a pair of headphones that push on the pinna, then certainly. Aside from the sonic benefits, picking a headphone that does not do that also has the benefit of not making your ears hurt.

 

[HFat]

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Originally Posted by mirumu /img/forum/go_quote.gif If the recording microphones were flat and nothing was lost in the recording (I'm talking theoretically here of course), then a flat headphone should sound just as flat as the original source irrespective of our ears.

What you propose should be true for speakers (assuming you've got the perfect room or that you can compensate for the shortcomings of your room).
I don't want to come off as condescending but you seem to be ignoring one of the biggest differences between headphones and speakers: clearly, supra-aurals, earbuds, and canals bypass part of the ear so they should be compensating that. Circumaural headphones create a somewhat open to closed room in the earcup... and this room is nothing like as perfect room so they should be compensating for that as well.
In other words, because headphones typically interact more with people's ears than speakers interact with the room (bypassing HRTF and/or reflections and probably other stuff as well), the hypothetical function that translates FR at the mike to FR at the eardrum should be more complex with headphones.
If you measured the FR in a realistic dummy ear canal (I don't know how realistic the good dummyheads are to begin with), then yes, it should measure flat*... but what measures flat* in such a case will only sound flat to someone who has ears very similar to the dummy. So differences between individuals come into play.
And you also need to take into account differences in volume between recording and playback as that affects percieved FR. Isolation tends to affect playback volume BTW.

EDIT: *by flat, I don't mean +- 1db in the audible frequencies. I mean: like the original signal would have measured if you had replaced the mike with the dummyhead (most certainly not +-1db in the audible range!).

 

[Shoewreck]

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Originally Posted by mirumu /img/forum/go_quote.gif I don't disagree, but I wonder why this is the case. If the recording microphones were flat and nothing was lost in the recording (I'm talking theoretically here of course), then a flat headphone should sound just as flat as the original source irrespective of our ears. i.e. if the sound goes out with the same response curve that it had coming in then our ears would hear something very close to the original source.

Just imagine yourself putting your ear next to a violin or a guitar combo instead of sitting on a chair in the second row or slamming by the stage. That should equal to the difference between flat reproduction and flat perception.

 

[tomb]

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Originally Posted by redshifter /img/forum/go_quote.gif i have access to a number of fine phones, but for monitoring headphones i reach for the sony mdr v6. they are not exactly neutral, but you hear everything, magnified. any flaws are easily heard, and can be corrected before they become big problems down stream. if you are producing recordings headphones will only take you half way. really the final mixing stages should be through monitor speakers, and that is where neutrality becomes more important. you can mix something that sounds wonderful in your headphones, only to find it is incoherent on speakers. keep in mind some producers also monitor through heavily colored speakers as well, as this is what the recording will typically be played through.

While this thread quickly digresses into a discussion about the existence of flat headphones, or the existence of a method to measure them, this little gem of a post may have gotten overlooked.

Both paragraphs are important. In fact, the second one may hint at the fallacy of the preceding discussion.

Ultimately, you want something that can isolate and something that will accentuate any tendencies or flaws. Decades of use and thousands of studio/broadcast professionals agree: Sony MDR-V6.

 

[boodi]

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Originally Posted by Le Déchaîné /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well, the title says it all Any recommendations? More exactly, i want precision, nothing else. This may be weird to say, but i want to hear the output of my sound card, not what the headphones want me to hear. I know, what i want just doesn't exists and there is no *perfect* headphones, there is (sadly) no *flat* frequency-response headphones, but, in short, i want to know, according to your facts and opinions, what is your closest-to-perfect reference analyzing headphones. Like i said, i want precision, nothing else. So i don't care about price, comfort, portability, or if they're cute or not Finally, just see that as a referendum about which headphone is the best analyzing, not "colouring", monitoring headphone. Thanks in advance!

Find a pair of hp-2 , and live happy .

It's usually not cheap, and quite rare , nevertheless it can be found when you keep your eyes open .

It's the only can I've come across that do exactly what you ask ( it lets you hear and know your system colour , other then the music , and make it much more transparent task then what other cans do )

 

[fmplautus]

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Originally Posted by Carl /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hardly. They may have roughly mapped out the frequency effects of "typical" human ear canals and made IEMs voiced to approximate that, but issues such as head related transfer functions, soundfield effects, and the complex phase and harmonic spectra relationships between our inner and outer ear are barely understood by anybody. So unless our musical experiences consist soley of listening to binaural recordings of harmonicless test-tones through technically perfect amplification, I feel I can safely say that no one knows what flat sounds like. The FR effect of our pinna and ear canals is of the order of +/- 30dB at varying frequencies (not to mention harmonic distortion in excess of 60%!). The "neutral" FR curve for IEMs, supra-aural, and circum-aural headphones are very much different. And even that is assuming that you're listening to a binaural recording made to tight tollerances in an anechoic chamber without any equalization (ie. diffuse field, free field) being applied to the microphone. In other words, dream world stuff.

I think we all know what our personal version of "flat" sounds like -- since we hear it everyday. What is more mysterious is how to reproduce "flat" with a transducer.

AKG got closer with the K-1000 at meeting your outlined criteria than anything else I've ever heard (check out the white paper on the Austrian K-1000 site). I do have great respect for the tonal neutrality of the Etymotics, but they don't capture the three dimensional, "binaural" quality of our hearing that evolved to keep us safe from lions, tigers and bears.

 

[varro]

Electrostatic: Stax O2
Dynamic: Grado HP1000 or AKG k1000
In-ear: UE10Pro

I would forget everything else. Only ue10pro and O2 are still being made.

 

[robm321]

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Originally Posted by fmplautus /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think we all know what our personal version of "flat" sounds like -- since we hear it everyday. What is more mysterious is how to reproduce "flat" with a transducer. AKG got closer with the K-1000 at meeting your outlined criteria than anything else I've ever heard (check out the white paper on the Austrian K-1000 site). I do have great respect for the tonal neutrality of the Etymotics, but they don't capture the three dimensional, "binaural" quality of our hearing that evolved to keep us safe from lions, tigers and bears.

Oh my!

I agree about the K-1000 being the most neutral. The HP-2 as well. My recomendation for the K701 was because it was still in production.

 

[jbunniii]

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Originally Posted by F1GTR /img/forum/go_quote.gif Grado HP-1000 They are few and far between, but this would be my recommendation.

I love the Grado HP-1000, but this headphone is not as neutral as people claim. Evidence? Everything sounds good through it, even bad recordings. So there's something euphonic going on for sure. It's hard to point precisely to what it is, though, so the impression is one of neutrality. For my money, that's better than a truly neutral headphone because I want something that sounds good no matter what I play through it. But for someone wanting a headphone to use as a studio monitor, the HP-1000 may sound a little TOO good.

 

[Carl]

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Originally Posted by fmplautus /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think we all know what our personal version of "flat" sounds like -- since we hear it everyday. What is more mysterious is how to reproduce "flat" with a transducer.

Or more accurately don't hear. When we reach the point that we no longer notice we have a headphone on, we're there.

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I do have great respect for the tonal neutrality of the Etymotics, but they don't capture the three dimensional, "binaural" quality of our hearing that evolved to keep us safe from lions, tigers and bears.

Actually the natural process is stereophonic, not binaural. Binaural, like those biscopic goggle things with two LCD screens, have two different "images" that are supposed to be merged into one complete "picture" by our brains. Done well they can get very close to approximating stereophonic/stereoscopic imaging, but are not the same thing.

 

[hempcamp]

A number of folks recommended the K701, head-fi's flavor of the month (mine included!). While they sound very "neutral" and "analytical" I wouldn't use them for monitoring unless I were in a very quiet, acoustically-dampened room. They are *very* open headphones and because they don't need tremendous volume to hear small detail, you hear all the outside noises even easier.

Perhaps on the lower end of things, the Senn HD-280 is a very neutral-sounding, anayltical closed pair of cans. The Ety 4S is also neutralish, analytical.

--Chris

 

[redshifter]

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Originally Posted by tomb /img/forum/go_quote.gif While this thread quickly digresses into a discussion about the existence of flat headphones, or the existence of a method to measure them, this little gem of a post may have gotten overlooked. Both paragraphs are important. In fact, the second one may hint at the fallacy of the preceding discussion. Ultimately, you want something that can isolate and something that will accentuate any tendencies or flaws. Decades of use and thousands of studio/broadcast professionals agree: Sony MDR-V6.

hi tomb. thanks for the kind words. i hope the original poster understands what i was trying to say: a completely "neutral" headphone is not the best choice for recording. same goes for most audiophile headphones: wrong gear for the job.