[MayaTlab]

As you can see, there are huge variations with Beyer's TOL headphones :
 
T1 :
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/BeyerdynamicT1.pdf
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/BeyerdynamicT1SN3964.pdf
 
T5p :
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/BeyerdynamicT5p.pdf
http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/BeyerdynamicT5pSN2866.pdf
 
Especially the THD measurements, which show much greater variations than the LCD-3 for example.
 
Unfortunately Tyll hasn't measured several Sennheiser TOL headphones (HD 650, HD 800) so we can't compare. And it's also worthwhile to note that the three DT 880 measured quite consistently (even with their difference impedances), so it's likely to be more related to certain products than an entire brand.
 
PS : Just to make it seems like we're still talking about the HD 700, I'll quote..... oh what the hell, there's no point trying to fake being on topic .

 

[grokit]

Being "on topic" is difficult when it's all speculation anyways. We have a few impressions of the early release units, and now it's just wait and see if anything changes with the production units.

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

What the graphs read, and how it actually occurs to you when you actually listen to it on a system with music do not always coincide in my experience.  6 months with HD800's and I would never think they had a substantial bass delivery.  In comparison with LCD-2's I would say from strictly my own listening experiences, that the HD800 does occur to me to be lacking in bass in the light of that comparison regardless what the graph says.  I have heard the HD800 bass described as being "more accurate".  Well, as far as headphones go, I don't know about "accurate".  Certainly they do not allow you to experience bass the way you might in a live performance given any and all visceral impact is absent.  Perhaps more accurate in the numbers, but then it will come down to what it always does - what does an individual prefer. 

No headphones ever let you hear bass as in a live performance - when it's live you feel bass with your body as well as hearing it with your ears.
 
Some headphones try and compensate by artificially boosting the bass.
 
The HD 800 is certainly not lacking in bass at all, as I said it's pretty accurate.
 
But if you don't like it, that's down to personal choice and, I presume, you liking a good bass level that may not be on the original recording.
 
 

 

[stv014]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MayaTlab /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Especially the THD measurements, which show much greater variations than the LCD-3 for example.

 
Although the reliability of the measurements themselves may be questionable sometimes, particularly regarding the THD+N graphs (which, as the name indicates, include all environmental etc. noise as well, not just the THD products). Many supposedly high end products are shown as performing really poorly there.
 

 

[jax]

Quote:

No headphones ever let you hear bass as in a live performance - when it's live you feel bass with your body as well as hearing it with your ears.
 

 
 

Thanks for repeating what I already said.  Given that very important point you've removed yourself quite far from any sense of "accurate reproduction" in terms of the actual experience of music within an environment right from the start.
 
Quote:

Originally Posted by John Willett /img/forum/go_quote.gif
 
Some headphones try and compensate by artificially boosting the bass.
 
The HD 800 is certainly not lacking in bass at all, as I said it's pretty accurate.
 
But if you don't like it, that's down to personal choice and, I presume, you liking a good bass level that may not be on the original recording.

 
Again, you are repeating my last point - it always comes down to what an individual personally prefers. 
 
You personally may not find the HD800 lacking in bass, but others obviously do.  Even though the graph translates to what you call "accurate" and even if your ears tell YOU personally that what you hear in the bass realm should be described as "accurate", this may not be so for everyone.  Again, the graphs do NOT tell the whole story.  Experiencing an acoustic illusion via speakers plastered up against your ears and sealed against outside sounds to some degree is a severe detachment from reality or "accuracy" from the get-go.  Whether or not the bass is "accurate", as it would also seem to be in the case of looking at an LCD-2 graph, there are oh so many ways that factor is just a tiny part of the story of how they actually sound with music.  Absent the component of a visceral experience it will NEVER occur to us as an "accurate" of the experience of the real music, or it most certainly should not since you have removed an entire sensory component from the experience.   "Accurate"  has very little to do, when it really comes down to it, with why most people prefer the systems they do...even at the audiophile level of neurotic adherence to such foolish myopic standards (which seem to be mostly held for some weird sense of self-righteousness in my experience of many in this hobby).  I know there will be plenty who will argue that point, and may cling to their notion of "accuracy" as a standard to start wars over and to elevate themselves and the components they enjoy, while dismissing all others.  "Accurate" might be rightfully important to recording engineers (most of whom are evaluating their music and components on speakers NOT on headphones) and perhaps peripherally to the folks who design and build audio components, but when it comes to the end user the enjoyment of music is far too subjective to rely on any one single salient point about how it is being reproduced. When actually listening to music on the headphones, the flat HD-800 bass does not occur anything like the same flat LCD-2 bass.  Yet on paper they might look pretty damn similar (flat or "accurate"), if you limit yourself to a simple frequency response graphs.  You can do any number of measurements to describe their performance in translating electronic signals to acoustic energy, and point at those numbers and jump up and down and cry down from the pulpit of audiophile righteousness that one way is better than another.  Ultimately people will still go on liking whatever they like, and they will do their best to describe things based on their own standards, preferences and understanding, whether or not it is similar to your own.  The only point you make that I'd concede is that YOU believe the HD800 bass occurs to YOU as accurate, and that it does indeed have a pretty flat frequency response in that region, much like a few other headphones.  It may indeed occur to others that way as well, as it may just as well occur to others as light.  The most important thing is how it sounds to the end user with their music on their system.  Nothing else should matter. 

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

Thanks for repeating what I already said.  Given that very important point you've removed yourself quite far from any sense of "accurate reproduction" in terms of the actual experience of music within an environment right from the start.
 
 
Again, you are repeating my last point - it always comes down to what an individual personally prefers. 
 
You personally may not find the HD800 lacking in bass, but others obviously do.  Even though the graph translates to what you call "accurate" and even if your ears tell YOU personally that what you hear in the bass realm should be described as "accurate", this may not be so for everyone.  Again, the graphs do NOT tell the whole story.  Experiencing an acoustic illusion via speakers plastered up against your ears and sealed against outside sounds to some degree is a severe detachment from reality or "accuracy" from the get-go.  Whether or not the bass is "accurate", as it would also seem to be in the case of looking at an LCD-2 graph, there are oh so many ways that factor is just a tiny part of the story of how they actually sound with music.  Absent the component of a visceral experience it will NEVER occur to us as an "accurate" of the experience of the real music, or it most certainly should not since you have removed an entire sensory component from the experience.   "Accurate"  has very little to do, when it really comes down to it, with why most people prefer the systems they do...even at the audiophile level of neurotic adherence to such foolish myopic standards (which seem to be mostly held for some weird sense of self-righteousness in my experience of many in this hobby).  I know there will be plenty who will argue that point, and may cling to their notion of "accuracy" as a standard to start wars over and to elevate themselves and the components they enjoy, while dismissing all others.  "Accurate" might be rightfully important to recording engineers (most of whom are evaluating their music and components on speakers NOT on headphones) and perhaps peripherally to the folks who design and build audio components, but when it comes to the end user the enjoyment of music is far too subjective to rely on any one single salient point about how it is being reproduced. When actually listening to music on the headphones, the flat HD-800 bass does not occur anything like the same flat LCD-2 bass.  Yet on paper they might look pretty damn similar (flat or "accurate"), if you limit yourself to a simple frequency response graphs.  You can do any number of measurements to describe their performance in translating electronic signals to acoustic energy, and point at those numbers and jump up and down and cry down from the pulpit of audiophile righteousness that one way is better than another.  Ultimately people will still go on liking whatever they like, and they will do their best to describe things based on their own standards, preferences and understanding, whether or not it is similar to your own.  The only point you make that I'd concede is that YOU believe the HD800 bass occurs to YOU as accurate, and that it does indeed have a pretty flat frequency response in that region, much like a few other headphones.  It may indeed occur to others that way as well, as it may just as well occur to others as light.  The most important thing is how it sounds to the end user with their music on their system.  Nothing else should matter. 

OK ............
 
Firstly - headphones are not my hobby at all, they are part of my profession.
 
And accurate means as close a reproduction of the recorded sound, nothing about reproducing the feeling of an environment - which can actually be very variable depending on if you are listening in a stadium, a concert hall, a pub environment or at home.  The same music will sound different.
 
 
Quote:

"Accurate" might be rightfully important to recording engineers (most of whom are evaluating their music and components on speakers NOT on headphones)

 
Yes - I am a recording engineer and accuracy is extremely important.  And what makes you think that most evaluate only on loudspeakers?  Actually, if you take all recording engineers most evaluate mainly on headphones, especially if they are recording in the field.
 
Actually most will actually use both as you can hear many things on headphones that you can miss with loudspeakers.
 
 

 

[jax]

 
Quote:

OK ............
 
Firstly - headphones are not my hobby at all, they are part of my profession.
 
And accurate means as close a reproduction of the recorded sound, nothing about reproducing the feeling of an environment - which can actually be very variable depending on if you are listening in a stadium, a concert hall, a pub environment or at home.  The same music will sound different.
 
 
 
Yes - I am a recording engineer and accuracy is extremely important.  And what makes you think that most evaluate only on loudspeakers?  Actually, if you take all recording engineers most evaluate mainly on headphones, especially if they are recording in the field.
 
Actually most will actually use both as you can hear many things on headphones that you can miss with loudspeakers.
 
 

If  you are a recording engineer then, as I said in my post, I'd completely get the need for accuracy.  I have no argument with you there. 
 
Yes, I know what accuracy means.  The fact is the enjoyment of music has to do with a whole lot more than accuracy.  A dead flat accurate system may bore the pants of someone, while another might think they've found the holy grail. 
 
Yes, I am full aware of the effects different acoustic environments have on sound and how it may occur as recorded music.  I'm not in need of a reminder.
 
I am a commercial photographer and have many clients over three decades of shooting who are musicians and high-end audio designer/manufacturers.  I'm sure it's not the same as your own direct and lifelong experience as an engineer, and thank you for  your own perspective, but since you ask where I get my idea from; my limited experience in perhaps a dozen recording studios and talking with the engineers in some of those studios reveal that most evaluate their mix on speakers because it is what the music will most likely be played back on.  Yes, certainly many have had headphones around as well to hear details, but I've never actually seen any engineer using them in the recording sessions I've attended. I'm not saying they don't, but that's where I'm getting my impressions from.  No doubt you can hear details you'd otherwise miss on speakers. 
 
My point really is more about end-users and not about recording engineers like yourself (this is, after all, a forum of end-users and not a pro-audio forum), and I think I made that very clear.  I'll obviously defer to you in all things related to your own field.  You've said the bass of HD800's are "accurate" - I pointed out by the same standards, so is the bass of LCD-2's yet they occur quite differently when you listen to music.  More to the point, "accuracy" is not the end-all means of judgment for an end-user. 
 

 

[rhythmdevils]

Quote:

No headphones ever let you hear bass as in a live performance - when it's live you feel bass with your body as well as hearing it with your ears.
 
Some headphones try and compensate by artificially boosting the bass.
 
The HD 800 is certainly not lacking in bass at all, as I said it's pretty accurate.
 
But if you don't like it, that's down to personal choice and, I presume, you liking a good bass level that may not be on the original recording.
 

 
We can disagree about which presentation is accurate and flat, but your absolutism is straight incorrect, period.  It's not nearly that black and white, and I think it is in fact you who likes artificially boosted treble and recessed bass in your search for a sense of clarity. 

 

[ac500]

Doesn't it depend on the recording too? Some recordings sound bass light on my HD800 because the recordings themselves are that way. Others actually have too much bass. If I was to weigh the number of recordings that sound bass light and the number that sound bass heavy, it's more or less equal proportions with what I'm listening to at least. So statistically speaking, my HD800s are bass neutral with the recordings I've been trying so far.
 
On the other hand, on my HD650s nothing is bass light, but also a lot of things have too much midbass.
 
On the topic of headphone relativism, I still don't quite understand how one headphone can sound one way to a person and entirely different to another. Surely this is not true of speakers, because you're both in the exact same room hearing the exact same thing. Why then are headphones different? Isn't the same signal reaching your ears no matter what?

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

 More to the point, "accuracy" is not the end-all means of judgment for an end-user.   

Of course, I agree with you - to a domestic user the whole point is if the sound is enjoyable to him or not.
 
I suppose my point is when people say something is "lacking in bass" when they really mean it gives them too little bass for their enjoyment.
 

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

 
We can disagree about which presentation is accurate and flat, but your absolutism is straight incorrect, period.  It's not nearly that black and white, and I think it is in fact you who likes artificially boosted treble and recessed bass in your search for a sense of clarity. 

LOL - not at all.
 
The HD 800 does not have recessed bass, but an extended natural bass - as very many people, not only me, have said.
 
I certainly don't like artificially boosted treble either - but someone mentioned earlier that this can be due to amplifier matching and damping-factor rather than being the headphones themselves.
 

 

[John Willett]

Quote:

Doesn't it depend on the recording too? Some recordings sound bass light on my HD800 because the recordings themselves are that way. Others actually have too much bass. If I was to weigh the number of recordings that sound bass light and the number that sound bass heavy, it's more or less equal proportions with what I'm listening to at least. So statistically speaking, my HD800s are bass neutral with the recordings I've been trying so far.
 

Correct - you said it.
 
There are actually quite a lot of badly recorded CDs around nowadays - and getting worse as people insist of very high compression to make it sound "louder" and often re-releases sound a lot worst than the original due to this high compression.
 
A good reproduction chain will show this up.
 
 

 

[stv014]

Quote:

On the topic of headphone relativism, I still don't quite understand how one headphone can sound one way to a person and entirely different to another. Surely this is not true of speakers, because you're both in the exact same room hearing the exact same thing. Why then are headphones different? Isn't the same signal reaching your ears no matter what?

Headphone frequency response in the high frequency range is largely affected by the interaction with the outer ear, and everyone has different ears. Of course, it may seem that it is the same for speakers, but the fact that headphone drivers are very close to, and in a small sealed enclosure with the ears, makes it quite different. Speakers are more like natural sound sources, being relatively distant from the listener, and a speaker with a flat frequency response sounds like that more or less for everyone (with the brain compensating each person's HRTFs against distant point-like sources). With headphones, this is not the case.
 
Edit: of course the bass (and to some extent other frequencies) is also affected by how good the seal is, another issue that can make a headphone sound different from one person to another.
 

 

[jax]

Quote:

Of course, I agree with you - to a domestic user the whole point is if the sound is enjoyable to him or not.
 
I suppose my point is when people say something is "lacking in bass" when they really mean it gives them too little bass for their enjoyment.
 

OK, I think I can raise a pint to that statement.

It begs the question, does every such statement in forums like this really need to be backed up by the qualifier, "...in my opinion...," or "...to my ears and for my preferences..."  I would think that would go without saying, no?  Anyway, I get your distinction from the actual meaning of the term "accuracy", especially in your own field.
 

 

[jax]

Quote:

Correct - you said it.
 
There are actually quite a lot of badly recorded CDs around nowadays - and getting worse as people insist of very high compression to make it sound "louder" and often re-releases sound a lot worst than the original due to this high compression.
 
A good reproduction chain will show this up.
 
 

 
I'd certainly agree with you here too.  Fortunately it is not always the case and there are also some very well recorded stuff out there.  But yes, sadly it is becoming the exception.