Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
MNOBODY in the recording industry uses headphones to MIX. The FINAL MIX is always done via STUDIO MONITORS a.k.a. stereo speakers. Name one album that has ever came out that is mixed using headphones. Monitoring via headphones is completely different from actual mixing. ...
|
There are engineers who mix with headphone. There are techniques and hardware deployed / developed, plus articles that write about the issue regarding headphone for studio mixing, perhaps you should read
this first before you conclude that no one is using headphone for studio mixing.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
ClieOS, you are fooling yourself if you think that music is supposed to sound like how a pair of E3Cs, ER6is, SA6, or Q-Jays sound. I'm sorry, for picking at details, they are absolutely awesome, for reproduction of speakers, they sound nothing like a pair of speakers.
|
Why must a pair of IEM be aiming for 'reproduction of speakers'?
Music are meant to hear in live. Any time music is mixed and leaves the recording studio, there is no chance of the consumer to ever reproduce the same sound the audio engineer first mix and hear it (that is, the same sound the audio engineer 'think' what the consumer will listen to). It is the simple fact that the gears (and environment) used for music reproduction will be different from the studio, thus the same music will sound in different ways. An IEM is just another way of reproducing music, just like using headphone. In fact, the reason why so many head-fi'er listen to music via headphone is sorely because headphone provide a different sound signature than loud speaker. There are members here who own extremely good >$10K speaker and headphone setup, yet they still listen to headphone from time to time. If your theory is true, they should have abandon all their in house headphone gears.
You seem to assume people are using headphone in house because they can't get themselves a good speaker setup (or maybe it is me that read your replies in a wrong way). Do you even consider some are using headphone because they like how their headphone sounds in comparison to speaker? Again, it is the personal preference of musical reproduction that you didn't consider. It is NOT, however, how
'real' the music should sound, because as I said before, you can't actually reproduce the
same sound as it was first mixed.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
...that is definitely NOT what music is supposed to sound like. Having to RELEARN how one listens to music is not how music is supposed to be heard. ...
|
As I said above, music should ultimately be heard in live. Any recording, mixing and processing means the music is twisted in one way or another. How does a consumer knows what the original music should sound like when it was mixed, tweaked, mastered, and
*compressed, while these are all done in a specific studio under a specific set of gears? How does a consumer get that set of gears to faithfully reproduce the same music that was intended to be heard by the original audio engineer?
If an audio engineer is good at his/her job, I doubt that he/she will not consider that fact that music will be played under vastly different gears in the current digital music era during mixing and mastering.
*see below, factor 2.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
Show me a armature driver that dips lower than 16hz. You won't find any. Dynamics can dip a bit lower than the 16hz armatures can go down to. Look at your charts, you have the frequency range starting from 20hz. Why don't you pull up some charts showing a phones full range? Your charts are obviously flawed as they do not show any of the frequencies that dynamics can dip down to and armatures can't.
|
Factor 1:
Human have a hard time hearing sound below 100Hz. The lower it gets, that worst it becomes. In fact, the lowest of bass note is often being felt by our skin more than being heard, simply because our inner ears don't pick up vibration so low. In the application of IEM, the sound wave contacting surface is limited to the ear canal itself, which also severally limits the effectiveness of
feeling the lower bass note. Also, ear canal is almost always sealed when using IEM, thus making the
sensational reproduction of lower bass difficult as the transducer don't have big enough air space to vibrate at such a low note.
Factor 2:
Music is currently most commonly available as Compact Disc. Due to the physical limitation of CD storage and decoding method, music companies deploy a two-channel 16-bit PCM encoding at a 44.1 kHz sampling rate per channel (Red Book Standard), which results in wave data that contains audible frequency range of 20 Hz - 20 kHz and small enough to fit inside the 700MB CD storage space. Coupled with the consideration of most DAP and CD related gears in the market now do not have the capacity to reproduce sound below 20Hz (plus the fact that many people are buying / listening to lossy music or lossless music ripped from CD anyway), we can safely conclude that most music we listen to these days have no meaningful bass note lower than 20Hz encoding in the original data stream, thus whether armature or dynamic is capable of producing such kind of bass note is rather irrelevant.
*Even if we are talking SACD or DVD-A which utilizes a better sampling technique, you should know that they still limit the low end to around 20Hz, as most of the detail of the music is believed to be located at the higher region of sound spectrum.
On side note (and perhaps as the factor 3): Whether EX700 is capable of producing meaningful low bass note is actually very questionable since Sony's spec does not in any way provide tolerance value for their measurement. Even
CNet UK question the authenticity of their claim. Don't really matter anyway, because of factor 2. The real problem is many IEM freq. range do not include tolerance value, which means one IEM can have 10Hz~149Hz
+ 40dB, 150Hz~8000Hz
+ 3dB, and 8001Hz~25000Hz
+ + 60dB, and still claim to be 10Hz ~ 25000Hz, which of course is ridicules. Freq. resp. with out proper tolerance value is as useless as it can be!
By combining the factors above, I don't think the measurement taken is flawed in any realistic / practical way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
...we pretty much have all heard enough quality music from good speakers to know what music is SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE. I'm not saying that armatures are not detailed, but there's a difference from detail-centric listening which is a NECESSITY for MONITORING purposes but sadly, most of them are not really suitable for musical listening. I've always scratched my head about how Etymotic claims that their ER-4S are what live music sounds like, because live music sounds NOTHING like that.
|
I hold a very different opinion to yours.
The more I listen to different headphones and speakers setup, the more I do NOT know how music is "SUPPOSED TO SOUND LIKE". What kind of standard defines how music is 'supposed' to sound like? Are we talking about how the audio engineer 'think' we will hear the music when he/she is mixing the music?
Every time we use different gears to reproduce the music, it will sound differently (more or less) - hence there isn't any absolute standard on how music should sound, beside the listener's preference. (Referring back to my second paragraph of this reply)
Quote:
Originally Posted by dookiex /img/forum/go_quote.gif
In closing, the Sony EX700s truly beats all the armature-based earphones EXCEPT for the Shure e530s. It's a bit of a trade-off with the EX700s as they have a slight issue with sibilance while the e530s has a bit of overpowering bass that muddies the highs. The EX700s also DO NOT need an amp as they are very very efficient but with an amp they gain the same benefits as any other pair that is fed through a decent amp. For UEs, I never liked their sound signature as either they are way too bassy or way too cold.
Also, to fix my earlier post, I actually own the RE1s, not he RE2s. That was a typo. RE1s sound magnificent amped and THEY SHOULD BE AMPED because they were made to be amped. You can't deduct points on a products intended use. For general purpose I still enjoy the EX700s the most as they sound great amped and unamped.
|
If you believe EX700 sounds better, than it is of course your opinion and I respect it. However, EX700 does not sound as good in my ears, and that is my opinion. It has a more microphonics cable that easily tangle up, you can wear it on over-the-ear style but the J cord design isn't particularly helpful in keeping the style, low isolation factor (which is what IEM is supposed to offer more), the bass is strong but doesn't go deep enough (a conclusion CNet UK seems to share), Soundstage isn't the best I heard in IEM, harshness in the 6~8kHz region, etc.
As for RE1, I do not recall Head-Direct mentioned in RE1 product page on anything about amping. In fact, as the first reviewer of RE1, I am the first to mention about the 150 ohms impedance (measured myself) and the need of amplification, before any spec was published or the actual sale began. The application of IEM is to provide good sound with isolation and mobility, if an IEM require amping to sound at its best, than the mobility factor will be lower thus it should be counted as negative.
One thing that I must draw your attention to is, to me, neither armature or dynamic are perfect, nor are both single and multiple transducers configuration. They all have their own pros and cons than can not be dismissed of, and neither of them have proved to be the 'end-all'. As I said in my second reply in this thread, "argument of armature vs. dynamic or single vs. multiple drives is all good and fun, but in the end it is the value of a product that count."
Until we perfected the IEM design (or maybe till I find my prefect IEM), I will not dismiss any possibility that either transducer's design or configuration will work, and I certainly won't limits myself to believe that musical taste doesn't play a role in finding that elusive perfect IEM design, or any headphone design in that matter.
