[davehutch]

True. I bought True-Fi to use with my Sennheiser HD6xx and it’s absolute heaven so I’ve been very frugal with my purchases, probably partly from being out of work and partly my age. I used to spend plenty on Hi-Fi but I’ve ‘calmed down’ in my old age

 

[CoffeeCutie]

So the question I guess we must ask ourselves now is, should we spend £400 on headphones and correct them to ‘studio’ with True-Fi or spend £3,000 to get essentially the same result? Interesting dilemma
Will reviewers now start doing True-Fi vs non True-Fi comparisons I wonder?

as sonarworks/RudeWolf said at the beginning of the thread, headphone THD is the primary ceiling for “calibrated goodness”.

I have compared a pair of AEON c through a Magí 3 and modi with tidal and high res files against my headphones that match the true fi criteria- it really does “focus” the sound toward the aeon cleanliness, even the apple EarPods setting xD.

Truefi does low end better than what is available on AEON.

I’m all for dsp based solutions, seems like a less costly and more repeatable way to deal with accuracy. Lots of companies are making low distortion models now....

 

[jnorris]

Comparing my Hifiman HE-400i, Marshall Monitors, Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro, Fostex TR50P vIII, Sony MDR7506, and others, all through the Reference 4, shows very different sonic profiles, even though the software is supposed to flatten them out to a standard. Frequency response is, by far, only one parameter that makes headphones and speakers sound like they do.

 

[EagleWings]

So the question I guess we must ask ourselves now is, should we spend £400 on headphones and correct them to ‘studio’ with True-Fi or spend £3,000 to get essentially the same result? Interesting dilemma
Will reviewers now start doing True-Fi vs non True-Fi comparisons I wonder?

Headphones have tonality aspecsts, as well as technicality aspects. What True-Fi does is, try to fix the issues in the tonality aspects, by correcting the frequency response. What the expensive headphones like Utopia do better than mid-fi headphones are, technical aspects such as; transient response, resolution, transparency, imaging precision and layering. While these aspects are influenced to a small extent by the tuning, they are more dependent on distortion, driver and design characteristics of the headphones. These are aspects that are inherent to a headphone that True-Fi can’t improve.

True-Fi can fix tuning/tonality issues of the Elear and make it sound like what Sonarworks considers is the correct FR. But it can’t automatically convert the Elear into a Utopia. I am not justifying the price tag of expensive headphones. Simply pointing out that, the high price you pay for, is towards the improvement in technical performance.

 

[castleofargh]

-there are obviously some headphones with massive resonances or nulls that can hardly be just compensated with convolution without creating a bunch of other issues.
-then as said, if distortions are high enough, they will make a noticeable difference. not much we can do about that, but logically FR is still a bigger deal as it involves all levels of loudness while distortions are usually -30 -40dB or lower.
-for generic compensations, there are simply the manufacturing tolerances. a few dB here and there aren't that rare.
-but there is another parameter to take into account. even if they succeed in EQing 2 headphones the same way, that EQ is based on a microphone on some dummy head. just by using our head instead, we can expect some measure of variations from headphone to headphone. how we will end up placing the headphone for comfort the size of the head and clamping force resulting of it, if one headphone has a small diaphragm and the other has a big one or if one is angled... then the signal bouncing on our ears will create differences, but not necessarily the ones captured by the dummy head. it should be fairly close because, well, we're still humans in shape, but all those reasons can explain why someone may not get 2 headphones to really sound close from one another.

 

[alphanumerix1]

True hi fi for 79 or just get reference 4 for headphones for 99 thoughts?

 

[jnorris]

I opted for Reference 4 because there are more options (wet/dry adjustment, simulations, etc.) that I thought were worth the extra $20. I don't think headphone profiles for Reference 4 will be as quick to come as they will be for True-Fi, however, the company says the Ref 4 profiles are held to a higher standard.

 

[Sound Eq]

hi everyone is there a profile for campfire cascade as that is really interesting to have

 

[CoffeeCutie]

I opted for Reference 4 because there are more options (wet/dry adjustment, simulations, etc.) that I thought were worth the extra $20. I don't think headphone profiles for Reference 4 will be as quick to come as they will be for True-Fi, however, the company says the Ref 4 profiles are held to a higher standard.

I ended up buying reference 4 too, the wet/dry knob and the multitude of very accurate-feeling simulations into headphones and speaker rigs is totally worth it. I also have found reference 4 to be more stable by a small margin.

I mix demos regularly anyway, super stoked to use the extra features- didn't realize how much bigger and mix-centric 4 is

hi everyone is there a profile for campfire cascade as that is really interesting to have

Not that I can see/imagine- there are only really full size traditional/studio/mix-centric hifi sets.

 

[CoffeeCutie]

I thought I'd share a view of the many buttons and knobs in reference 4 and it's simple-ness with Tidal. Quite a bit in there worth fiddling with

 

[Solrighal]

Thanks for your guidance Solrighal. I just tried and found it. But, just as I suspected, only the Ref 4 is supported. I’ll get in touch with SW to surrender my True-Fi and get the license for Ref 4.

I used Ref 3 since it's release & gave True-fi a listen. It did nothing for me. Then I tried Ref 4 and it was so much better. Interestingly, it wasn't the same sound as I got from Ref 3 so something has changed in the algorithm.

Whatever, for me, using HD 650's, Ref 4 is clearly superior.

 

[Solrighal]

I thought I'd share a view of the many buttons and knobs in reference 4 and it's simple-ness with Tidal. Quite a bit in there worth fiddling with

I also have my speakers set to the French theme. It works wonders beefing up my Dali's in a tiled room. In France too, coincidentally.

 

[karn1911]

Curious experiment: load a flattened curve into Sonarworks and then apply the Harman Headphone Target curve with Equalizer APO.
For any of those that have wanted to hear the Harman Target (which isn't available in Sonarworks.)

 

[EagleWings]

Curious experiment: load a flattened curve into Sonarworks and then apply the Harman Headphone Target curve with Equalizer APO.
For any of those that have wanted to hear the Harman Target (which isn't available in Sonarworks.)

You would be double compensating if you do that. When you apply the Sonarworks correction to your headphone, it already corrects the tuning of the headphone to Sonarwork's target curve. So adding Harman's curve on top of that, would give you something quite far from a headphone target curve.

 

[karn1911]

You would be double compensating if you do that. When you apply the Sonarworks correction to your headphone, it already corrects the tuning of the headphone to Sonarwork's target curve. So adding Harman's curve on top of that, would give you something quite far from a headphone target curve.

Oh, I see the chart that gets shown is compensated. I stand corrected, I thought it was flattening it as a raw.