Sound Science Corner Pub

[castleofargh]

Looks like we're just at different experiences. I know the A16 is supposed to be king for 3D audio with headphone experience. Back when I was trying to get a good surround sound experience with headphones, it wound up being in college when I got a Sennheiser HD-580 that also included their pro-logic surround processor. It's only calibration was manually dialing things like "parametric" until it sounded good. But dang it, when I listened to The Matrix on it with the headphones, I could hear Neo swish kicking his legs behind me. I got into head-fi for just listening to music and then continued to speakers for movies. After I got a HD plasma TV, eventually got into blu-ray and HDMI 7.1 speaker system (and I can now have a cinema experience without alarming neighbors). What was funny was the girl I was dating at the time first said "wow, your speakers are big and ugly". But after she watched a movie on it-"wow, this sounds better than a movie theater". While I'm sure the A16 is still one of the best things for 3D audio with headphones, there's also an experience of watching live concert blu-rays with a group with surround sound speakers. For example, I gave an extra surround receiver to a friend, along with a pair of bookshelf speakers. He had a gathering at the time of me gifting this stuff. It was hard to run calibration tones with running kids....but after I got past that, I put on the first Eric Clapton's Crossroad's blu-ray. The segment with Midnight in Harlem (Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi) really highlights the range of vocals with surround and bass with subwoofer. Because I now also watch all my video content with my now current 3D audio speaker setup, spatial audio for headphones still don't interest me. Honestly, currently the main regular headphones I listen to every day is running with open air earbuds in that I'm not looking for great audio quality.

Oh, if I could freely use speakers, I would never touch headphones at home, Realiser or not.

 

[Davesrose]

Oh, if I could freely use speakers, I would never touch headphones at home, Realiser or not.

Yeah…especially with movies, the sweat spot for my room with the subwoofer also coincided with it being behind my recliner. So action movies certainly are another level when you get sub-bass that’s not just in your ear canals.

 

[Ryokan]

Funny, I need to close my eyes to be able to properly concentrate on sound. It made many people laugh at me at small audio meets, as you can imagine. The guy who advocates blind testing is closing his eyes to listen to some gear in public, hilarious. But I have to, otherwise, I'm pretty much the kind of guy who stops listening to what you're saying because something moving in the background just caught my attention.

I've long realised I get a better experience listening to music in a dark room. I put it down to fuller concentration given to hearing. If I'm writing, especially a lengthy passage - like course work, I'll hardly notice music is playing. A whole album goes by and I'll have to replay it when finished writing.
When I worked in a heavy machine environment a crane operator said he'd light a cigarette when seated and when he thought to put it between his lips was surprised to see just a couple of inches of ash and a tip between his fingers.

 

[gregorio]

Like I wrote long time ago, I need my sight to listen to the more subtle ones and I need to form memory in order to reliably form a repeated comparison between components

It’s one thing being wrong a “long time ago” but another to still be wrong after it’s been explained to you numerous times. And, how are you not contradicting yourself? You’ve stated several times that you “trust your ears” and now you’re saying you “need my sight”. So either you were lying previously or you believe you achieve your sight with your ears rather than your eyes, which is it? And if that’s not enough, assuming you’re human, you only need milliseconds to form a memory and echoic memory can only contain a few seconds of data, forming short term and then long term memory requires reducing the data and accuracy of the memory, which reduces reliability of comparisons. So either you’re not human or you have some sort of serious brain damage.

That's why I don't gaslight myself that my perception is wrong and no difference is the genuine thing.

When you listen to a stereo system and perceive sound coming from the central position between the two speakers, do you really believe there’s another magical, invisible speaker between the two stereo speakers? Or, do you accept the actual fact that your perception must be wrong and therefore it is NOT “gaslighting”?

G

 

[colonelkernel8]

I know what I heard that's how I'm able to cure my system to the sound signature that suits my preference. Every part of my system contributes to its overall sound. I swap things, some of my human bias gets thrown here and there but the end result is I absolutely love how my system is sounding after all those tweaks and curated component matching

Ok. Neat. But then understand that almost all of your experience is "human bias". It's not "here and there", it's literally all you know.

When you listen to a stereo system and perceive sound coming from the central position between the two speakers, do you really believe there’s another magical, invisible speaker between the two stereo speakers? Or, do you accept the actual fact that your perception must be wrong and therefore it is NOT “gaslighting”?

absolutely brutal, G

I am going to go taste my headphones and see if that adds to my perception of the music they reproduce. I think Dan Clark should start making his headphones taste really, really good to add to the perceptive cornucopia that is audio reproduction. I figured out a great mod, I absolutely saturate my earpads in Chanel No. 5 and it just makes my headphones sound so sophisticated and classy.

 

[FrancoeurRichard]

Love this idea. Been missing the old vibe too laid-back, fun, and full of good people. Glad to see someone taking the lead.

 

[colonelkernel8]

Love this idea. Been missing the old vibe too laid-back, fun, and full of good people. Glad to see someone taking the lead.

The reply function is important for context.

 

[2leftears]

The reply function is important for context.

Very first post is what I assumed. At least it makes sense in that context, albeit a bit late...

 

[theveterans]

I am going to go taste my headphones and see if that adds to my perception of the music they reproduce. I think Dan Clark should start making his headphones taste really, really good to add to the perceptive cornucopia that is audio reproduction. I figured out a great mod, I absolutely saturate my earpads in Chanel No. 5 and it just makes my headphones sound so sophisticated and classy.

My Susvara is far more salivating than Dan Clark can ever make for now

 

[colonelkernel8]

My Susvara is far more salivating than Dan Clark can ever make for now

I don't trust a single product Hifiman makes because their ethos is absolutely quantity over quality; they just shovel the sht out the door over there. They struck gold with the Susvara (against all odds) but it's way, way too expensive and poorly manufactured.

I think it's pretty clear Dan Clark employs actual engineers with integrity and won't release a $5500 product that's fundamentally broken by its very nature (looking at you HE-R10P).

 

[Slaphead]

I’m a human not a machine

But when you look anatomically at a human, or any living creature, you'll realise that a machine is exactly what you are.

Take your hearing for example - it's basically a thin piece of skin (the eardrum or tympanic membrane) which is attached to three bones (malleus, incus, and stapes) which then vibrate the fluid inside the cochlea which in turn vibrate a number of hairs (Stereocilia) inside the cochlea the length of which corresponds to the frequency by which they resonate which is then transmitted via a nerve to your brain. Basically your inner ear acts like a physical fast Fourier transform - the same thing that's used to create MP3, AAC, ATRAC - or otherwise known as digitally compressed audio.

Now that's a machine by definition.

 

[theveterans]

But when you look anatomically at a human, or any living creature, you'll realise that a machine is exactly what you are.

Take your hearing for example - it's basically a thin piece of skin (the eardrum or tympanic membrane) which is attached to three bones (malleus, incus, and stapes) which then vibrate the fluid inside the cochlea which in turn vibrate a number of hairs (Stereocilia) inside the cochlea the length of which corresponds to the frequency by which they resonate which is then transmitted via a nerve to your brain. Basically your inner ear acts like a physical fast Fourier transform - the same thing that's used to create MP3, AAC, ATRAC - or otherwise known as digitally compressed audio.

Now that's a machine by definition.

Brain still interprets those differently and varies by person to person hence why there's a target PREFERENCE curve but not ABSOLUTE curve. And even then, the established preference curve does NOT sound correct to my brain interpretation

 

[2leftears]

But when you look anatomically at a human, or any living creature, you'll realise that a machine is exactly what you are.

Take your hearing for example - it's basically a thin piece of skin (the eardrum or tympanic membrane) which is attached to three bones (malleus, incus, and stapes) which then vibrate the fluid inside the cochlea which in turn vibrate a number of hairs (Stereocilia) inside the cochlea the length of which corresponds to the frequency by which they resonate which is then transmitted via a nerve to your brain. Basically your inner ear acts like a physical fast Fourier transform - the same thing that's used to create MP3, AAC, ATRAC - or otherwise known as digitally compressed audio.

Now that's a machine by definition.

Fascinating the way human hearing works isn't it? IMO a lack of understanding re. this is a significant factor in prolonging some audiophile myths.

But re. your comment; the human hearing doesn't really work like a Fast Fourier Transform (which is a specific algorithm implementation of the Discrete Fourier Transform).

It effectively is more of a cross between the Wavelet Transform and the Gabor Transform. Both are related to the Fourier transform but whereas the Fourier transform is only localised in frequency, the Wavelet and Gabor transforms are localised in both time and frequency.

 

[Davesrose]

Brain still interprets those differently and varies by person to person hence why there's a target PREFERENCE curve but not ABSOLUTE curve. And even then, the established preference curve does NOT sound correct to my brain interpretation

I didn't realize there was an established preference curve-why so many debates about the Harman target curve?

 

[bigshot]

I don’t know why any of this is being discussed here. This thread is for dropping arguments and chatting together as a community.