[HiFiHawaii808]

All of those things are covered by frequency, amplitude and timing. And any deviation from fidelity would be distortion. Frequency and amplitude are the big hurdles for headphones. Timing and distortion are bigger issues for speakers.



Since it's pretty much impossible to do a blind test of headphones, it's hard to test for that or quantify it. But I would bet that a listener's ears would accommodate to those things pretty easily, and when listening to commercially recorded music, it wouldn't be very noticeable.

I completely disagree with you. You are basically saying something equivalent of I am using the exact same high grade cream for my ice cream so therefore vanilla ice cream and chocolate ice cream will taste exactly the same since the consumer's taste will adjust to it. I've done the Eqing to curves with various high end headphones and they sound different enough that you can tell the difference in sound even when the frequency response curve is nearly identical. It's not as simple as just getting a highly technical headphone and all you need to do after that is EQ them to a target curve and you basically own all headphones in one.

 

[bigshot]

In basic terms, a sound wave is a bunch of frequencies at a certain amplitude, combined into a timeline. That is all that sound is made of. Sound isn't made of veils or soundstage or timbre. All those things are made of sound. Distortion is the amount of deviation from the sound wave encoded into the digital file, and the sound wave produced by the transducer that reaches your ear. If it is very close to the same in as out, it is low distortion. If it is very different, it is high distortion.

The hardest thing for any transducer to produce is a balanced response. A balanced response is a full spectrum of frequencies and a proportional amplitude across the range. The challenge for both speakers and headphones is to produce a balanced response. Headphones generally have an easier time of it because they are smaller. They also have very low distortion levels, and since the space between your ears and the sound source is a matter of centimeters, timing isn't much of an issue.

Speakers have additional challenges. Large transducers have higher levels of distortion because the speakers have high excursion to be able to produce low sound waves using larger cones. Floppy excursion causes distortion. With speakers, timing is a very complex interaction of the speaker and the room. Timing errors in a room can wreak havoc with the frequency response. When it is bad, it is very, very bad. But when it works, it is glorious. Speakers can produce a sound that goes far beyond what any headphone can reproduce without complex signal processing simulations. That is because of the element of time. When it comes to sound, space is expressed as time.

The things that make the biggest difference work like this... Frequency Response > Timing (which can affect frequency response if it is out of align) > Distortion. Distortion brings up the rear, because that aspect has been pretty much tamed by technology. We aren't talking about steel needles vibrating a diaphragm through a horn any more. It is pretty easy to reproduce sound with levels of distortion that don't sound bad at all to human ears. In most cases, distortion is inaudible.

Frequencies and amplitude in time are all a sound signal is made of. Distortion is the amount of error in the signal. There is nothing else. All the other aspects are a function of the basic elements of a sound wave.

As long as a set of headphones is close enough to your target curve to allow you to EQ it without introducing an audible amount of distortion and the extension is sufficient, you should be able to make one headphone sound very close to another. The quality of many midrange headphones are good enough to allow you to adjust them to match the best headphones.

 

[ADUHF]

Fwiw, I agree with you both.

Frequency is big. And it is one of the first things I listen for... Is it too bright or too dark. Is there too much bass or not enough. Is the treble too piercing in spots, or too laid back. Do vocals sound muffled and withdrawn or more forward and shouty, etc., etc... All that stuff is important.

But there are definitely other qualities to a headphone's sound that I can discern as well, that I believe are less related to the spectral response. I can hear, for example, when a headphone's sound is shifted more to the left or the right. And when it's stereo image is not well-defined vs. well-defined. And whether it produces a more narrow image, or a more immersive one that seems to surround me. And I can tell when the details and textures in a recording sound clear and distinct versus more fuzzy and diffused.

And I can hear these differences on headphones both at the lower end of the price scale, and in the $100 to $500 range. (Though I would probably admit that it seems to get a bit harder as you climb the price ladder.) And based on many of the comments on this board, I'm sure I'm also not alone in this.

I have to agree with bigshot though that these things essentially all boil down to what he said. And are mostly related to distortion and time-related effects. And also differences in amplitude in the case of the driver imbalances. So I guess that does indeed mean that we can distinguish some pretty small differences in distortion and other time-related effects which may be orders of magnitude smaller than a loudspeaker in a room. How we interpret those differences may vary from one individual to the next though.

 

[ADUHF]

Just a little reminder, btw, that the sound in headphones is not produced in the same way as a loudspeaker works, by propagating waves through the air. Headphones simulate this though via a process that Tyll referred to as acoustic coupling, where the eardrum, driver diaphragm, and volume of air in between the two essentially all move and vibrate as a unit.

The volume of air between the diaphragm and eardrum is malleable though. So as it moves back and forth with the motion of the diaphragm, its shape is continually being "morphed" to fit the contours and shapes of the ear. Which alters the sound's spectral characteristics, amplifying certain frequencies and diminishing others. And this morphing or warping effect is the ear's transfer function.

 

[castleofargh]

It's hard to draw general conclusions on this IMO.
First because depending on how the EQ is done, the response will not be the same at our own ear. So, part of our impression will still often be FR variation.
Second, because we're doing those headphone comparisons sighted. Exaggerating what we perceive or making some stuff up, is a fairly typical result compared to a more controlled listening test. And there isn't much we can do about that when testing headphones. the stuff I linked before tries some approaches but comes with a bunch of caveats.
Third, because matching 2 headphones might sometimes be more complicated than just applying EQ. Like how having significantly different impedance and sensi could affect noise, disto, FR, crosstalk levels at the amp. In worst case scenarios those could be audible. Then there is the need for the headphone to still show low distos once it's EQed. That will often disqualify anything with serious roll off, and some stuff with acoustic cancellation or high distos that won't go down with EQ but could on the contrary increase dramatically at frequencies where the driver was already struggling at that SPL.

With that said, FR reaches all magnitudes including FS, while the highest distortions will usually be tens of dB below FS if we didn't pick a real garbage headphone to EQ. So while I have no reason to doubt that we will still be able to pick up other differences between many headphones tuned to the same FR, the impacts should be contending with the quiet parts of our music.
With the same logic, matching 2 very clean headphones with fairly smooth and extended FR could probably come very close while using only EQ. And that might be the biggest hurdle about EQ. Most people want to purchase a donkey and EQ it into a race horse(I'm talking objectively here, not about $). While there is no doubt about the potential improvement of a more appropriate FR, that's also the situation most likely to fail for various reasons. I'd still do it because a better FR is a big deal, but people should indeed lower their expectations in term of getting the same sound IMO.

 

[theaudiologist1]

Sorry, but price DOES make a difference. The Focal Utopias are objectively better than the HD600's, for example.

 

[bigshot]

The criteria for judging quality in this case is the response... specifically how close they are to the Harman curve. There are midrange cans that nail the Harman curve apparently. Naturally when it comes to abstract inaudible specs like distortion, build quality and features, price will make a difference.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

I hate studies like this. No schiit price does not reflect quality. Any moron could tell you as much. The concept is prevalent with almost anything you can buy anyways, so why should audio be any different.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

Sorry, but price DOES make a difference. The Focal Utopias are objectively better than the HD600's, for example.

That logic only works if audio companies followed a more honest cost plus pricing model.

 

[Heldaeus]

I hate studies like this. No schiit price does not reflect quality. Any moron could tell you as much. The concept is prevalent with almost anything you can buy anyways, so why should audio be any different.

I don’t think it’s as obvious as it seems that price doesn’t entirely correlate with sound quality. Or that it does. Correlations like these are contingent on a variety of factors and these studies can have fascinating utility.

 

[igcp]

Why Audiophile community trying to cripple themselves with these topics is beyond me TBH. Almost all of you are aware of the fact that none of you trying to reach to the point of hearing "flawless sound" but rather trying to enjoy the adventure via experiencing new items and that money you spent is basically a donation to manufacturers. Almost all people I met owns multiple IEMs and headphones. That indicates to me people don't give a crap about "best sound" since they would just sell other ones that they could consider inferior. Come on, a shiny new toy what people wants. It's bicycles for me even tho audio equipment reaching to that point too. I would say audio equipment is a scam but a strange one. Companies usually doesn't come up with wild claims as much as other consumer products do. From what I've seen, we just convince ourselves to buy a new one, even tho there's nothing wrong with the old one. I did that with my bike too and still doing it. To me, these studies trying to reach out to 10%. Other 90% is in for the thrill.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

I don’t think it’s as obvious as it seems that price doesn’t entirely correlate with sound quality. Or that it does. Correlations like these are contingent on a variety of factors and these studies can have fascinating utility.

It's not obvious to decent and honest people. The moment you see how screwed up things are in the business world, it becomes painfully obvious.

 

[bigshot]

It isn't entirely the manufacturers' marketing departments fault. I think consumers are partly to blame. The enter into the hobby without learning how things work. They depend on other people's opinions and sales literature to make up their minds instead of defining their own criteria and finding the product that meets their own particular needs best. You can always find a person with another opinion and a salesman who says his product is better. If you depend on them to make up your mind for you, you'll wander around aimlessly and buy a dozen different sets of headphones, all different. And after spending thousands of dollars, you're still no closer to defining what your own criteria for the perfect headphones might be. That is just a combination of OCD and intellectual laziness on the part of consumers.

 

[Tjj226 Angel]

It isn't entirely the manufacturers' marketing departments fault. I think consumers are partly to blame. The enter into the hobby without learning how things work. They depend on other people's opinions and sales literature to make up their minds instead of defining their own criteria and finding the product that meets their own particular needs best. You can always find a person with another opinion and a salesman who says his product is better. If you depend on them to make up your mind for you, you'll wander around aimlessly and buy a dozen different sets of headphones, all different. And after spending thousands of dollars, you're still no closer to defining what your own criteria for the perfect headphones might be. That is just a combination of OCD and intellectual laziness on the part of consumers.

There is a lot of that going on too. It's all a vicious cycle.

 

[bigshot]

You have to invite the vampire into your house before he can suck your blood.