Larger drivers are a trade-off. You can get more bass presence by moving more air with larger drivers at the cost of increased distortion (smaller drivers distort less) and less control over the driver (regardless of the technology).
Many mixing engineers just high-pass everything in the bass ranges at even higher frequencies, so you're not even listening to the original content at those frequencies.
Bet there are lots of music based for such low frequencies especially in electronic. I don't believe that EQ is a holy grail unless I will see it, but so far whole days effort didn't brought dynamic headphone bass sounding close to planar.
I tried audirvana and didn't like it. The interface is really clunky. Or at least it was when I tried it. I doubt there is any difference in sound quality. My Macs are all audibly transparent. It doesn't get any better than that.
Maybe the PM-2s were the PM-1s that didn't meet spec.
Yes PM-2 is a lower class sibling of PM-1. I'm demoing audirvana and I can tell that at least music can sound louder there it's just I don't have many flac/loosless music if that makes a difference as well..
Not quite, the bulk of the bass (even for bass-heavy songs) is from 40 Hz upwards. Humans can detect those frequencies, but they are interpreted as deep rumbles instead of sound, so headphones just aren't able to replicate speakers in that area (no body transfer possible with such small transducers).
If the driver is nimble enough and doesn't distort much when forced to do extra work at specific frequencies, EQ can totally change their FR. It is pretty powerful but I agree, it cannot change bad headphones or speakers to sound like good ones.
What is "planar bass"? If you mean faster decay and lower distortion in that area, you can achieve that only by designing a better driver, no EQ can help you to achieve better decay or distortion characteristics. EQ only digitally boosts or cuts frequencies, it doesn't change the physical behavior of the driver.
Not quite, the bulk of the bass (even for bass-heavy songs) is from 40 Hz upwards. Humans can detect those frequencies, but they are interpreted as deep rumbles instead of sound, so headphones just aren't able to replicate speakers in that area (no body transfer possible with such small transducers).
If the driver is nimble enough and doesn't distort much when forced to do extra work at specific frequencies, EQ can totally change their FR. It is pretty powerful but I agree, it cannot change bad headphones or speakers to sound like good ones.
What is "planar bass"? If you mean faster decay and lower distortion in that area, you can achieve that only by designing a better driver, no EQ can help you to achieve better decay or distortion characteristics. EQ only digitally boosts or cuts frequencies, it doesn't change the physical behavior of the driver.
I might not be good with describing sound, but for me my pm-3 bass was tight, more controlled, faster and created more air pressure maybe as it is closed back. My colleague was convinced that he can emulate this, but whole day spend and all he could do is to bring hd650 to more boomy side or even to the point where it starts to burp. When we switched from laptop to amped source pm-3 opened up even more while I couldn’t tell much difference on HD650. Felt like planar driver had way more breathing space to increase quantity and quality of bass.
I might not be good with describing sound, but for me my pm-3 bass was tight, more controlled, faster and created more air pressure maybe as it is closed back. My colleague was convinced that he can emulate this, but whole day spend and all he could do is to bring hd650 to more boomy side or even to the point where it starts to burp. When we switched from laptop to amped source pm-3 opened up even more while I couldn’t tell much difference on HD650. Felt like planar driver had way more breathing space to increase quantity and quality of bass.
Subjectively, I find the bass in my HD 6XX and my LCD-2 F to be really close. But I'm able to trade some bass quality for comfort in my case (the LCD-2 are really uncomfortable)
I might not be good with describing sound, but for me my pm-3 bass was tight, more controlled, faster and created more air pressure maybe as it is closed back.
And as I already explained, it sounds like your friend was boosting largely inaudible sub bass frequencies to the point of causing the bass to distort and clip. EQ is a tool you have to learn how to use. It isn't intuitive and you can make mistakes very easily. But if you use it well, it can make a set of midrange cans sound very, very close to high end ones. I have PM-1s and I have no doubt that I could take a set of HD-650s and make them sound almost identical.
I might not be good with describing sound, but for me my pm-3 bass was tight, more controlled, faster and created more air pressure maybe as it is closed back. My colleague was convinced that he can emulate this, but whole day spend and all he could do is to bring hd650 to more boomy side or even to the point where it starts to burp. When we switched from laptop to amped source pm-3 opened up even more while I couldn’t tell much difference on HD650. Felt like planar driver had way more breathing space to increase quantity and quality of bass.
I agree with bigshot on EQ not being intuitive and needing learning. It's treacherous because it does seem way more intuitive than it is. I also don't think that adjusting an EQ based on 2 FR graphs from a dummy head is the right method. Because the dummy doesn't have our ears so there will most likely be some remaining variations when for example one driver is much larger than the other like is probably the case here.
The best approach would probably be to use binaural mics and measure both headphones on the listener himself, then adjust the FR and confirm the result with another measurement. That IMO should us get pretty close subjectively(so long as neither headphone has very noticeable distortions, natively or as a result of the EQ).
Maybe it's not something obvious for everybody, but adjusting only the bass is a mistake if the point if to try and get similar subjective impression of bass. We get our impression from the global signature. Plus, many bassy sounds have an initial impact with higher frequency content, so we may need to account for that.
On the Realiser A16, the simulation is calibrated using only the frequency response of the headphone. When the very same mics and input are creating a full impulse response when measuring the speakers+room. It should be trivial for them to also do that for the headphone if they thought it would make a decisive difference, yet they decided to only bother with the frequency response. It's an anecdote but as it's about a device aimed specifically at simulating certain subjective impressions while trying to remove/limit the impact of the headphone used, I think it supports the idea that getting the frequency response right is most of what we need subjectively from a headphone (again, with the assumption that it won't cause loud distortions and that it can be EQed the way we want it to be).
It should be trivial for them to also do that for the headphone if they thought it would make a decisive difference, yet they decided to only bother with the frequency response.
I suspect it is a bit more complicated. What is measured in the PRIR is "re-enacted" on playback, that is easy with convolution.
But what is measured in the HPEQ is compensated at playback. How would you compensate for the time a driver needs to come to a halt? How would you compensate for reflections in the cups? I don't think that is something you can (completely) do with convolution. Remember there are such things as functions for which there exists no inverse function. In a way I think it is a lucky coincidence that the compensating part works good enough with EQ only.
Look at the "re-enactment" part another way: adding reflections and reverb etc. is easy, but the inverse operation: removing them?
I agree with the main message of your post, but have some doubts about the following:
I suspect it is a bit more complicated. What is measured in the PRIR is "re-enacted" on playback, that is easy with convolution.
But what is measured in the HPEQ is compensated at playback. How would you compensate for the time a driver needs to come to a halt? How would you compensate for reflections in the cups? I don't think that is something you can (completely) do with convolution. Remember there are such things as functions for which there exists no inverse function. In a way I think it is a lucky coincidence that the compensating part works good enough with EQ only.
Look at the "re-enactment" part another way: adding reflections and reverb etc. is easy, but the inverse operation: removing them?
Sure. When I said trivial, it was about deciding to use more than FR, not that effectively compensating for more would always be trivial(or possible). Even EQ cannot correct all causes of FR variations if we go that way.
Totally agree that you can EQ things to greatly increase SQ of HP, but for regular person like me, simply can't be bothered. Even when buying audio gear, the sound that excites me most at the shop, I find it later hard to listen for long sessions. Can't make correct, quick decisions and need more time with hp/iem either to fall in love or dislike their sound signature, adding EQ'ing while not knowing what to do and how it should sound it's too much of the hassle. Multiple IEM's where bought which where highly praised here, but was not making me happy(lots of details, precision, but sounding unnatural/aggressive for me). When I saved money and bought musical iem instead, I'm close to my honeymoon as I was with pm3. I can't justify it's price, but at the end of the day it's the sound that keeps my toe tapping, no bothering of what and how sound signature needs to be fixed, just plug to a phone+ dac/amp and play. Either way you choose to reach your goal, buying gear/modifying sound with software, at the end we are all here for the same
For casual listening, like on the go where you're contending with street noise, etc. there's no reason to EQ. It's more for when you are listening carefully at home. When you use EQ regularly, you learn to listen more critically and identify specific frequency bands. You'll find that your tastes in tone aren't as random. You determine a target response curve and prefer that when you're listening seriously. A balanced response benefits more than just tone. It also can make music sound clearer by eliminating masking. But if you get really good headphones that are the way you want them out of the box, that is the best of all. Unfortunately, that can be expensive.
Of course it's fine to just follow the breeze of your subjective feelings and just do what feels good at the time. But that isn't really the topic of this particular forum.
For casual listening, like on the go where you're contending with street noise, etc. there's no reason to EQ. It's more for when you are listening carefully at home. When you use EQ regularly, you learn to listen more critically and identify specific frequency bands. You'll find that your tastes in tone aren't as random. You determine a target response curve and prefer that when you're listening seriously. A balanced response benefits more than just tone. It also can make music sound clearer by eliminating masking. But if you get really good headphones that are the way you want them out of the box, that is the best of all. Unfortunately, that can be expensive.
Of course it's fine to just follow the breeze of your subjective feelings and just do what feels good at the time. But that isn't really the topic of this particular forum.
My old pm3 holds it's test of time. I get easily drawn into music with them and they are the reason why many times I had to go to work with little sleep. Maybe I haven't heard true high end sound, but am I missing a lot ? I've seen headphones going to ridiculous prices and needing a proper standalone amplifier. For me it's hard to imagine that SQ could go that much better...
There is absolutely no reason to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. If you can identify some aspect of sound that is lacking, then you can look for something to solve that problem. But if it sounds good to you, there is no reason to buy something more expensive at random in the hopes that because it costs more, it will sound better. Random changes bring random results. Analyzing your sound and identifying problems is the way to improve sound. Very few audiophiles seem to realize that. They get sucked into consumerism and mistakenly correlate sound fidelity and price. Price, sound quality and musical quality are three completely separate things. If you want to understand them, you have to learn the terminology and how each of the aspects you are considering works.
There is absolutely no reason to upgrade just for the sake of upgrading. If you can identify some aspect of sound that is lacking, then you can look for something to solve that problem. But if it sounds good to you, there is no reason to buy something more expensive at random in the hopes that because it costs more, it will sound better. Random changes bring random results. Analyzing your sound and identifying problems is the way to improve sound. Very few audiophiles seem to realize that. They get sucked into consumerism and mistakenly correlate sound fidelity and price. Price, sound quality and musical quality are three completely separate things. If you want to understand them, you have to learn the terminology and how each of the aspects you are considering works.
I do not see any issues with my old HP and I still mainly lean to them even after many purchases. Someone said that because of long-term and excessive listening through the same HP I've got a "brain burn in" and now it's hard to quickly appreciate different sound. Curiosity of trying new stuff drew me forward, but I was not ending in a happy place. Once I shifted my focus back to music itself, I forgot about the need to upgrade and become happy listener again. Well at least I learned that no IEM can emulate the sound of full sized headphones
This site uses cookies to help personalise content, tailor your experience and to keep you logged in if you register.
By continuing to use this site, you are consenting to our use of cookies.
