[haloxt]

Uncle Erik, people reporting burn-in differences is nothing like people not working in floor 13. It'd be more like people with offices in floor 13 and reporting they are having bad luck at the same ratio of people reporting they hear burn-in.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Would you care to give an example of this? k

Sure. When you hear a difference in the depth of staging, how do you measure that?

How about width of staging?

How about 3D placement of individual instruments in a soundstage?

Bass slam vs bass frequency response?

What are the figures of merit?

There are many more, but that's what jumped to mind at this instant.

I know how to simulate depth and width artificially, but how does one measure the natural effect when it has not been simulated in listening to two different headphones?

In short, most psychoacoustic phenomena have no ratified figures of merit for measurement/quantification. We are just beginning to understand some of these phenomena well enough to measure and alter them, but again no industry standardized figures of merit.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif You don't need any particular "figure of merit" for purposes of discussion here. In order for a headphone, or cable, or amp, or whatever to bring about any actually audible change in the perceptions you mention, the signal would have to be altered in some fashion, either in the time domain, the frequency domain, or both. So in order to substantiate your claim, you need to demonstrate some instance of it having been established that something produced actual audible differences with respect to those perceptions without their having been any measurable alteration of the signal. k

Educate me. I'm listening.

 

[IPodPJ]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif Sure. When you hear a difference in the depth of staging, how do you measure that? How about width of staging? How about 3D placement of individual instruments in a soundstage? Bass slam vs bass frequency response? What are the figures of merit? There are many more, but that's what jumped to mind at this instant. I know how to simulate depth and width artificially, but how does one measure the natural effect when it has not been simulated in listening to two different headphones? In short, most psychoacoustic phenomena have no ratified figures of merit for measurement/quantification. We are just beginning to understand some of these phenomena well enough to measure and alter them, but again no industry standardized figures of merit.

I've been saying the exact same thing for a long time now. We just don't have the ability yet to test for this, or if we do it hasn't been done.

 

[spinali]

Check the blog below for a full treatment of break-in. Agree or disagree, at least you'll have a chance to evaluate all the arguments.

 

[bergman2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by haloxt /img/forum/go_quote.gif Uncle Erik, people reporting burn-in differences is nothing like people not working in floor 13. It'd be more like people with offices in floor 13 and reporting they are having bad luck at the same ratio of people reporting they hear burn-in.

don't mind Uncle Erik, he's quite intransigent on certain issues and plays the idealogue very well ... on this point, in particular, he seems unwilling to even entertain opinions, anecdotes AND data from those with experience ... dialogue frequently devolves into folksy old saws and non sequitors ... and I say all of this without a hint of malevolence

 

[Happy Camper]

kwkarth, I'm in your corner with respect to science not having answers to everything. Never needed it so why invest in it? Our level of analysis and a need for an explanation of everything requires this get answered but I don't expect it here. Just banter from hobbyists that think everything sound related is measurable in frequency, amplitude and time of test signals.

Headphones are a microscope for sound. Things are more revealing. This opens up areas not noticed with most speaker setups. I'm a novice to this but seems there's some missing information that hasn't been studied or formatted to study.

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif In order for a headphone, or cable, or amp, or whatever to bring about any actually audible change in the perceptions you mention, the signal would have to be altered in some fashion, either in the time domain, the frequency domain, or both. So in order to substantiate your claim, you need to demonstrate some instance of it having been established that something produced actual audible differences with respect to those perceptions without their having been any measurable alteration of the signal. k

But how could you prove that the demonstrable change is an audible one?

kwkarth,
Are you saying that standard measuring methods cannot pick-up a change secondary to soundstage depth? Or is it that a change is detected, but it's just that it cannot be proven to be responsible for a difference in soundstage, base slam or 3d placement?

 

[estreeter]

spinali, I love the Blog you linked to as its a very good summary of pretty much everything I've seen on Break-In. I particularly zeroed in on this:

Break-in has actually been measured with full-sized speaker diaphragms. The larger the diaphragms, the more potential break-in.

Those with the 'varimotion' diaphragm in AKG phones may or may not agree with me when I say that these are the only headphones where I would be prepared to claim a significant change between hour 5 and hour 200 : the tough part is that I will never be able to prove that. We could have a team of scientists work on this for weeks, publish peer-reviewed papers in respected journals, appear on talk shows - WHATEVER - for those who dont believe in burn-in, it wouldn't matter a zac. If I believe in the teaching of the Buddha, and you dont, it only becomes a problem when I decide to become an evangelist for Buddhism over all other religious/philosophical and ethical standards.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif What more would you like me to say? I thought what I'd already written was pretty self explanatory. k

You haven't added anything to this discussion. If you haven't experienced what I've experienced, then please tell us of your experience and how you were led to the conclusions you've come to. If you disagree with what I shared please elaborate as to why.

WRT issues being either in the time domain or frequency domain, well, ya, in what other domain would the answer be found? The challenge is to pin *it* down. I suspect the issues I brought up are artifacts found in both domains, therefore in order to qualify and quantify a figure of merit needs to be chosen which will be an integration of BOTH time and frequency domains. How does one scale this? measure this? integrate the measurements? Name the "measurement?" Do you have some constructive suggestions? Have you measured depth, height, and width of a soundstage? How did you do it?

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Happy Camper /img/forum/go_quote.gif kwkarth, I'm in your corner with respect to science not having answers to everything. Never needed it so why invest in it? Our level of analysis and a need for an explanation of everything requires this get answered but I don't expect it here. Just banter from hobbyists that think everything sound related is measurable in frequency, amplitude and time of test signals. Headphones are a microscope for sound. Things are more revealing. This opens up areas not noticed with most speaker setups. I'm a novice to this but seems there's some missing information that hasn't been studied or formatted to study.

As a professional, and a scientifically minded sort of guy, I want to know when my ears are deceiving me. I want to be able to quantify and qualify everything i hear so that I can turn that into a pass/fail, and figure of merit specification. Maybe one person out of a hundred (maybe less) within the engineering community can be taught to hear things as I hear them, but if I can measure it, then I don't need to try and find that rare person to train. I can just have a person slap the cans on a Kemar and hit a button. The product either "passes" or "fails" to meet specification and is either accepted or rejected on that basis.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimlink /img/forum/go_quote.gif But how could you prove that the demonstrable change is an audible one? kwkarth, Are you saying that standard measuring methods cannot pick-up a change secondary to soundstage depth? Or is it that a change is detected, but it's just that it cannot be proven to be responsible for a difference in soundstage, base slam or 3d placement?

How do you "measure" soundstage depth? How do you measure bass slam separately from bass response? They are rather independent of one another.

How do you "measure" a headphone's ability to "place" an instrument in 3D space?

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by estreeter /img/forum/go_quote.gif spinali, I love the Blog you linked to as its a very good summary of pretty much everything I've seen on Break-In. I particularly zeroed in on this: Break-in has actually been measured with full-sized speaker diaphragms. The larger the diaphragms, the more potential break-in. Those with the 'varimotion' diaphragm in AKG phones may or may not agree with me when I say that these are the only headphones where I would be prepared to claim a significant change between hour 5 and hour 200 : the tough part is that I will never be able to prove that. We could have a team of scientists work on this for weeks, publish peer-reviewed papers in respected journals, appear on talk shows - WHATEVER - for those who dont believe in burn-in, it wouldn't matter a zac. If I believe in the teaching of the Buddha, and you dont, it only becomes a problem when I decide to become an evangelist for Buddhism over all other religious/philosophical and ethical standards.

estreeter,
I agree that the AKG's I have are one of the headphones that benefitted from run in time. There are others as well. I personally don't think it would take a team of scientists to figure this out. All it would take is one guy with an understanding and suspicion of what's going on, proper instrumentation, and a few weeks to a few months to identify, quantify, and integrate what is going on. The a paper could be published and presented @ AES. If it were real, it may be met with some initial skepticism, but would quickly be duplicated by others and validated.

Mechanically and electrically we have pretty good ideas about what changes during break-in, we just don't have objective measurements that correlate the changes (mechanical and electrical) that take place, and the difference in sound as perceived by the listener.

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif How do you "measure" soundstage depth? How do you measure bass slam separately from bass response? They are rather independent of one another. How do you "measure" a headphone's ability to "place" an instrument in 3D space?

I'm with you there but I don't think you're getting what I mean. Let me go again.

Is it that you can discern a measurable change in sound that could be secondary to a change in any one or combination of the qualities you mentioned, or are you saying that changes in these qualities are silent to any measuring device you may have at your disposal?

I hope that I'm more clear now and I think this is what Koyaan was asking.

IOW's, if, and a big if, two headphones were to differ only from the POV of sound stage, then any current measuring method you throw at them would come up with them being identical? Or is it that you will detect a change but there's no way of proving that the measurable change you see is responsible for the sound stage difference?

 

[bergman2]

exactly ... unfortunately there is not a measuring device available for every metric ... furthermore some of the measuring tools available are not sensitive enough to quantify sq diffs with various burn in/component changes (think: weighing a feather with a bathroom scale) ... yet some within the community would have us disregard the finest god given metering device available -- our ears