[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimlink /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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?

If I can discern some sonic characteristic or attribute in a headphone, then I want to be able also to measure and quantify it. Today, we can measure frequency and phase response, but that is typically done with an artificial ear and not my ear, or your ear. Everybody hears differently and our ear canals are as individual as our fingerprints. Our inner ear's ability to turn those acoustic pressures into electrical signals, and then finally, our brain's ability to translate those signals produced by each ear into what we perceive, is difficult to measure? yes, and completely unique to each individual.

The issue of how we perceive depth and width of soundstage and 3D placement of things in the sound field are in fact a very subtle and sophisticated integration of time alignment of the L and R signals relative to one another, phase and frequency time alignment within each channel individually, subtle frequency dips and peaks both in absolute terms for each channel and each channel relative to one another.

So, integrate all of that into one figure of merit that can be used to qualify and differentiate one can (headphone) from another.

Does any of that make sense to anyone else, or am I just blatheriing??

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bergman2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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

You're hitting several nails squarely on their respective heads there , Mr. Bergman. Good job.

However, I think the sensitivity issue is more of one regarding scaling of instrument sensitivity, and not one of absolute instrument sensitivity. Once we know where in the haystack to look for the needle, we can train our focus on that spot to find the needle, as it were..

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif If I can discern some sonic characteristic or attribute in a headphone, then I want to be able also to measure and quantify it. Today, we can measure frequency response, but that is typically done with an artificial ear and not my ear, or your ear. Everybody hears differently and our ear canals are as individual as our fingerprints. Our inner ear's ability to turn those acoustic pressures into electrical signals, and then finally, our brain's ability to translate those signals produced by each ear into what we perceive, is difficult to measure? yes. The issue of how we perceive depth and width of soundstage and 3D placement of things in the sound field are in fact a very subtle and sophisticated integration of time alignment of the L and R signals relative to one another, phase and frequency time alignment within each channel individually, subtle frequency dips and peaks both in absolute terms for each channel and each channel relative to one another. So, integrate all of that into one figure of merit that can be used to qualify and differentiate one can from another. Does any of that make sense to anyone else, or am I just blatheriing??

With a medical background, I do know about the sophisticated nature of human hearing. However, what I'm referring to is not a matter of trying to do a qualitative measurement of what we're hearing, but it's simply a matter of claiming that it's possible that we could be hearing something as a result of the objective and measurable presence of a stimulus or that we could be hearing a difference in sound because of a measurable change in the stimulus. Yes, different things may be said about the stimulus with regard to various perceived qualities. One person may claim he hears a change in sound stage while another perceives the changed stimulus as something else. Of course, this will frustrate the measurer since there's no way of translating the measured change into specific, subjective changes as perceived by the subject such as sound stage and base slam. All that's left is a change but a bunch of ears that perceive it differently.

Or is it that those qualities you mentioned will not be detectable in any way by any measuring devices available.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimlink /img/forum/go_quote.gif With a medical background, I do know about the sophisticated nature of human hearing. However, what I'm referring to is not a matter of trying to do a qualitative measurement of what we're hearing, but it's simply a matter of claiming that it's possible that we could be hearing something as a result of the objective and measurable presence of a stimulus or that we could be hearing a difference in sound because of a measurable change in the stimulus. Yes, different things may be said about the stimulus with regard to various perceived qualities. One person may claim he hears a change in sound stage while another perceives the changed stimulus as something else. Of course, this will frustrate the measurer since there's no way of translating the measured change into specific, subjective changes as perceived by the subject such as sound stage and base slam. All that's left is a change but a bunch of ears that perceive it differently. Or is it that those qualities you mentioned will not be detectable in any way by any measuring devices available.

I think we're in agreement regarding differences in perception, and fundamentally, I believe we have instruments sensitive enough to measure virtually any individual characteristic imaginable. The rub or challenge comes into play when we recognize that much of what we perceive has a 2 channel character that must be taken into account, where measurement from a single channel perspective will not reveal or measure the stimulus responsible for the perception. Further, not only must we integrate deltas relative one channel to the other, we must also measure characteristics in both time and frequency domains both for single channels and for deltas between left and right channels at any instant in time.

So this is an integration problem, not a pure measurement problem, at least the way I see it.

 

[aimlink]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think we're in agreement regarding differences in perception, and fundamentally, I believe we have instruments sensitive enough to measure virtually any individual characteristic imaginable. The rub or challenge comes into play when we recognize that much of what we perceive has a 2 channel character that must be taken into account, where measurement from a single channel perspective will not reveal or measure the stimulus responsible for the perception. Further, not only must we integrate deltas relative one channel to the other, we must also measure characteristics in both time and frequency domains both for single channels and for deltas between left and right channels at any instant in time. So this is an integration problem, not a pure measurement problem, at least the way I see it.

The way I see it is if you can detect any change from either driver after a period of burn-in, we can then document that there's a change. Whether a human being can always discern such change is besides this specific point since there may well be some who can. Exactly how that change is perceived is yet another can of worms.

I know that there's an easily measurable difference between a 320Kbps/sec mp3 and a lossless version of the same tune. However, I can't hear it. Others say they can. Who are we to say that they aren't hearing a difference unless we do blind testing or something of the sort with the claimer? Afterall, there is a measurable difference, isn't there? What I do find difficult to believe is that what I can't hear would turn out to be a transformative change for another, i.e., from intolerable to wonderful.

 

[bergman2]

perception is an interesting area as well ... since no two ears are alike it could be that certain sq diffs sound "good" to one ear, "bad" to another, and "neutral" to a third ... this admittedly makes measurability a messy proposition with a sliding sq scale for everyone on the planet ... hence even as objective data might give the gloss of uniformity it is rendered subjective by the ear(s) involved

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimlink /img/forum/go_quote.gif But how could you prove that the demonstrable change is an audible one?

By controlling for the ambiguity presented by purely subjective analysis. In other words, blind testing, which can't be discussed here so I'll say no more.

Or, as I'd said previously (not sure if it was in this thread or another one), show some change in the signal that's within the known thresholds of audibility.

k

 

[estreeter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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.

I respectfully disagree that any such validation would change the opinions of the hardened burn-in sceptics, in the same way that no amount of empirical data has changed the stance of climate change sceptics ('naysayers' might be a better term). Once you take a stand on something this controversial, its very hard to back down : its only when the ocean is lapping at your front steps that some of these folk may be willing to admit that 'well, there might just be something to that climate change stuff after all ...'.

One of the things I find interesting about anything we take on faith is that the negative camp often puts a lot more effort into denying something than the believers put into supporting their belief structure. If I fervently believe in alien abductions, you can spend years trying to logically prove that the sheer distances involved in space travel make it impossible, but I will continue to believe in something that you cant disprove. Headphone burn-in is still right up there with a Star Trek script for many.

 

[Steve Eddy]

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Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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.

Which conclusions are you referring to?

Quote:

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.

You can't hope to pin it down in any meaningful sense until you've first established actual audibility of break-in. Otherwise, you can't know whether or not there is even anything to go looking for with which to pin it down. Nor do you have any reliable means of testing any theories as to the cause.

Quote:

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?

You can't do anything along those lines until you've first established actual audibility.

k

 

[Steve Eddy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bergman2 /img/forum/go_quote.gif 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) ...

Why do you make the assumption that current measurement capabilities are the equivalent of weighing a feather with a bathroom scale?

It's entirely possible to measure changes well below that which our ears can discern.

k

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by aimlink /img/forum/go_quote.gif The way I see it is if you can detect any change from either driver after a period of burn-in, we can then document that there's a change. Whether a human being can always discern such change is besides this specific point since there may well be some who can. Exactly how that change is perceived is yet another can of worms. I know that there's an easily measurable difference between a 320Kbps/sec mp3 and a lossless version of the same tune. However, I can't hear it. Others say they can. Who are we to say that they aren't hearing a difference unless we do blind testing or something of the sort with the claimer? Afterall, there is a measurable difference, isn't there? What I do find difficult to believe is that what I can't hear would turn out to be a transformative change for another, i.e., from intolerable to wonderful.

I think I'm following you. The reason that I want to correlate change with perception is because it will help us not only understand the nature of auditory perception, but also should help us shape and voice a headphone design to be what we want it to be.

 

[Happy Camper]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kwkarth /img/forum/go_quote.gif I think we're in agreement regarding differences in perception, and fundamentally, I believe we have instruments sensitive enough to measure virtually any individual characteristic imaginable. The rub or challenge comes into play when we recognize that much of what we perceive has a 2 channel character that must be taken into account, where measurement from a single channel perspective will not reveal or measure the stimulus responsible for the perception. Further, not only must we integrate deltas relative one channel to the other, we must also measure characteristics in both time and frequency domains both for single channels and for deltas between left and right channels at any instant in time. So this is an integration problem, not a pure measurement problem, at least the way I see it.

This is the direction of interest I believe would begin to ID the sound traits.

 

[kwkarth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Which conclusions are you referring to? You can't hope to pin it down in any meaningful sense until you've first established actual audibility of break-in. Otherwise, you can't know whether or not there is even anything to go looking for with which to pin it down. Nor do you have any reliable means of testing any theories as to the cause. You can't do anything along those lines until you've first established actual audibility. k

I would like to ask that you reread my posts again to find what you've missed. I'm not at all trying to prove anyone's theories wrong or right, I'm simply sharing my personal experiences and I think multiple times I've answered your questions. I have established audibility many, many, many times as I explained in many of my previous posts. I never said I demonstrated audibility to you, only that I myself have observed audible differences. These differences I have corroborated with others, but not with you. I'm not asking you to believe me, but at least read what I wrote so we can be on the same page in this discussion. Fair enough?

 

[bergman2]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Koyaan I. Sqatsi /img/forum/go_quote.gif Why do you make the assumption that current measurement capabilities are the equivalent of weighing a feather with a bathroom scale? It's entirely possible to measure changes well below that which our ears can discern. k

You're taking two different statements of mine and melding them together ... to reiterate, (1) there isn't a measurement device available for every sonic metric; (2) sq changes do sometimes contain certain ineffable characteristics that are in some cases beyond the ability of equip to discern but nevertheless operative; (3) what exactly does a squiggly line on a meter mean ... really?

 

[smallfish]

Quote:

Originally Posted by sampson_smith /img/forum/go_quote.gif Is it possible that making a comparison between new and suitably "burnt" headphones using a carefully recorded frequency response graph would give some insight into whether or not burn-in is real? I'd imagine that one would not see great deviations between the before and after specs, but this would help end the debate once and for all between those that think burn-in is a mental artifact and those that think that the phenomenon is physically transformative in a helpful, noticeable way. I'm for the latter, but wouldn't be surprised if I've been duped a bit by some desirable placebo effect. Reliable frequency response graphs aren't that easy to come by, mind you, but HeadRoom seems to have no difficulty generating them.

use a headphone to listening to the music is the thing I just do now

and its great.