[Beagle]

And for the record here people, a very curious thing occurred in that Jude/head-fi bashing thread in the place I can't name. One poster decided he needed to prove how Jude needed help from Bill-P, which is fine, learning is always good. I'm getting to my point. The logic behind the Bill-P reference was that he was a very respected member there. I have no doubt if it is the same Bill-P I believe it is. Anyway, Bill-P went on to say that even looking at Tyll's measurements of the Z1R he felt it was actually quite good and not much different from a Stax headphone that he respected quite a bit. Nobody suddenly discussed that there expert witness actually said that the Z1R measurements didn't really seem very problematic to him. They all just ignored that little gem as if it wasn't mentioned. Funny. Hopefully I captured the essence accurately of what Bill-P said, I don't want to go back there and read again so if I have at all misrepresented what Bill-P was saying I am sorry and it was unintentional.

Sort of like how mainstream media chooses to put certain people under a microscope yet completely ignore others who do worse. Seems to be the norm now, sadly.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

I did let that sink in...and I don't want even one ZMF Eikon, so that's cool with me!

I guess that's for the best, the waitlist is pretty crowded as it is.

 

[MacedonianHero]

I guess that's for the best, the waitlist is pretty crowded as it is.

Likely due to manufacturing constraints. Not one I'm interested in at all.

 

[Andrew Rieger]

Likely due to manufacturing constraints. Not one I'm interested in at all.

Have you heard it? Or is it just a headphone that doesn't interest you?

 

[MacedonianHero]

I've heard the Atticus and it was definitely a letdown. Everything from the build quality, comfort and sound screamed DIY to me. So thus the lack of interest.

 

[TSAVJason]

Jeez Grizzly, that's a lot to unpack! I've enjoyed reading a lot of your posts on the forum, but this one, I don't know. Like picking ants out of the picnic jelly. Sure, I see the bullet points, but you have to stick to using them.

So far, this is what I think this is about:

• measurements
• Jude
• oddities and outliers
• Jude
• telephones and email
• Jude
• dumping all over one of my favorite headphones

Now, on that last item, you are really hurting my feelings. Looking at your profile I see you have the Utopia. Let me ask you: Beryllium is highly toxic, who's brilliant idea was that? Huh? Next they'll be using asbestos for damping material. Do you like that?

Cheers!

I haven't followed your conversation with the Griz, you must feel offended somehow.
So I've limited my comment to just your Beryllium comment.

I wonder. At what point will Grizzly's Utopia turn to dust so that it can be "highly toxic"?

 

[ThomasHK]

This whole story is very simple, and there's a no need for all the finger pointing to Tyll and/or Jude.

1. Jude is showing compensated curve only. If he used the standard GRAS diffuse field correction curve, this has a peak of 10 dB at 8kHz that is still 8 dB at 10kHz (checked GRAS data for my KEMAR).
2. Headphones show large variation in the location and height of High Frequency resonances. Well controlled manufacturing will maybe be able to control the large portion of the frequency range (50Hz-3kHz) to be within +/-2 dB, and with sorting/matching this can be improved even further for the L/R balance. But no manufacturer is able to control those HF peaks well, I'm often seeing +/- 4dB or even +/-5 dB spread as manufacturing spec.

I suggest @jude shows the uncompensated curve first, that will already bring the two measurements (Thyll & Jude's rigs) much more in line. Take the expected HF variation into account and it all will fall into place.

 

[nordkapp]

You can buy two ZMF Eikons for the price of the Z1R. Let that sink in.

Why would you need 2 of the same HPs?

 

[grizzlybeast]

guys...

The issue has nothing to do with whether or not the Z1R sounds good or not.

The issue is that Jude assumes that Tyll's measurements are useless based on his own and is undermining the credibility of many others because he has better compensation curves and better gear. It begs for a war and is a hasty move... an undermining move. Tyll's measurements are relative and more useful to make judgements from even if he has worse tools and parameters because he has used them on hundreds of other headphones that we can compare the Z1R to. If those eccentricities show up on lesser gear but not the more accurate gear, it still makes the more accurate gear less relative because it is not being compared to known references. Consistency and relativity is the name of the game of measurements.

If my thermometer inaccurately measures today's temperature at 20 degrees F and everyone in my culture knows what 20F feels like summer based on my our previous record of measurements and an alien from outer space says no it is supposed to be 95F....does that mean that all of a sudden we feel hotter? No, we thought 20F was hot and can't fathom 95F. Our minds would automatically think ...wow... no way...95F would kill us and the alien is crazy. We would have to become educated in the new way first and overcome our fears.

Inversely, if Tylls rig (and everyone elses) shows us eccentricities from a premise that we are used to and Jude comes along with more accurate readings and says "no those don't really measure like that", would that stop us from hearing those frequencies that way? Absolutely not. So then when we actually do see a spike like that on Jude's rig we better protect our ears from the blood inducing spikes going through them.

His post at this point misses relativity. Until we see how another known headphone measures up against the Z1Rs measurements on his rig then we cannot begin to understand how to interpret Jude's graphs.

Even if other headphones compared with the Z1R start measuring like Tyll's on Jude's rig, Jude still has not earned the authority to discredit everyone else's measurements of the Sony because we would have to assume Tyll's are right since he has more experience. There is an element of established trust that people are missing here. Trust that pervasively positive posts cannot earn. There are a lot of leary buyers out there that want the whole truth. I also hope that the measurement movement on head-fi can also be used to point out flaws as well.


Make sponsorship and appraisal of products something that is hard to get around here so that when people read positive reviews from HF they are taken more seriously. Make them earn it!!!!

Why are only positive reviews on the front page?
Why are none of the videos made here about a product ever negative.
The industry doesn't need more garbage coming in.
There are a lot of good products that go unnoticed.

There is a lot of garbage out there and it is hard for people to be honest when they are being thrown money all of the time, or free gear. Trust me I know but there is a theme of reviewing gear that needs to stop...only reviewing good gear.
If you want an appreciation thread then make one. So you can ignore all of the criticism. The internet is not the place for you to enjoy your headphones, your playlist is.

Also The Z1R is being criticised in the context of other headphones. There are tons of reasons, legitimate ones, for people to love the Z1R. The headphone is not garbage, but I guarantee that Sennheiser wouldn't put out that kind of performance at that price.

There are those who look at this like it is a hobby and we commune around gear. To some of them, the gear has to earn the right of passage when it comes with that hefty price tag. Communities of measurements, objectivity, and subjectivity are allowed to tar and feather something they believe is sub par. We must realize that 2.5K is a lot of money and if one loves the headphone then so be it, that doesn't make them wrong. Enjoy it, who cares what other people think! In the same breath, know that if you did not have the bashing of or criticism of poor performance than people would do whatever to make a buck. Criticism is very important. It is why movies flop and never get remade again, or why certain bands quit making garbage music, or why restaurants shut down. Just how we should let people enjoy eating McDonalds is the same way we should let people say McDonalds is garbage. The problem is when you hate the people that say they like McDonalds, or when you get mad at everyone for saying McDonalds is garbage.

 

[DigMe]

Also, you can buy like 4000lbs of bananas at that price.

 

[Sonic Defender]

This whole story is very simple, and there's a no need for all the finger pointing to Tyll and/or Jude.

1. Jude is showing compensated curve only. If he used the standard GRAS diffuse field correction curve, this has a peak of 10 dB at 8kHz that is still 8 dB at 10kHz (checked GRAS data for my KEMAR).
2. Headphones show large variation in the location and height of High Frequency resonances. Well controlled manufacturing will maybe be able to control the large portion of the frequency range (50Hz-3kHz) to be within +/-2 dB, and with sorting/matching this can be improved even further for the L/R balance. But no manufacturer is able to control those HF peaks well, I'm often seeing +/- 4dB or even +/-5 dB spread as manufacturing spec.

I suggest @jude shows the uncompensated curve first, that will already bring the two measurements (Thyll & Jude's rigs) much more in line. Take the expected HF variation into account and it all will fall into place.

I'm not saying you are wrong, but are you sure of that?

 

[ThomasHK]

I'm not saying you are wrong, but are you sure of that?

Well since everything I've written are facts, I don't see how I cannot be sure of that. The DF curve can easily be looked up and those stats on headphone FR tolerances come from my experience as headphone acoustical engineer.

 

[up late]

Well, as they say, "it's been said many times many ways, Merry Christmas to you".

My message is fairly generic and has been said many times before and will be said many times again, but sometimes people need a periodic reminder about what is really important.

Regarding what we mean by "objective" in this case, there is one huge difference between speaker measurements versus headphone measurements. There is a fairly straight forward objective consensus that a speaker's ideal frequency response is flat for truly uncolored objective sound reproduction. There is absolutely zero objective consensus on what an ideal headphone frequency response should look like. There was research done at Harman International to develop what they believed should be the ideal frequency response for headphones, but this has been an on going development, done by a single company, which has only surfaced in circa 2014. Some people are pretending that this curve is written in stone as an ideal, but the reality is far from the case.

Aside from that there are many dimensions to headphone measurements, including the targeted curve, the compensation curve used to smooth out the frequency response, the equipment used to do the measuring, and so on. Again, people are pretending that these are all solved problems, but the reality is very far from the case.

I think we can all applaud and cheer on the research into a scientific approach to understanding headphone audio production. The community should be encouraged to continue to do the research. Jude and Head-Fi should be given credit for investing so much into this area and trying to untangle some of the confusion regarding what these things really mean. But these kinds of conversations and discussions should be had within the context of the current state of the research, which is no where near the point where you can definitively evaluate the objective quality of headphones by their measurements alone. And people need to stop pretending otherwise.

And despite all this, at the end of the day, "it's been said many times many ways", the music is the most important thing. If people are enjoying their headphones while all the above discussion is going on, that is really all that matters.

"welcome to head-fi and sorry about your wallet" has also been said many times here. so welcome and thank you for the periodic reminder of what is really important to those of us who have enjoyed this hobby for quite some time.

it's acknowledged that there isn't a consensus on a frequency response curve for headphone measurements currently and yes, dr sean olive and his team have proposed one based on their research, which is indeed ongoing. that said, I've found that headphone frequency response measurements from different sources look more similar than they do different. so i'm more inclined to take notice of them rather than dismiss them. i take the view that if we regard them as indicative rather than absolute, then there is useful information to be gained for those of us who are interested in how a headphone performs objectively. personally, i see no conflict between having an interest in how a headphone measures and how it sounds.

i've also found that most people who understand headphone measurements are aware of the variables and the limitations, particularly those who take their own measurements. i doubt they would claim that all of the problems are solved or that "you can definitively evaluate the objective quality of headphones by their measurements alone". they also understand that there are aspects of a headphone's performance that is not measurable such as tone, imaging and "soundstage".

i thinks it's great that jude has decided to enter the world of headphone measurements and provide us with another data point. and having been in the thick of it here, i can assure you that i haven't lost sight of what really matters to me in this hobby.

 

[miceblue]

This whole story is very simple, and there's a no need for all the finger pointing to Tyll and/or Jude.

1. Jude is showing compensated curve only. If he used the standard GRAS diffuse field correction curve, this has a peak of 10 dB at 8kHz that is still 8 dB at 10kHz (checked GRAS data for my KEMAR).
2. Headphones show large variation in the location and height of High Frequency resonances. Well controlled manufacturing will maybe be able to control the large portion of the frequency range (50Hz-3kHz) to be within +/-2 dB, and with sorting/matching this can be improved even further for the L/R balance. But no manufacturer is able to control those HF peaks well, I'm often seeing +/- 4dB or even +/-5 dB spread as manufacturing spec.

I suggest @jude shows the uncompensated curve first, that will already bring the two measurements (Thyll & Jude's rigs) much more in line. Take the expected HF variation into account and it all will fall into place.

He did post the uncompensated data, actually.

I missed it too.
https://www.head-fi.org/f/threads/t...e-from-ifa-2016.818846/page-699#post-13549237

Yes, we always test in multiple positions. For the DF-compensated plots, we're using KEMAR DF (I'll send you the values). Here are five positions, no DF compensation applied, frequency response and total harmonic distortion (click for larger size):

 

[up late]

Beg to differ here. Very familiar with the clarity and precision of objective standards in architecture and engineering. That caliber of standards can put a building in the ground, a spacecraft beyond our solar system, and when necessary, settle a dispute in court. For all the reasons listed in these discussions, the standards in question are not at that level of precision or correlation.

Just need to put a realistic focus on the measurement technology as it applies to the purpose of reproducing music.
Feynman said: The first principle is that you must not fool yourself, and you are the easiest person to fool.

Generally speaking, we are all too quick to 'believe' the expeditious.
It's fairly easy to comprehend a FR chart. But that's not anywhere near as relevant or useful as listening to a hundred live music sessions.

agreed that headphone measurements aren't at that level yet. they are a relatively recent development compared to those examples, but the research continues. and they're not measuring music, they're measuring headphones. the objective is to measure a headphone as we would measure a loudspeaker.

i think that feynman is referring to human fallibility in that quote. our sensory perception can fool us and our beliefs can be mistaken.