Quote:
that is interesting.thanks for the explanation. i wonder tho have you found any headphones that were actually free field equalized? only headphone i know of are the akg 240 Cardens(sextetts) going by the PDF file AKG sent me when i asked them about my sextetts. i shared the file in the akg grado'ed forum been going on. i always thought ''free field'' in theory be better since the equalization gets taken place in an anechoic chamber with mics attached to ear lobes of a test dummy while ''diffused field'' is done in a reverberation chamber with reflections everywhere measured with pink noise.
Hi, the entire stax lambda line and the original omega are free-field equalised, and very accurately.
As an FYI, the key differences in sound come from how the waves interact with the head, rather than the room type used.
Free field = Sound coming at the face, captured at the ears
Diffuse field = Sound captured at the ears in a diffuse field
I'm not sure how direction independant is defined, or how it's capturing technique different, but the curve itself is somewhere between the two above.
The lambda line specifically has a "semi-panorama", in that they have uneven padding, which makes the sound come from slightly more forward than most headphones. Still, I'm not sure how big an effect this actually has
IMHO free field is the better in practise, since it is easily reproducable, and much closer to real life (usually we are facing a sound, most sounds are recorded head on, and those that aren't are typically captured with cariod mics that have different off-axis properties; which means the effect is in the recording, often not captured at all). On the other hand, Diffuse field is often the sought after "ideal" for all speaker setups (one that is essentially futile since any body in the room would disrupt the field)
@Shike; iirc, there was a post made here by another person who was doing amateur measurements against some results for stax by Ryumatsuba - one with the pad flush and one with it sitting slightly ajar. The Ryumatsuba results looked like the ones with the pads slightly ajar. I can't remember where the post is, but I've seen it posted several times.
I do, however agree with you about stax lambda sounds in the sense that there isn't that much of a difference between the models. There are differences in construction (housing, driver mounts) over various decades of production (Eg, Mechanical damping, no mechanical damping, modern mounting frame), which would make a difference. But otherwise, they are pretty similar if you ask me.
I haven't heard any from the new line.
FWIW, I'll give recording headphones a go once I knock up a recording studio at home, but honestly it seems very hard (and expensive) to do well