HIFIMAN SUNDARA AND DAN CLARK AEON2 NOIRE

[Jimbob54]

The biggest issue with soundstage is that it not only is pinna dependent but above all brain dependent.

For instance. I can't hear the sounds in front of me. Not even using binaural recordings. With spatializers I can hear a very unnatural effect.
However, with some of the better headphones I can much easier 'pinpoint', quite sharply, in position in the stereo width 'line' inside my head, I can easily separate instruments when tonal balance is flat.
With angled drivers this increases. It never goes 'forward' or out of the head for ME though.
In some very rare recordings where recordings are made with, as an effect, someone calling from afar I do perceive it as if someone does this from the room that appears not to be in the recording (but is)
I call this 'imaging' instead of sound stage or with headphones 'head stage'.
Other can hear sound in front of them. How would one capture this is numbers ?

Stranger still with good (in my case stats) I can perceive depth and width easily, even height for some obscure reason. So it is not that I can't hear it. Just not with headphones. Also my ears look rather 'average' so it is unlikely my pinna differs very much from many others.

For this reason I never looked into this aspect as I cannot hear and thus verify this effect... a brain thingy.

I have definitely perceived height with headphones, as well "out of head" width and depth. The HD800 (before EQ) did just that. After EQ- not so much but a better listen overall with EQ. But the ability to build that 3D space around my head was unparalleled. The Focal Clear have an element of that too.

 

[solderdude]

Perhaps that EQ was based on a specific HATS which isn't the correct EQ but looks nice and correct on that particular test rig.

 

[Helicopter]

I have definitely perceived height with headphones, as well "out of head" width and depth. The HD800 (before EQ) did just that. After EQ- not so much but a better listen overall with EQ. But the ability to build that 3D space around my head was unparalleled. The Focal Clear have an element of that too.

I have only experienced it with Focal Clear, but never tried HD800s. Like solderdude, I have never heard front and center.

Edit: it is a little hard for me to imagine it is all brain though. When I first got the Clear, I was repeatedly confused about whether the sounds were outside the headphones, and kept taking them on and off to test like a young child might, so the brain was quite deceived, at least for 5 hours or so. It was remarkable.

 

[Jimbob54]

Perhaps that EQ was based on a specific HATS which isn't the correct EQ but looks nice and correct on that particular test rig.

Possibly. But I think knocking the treble down has something to do with it. Lose the exaggerated detail that i think that helps with the pinpointing of sounds in the image.

 

[Sean Olive]

The biggest issue with soundstage is that it not only is pinna dependent but above all brain dependent.

For instance. I can't hear the sounds in front of me. Not even using binaural recordings. With spatializers I can hear a very unnatural effect.
However, with some of the better headphones I can much easier 'pinpoint', quite sharply, in position in the stereo width 'line' inside my head, I can easily separate instruments when tonal balance is flat.
With angled drivers this increases. It never goes 'forward' or out of the head for ME though.
In some very rare recordings where recordings are made with, as an effect, someone calling from afar I do perceive it as if someone does this from the room that appears not to be in the recording (but is)
I call this 'imaging' instead of sound stage or with headphones 'head stage'.
Other can hear sound in front of them. How would one capture this is numbers ?

Stranger still with good (in my case stats) I can perceive depth and width easily, even height for some obscure reason. So it is not that I can't hear it. Just not with headphones. Also my ears look rather 'average' so it is unlikely my pinna differs very much from many others.

For this reason I never looked into this aspect as I cannot hear and thus verify this effect... a brain thingy.

I also have trouble getting things out front unless I have head-tracking with binaural recordings. If there are speakers in front of me (like the Smythe Realizer or DTS:X demos) that also works. If you are in the same room where the binaural recording was made that helps immensely as you've learned the reflection patterns and can often externalize with the head-tracking turned off.

Last night I was listening to the Sundara on Tidal, and switched to a Youtube video of a headphone review. For a moment I thought I was listening to the speakers on my iMac Pro versus the headphones because the reviewer was outside my head and in front of me. To my surprise it was the headphones.

Just an example of the cognitive effect of seeing the sound source vs. not.

 

[abdo123]

I have several. For travel AKG N700 ANC (see measurement below), at work or home, currently AKG K371. I also have a pair of AKG N5005 for in-ear with Comply Foam Tips.

I have access to lots of headphones at work I can bring home and listen to as well (see photo).

But I mostly listen to loudspeakers: Salon 2 in my living room and Revel Performa in my 7.2.4 home theater

Thank you very much for sharing!

Is there a headphone that you would suggest for people who like more Bass than the Harman target?

 

[Sean Olive]

Actually they have (talked to Sam about it, who now left Rtings b.t.w.) but was not thoroughly researched but they somewhat documented their reasoning. Sam found the the HD800S (one of the first headphones he measured and listened to and I agree) to have an excellent sound stage.
Also he was impressed with the Edition X. As I measure pinna less and we compared measurements he also decided to measure pinna less and look for the differences. The question (I may still ask him about it) is if he just removed the pinna and left the existing cavity as is or filled it up. In any case he looked for pinna effect differences and see if he could correlate.
This is why is 'target' is very close to that of the HD800S and Edition X combined as that to him was the reference.

Anyway.. if it was FR related (the dip at 10kHz) and one would EQ up and down that specific part of the FR then changes would occur in soundstage.
This of course does not happen (I tried).

Of course we know how each pinna changes the FR between 1kHz and 20kHz and that different artificial pinna and ear canals react differently especially to angled headphones. As all different HATS and fixtures measure differently surely not a single one will be 'correct'. They all will be correct-ish at best and some maybe more than others.

It was a fun attempt from Rtings to get 'a metric' but it is no more than that but they wanted something they could rate based on measurements only.
Angled drivers + even not too tilted response is a recipe for better 'imaging' or being ability to 'pinpoint' (more sharply define location of) instruments in a stereo image IME.

I talk to Sam a lot too. I am a fan of Rtings. I know they do some informal listening but I don't consider that scientific or definitive proof. If the metric truly works then do some formal listening tests and publish the results.

The same applies to Consumer Reports or any other audio publication that comes up with "predictive" sound quality metrics. How can we accept them as fact when there is no proof?

 

[Sean Olive]

Thank you very much for sharing!

Is there a headphone that you would suggest for people who like more Bass than the Harman target?

On average, most closed headphones have more bass that the Harman Target, at least upper bass between 50 - 500 Hz.

Most JBL headphones are tuned with 3 dB+ more bass than Harman Target to appeal to a 18-20 something year-old male with no critical listening experience. I've seen studies where they did personality tests on college students prior to doing a listening test where they found males preferred more bass than females.


There have been studies linking preference for enhanced bass levels to personality. Depending on how much bass you prefer, you may have anti-social and borderline personality


This study found "exaggerated bass preference is more common among males than females and correlated with antisocial and borderline personalities."

So, you may want to move to the other side of the train/bus/plane if something beside you is wearing Beats -

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886997000858?via=ihub

 

[solderdude]

I would say there is no 'best headphone' but some models may suit one better than others. These in general may not be what someone else prefers or recommends.
It's why hundreds of headphones exist and people who keep them like them while others may hate them.

There are quite a few excellent sounding ones, they can be found in all price classes. Finding the one you like (comfort, purpose it serves, sound) is the hard part.

You would have to try a lot of them (and not just for a few minutes) to find one that suits you most and you will love. regardless of what reviewer, owner or hater thinks about that particular model.

Measurements can help narrow the choice when looking for a certain sound signature.
That is when one knows what it is they want and can correlate with measurements. For this some experience with measured headphones is a big help.

 

[thewas]

There have been studies linking preference for enhanced bass levels to personality. Depending on how much bass you prefer, you may have anti-social and borderline personality


This study found "exaggerated bass preference is more common among males than females and correlated with antisocial and borderline personalities."

So, you may want to move to the other side of the train/bus/plane if something beside you is wearing Beats -

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0191886997000858?via=ihub

Or some Harman models which can be even more "antisocial" than some Beats!
https://www.rtings.com/headphones/1-4/graph#9022/3992/1626

 

[jhaider]

I have several. For travel AKG N700 ANC (see measurement below)...

Interesting. The “N700M2” version of these (large differences?) are currently even cheaper than K371BT on Amazon. I wasn’t planning on buying yet another set of BT headphones: already have K371BT paired to the work laptop, NAD HP70 paired to the MacBook, and AirPods Pro which work on all my personal devices but not the work laptop. But then I saw another claimed feature that caught my eye and caused Amazon’s stock to fall by one unit.

“MULTI-POINT CONNECTIVITY
Pair two Bluetooth devices at once and your headphones will intuitively switch between devices.”

About damn time! The most asinine thing about BT headphones is, generally they only pair with one device and are a hassle to unpair and re-pair. AirPods are the welcome exception, but unfortunately BigLaw is still largely not Mac territory.

If these work with my work thinkpad and personal iPhone without hassle that’ll be a godsend for travel when that happens again.

 

[markanini]

Interesting. The “N700M2” version of these (large differences) are currently even cheaper than K371BT on Amazon. I wasn’t planning on buying yet another set of BT headphones: already have K371BT paired to the work laptop, NAD HP70 paired to the MacBook, and AirPods Pro which work on all my personal devices but not the work laptop. But then I saw another claimed feature that caught my eye and caused Amazon’s stock to fall by one unit.

“MULTI-POINT CONNECTIVITY
Pair two Bluetooth devices at once and your headphones will intuitively switch between devices.”

About damn time! The most asinine thing about BT headphones is, generally they only pair with one device and are a hassle to unpair and re-pair. AirPods are the welcome exception, but unfortunately BigLaw is still largely not Mac territory.

If these work with my work thinkpad and personal iPhone without hassle that’ll be a godsend for travel when that happens again.

That does look tempting. Once you have some impressions to share I will read closely.

 

[Dan Clark]

I find the Aeon Noire a very interesting case. By all accounts @Dan Clark demonstrating you can tune an existing design, within reason, to Harman (or target of choice) I wont ask what he did to the base model to get the Noire but Im guessing the black paint isnt the secret sauce. But is it all in the softer elements of the build (pads, wadding etc) or is it more fundamental do we think?

As Oratory noted with his measurement Noire is the same headphone with a different ear pad. Ear pads have a profound effect on frequency response. This pad was tuned to create this effect.

 

[Jimbob54]

As Oratory noted with his measurement Noire is the same headphone with a different ear pad. Ear pads have a profound effect on frequency response. This pad was tuned to create this effect.

Thanks for clarifying

 

[Mkaram]

As Oratory noted with his measurement Noire is the same headphone with a different ear pad. Ear pads have a profound effect on frequency response. This pad was tuned to create this effect.

Does it stand to reason, then, that if I purchased the Aeon2 open headphones that I could try curves by purchasing different pads? I only see one alternate pad option in your store for the aeons.

 

[Dan Clark]

Does it stand to reason, then, that if I purchased the Aeon2 open headphones that I could try curves by purchasing different pads? I only see one alternate pad option in your store for the aeons.

Correct, the pads are mounted with an adhesive and they can be peeled off and replaced 5-10 times before the adhesive gets too janky. Also there are new pads from Dakoni which were designed to create a really different sound so there are two options from us and I think 3 from Dakoni.

 

[bogart]

Correct, the pads are mounted with an adhesive and they can be peeled off and replaced 5-10 times before the adhesive gets too janky. Also there are new pads from Dakoni which were designed to create a really different sound so there are two options from us and I think 3 from Dakoni.

Sincerely appreciate the technical use of "janky," which many engineers knows is a critically important performance descriptor.

Out of curiosity, does a brand like Dekoni collaborate with manufacturers at all when producing aftermarket products, or is that a purely independent venture?

 

[solderdude]

Correct, the pads are mounted with an adhesive and they can be peeled off and replaced 5-10 times before the adhesive gets too janky. Also there are new pads from Dakoni which were designed to create a really different sound so there are two options from us and I think 3 from Dakoni.

Aside from Dekoni there is also Vesper Audio pads for AEON and Ether

 

[Mkaram]

Correct, the pads are mounted with an adhesive and they can be peeled off and replaced 5-10 times before the adhesive gets too janky. Also there are new pads from Dakoni which were designed to create a really different sound so there are two options from us and I think 3 from Dakoni.

Thanks.
Could you recommend which pad I might try to get the Aeon2 Open closer to Harman? Selfishly I want the red ones, not the black ones

 

[Dan Clark]

Thanks.
Could you recommend which pad I might try to get the Aeon2 Open closer to Harman? Selfishly I want the red ones, not the black ones

The perforated pads. We're out of stock for a couple of weeks, demand has been really high and we're backlogged...