Pinnae represent an insignificant perturbation on room acoustics (where they represent a vanishingly small proportion of room volume), but a significant one in headphone acoustics (where they represent a significant fraction of the enclosed space).
What bothers me, and maybe one of the reasons I dislike using headphones, is that what happens with a standardized pinna will not be the same as what happens with my ear. There's no agreement on the measurement method, much less the target acoustics. This of course has not stopped the creation of standards. The Harman papers, IMO, created more uncertainty.
I follow what you wrote. And your point on absence of «agreement on the measurement method, much less the target acoustics», resembles what I wrote.
However, I don’t understand what you mean by the «Harman papers...created more uncertainty».
If we look up
@Floyd Toole ’s concluding comments on headphones, we find this:
«Conclusion: the best sounding headphones sound like good loudspeakers in a good listening room. Because that is where recordings usually originate, is anyone surprised? The good news is that it is possible to anticipate sound quality using the right measurements, interpreted in the right manner.»
So there seems to be a target, which is in principle the same («sound like good loudspeakers in a good room») as for speakers. And because there is a target («the good news») we can predict if a measured headphone sounds good or not. I guess everyone agrees so far, right?
So the source of disagreement may come when I use the absence of a target curve in headphones as evidence of absence of science in headphones design.
@BE718 said I was practicing sophistry when I asked about standards and evidence of science in headphones design (
@BE718 wrote: «I'm not going to disappear down your philosophical rabbit hole with you, science is very much present in headphone and speaker design»). But is what I wrote very different from what
@Floyd Toole has commented? Let me quote Toole:
«Headphone measurements have been and still are a debated issue. (...) Then there is the second issue: what is the target curve for the measurement? (...) There was reason to believe that this kind of measurement, used with this kind of target, could be useful in designing headphones that have a chance of sounding good. But such was not to be the case. A small number of brands took the hint, and some visited me at the NRCC, but most companies apparently had other “marketing” priorities. Headphone sound has continued to be characterized by large variations».
In other words: As speakers have converged to a target (flat smooth curve), there has been no such convergence in headphones. How can audio be scientific if there’s absence of convergence? Is the headphones area still stuck in «marketing priorities»?