Four hundred dollars is not good value for a mediocre headphone like the Elegia, especially when you can get much better closed-back headphones like the AKG K371 for 250 dollars less.
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Headphone with these characteristics under $1,500
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Four hundred dollars is not good value for a mediocre headphone like the Elegia, especially when you can get much better closed-back headphones like the AKG K371 for 250 dollars less.
That is one opinion, but hardly a fact. I returned the K371. I now own the Elegia.
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I wouldn't say either headphone is trash, but if you care about build quality, the Elegia is worth the premium in my opinion.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/654wxtmhlq0dhqa/AAAKT-RIbEKpsl-JW7mOnu_9a?preview=Focal+Elegia.pdf
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/654wxtmhlq0dhqa/AAAKT-RIbEKpsl-JW7mOnu_9a?preview=AKG+K371.pdf
I didn't say the Elegia was trash, just decidedly average, with a treble response that is far from neutral. And yeah I'm primarily considering sound quality. I'd take a headphone that sounds great with average build quality over one that only sounds average with great build quality, but to each their own.
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Those AKG are interesting, I'll have a look at them.
I don’t think there’s ever going to be facts when comparing headphones as tonality (FR response) of a headphone itself is always and will always be subjective. Maybe referring to pure distortion/frequency graphs at 90,100 and 110 SPL can be used as facts instead
What is a fact is that the Elegia has a dark tonal balance and uneven highs, and so will impart that sound signature on everything it plays, whereas the K371 has a much more neutral overall tonal balance. The subjective choice is then whether you want all your music's tonality markedly altered by the former, or much closer to the artist's / mixer's / mastering engineer's intention via the latter.
It's not a fact when someone opinionates that Elegia sounds better than K371 to his/her preferences. It's also not a fact that you prefer a neutral tonal balance of the K371. Once you reproduce a signal through a different brand/model etc. transducer and its accompanying headphone amplifier, you will never get close to the mixer's /mastering engineer's intention. Heck even our ears hear differently due to HTRF differences between us and as such, the very same exact headphone and its accompanied gear that is heard by the mixer / mastering engineer will not sound the same to your ears. In my opinion, that makes tonality as subjective matter and not a fact. Also, IMO, I prefer a warm U-shape tonality of the CA Andromeda IEM over any headphone out there with the exception of HEDDphone (terrible FR curve in the treble region, but tonality sounds awesome to my preferences) and Utopia (which I know some users here perceive Utopia as inferior sounding in high frequencies to their preferences while to my preferences/opinion, it reproduces one of the best treble tonality in the headphone market)
Yeah, I agree, or the NAD HP50 that I own - they actually fit every single one of his criteria in his OP too (which I posted about in detail earlier). My HP50 after EQ do not sound far off in vocals to my HD600 (which is renowned for vocals), whilst the HP50 is better in bass and I think it's a smoother headphone, the HD600 sounds a bit harsh to me now. (One thing that brought the HP50 alive was my own EQ I did based on Oratory's measurements, I think he was hungover or something when he did that headphone as he made a mistake calculating the negative preamp required, and made a couple of other bad decisions in the EQ that are detrimental to the sound, in my experience).
First off I gotta say I truly appreciate @raistlin65 for bring the deal to the Masterdeals thread for the Elegia's. I jumped on the deal. The build quality of the Elegia's is great. However, I found them very boring. I even returned them. That being said for the price and adorama's return policy, they're worth trying.
For what its worth though my Meze 99 classics at msrp of $309 destroy the Elegia's. For something thats 1/3rd the price theyre in my subjective opinion WAY better in all aspects (insert whichever descriptive audio verb here). Hope this helps someone.
For what its worth though my Meze 99 classics at msrp of $309 destroy the Elegia's. For something thats 1/3rd the price theyre in my subjective opinion WAY better in all aspects (insert whichever descriptive audio verb here). Hope this helps someone.
You must like a very warm, bassy sound.
I can see why the Elegia would seem boring in comparison to the Meze 99 Classics if those are to your taste. I found the Elegia slightly bass light and switched to the Dekoni sheepskin pads. But it definitely wouldn't have been enough for you if you like the 99s.
I agree.
Plus, I personally feel that gestalt theory of perception applies to audio perception in headphones, that the audio experience that one perceives can be more than the sum of its parts. And sometimes less. It's an instance of where holistic evaluation through listening may result in a different assessment, than trying to weigh the metrics for different measured sound attributes.
And sometimes when listening to the music through the headphones one can get carried along in a superior experience. As opposed to what the critical experience of listening to the headphones through the music might tell us.
True in some respects re HRTF differences between people, but in absence of anything better a headphone that hugs closely to the Harman Headphone Curve will be (by definition of the research done in it's creation) closer to most people's preference (including "accuracy") than any given random headphone with other types of frequency response. Therefore it's a solid starting point for a headphone recommendation as well as a solid starting point for not recommending others....this is particularly relevant if the person in question knows already that the Harman Headphone Curve sounds good & accurate to them, which you can mostly really only know by comparing the sound quality/tonality of known tracks on said Harman EQ'd Headphones vs measured & EQ'd speakers that have also been EQ'd themselves to the Harman Curve. I'm one of those people that have done that and I know the Headphone Harman Curve suits my own HRTF very reliably.
Even the Harman Curve is based of the subjective preferences of users that participated with the research. It's still a subjective opinion at the end of the day and with regards to tonality, I'd rather recommend someone with good distortion characteristics (i.e. mentioned in the first post) and a FR curve close to their desired tonality then just "lightly / fine tune" EQ the headphone to whatever FR curve he/she desires or suits their HRTF. At the end of the day it all boils down to their preferences and not to Harman or whatever target curve that exists in the wild today. As I'm more into IEMs than headphones, I've heard one of the closest to DF-Harman Curve tuned IEM which is the Moondrop Blessing 2 and I find it sounding unnatural to my preferences. None of the headphones that I prefer (HEDD and Focal Utopia) even remotely comes to that Harman Curve and yet those headphones put the biggest smile of my face since their native (no EQ) tonality suit my preferences immensely.
As someone who is the 1 out of 3 people who do not prefer the Harman Target Response, I'm glad you mentioned that. Too often the Harman Target Response is lauded as a one sized fits all solution. I can't wear one sized fits all hats, either
I also think there other ways that too much weight is put on the Harman Target Response as the solution to headphone choice. For example,
- It stands to reason that a one-sized fits all solution is not necessarily the perfect fit, but a good enough fit. So even in that 2 out of 3 group, for example, could be someone would like a little more midbass to give their headphones warmth. Or someone else might like a little more air to their treble.
- People listen at different volumes, which will affect bass and treble perception, and the Harman research must necessarily be keyed to some standard average volume response.
- I've seen headphones that are kind of close to the Harman Target Response offered as necessarily "better" than one that is less close, even though the Harman research doesn't tell us any of the nuances of listener preference who like the Harman target Response once we move away from it.
- And headphones that are close to the Harman Target Response may still have a flaw that bothers some users. For example, a headphone with a treble response that emphasizes sibilance could easily be less preferable for some people to one that is a much worse match to the curve.
- Many of us with multiple headphones enjoy headphones with different sound signatures because of what they bring out of the music in different genres. For example, I find Grados quite fun for listening to rock if I'm in the mood to focus on the lead guitar. But not great if I want to listen to the whole band and hear the bassline. Which runs counter to the one size fits all notion. So maybe the one size fits all solution is not true if someone mainly listens to a particular genre or for a particular element of a genre.
- Soundstage or resolution might trump better Harman Target Response matching among some in the 2 out of 3 group.
The Harman Headphone Curve is not just based on the preferences of the people on the study, but the basis of the curve started out as a preferred speaker in the Harman Listening Room....so they measured that speaker with a dummy head to work out the basis of the headphone curve, and it was at that point that they trialed it on a group of listeners where they were able to mess with broad tone controls to reach their preferred target. So my main point is that there was a measured basis to the start of their headphone research (dummy head), which was then tweaked to user preference by subjective means......so when you talk about "subjective preferences" in your post that underplays the "rigour & science" behind it. The Harman Headphone Curve certainly is not just a "subjective opinion" to quote you again.
There is more to a headphone than it's frequency response though: comfort / useability / soundstage / distortion.....and probably some other factors that I've forgotten to mention or don't know about, ha!
Yeah, for sure, Harman Headphone Curve is for sure not a one size fits all, but it's a good place to start & to recommend unless that person knows categorically that a Harman Headphone Curve doesn't suit them.....but there's not too many folks that really know that it doesn't because you'd have to EQ whatever headphone you got accurately to the curve to start with, although the number of people that would have tried that is probably relatively large here in this ASR community right here.....but if you're recommending to newbies (new posters) here then most of the time I suppose you could assume they haven't done that before and haven't tested the Harman Headphone Curve on themselves yet, so Harman Heaphones would be a good starting recommendation in that case.As someone who is the 1 out of 3 people who do not prefer the Harman Target Response, I'm glad you mentioned that. Too often the Harman Target Response is lauded as a one sized fits all solution. I can't wear one sized fits all hats, either
I also think there other ways that too much weight is put on the Harman Target Response as the solution to headphone choice. For example,
So sure. The Harman Target Response is obviously an excellent idea for creating a headphone that could gain very good acceptance in the market, which is what Harman was after. And sure. It's a useful tool for talking about headphone preference. But I think we need to be cautious about over relying on it.
- It stands to reason that a one-sized fits all solution is not necessarily the perfect fit, but a good enough fit. So even in that 2 out of 3 group, for example, could be someone would like a little more midbass to give their headphones warmth. Or someone else might like a little more air to their treble.
- People listen at different volumes, which will affect bass and treble perception, and the Harman research must necessarily be keyed to some standard average volume response.
- I've seen headphones that are kind of close to the Harman Target Response offered as necessarily "better" than one that is less close, even though the Harman research doesn't tell us any of the nuances of listener preference who like the Harman target Response once we move away from it.
- And headphones that are close to the Harman Target Response may still have a flaw that bothers some users. For example, a headphone with a treble response that emphasizes sibilance could easily be less preferable for some people to one that is a much worse match to the curve.
- Many of us with multiple headphones enjoy headphones with different sound signatures because of what they bring out of the music in different genres. For example, I find Grados quite fun for listening to rock if I'm in the mood to focus on the lead guitar. But not great if I want to listen to the whole band and hear the bassline. Which runs counter to the one size fits all notion. So maybe the one size fits all solution is not true if someone mainly listens to a particular genre or for a particular element of a genre.
- Soundstage or resolution might trump better Harman Target Response matching among some in the 2 out of 3 group.
"People listening at different volumes...." you say, that is mainly influencing the amount of bass required - more bass required at lower volumes.....you'd just EQ up the bass a little more using the Low Shelf Filter that Oratory supplies in his EQ's (if you're not using your own EQ).
Yes, definitely, the Frequency Response isn't the only factor of importance in a headphone (I listed a few of my thoughts on that earlier on in this post replying to majingotan).
I suppose also in recommending a headphone, you have to find out if the user is gonna be EQ'ing them....because if they are gonna EQ then it doesn't matter too much what the existing frequency response is.....well it matters less.....but if it's too far away from Harman Curve or if there are unfixable peaks & troughs then you're never gonna get them that accurate onto the Harman Curve - so it's important to be aware of the frequency response curve for a headphone for things that can't be fixed or limitations that are on show. Generally you'd pick one that is close to your ideal target as long as it had all other good/required features/qualities.
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The Focal Utopia actually scores very highly on the Harman preference rating (a score of 86); for reference, the AKG K371 which is touted for its closeness to the curve scores an 89. The HEDD scores a 66, which is in the realm of "good" if we were to go by Harman categorized scores in its whitepaper.
Poor: 0 - 39
Fair: 42 - 54
Good: 65 - 76
Excellent: 90-100
Source: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/blob/master/results/RANKING.md
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The brothers Young on Grados....
Give me a serving of classic Scorpions with that, too
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Give me a serving of classic Scorpions with that, too
Scorpions tour manager, c1983 :
"Hey, guys, what do you need 5 bottles of talcum powder on the rider for?"
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