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Kennerton Rognir Review (Closed Back Headphone)

Skinner001

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Sorry if I made you misunderstood, I might have worded my last post poorly.
What I meant more precisely in this situation is that Amir's subjective experience with this product was okay enough to voice a recommendation (with EQ). So along with the already-undisputable measurement data, that too can be taken as a point of reference instead of being completely discarded because the points I found in this thread like 1) "It's only good because of EQ" (because all headphones can benefit from EQ to certain degrees) or 2) "The price is just too much I can have X headphones for Y price and gain Z% performance of this" (this fact is already a rule of thumb because of diminishing return) and so on.

I don't vouch for badly measured products or even worse, largely overpriced ones, especially in a place like here. I believe in the cause and characteristics of this community, I just want to make a point that if people are going to criticize a product, they should criticize the correct aspects (performance of these headphones) instead of less relevant ones (gimbals, pads, looks) because one has a clear standard but the other doesn't.
I believe most here have been criticizing performance, it performs poorly out of the box and requires heavy EQ to make it OK (but will not fix everything and make it smooth anyways) - this combined with the price is eliciting the harsh comments.

If you value high fidelity then yes - measurements are the "correct" aspects. But let's be honest, we're not here only for measurements (otherwise we'd all own one pair of fairly cheap headphones, one dac/amp stack with the lowest price for the features we desire). Each one of us know what are the "correct" aspects for our own decisions. Build and comfort are basically as important to me as sound quality - it can be the best measuring headphone on Earth, but if I don't find it comfortable the measurements won't save it. Build quality is certainly an aspect I look at and the looks to less of an extent. There are a bunch of other things one might consider as well - from wanting to own something, having a variety of tech options (e.g. different driver types represented in the collection) to favouring a specific company. All of these may be "correct" or utterly unimportant - depends on the objective - and since fidelity is not the only objective there are more "correct" aspects than just measurements.

Certainly, for a lot of people here (myself included), fidelity is the primary objective so is the "most correct" aspect to look at, but still not the only one.

This headphone for me personally looks like crap, is all out of whack out of the box, it's comfortable for Amir but that's very personal so I'd have to put them on, and is priced at a ridiculous price for what it is. For me it fails on performance (miserably) and the other aspects are not up there, including my perceived value (considering aspects I value).

I also don't think "every headphone benefits from EQ" is a blank check to make any type of crap as long as it can be made bearable with the consumer doing the legwork. There is a clear difference between something that I tune at a few places, that doesn't distort, provides a smooth experience I can tune to my preferences with the least amount of problems - and this headphone. Therefore, I find the criticisms pretty fair.
 

tifune

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The mentioned Ether CX, other DCA options.
Drop Aeon X Closed is currently on sale.
If you go up in price you get the DCA Noire.
AKG K371 if you can love with the build (I personally can't but comfort and build preferences aee personal).
Options from Shure, prehaps Senn HD280 pro.

I have the older Ether C 1.1 and, even though I want to buy the Noire, I can't justify splashing on them.

Thank you, this is very helpful. I do have both the Aeon X Closed and Open; to my hobbyist ears it's not even a fair contest (as it should be given the price points). I definitely regret not trying the Noire prior to Stealth, at this point it'd be hard to justify unless I find an outrageous holiday deal. I did try the original RT and although it's literally the most comfortable headphone I've ever worn, the sound quality edge goes to Ether CX by a small margin, almost entirely in the bass dept. Not realyl familiar with those others, will read up on them. cheers!
 

nyxnyxnyx

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I believe most here have been criticizing performance, it performs poorly out of the box and requires heavy EQ to make it OK (but will not fix everything and make it smooth anyways) - this combined with the price is eliciting the harsh comments.

If you value high fidelity then yes - measurements are the "correct" aspects. But let's be honest, we're not here only for measurements (otherwise we'd all own one pair of fairly cheap headphones, one dac/amp stack with the lowest price for the features we desire). Each one of us know what are the "correct" aspects for our own decisions. Build and comfort are basically as important to me as sound quality - it can be the best measuring headphone on Earth, but if I don't find it comfortable the measurements won't save it. Build quality is certainly an aspect I look at and the looks to less of an extent. There are a bunch of other things one might consider as well - from wanting to own something, having a variety of tech options (e.g. different driver types represented in the collection) to favouring a specific company. All of these may be "correct" or utterly unimportant - depends on the objective - and since fidelity is not the only objective there are more "correct" aspects than just measurements.

Certainly, for a lot of people here (myself included), fidelity is the primary objective so is the "most correct" aspect to look at, but still not the only one.

This headphone for me personally looks like crap, is all out of whack out of the box, it's comfortable for Amir but that's very personal so I'd have to put them on, and is priced at a ridiculous price for what it is. For me it fails on performance (miserably) and the other aspects are not up there, including my perceived value (considering aspects I value).

I also don't think "every headphone benefits from EQ" is a blank check to make any type of crap as long as it can be made bearable with the consumer doing the legwork. There is a clear difference between something that I tune at a few places, that doesn't distort, provides a smooth experience I can tune to my preferences with the least amount of problems - and this headphone. Therefore, I find the criticisms pretty fair.
Fair points you expressed.
I can relate to what you say as well, and my post is mainly to people who debated why and how did Amir recommends these headphones (with EQ). I understand that the pricier a pair of headphones are, the more expectations to be had. My viewpoint is just that because I believe in diminishing return, I already enter with a mindset like "Even at the very best, those expansive headphones most likely will not sound nor measure X times/percent better than the [established products] we already measured and loved, so I will not expect it to be anything that great, maybe I will just predict that it'll be different".

About build/look/comfort/durability: I agree that those are very important too and they're one of the biggest reasons why I didn't buy some headphones I liked - for example: have doubt about their longevity. However, the complaints about this particular product don't make much sense to me because Amir noted that they were made with premium/good components, I would have related better if this one is expensive, yet the build quality is garbage. For look, I think it's very personal/subjective, so I will understand and accept if someone finds it beautiful or ugly.

But if someone were to agree or accept other people's personal take here, then that person shouldn't discard their experience with the product too, right? That includes how it feels, how it sounds, how it looks etc...
Then by that logic, I think Amir's listening experience along with other related inputs can be taken as additional reference points for the readers here, but some folks are like "why on earth would you recommend/like a product that doesn't measure so fine?" and that example I made up is already quite mild to what I've seen a few times in this forum. I think a small part of our community is so one-sided in this aspect, without considering all the factors like you do. That's what I want to point out because some folks won't include in other factors to the overall value of a product.

All headphones do benefit from EQ, but I don't mean it as in, to normalize that companies can keep making bad headphones because they expect us to EQ and make it okay. I too truly want anything I buy will just sound amazing out of the box.

And as far as I did read in this thread, for the most parts folks debated about EQ and the price tag of this product, but like my previous point, the price cannot be an indicator to hint how good or bad a product is. That's also why not only Amir but other reputable reviewers don't include price as a factor to judge something's overall performance.

Sorry if I wrote it a bit too lengthy, I tried to make it shorter but I'm not too good at English.
 

GaryH

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Maybe not a audible problem, but as far as I know Roon implement an infinite impulse response filter, as does the vast majority of PEQ option. I tried to see info on a phase correcting implementation (minimum phase). I am willing to take your word for it but do you have more info on this? I have browsed around on some of these types of interrogations in Roon forums and did not find answers. Linear phase and minimum phase filters are quite common in the world of digital reconstruction filters, also in the world of room correction platforms, but in the world of general use parametric EQ it is far from being the norm.

This comment by Oratory on Reddit should answer your questions:

Oh yeah, many people fall for that trap, believing that digital filters are the only thing that affects phase, and that it should therefore be avoided meaning linear-phase filters (which can only be done via FIR filters) are clearly superior.

Well, this point of view is very much wrong.
Any change to the frequency response will always go hand-in-hand with a correlated change in the phase response!
And by "any" I mean "anything that isn't a digital FIR filter where FR and Phase Response can be separated from each other with mathemagic".

TL;DR:
IIR filters are fine and are actually exactly what you want when the goal is to "fix your headphone's flaws".

So if you want to fix a certain flaw in the frequency response of your headphone, this flaw will also show itself in the phase response, and by using a minimum-phase-filter ("a normal filter") you will fix both these things at the same time.
 

xykreinov

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You should be alright with using EqualiserAPO and PEQ on PC, as there is effectively zero latency - have a look in the bottom left of the following screenshot - latency with maybe 20-30 filters enabled is 0.0ms, so I'd count that at as zero latency:
View attachment 159670
The "Init.Time" I think is Initiation Time, so just the length of time of initiation of the EQ when you switch profiles (I think), but indeed it says Latency = 0

I use an EQ for gaming and don't notice any latency issues.
I hate Linux
I love PipeWire
 
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mhardy6647

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why, oh, why do "we" have such high-priced headphones?
(I must be too old or too conservative... or something...)
 

Robbo99999

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Duckeenie

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Except that this is a science forum dedicated to high fidelity. If a person wants to wax poetically about a low performance product, there are plenty of places to do that (practically every other audio forum on the internet). Doing so here is likely to generate some push back, which I think is natural considering the mission and readership of this forum.

This whole thread is about a poorly performing product that is said to sound good. By and large people appear okay with it.
 

Robbo99999

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That's my point :^)
I think we're cluttering up the thread with innefficient communication. Are you saying you haven't got a Windows based PC and therefore can't use EqualiserAPO (which would solve your latency issues)?
 

Robbo99999

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This whole thread is about a poorly performing product that is said to sound good. By and large people appear okay with it.
Most people sound like they're not OK with it....I've said I wouldn't put this headphone on a short list when there are headphones with better frequency responses & priced better too....pretty much everyone would have the same viewpoint if they follow headphone measurements. It obviously sounded good to Amir after he EQ'd it, but I put more faith in the measurments.....I'd choose a headphone where the good measurements & the good subjective review match (and at a good price point).
 

PeteL

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This comment by Oratory on Reddit should answer your questions:
Thanks, it does kind of make sense, It's a bit thin as for answering my questions but I assume this Oratory person have studied the phenomenon. It wasn't my main point tough, regardless of the filtering involved, there is an objective cost to degrade a signal mechanically and recover it by EQ, but the benefit is higher than the cost so we should embrace EQing as a fix. Now that the phase problem caused by the driver and phisical structure deficiencies would be fully nulled by the effect an EQ has on the phase seems a bit strong. There is no evidence than this cost is not audible, because, well we want EQ to be audible, and it is audible when done right in a positive fashion. Since it brings obviously audible change, it is kinda hard to discriminate since the benefit are clearly audible, but are the artifacts audible too? The question is: when there is options to avoid "extreme" EQing, there is an incentive to choose these options instead of the heavily flawed response.
 
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GaryH

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Thanks, it does kind of make sense, It's a bit thin as for answering my questions but I assume this Oratory person have studied the phenomenon. It wasn't my main point tough, regardless of the filtering involved, there is an objective cost to degrade a signal mechanically and recover it by EQ, but the benefit is higher than the cost so we should embrace EQing as a fix. There is no evidence than this cost is not audible, because, well we want EQ to be audible, and it is audible when done right in a positive fashion. Since it brings obviously audible change, it is kinda hard to discriminate since the benefit are clearly audible, but are the artifacts audible too? The question is: when there is options to avoid "extreme" EQing, there is an incentive to choose these options instead of the heavily flawed response.

What are these 'objective costs' and 'artifacts' of EQing you're speaking of? Please be specific. It seems like you're just inventing issues to worry about that don't actually exist. Having said that, yes this particular headphone is trash and there are much better alternatives available for a fraction of the price that require only minimal EQ.
 

PeteL

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What are these 'objective costs' and 'artifacts' of EQing you're speaking of? Please be specific. It seems like you're just inventing issues to worry about that don't actually exist. Having said that, yes this particular headphone is trash and there are much better alternatives available for a fraction of the price that require only minimal EQ.
I am not sure that I can be more specific than what I already said. There is 9 dB of gain in a region where distortion is already in audible territory, and there is no evidence that the effect the EQ have on the phase response completely null the negative effect that the driver and physical considerations have on phase.
 

PuX

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is there a way to see the post-eq frequency response chart?
because without it it's subjective.
 

Honken

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That's my point :^)
You are the master of your own fate then. There are solutions with lower latency hits than good 'ole PulseEffects. @bmc0 have made one such solution for example, and I believe that the new EQ built into PipeWire may be of interest as well.
 

GaryH

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Since most every headphone is recommended after EQ (and not before). The graphs after would be a very important part of the review.

Especially for this headphone, as it's not at all certain that EQ will have the intended effect on its frequency response, due to the many large swings in group delay which could be the result of non-minimum phase acoustic cancellations within the earcup that may not be EQable.
 

GaryH

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I am not sure that I can be more specific than what I already said. There is 9 dB of gain in a region where distortion is already in audible territory, and there is no evidence that the effect the EQ have on the phase response completely null the negative effect that the driver and physical considerations have on phase.

Ah I thought you were intimating that EQing will always have objective costs and artifacts. I see now you're only referring to this particular headphone and EQ.
 

xykreinov

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I think we're cluttering up the thread with innefficient communication. Are you saying you haven't got a Windows based PC and therefore can't use EqualiserAPO (which would solve your latency issues)?
Ya, that was the joke.
Obtuseness aside, good to know that it's entirely possible for 0 latency. EQApo has always been pretty nice.
 
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