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7hz Salnotes Zero - the "other" Zero

DanTheMan

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You wouldn't want it to be, due to the SLD effect: acoustic sources at different distances from the ear are perceived to sound differently even if the measured response is the same. See Theile's seminal paper. Then there's the lack of tactile bass from headphones (even less from IEMs) compared to speakers which needs to be compensated for. These are both reasons why preference adjustments are needed to arrive at the target, just as Harman did.
Or at least those are the reasons they state.

That excerpt keeps talking about the problem of free field measurements and how the diffuse field is a better starting point for devising a headphone curve. All from 1986 no less. No one is arguing for or against any of that that here. I thought we had moved well beyond this at this point. Anyway, you can have your Harman. I just don’t care and regret getting involved.
 

GaryH

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Or at least those are the reasons they state.

That excerpt keeps talking about the problem of free field measurements and how the diffuse field is a better starting point for devising a headphone curve. All from 1986 no less. No one is arguing for or against any of that that here. I thought we had moved well beyond this at this point. Anyway, you can have your Harman. I just don’t care and regret getting involved.
Looks like you've only read the abstract. You can downloaded the full paper for free here. I suggest reading it, in particular section 2.5 'The SLD Effect', before making any more ill-informed comments.
 

DanTheMan

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That was the only part I could have read at the time. It's what you linked. None of my comments have been ill-informed and no one is saying that EQing/subjectivity is bad. I don't know everything however and neither do you ;) ... Ultimately subjectivity is all we have in the hobby and that's only partly due to the circle. In fact I EQ and I've even developed my own curve by doing so that changes based on a few variables. You certainly won't hear me argue against subjectivity and EQ. I would just rather start from a realistic place and then go to the subjective tweaks and preferences if something still sounds off. 'The curve' doesn't sound like anything I've ever heard and it's not a way out of the circle unless we change everything else.... It's interesting that the article's compensation isn't from a realistic starting place--which has always been one of my issues with the Harman Curve. Their's is worse than Harman's, but decades of learning happened in between. In truth though, I appreciate the article a lot! Thank you. It's helping me explain some phenomena I've noticed that I haven't been able to reconcile previously. I was chalking it up to differences in my real head and my dummy head though I still think that's part of it. It doesn't make me think or feel any better about the Harman Curve however. It still sounds the same as it did. Still not my preference or anyone's reference. It's just a 2 variable EQ based off of an okay start that roughly 70% of the people tested preferred. 100% of the people I talk daily about audio do not like it much and we hear the same problems with it. That doesn't make us right. I have no qualms with you enjoying it. If you've found your bliss, just go with it and enjoy.
 

markanini

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If the guy bought the IEM, without warranty, based on that logic I can't feel sorry for him to be honest. The audio community encourages to much blind faith like that.
 

ronnzi

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I owned this thing for about 10 minutes. I have to admit I thought it was horrible sounding. Sent it back right away. Compared to my calibrated home theater it's extremely bright. My ADAMs are actually thought of as brighter monitors and they are not EQed above SBIR zone. These are dramatically brighter than the ADAMs. I should have measured it and then EQed it to be more listenable, but I don't see the point--I already have IEMs that I can EQ. More power to you guys who can handle this level of treble/balance of sound. I admire your fortitude. To the people who actually like these.... well perhaps your pinna gain is naturally much higher than mine.
This was my exact same reaction until I changed the tips. Mine came with the red tips installed and I switched to the yellow. Can’t remember if they’re the wider/squatter ones or not, but once I made the change, they sounded MUCH more balanced. I would agree with what Matias said in one of the earlier posts - if there was a tad more mid-bass, I think they would be perfect for what they are.

Don’t get me wrong, they don’t have the same impact of my well-calibrated home theatre running two 15 inch subs or anything, but their tonality is spot on and they’re only $20. If anything, I think they provide a good neutral reference (nice to have when tuning my real system when doing back and forth listening tests). Though, for longer listening sessions, I do wish they were a little more comfortable.
 
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KJohnM

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Many words have been written in this forum about the Crinacle x Truthear Zero, and how cheap it is for its sound.
Now as some of you surely know, there is also another "Zero" for an even cheaper price - 7hz Salnotes Zero.
I guess many people have not even realized yet that these are not the same. :D

The sound signature looked like it could be my taste, and I gave it a try. I paid 22,90 Euro.
And I must say that I am pretty much mindblown. As I said in another topic, the Harman IEM Target is too harsh and "hollow" for my taste.
This is the first IEM / Headphone ever where I dont feel the need to EQ anything. Even though I am quite nitpicky I think.

Some people say that the lack of "resolution" is the reason to invest more money. But it all depends on what you want.
Basically, the 7hz Zero is a Sennheiser HD 650ish headphone in IEM form. It does sound rather warm than "edgy", but it just sounds very correct, not only for its price.

If something unforseen happens and I needed to sell everything on order to save money, this would still suffice.
It almost feels like a joke at the expense of those who spend thousands of dollars on audio equipment.

In a way it reminds me of what Crinacle said in a video about amplifiers. He showed an Apple Dongle and said: This is fine.
You can pay more if you like, but it is not really a big step upwards from there. The same goes for this IEM.

The same goes for the comfort and the build quality. It feels sturdy and it is absolutely alright.
The cable is particularly good: It is neither microphonic nor has it the tendency to knot itself.
I've just ordered one today after watching a review on Audio Fixations YouTube channel. Got it on express delivery! First Chi-Fi IEM!
 

DanTheMan

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This was my exact same reaction until I changed the tips. Mine came with the red tips installed and I switched to the yellow. Can’t remember if they’re the wider/squatter ones or not, but once I made the change, they sounded MUCH more balanced. I would agree with what Matias said in one of the earlier posts - if there was a tad more mid-bass, I think they would be perfect for what they are.

Don’t get me wrong, they don’t have the same impact of my well-calibrated home theatre running two 15 inch subs or anything, but their tonality is spot on and they’re only $20. If anything, I think they provide a good neutral reference (nice to have when tuning my real system when doing back and forth listening tests). Though, for longer listening sessions, I do wish they were a little more comfortable.
There was a part of me that wanted to experiment with them to see if I couldn’t get something from them, but thought they were just too far out. Perhaps I should have tried harder because I thought the comfort was pretty good. I was going to try foam ones.

That reminds me, years ago I tried calibrating my headphones from a perceptual loudness matching perspective as in the paper @GaryH mentioned. It’s on YouTube and it’s an audio engineers site but it only has a few subscribers and I can no longer find it. I abandoned it however because it turned out horrible with music. It was a couple years ago and I had all but forgotten about it. The method the guy used definitely doesn’t work, but it was an attempt at getting frontal localization. It didn’t work for that either and ultimately that’s why I stayed with measurements. The most neutral sound from headphones I’ve heard still comes from measuring how a stereo sounds in each ear and calibrating to it. In my case that ends up with an 8dB pinna, a notch at 9kHz and a boost centered at about 15kHz with a room gain starting around 400Hz down to 20Hz at about 1dB/oct. basically looks a lot like the Expanse’s curve with the bass smoothed out. I want a $20 Expanse. I’m willing to go up to $100. I remember I got that link from a piano forum of all places, but I just can’t find it for the life of me.

The most neutral sounding cans I’ve heard are the HD650 though they are midcentric.
 

Cars-N-Cans

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None of the Harman curves sound much like speakers in a room to me personally. The OE is better than the IE, but it lacks mid bass and air. The Expanse’s curve is closer than Harman graphically speaking. Most IEM manufacturers seem to agree unless they are tuning to something that they don’t think sounds very good... Amir liked the Expanse’s mid bass better than Harman’s as well. I’ll never know when it comes to the Expanse. It’s 4k and that’s just more money than I can justify for headphones.
The potential problem with the Harman target is it is only with respect to frequency response, and not with respect to how the auditory center perceives the actual sound source itself, and the resulting imaging that is perceived. We all know of HRTFs and how they modify the spectral content, yet we never actually perceive the modified spectrum itself, only the resulting localization of the sound source that results from it. If something moves around you, it sounds the "same" perceptually with respect to its tonal character, but its location is what differs. In the linked paper on SLD in section 2.4 there is some commentary along the same lines. Ran into this when working with binaural audio over loudspeakers. The goal is to ensure the actual localization cues in the source material are what drive the imaging (e.g. three-dimensional spatial effects with respect to lateral location and depth), but the auditory center is well aware of the physical location of the loudspeakers themselves, and it was a bastard to not only determine what was going on, but find ways to compensate for it. While the Harman target is preferred, we can't be sure that everyone will have the same transfer function as there is more to it than just what ends up at the eardrum spectrally. There is processing afterwards as well that may or may not translate to neutral sound, and this will be influenced by the type of device and how it interacts with the ear. I think they know most of the details, but that doesn't guarantee that any headphone or IEM on the Harman target will work for any user. For me it works, and sounds fairly neutral. But the imaging is always that of the sound sources located along the axis of the ears, and never really external to the head beyond that.
 

DanTheMan

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The potential problem with the Harman target is it is only with respect to frequency response, and not with respect to how the auditory center perceives the actual sound source itself, and the resulting imaging that is perceived. We all know of HRTFs and how they modify the spectral content, yet we never actually perceive the modified spectrum itself, only the resulting localization of the sound source that results from it. If something moves around you, it sounds the "same" perceptually with respect to its tonal character, but its location is what differs. In the linked paper on SLD in section 2.4 there is some commentary along the same lines. Ran into this when working with binaural audio over loudspeakers. The goal is to ensure the actual localization cues in the source material are what drive the imaging (e.g. three-dimensional spatial effects with respect to lateral location and depth), but the auditory center is well aware of the physical location of the loudspeakers themselves, and it was a bastard to not only determine what was going on, but find ways to compensate for it. While the Harman target is preferred, we can't be sure that everyone will have the same transfer function as there is more to it than just what ends up at the eardrum spectrally. There is processing afterwards as well that may or may not translate to neutral sound, and this will be influenced by the type of device and how it interacts with the ear. I think they know most of the details, but that doesn't guarantee that any headphone or IEM on the Harman target will work for any user. For me it works, and sounds fairly neutral. But the imaging is always that of the sound sources located along the axis of the ears, and never really external to the head beyond that.
This has always been part of the reason why I’ve thought the Harman Curve was too bright/thin to me while other people seem to like it—maybe my ear gain just isn’t as high as others. You wouldn’t think that looking at my anatomy however and my audiogram, which just measured not long ago, makes me look like I’m 10yrs old. The curve I derived in my own living room also says the Harman curve lacks mid bass…. I also think that Harman has a too much energy in the sibilants region and too little air. None of these things are too dramatic in isolation but they add up. It’s interesting to me that what I enjoy lines up so well with what I measured and headphones like the HD650, HD598, CAL!, etc… all line up against my curve the way they sound to my ear—or at least very similarly. These are in ear mic measurements of my room vs headphones:
E6994510-1FFF-4B3F-9F4E-1FAEC385DCEB.jpeg

E2F91595-85B6-45BA-A764-A273A749A733.jpeg

Your sense of imaging essentially matches mine, but some headphones do give a better sense of envelopment and space than others and I haven’t been able to notice a correlation with FR or distance from the head. I’m pretty sure if I talk about separation, clarity or resolution that I’ll get banned from ASR….
 

Cars-N-Cans

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Your sense of imaging essentially matches mine, but some headphones do give a better sense of envelopment and space than others and I haven’t been able to notice a correlation with FR or distance from the head. I’m pretty sure if I talk about separation, clarity or resolution that I’ll get banned from ASR….
And that is the part of headphones that is not generally specified, or really controlled. Basically it’s the topology of the drivers and how they interact with the ears that drives that, and there is some interdependence on FR and imaging, which may be why some manufacturers do choose to deviate. That is definitely my experience as well, and sometimes what they do doesn’t always pan out. With my HD560s the features in the cups that comprise the EAR feature make the soundstage have a strange bowing to it that extends over my head, which is not bad, but somewhat unnatural. It could be solved generally, but would require external processing to add HRTFs to improve the imaging. This is esp. so with IEMs as they are directly in the ear canal, and don’t really interact at all with the ear.
 
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Dazerdoreal

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I agree with your very positive impressions. :)

Still, I am surprised that you find the 7hz brighter than the Truthear. I didnt hear the Truthear, but according to measurements, the Truthear are brighter pretty much across the range. Besides, they also have less warmth & mids to balance it out. Maybe you bought an usually bright 7hz oder an usually dark Truthear. Taking the low price into the account, the manifacturing tolerances might be rather on the high side.
 

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Hewbacca

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Just got mine, decided to read some threads while listening. Tuning is great, I do notice worse resolution than my Blessing 2s. But resolution is such a strong point of IEMs in general, it's ok. They resolve better than any dynamic over ears I've used, but worse than other IEMs, so, do with that what you will.

In particular I notice some distortion in the bass to subbass region, but I find this to be wholly acceptable for an IEM of this price. My favorite song to test this with is "The Droid Invasion and the Appearance of Darth Maul" by John Williams, lots of sub-bass in the beginning and underscoring throughout. I feel it highlights the shortcomings of this IEM (as they are) pretty well. I won't notice any of this in casual listening (when I am listening to music with IEMs, instead of listening to IEMs with music). Make me feel silly for spending $320 on B2s.

The isolation on these is below average for an IEM, but I think this is partially due to the smaller size of them compared to many more expensive sets. This isn't good or bad, it just depends on what they are to be used for. On the plus side, I think I could comfortably side-sleep with these in, which is a use case for a lot of people.

I should mention I immediately put the goofy colored tips away and put Moondrop spring tips on them, so that may or may not be influencing my experience.

I wish this thread had more discussion of the IEMs and less infighting.

8/10 for the IEMs.
4/10 for the thread.
 
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vco1

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I might be missing something. Got my pair in today. And I am disappointed. To say the least. The fit is not ideal for me. I'd say the fit is even worse than that of a pair of old Bose iems I own. And those are bad! I tried most of the included eartips, but the Zeroes never get a nice sturdy fit in my ear.
But more importantly, to me they sound very bright. Like extremely bright. Thelower frequencies seem to be completely missing. I'm listening to a lot of electronic music, and I found this almost unbearable. Mostly high frequencies and nothing else.
The Truthear Zero on the other hand sound great. They have a full sound. I like them a lot.
I find it hard to believe so many people seem to enjoy their Salnotes Zeroes. Could be my ears are not the right shape for these?

Both Zeroes were used with a Qudelix 5K.
 

AdamG

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Just jumped into the Sal-pool. Arrived today and will begin demoing them tonight. Initial impressions using memory foam tips, fit is great. Light and comfortable. Sound was unexpectedly nice. Going to play around with eq and see what they can handle before distortion set in. Paid $22.99 delivered. For this price I can see these being used for Tackle Box, gym bag, Paddle Boarding without the worry of great loss. These will make great stocking stuffers next year. Or Easter Egg Surprises come April.

Out if the box without eq they were fine, not great, but not terrible either. With rough order eq (used Acoustic preset) sound was jamming. After a few days of good use I will circle back and report any nits that might arise. For 23 bucks, what the heck right? They do look toy like, but if looks don’t matter to you then disregard this aspect.

Enjoy your Friday night and weekend Teammates.
 

bsdinis

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where can I get a balanced cable with Pentaconn or 4-pin XLR that doesn't cost as much as these IEMs?
this is the cheapest I could find

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Matias

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Matias

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Matias

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Got my 2nd pair today, this time with USB-C + mic option, and a bundle of decent tips as opposed to the gaudy original ones. Haven't tested the inline DAC amp compared to a good dedicated dongle yet, will update later. Just a pic for comparison. These cables are veeeeery good especially considering the price.

IMG_20230206_181753.jpg
 
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