ASR Long-Term Plans

[Robbo99999]

ASR is providing an invaluable resource. The loudspeaker reviews have been a real eye opener, even tho I voted against going down that path. My mistake, I’m so glad I was wrong.

Personally I’m not that keen on a video dimension to ASR, however having been wrong before, I’d like to make a suggestion.

We now have copious amounts of fantastic data. The challenge now is to interpret it and to integrate it. Especially for the new arrivals.

So, what does all this raw data mean for:

• Headphone listening setups
• Desktop music studio (DAW) setups
• Bedroom loudspeaker setups
• Living room loudspeaker setups
• Home Theatre setups
• Whole home music distribution setups

And by setups, I mean lists of recommended products, and if necessary how to configure them, that would produce fantastic results for Surprisingly modest outlay.

Yeah, no video content....too time consuming to get hung up on presentation / lighting / attitude / comedy....the written word and written reviews with graphs are exactly in keeping with a no-bullshit scientific approach to audio, and I think people that visit this site realise the value of that. Going down the YouTube channel just seems like following the herd for no good reason - I'd see that as a time waster and loss of focus. Also video content is very time consuming to absorb information from, I'd rather read a review.

Maybe Amir could hire a folk or two to take the load off whilst keeping up the turnover, but I don't know the feasibility of that, but to be honest I'm quite surprised by the fact that there is almost a new review up each day, possible you could get away with less...but if you can get staff to take the load off and keep up output then that can't be too bad. I think I suggested in the "What would you like to see tested" thread that it would be great to see headphone measuring & testing as I see both speakers & headphones as being the two most influential items in audio quality....I think I suggested teaming up with Oratory1990 who has done some fantastic stuff with headphone measuring & EQ.

Yeah, this is great site that I only discovered by accident shortly before end of last year, I'd like to see it continue....if it evolves & if it doesn't.

 

[North_Sky]

Not too shabby if you ask someone ...
⚖ https://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/audiosciencereview.com

 

[Robbo99999]

Tell me about it. Today I will be shipping four monster boxes, each around 40 pounds. Spent last night and more hours today just packing them. Then on to UPS to print labels, drive to drop them off, etc. Then there is coordination with the owner behind the scenes, before and after shipping.

All of this takes time away from doing reviews (or taking care of life in general).

That is dog work, although good that it's not highly skilled, good candidate for easy hiring stage one!

 

[Xulonn]

As for electric flying cars that too was humor for the fun of living, but not everyone can read humor, unfortunately. Because without humor we are lost a little bit more. So a good balance has humor in it and other stuff from scientific objectivity and the art of living free (sensory and emotional pleasure from listening and viewing and learning and appreciating and respecting everything that we love living).

Unfortunately, the Internet brings out a lot of ignorance and stupidity, and it is often difficult to identify humor because forum interaction lacks visual cues. That is why I frequently use a "/s" (end snark) at the end of humorous or sarcastic posts.

That being said, your comments are spot on.

 

[North_Sky]

Unfortunately, the Internet brings out a lot of ignorance and stupidity, and it is often difficult to identify humor because forum interaction lacks visual cues. That is why I frequently use a "/s" (end snark) at the end of humorous or sarcastic posts.

That being said, your comments are spot on.

I shall make an effort to use emojis for both older members and newer members.
But then some people hate emojis.

 

[amirm]

I think I suggested in the "What would you like to see tested" thread that it would be great to see headphone measuring & testing as I see both speakers & headphones as being the two most influential items in audio quality....

A company offered me some headphones for testing recently and got it back interested in investigating headphone testing. It is a crowded scene with a lot of hobbyists doing it. Is there a unique angle here for us?

 

[Jimbob54]

A company offered me some headphones for testing recently and got it back interested in investigating headphone testing. It is a crowded scene with a lot of hobbyists doing it. Is there a unique angle here for us?

Unique if you could come out with measurements as comprehensive as the Klippel stuff for speakers.

Whether that would be of use/ interest to all those on or approaching the head-fi train is a different matter.

Personally I would say the majority of traffic just wants to know if (new headphone) is "better "than their HD 6XX . Dont believe the measured answer would be heeded or understood.

 

[Robbo99999]

A company offered me some headphones for testing recently and got it back interested in investigating headphone testing. It is a crowded scene with a lot of hobbyists doing it. Is there a unique angle here for us?

I'm not sure it would be a more unique angle than what Oratory is already doing, but his turnover is really quite low...so it would be good to see him combine with you and just turnover more headphones. Oratory seems to be more about the measurement and then providing EQ's to the Harman Curve, and that is of a lot of value, but it doesn't totally describe how a headphone sounds and whether it sounds good - I recently got a NAD Viso HP50 EQ'd to Harman with Oratory's EQ and comparing that to an Oratory EQ'd K702 (with some caveats too long-winded to explain in this post) there's some major differences, with the my general preference to the latter. So perhaps it would be worth pursuing what those "other" variables/qualities are that make a good headphone, and if that proved difficult or inconclusive at least the addition of more models with Oratory/ASR Harman EQ's would be a thing of tremendous value, as those EQ's have positively improved all the headphones I've tested - lol albeit it's only two (HP50 & K702)! And sure some of that objective stuff can be combined with subjective listening tests like you do for your speakers, but it would be good if it could be quantified in terms of measurable variables what makes headphones sound good beyond frequency response hugging the Harman Curve. Either way I see a lot of value in any endeavour there as speakers & headphones are the most influential part of the audio chain in terms of impact on sound quality, so it makes sense for people to know what to look for & how to buy properly as well as optimising whatever they get (EQ).

 

[beefkabob]

Headphones are weird. How do you measure them? Like speakers? The sound is going to vary significantly with small differences in location and ear shape. A room shaped like an ear.

 

[bigjacko]

A company offered me some headphones for testing recently and got it back interested in investigating headphone testing. It is a crowded scene with a lot of hobbyists doing it. Is there a unique angle here for us?

There are a lot of hobbyists doing it, but the problem is they all use different rig and not professional equipment. That makes it impossible to compare those data. I really want measurements from a professional rig so we can see the deviation from "absolute flat response", also a standard way of testing and measuring.

 

[Robbo99999]

There are a lot of hobbyists doing it, but the problem is they all use different rig and not professional equipment. That makes it impossible to compare those data. I really want measurements from a professional rig so we can see the deviation from "absolute flat response", also a standard way of testing and measuring.

Yes, Oratory is the only one I know of that has this professional equipment whilst providing the measurements & EQ publically. He also knows what he's doing on the EQ front too, although I feel that this skill is not just tied to one person....I've learned loads re EQ with my experimentations with my speakers & headphones and I only started 6 months ago, so I'm sure there's people out there with the same skills as Oratory from an EQ perspective. You can learn a lot from messing with REW! I might be being presumptive, but it's my intuition on it.

 

[Jimbob54]

Headphones are weird. How do you measure them? Like speakers? The sound is going to vary significantly with small differences in location and ear shape. A room shaped like an ear.

What would you rather have, an ear shaped like a room or a room shaped like an ear?

 

[bigjacko]

Yes, Oratory is the only one I know of that has this professional equipment whilst providing the measurements & EQ publically. He also knows what he's doing on the EQ front too, although I feel that this skill is not just tied to one person....I've learned loads re EQ with my experimentations with my speakers & headphones and I only started 6 months ago, so I'm sure there's people out there with the same skills as Oratory from an EQ perspective. You can learn a lot from messing with REW! I might be being presumptive, but it's my intuition on it.

I have tried to eq based on my listening but always feel not good. I have tried eq crazy numbers and see if I can hear it, but I cannot reliably hear them unless the gain is way out of bound and people would call them broken. The low q is easier to spot though. With your experience how much can you hear and how good is your own eq?

 

[beefkabob]

What would you rather have, an ear shaped like a room or a room shaped like an ear?

I'm trying to work the word "Uranus" into my reply, but I can't quite put my finger on it.

 

[oldsysop]

For me ASR is perfect just the way it is. I hope nothing ever changes or "improves".
Thanks Amir.
Thanks Thomas.

 

[North_Sky]

For me ASR is perfect just the way it is. I hope nothing ever changes or "improves".
Thanks Amir.
Thanks Thomas.

And thank you, you and all.

* As for the video forum section I have no objection personally.
It's cool to check what people listen to with their flicks.
And it's cool for ideas of documentaries worth watching.

I don't know many audio websites that are strictly audio.
Besides we are free to check or not; it doesn't take anything away from Amir's awesome audio component measurements, right?
And audiophiles love bass (LFE channel) with their movies, articulate speech, grandiose classical orchestral music soundtracks and all that jazz (Interstellar, John Williams film music scores...Star Wars, Jaws, ...). Floyd E Toole is playing with a new toy; Trinnov high resolution multichannel room correction EQ system. And Kal Rubinson is a pioneer to be reckon with.

A site I also like is DIYAudio. ....And GearSlutz of course, for the new musicians and their exposures and sharing new creative musical stuff. Plus much much more including best microphones, recording portable studios, recording pro monitors, musical instruments (characters, tones, etc.), audio gear including multichannel room EQ systems.

It's nice to be exposed and listening to all type of great music and systems, from zero to eleven. The speciality here is great, measurements that put us all in the ballpark.
How we interpret them is all the fun in the audio world. That's what science is; the exploration, definition, advancement, studies and discoveries, through analysis and controlled measurements.

Me too I appreciate ASR just the way it is; simple and to the point.
Nothing is absolute in life and that's why high fidelity never ends for each person till they stop listening for good (till death separates us).
Keep playing that trumpet and that cello and that piano and that acoustic bass and that drum kit.

And send those cheques...whatever you can afford from the heart ...

Hey!

 

[Racheski]

A company offered me some headphones for testing recently and got it back interested in investigating headphone testing. It is a crowded scene with a lot of hobbyists doing it. Is there a unique angle here for us?

I want to know which manufacturers are actually practicing good engineering and can justify their prices, and which ones are the “PS Audio” that charge wildly inflated prices for objectively bad engineering. Are there a set of measurements that can prove this one way or the other?

 

[North_Sky]

The World of headphones can be extremely lucrative.
It's like the World of cables.

But headphones are also very very personal...a zone of comfort and preference and practicality off and on the move.

 

[Robbo99999]

I have tried to eq based on my listening but always feel not good. I have tried eq crazy numbers and see if I can hear it, but I cannot reliably hear them unless the gain is way out of bound and people would call them broken. The low q is easier to spot though. With your experience how much can you hear and how good is your own eq?

Doing your own EQ is mostly a recipe for disaster if you don't have a measurement rig like Oratory1990 has access to. It really needs to be based on measurements. If you're limited to doing your own EQ I would limit your interventions to gentle Low Shelf Filters for the bass and gentle High Shelf Filters for the treble - effectively that would be the equivalent of simple tone controls that just control the angle of the slope of the frequency response and are really just to subtly change the overall tone/balance of the headphone.

Your recognition that sometimes it's hard to spot random changes in your own EQ experiments....yes if it's high Q filter its only affecting a very narrow frequency band so it's not as noticeable as a similar gain for a Low Q filter, because a low Q filter affects a wider frequency range....but it does depend on where in the frequency range you are tweaking, because our hearing is more sensitive to certain frequencies, eg 1kHz area.

But yeah, you really want to be basing your EQ on proper measurements that have been done on a professional rig (like Oratory's) if you want to make fine tuned or acute EQ changes, otherwise I think you should limit yourself to the Low Shelf & High Shelf Filters that I talked about to just change the overall tone of the headphone.

You asked me about my own EQ. I used Oratory1990's EQ profiles for my NAD HP50, but I did add in a low Q High Pass Filter at 12Hz to start tailing off the bass from 20Hz, and that helped improve clarity....I also did a vibration dampening headband mod on my HP50 as it suffers from headband resonances and that improved clarity (I might start an HP50 thread & document my changes). My AKG K702 EQ is also based on Oratory1990's EQ but he has only measured the Anniversary Edition which is slightly different, so I based it on that, and by comparing EQ measurements of K702 & Anniversary Edition from another website (not Oratory) I was able to see what the main characteristic differences were in shape between the two, I then did some extrapolations with help of REW software to align those general differences into a hypothetical measurement curve for my K702 which I then used REW to EQ down to the Harman Curve...this was only applicable for the treble section from 1kHz onwards as Anniversary Edition & K702 are basically the identical in their bass according to the comparison of the curves I've seen on different websites, so I used pure Oratory1990 EQ for the bass areas & up until 1kHz. So my K702 EQ is a mongrel of Oratory1990 EQ and my own work based on extrapolations from K702 vs Anniversary Edition curves from other websites. (I also use the same High Pass Filter at 12Hz for my K702 that I use on my HP50, and that improved the K702 too).

 

[bigjacko]

Ha, I thought I was not very good at listening, your words make peace in my mind. I have seen people on the internet saying they heard certain peaks or dips at certain frequencies but I could never know exactly where the peaks and dips are. I could only notice that all headphones never sound smooth or refined, but don't know where the problem is. I use oratory's eq presets too and think they are good. I got some headphones and all headphones sound the same after eq except ESP/95X which got a bit more bass.