jaakkopasanen
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I conducted a remote AB listening test looking for audibility of equalizer frequency response peaks using abxtests.com. This was done to check if peaks in equalizer frequency response are harmful and how they should be regularised (see Reddit post for more info). The different dB values here correspond to the maximum allowed slope steepness (first derivative) of the equalizer frequency response meaning that higher values allow steeper slope and therefore higher peaks. The hypothesis was that allowing for steeper slopes makes it possible to equalize more accurately but at the same time the peak will start to resonate (ring) audibly and that people would prefer some kind of compromise between the two.
In total 10 subjects finished the test, each using different pair of headphones measured by oratory1990. Soon it started to come clear that deviation from target due to peak regularisation nor the filter resonance are not problems as a few test subjects refused to finish the test as they felt they cannot hear the difference. We can see this also in the results as there clearly is no preference for any of the regularisation values in the table. The "Shapiro-Wilk P" column is the probability of the sample coming from normal distribution and we can see that all of these probabilities are extremely low. My idea for this statistical test was that if there is a compromise between the equalization accuracy and filter resonance, the results would exhibit a normal distribution.
This isn't a massive amount of data and the remote listening testing methodology isn't necessarily up to the highest scientific rigour but still I'm fairly confident in concluding that for most headphones equalized to Harman target the filter resonance is not an issue. Anecdotally I did myself however experience a need for compromise but I took the test using Custom Art FIBAE 3 which has massive ~20 dB gap between 5 kHz and 7 kHz so the issues were audible, only if very slightly for most songs.
In total 10 subjects finished the test, each using different pair of headphones measured by oratory1990. Soon it started to come clear that deviation from target due to peak regularisation nor the filter resonance are not problems as a few test subjects refused to finish the test as they felt they cannot hear the difference. We can see this also in the results as there clearly is no preference for any of the regularisation values in the table. The "Shapiro-Wilk P" column is the probability of the sample coming from normal distribution and we can see that all of these probabilities are extremely low. My idea for this statistical test was that if there is a compromise between the equalization accuracy and filter resonance, the results would exhibit a normal distribution.
This isn't a massive amount of data and the remote listening testing methodology isn't necessarily up to the highest scientific rigour but still I'm fairly confident in concluding that for most headphones equalized to Harman target the filter resonance is not an issue. Anecdotally I did myself however experience a need for compromise but I took the test using Custom Art FIBAE 3 which has massive ~20 dB gap between 5 kHz and 7 kHz so the issues were audible, only if very slightly for most songs.