Countering misinformation about AutoEQ

[MacClintock]

@MacClintock what's your beef with, the ranking table or the people who treat it like gospel? From above posts you seem completely aware of the limitations of the statistical model so I'm not sure why you're so bothered that some headphones you don't like appear at the top. Not sure what you're suggesting Jaako does instead. The fact some people aren't knowledgeable enough to make proper use of tools/info/etc. is unfortunately an issue in all walks of life.

Yes it is kind of both, but much more strongly the latter. A headphone can be as bad as one can imagine (high distortion, channel imbalance, fluctuating impedance, spiky FR,...), but if it somehow in the region of 40Hz to 10kHz, even by a dubious measurement (like crinacle´s), adhers quite good to Harman, it will appear high in the ranking list. That is also a point I haven´t mentioned before, measurements from different sources and rigs are mixed, giving quite random results, on top of all the rest. I honestly think it would be best to get rid of it altogether. Oratory1990 has already in his measurements some scoring, if one really needs that, on can have it there. But it is much more revealing to actually LOOK at the measured FR and see it´s characteristics (where are peaks, are there regions off, can I even EQ it, ....).

 

[MacClintock]

Suspect its both. If the table (or indeed Oratory's scores he puts on his PDFs) didnt exist then people wouldnt run around quoting scores like it meant anymore than how likely a headphone's stock tonality is to be "liked" by the most number of people.

Exactly.

TBH I think more value can be obtained from the rankings from a consumer perspective by using it to rule out poor sounding headphones from ones purchasing decisions than assuming the ones at the top of the list are automatically the ones to look at.

But even this is not true, as an otherwise fantastic headphone does not sound good out of the box, but comes to life with EQ,

I reckon the scoring has considerably more value for manufacturers, especially if they measure and calculate during the design/ proto phase.

Maybe, but as we have seen here at ASR, there are manufacturers who deliberately tune more by their guts than anything else (Zach).

 

[Moderate Dionysianism]

Messy group delay may cause resonances

Isn't it the other way 'round?

 

[MacClintock]

Isn't it the other way 'round?

Sure, but you know what I mean, what I wanted to say was “messy group delay may be caused by resonances”.

 

[markanini]

Some data to consider:

Notice how the magnitude takes a nose dive below 40 Hz. No wonder Sean Olive used 40Hz as a cutoff for his model.

 

[CedarX]

Some data to consider:
View attachment 365333

Notice how the magnitude takes a nose dive below 40 Hz. No wonder Sean Olive used 40Hz as a cutoff for his model.

Is it only because of the dive below 40Hz, or is partially due to very low freq. being “felt” more than “heard”—something a headphone can’t really reproduce anyway? I mean HP can go that low, but they ain’t gonna rattle your whole torso…

 

[MacClintock]

Some data to consider:
View attachment 365333

Notice how the magnitude takes a nose dive below 40 Hz. No wonder Sean Olive used 40Hz as a cutoff for his model.

I could name you a bunch of music with full content down to 20Hz. Not everybody uses Céline Dion to evaluate the sound quality of headphones and even the notorioulsy used Tracy Chapman has several songs with deep bass content. Just ask Amir.
By the same logic, the use of subwoofers to complement speakers would be superfluous...

 

[MacClintock]

Some data to consider:
View attachment 365333

Notice how the magnitude takes a nose dive below 40 Hz. No wonder Sean Olive used 40Hz as a cutoff for his model.

I learned not only a lot about gear and hifi from ASR, but also discovered great new music. For example Terje Isungset. Look at the spectrum of his song "Fading Sun":