Hot dawg! The second sample measures much better than the first. Thank you very much for doing this, @Resolve .
Thanks for posting back in the thread after measuring that 2nd unit. There is indeed quite a lot of variation between the two samples there. You mentioned that the second sample had good channel matching which indicates that it should be a headphone "as intended" from the company, whereas you say the first sample had bad channel matching, how bad was the channel matching in the first sample.....does one of the channels in the first sample closely match the response of the second sample you measured? If one of the channels of your first sample measures very closely to your second sample then you could probably assume that the first sample you measured was a bad unit "broken" (as in one of the channels broken, the other channel fine), in which case I'd do an EQ of your second sample without averaging the two sample measurements. (Or you could average the 3 good cups into one measurement)
And/or you could send yours to Oratory, who lives in Austria - are you Europe or USA or elsewhere? Sorry, of course, it's in your profile - you live in Canada! Well USA is closer, doesn't Crinacle live over there, well and Resolve (I think!).....so yes maybe not to Oratory then.....but if no-one on your continent wants to measure them, then you could still send them to Oratory, he's accepted headphones from the USA before & elsewhere.
Out of respect for DCA and Drop I'm going to refrain from publishing it, because this stuff often gets taken out of context, but I will say that it was definitely audible in the lower frequencies beyond the acceptable range. I have somewhat of a nuanced position on this - and not everyone agrees - but when it comes to channel matching, in my mind it's kind of a pass/fail situation. Either it's within an acceptable range (or close enough to where there generally wouldn't be any audible issues let's say), or it's not. In a case where it's not within an acceptable range, I'd rather just ask the manufacturer to send another unit, because there's always a chance with any manufacturer that it was just bad luck. I've even had this happen with brands that are known for their impeccably tight QC. Now with that said, if multiple samples show this behavior then that's a problem, or if maybe they tell you "that's within spec", then yeah I'd probably note that haha. But so far there haven't been many bad cases of that.
It sounds like I'll do an EQ of the average of the two samples then. But just to be clear before I do that, did one of the channels in your first sample match the 2nd sample frequency response quite accurately in contrast to the other channel? If yes, then I'll just do an EQ of the 2nd sample as that would likely be closer to the truth.
The other channel did not, but... Why not just try an EQ for both and see which you prefer?
Why do an eq of hradphones you don't own averaging 2 measurements that are quite different, one of which may be a bad sample? You can't validate it.
Ah, ok, thanks for the information. In that case there's not really any reason to believe one headphone sample is more correct than the other, in which case an average is more representative. Obviously the more samples you measure then the average becomes more representative of the headphone as seen in the wild, but even two headphones measured is better than one!
I might do an EQ of the second sample too, as well as the average, so that people can try both (just in case the first sample was indeed a bad sample). I'll post it up when I'm done, I'll probably do it tomorrow.
I think this whole talk of "damping" is a bit obscure, and I'm not confident that it can be relied upon....however you can rely on the frequency response measurements which show some slightly disturbing unit to unit variation, especially at this price point....so if I were going to latch onto a negativity associated with this headphone then this would be it. We may need further measurements of different samples to really know how bad/good unit to unit variation truly is, but it's not a great start.
Well, it should also be noted that the Aeon shape and pad style has been known to give rise to seal issues which in turn might show as varied FR between cups on the same unit and also possibly different units. So I'm not sold on the "you can rely on FR measurements" line either.
Seal issues would effect the bass, but not the 800Hz-4000Hz area which is where we are seeing the most difference in the measurements. The bad channel matching of the first sample might be caused by seal issues as Resolve pointed out he could notice differences in the bass areas, but we'd probably need to see the left & right actual frequency response measurements of sample #1 to come to some more definitive conclusions. Either way, I'm a bit disappointed in what we've seen reported in the unit to unit variation as well as the driver matching....otherwise it seemed like it was a promising headphone. We need to reserve a little bit of judgement though as only 2 units measured and the second one had good channel matching which doesn't really seem like an accident! I'm gonna try to reserve judgement, I'll just do the EQ's I promised tomorrow for the average of the two as well as a seperate one for the second sample, then owners can choose one or the other until more units are measured & published on the internet (be it Crinacle/Amir/Oratory/Resolve).
I'm glad you've found a profile that sounds more accurate/better to you. I think it makes sense what you say, because the Sample #2 EQ keeps the most energy in the 2kHz+ zone as well as boosting the bass less, so all things being equal it would sound less muffled - whether or not that means it's more accurate & closer to faithful reproduction of the Harman Curve in the case of your particular unit is not too possible to say. However, on average if there was too much energy above 2kHz and not enough bass then it would sound too bright & harsh, and if you're not experiencing that with the Sample #2 EQ then there's a good chance that your headphone is closer to the frequency response of Sample #2, which would fit with my hunch that Sample #2 is the more representative measurement of any Closed X headphone out there in the wild (Sample #1 seemed a little faulty in my view). If you can be parted from your headphone for a few weeks (month+/-) then send it off to be measured by Oratory to be sure, or maybe Amir would measure it, or Crinacle, (Resolve didn't respond to you, it's probably out of his remit to become a source for measuring headphones direct from the community).
