Ear Canal Resonance for small ears

[Hasan Aydin]

i have noticed that with almost all my headphones i have to reduce by about 3db at 3.3khz. also with the sennheiser HD600 which is "perfectly" tuned in this range. My ears are very small and have a very small ear canal (said my ear doctor) almost like a child. Is it true that 3khz is more amplified with a smaller ear canal?

If so, would headphones such as the Clear MG be ideal for me?

 

[fpitas]

Maybe; but the more straightforward way to deal with it is EQ.

 

[Hasan Aydin]

The question would be, is it right to attenuate this frequency range just because I hear differently?

Suppose a song has been mastered by a mastering engineer with a normal ear canal on good mastering speakers with a linear frequency response.

If I now want to hear the song completely neutral like the mastering engineer heard it, should I leave the frequency response of neutral headphones (measured with a standardised system) unchanged or should I adjust the headphones to my ears to hear flat?

Maybe; but the more straightforward way to deal with it is EQ.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

The question would be, is it right to attenuate this frequency range just because I hear differently?

Suppose a song has been mastered by a mastering engineer with a normal ear canal on good mastering speakers with a linear frequency response.

If I now want to hear the song completely neutral like the mastering engineer heard it, should I leave the frequency response of neutral headphones (measured with a standardised system) unchanged or should I adjust the headphones to my ears to hear flat?

Imagine you are sitting next to the recording engineer and some plays a harpsichord. You may have a resonance that makes the A above middle C sound a bit louder than any other key, but the recording engineer doesn't have that same effect.

Now, this is THE most important thing for you to grasp - you have grown up with the A above middle C sounding a bit louder, so THIS is what natural harpsichords sound like to you. When you get home and play the recording, for the harpsichord to sound accurate, the the A above middle C MUST sound louder on the recording or it won't sound accurate to you.

 

[Hasan Aydin]

Imagine you are sitting next to the recording engineer and some plays a harpsichord. You may have a resonance that makes the A above middle C sound a bit louder than any other key, but the recording engineer doesn't have that same effect.

Now, this is THE most important thing for you to grasp - you have grown up with the A above middle C sounding a bit louder, so THIS is what natural harpsichords sound like to you. When you get home and play the recording, for the harpsichord to sound accurate, the the A above middle C MUST sound louder on the recording or it won't sound accurate to you.

But there is another side that confuses me. The headphones are tuned to a standardised dummy head. If you replace this dummy head with a head like mine, the measured frequency response of the room would be different and the headphones would have to be tuned differently.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

But there is another side that confuses me. The headphones are tuned to a standardised dummy head. If you replace this dummy head with a head like mine, the measured frequency response of the room would be different and the headphones would have to be tuned differently.

Why?

 

[Hasan Aydin]

Why?

because the headphones response has to match the measured room response (with the head) to sound neutral. Otherwise, I'm basically hearing through someone else's ears, right?

EDIT: keep in mind I am still using the standardised head for the headphone measurement, but my own head for the room measurement.

 

[sarumbear]

Is it true that 3khz is more amplified with a smaller ear canal?

Only an otolaryngologist who is working to an audiologist's tests can answer that.

 

[Tallulah]

Oratory's measurements of the HD 600 show a +2 dB deviation at 3300 Hz. RTings also show some boost around that zone. I'm using Oratory's EQ below 5 kHz and I enjoy it. After 5 kHz I only remove peaks by ear if needed (I don't need that with the HD 600), since other people's measurements don't correspond to my hearing.

 

[MRC01]

But there is another side that confuses me. The headphones are tuned to a standardised dummy head. If you replace this dummy head with a head like mine, the measured frequency response of the room would be different and the headphones would have to be tuned differently.

Why?

because the headphones response has to match the measured room response (with the head) to sound neutral. Otherwise, I'm basically hearing through someone else's ears, right?

@Hasan Aydin your intuition is correct. The "standard" HRTF curve is averaged over thousands of people and it has significant individual variation. Essentially this is a boost of 12 dB or more in the 2-5 kHz range but the curve is more complex than that. And there are different HRTF target curves. When we wear headphones, they play music directly into our ears which bypasses most of the HRTF effects, so their frequency response must reproduce the HRTF that they bypassed. This is one reason why people argue so much about which headphones sound best - everyone has a different HRTF and the world literally sounds different to them. And it's a key reason why headphones are different from speakers, which don't bypass our HRTF, so with a speaker, "flat" response is ideal for everyone.

Regarding your question about the ear canal, that is a contributing factor but there are many others: the distance between your ears, the size of your head, the density of your skull and nasal cavities, the size & shape of your ears, etc. all contribute to individual HRTF.

For example most headphones sound brighter than reality to me, especially ones that follow the Harman curve, so I know my personal HRTF has a smaller hump in the 2-5 kHz range than most other people. If I apply Oratory1990's EQ to headphones, they sound too bassy & too bright, like a teenager got his hands on a graphic equalizer and pumped up a "V" shaped curve. That's not to disparage his work, which brings a measure of objectivity and consistency to a subjective and inconsistent field, which is great.

 

[solderdude]

Add to that most people listen to sounds coming from the front of them and the position of the pinna plays a big role here.
Protruding ears have a different response to less less protruding ears.
The brain 'calibrates' to sounds perceived in every day life and the difference between protruding pinnae and less protruding pinnae compared to sounds coming from the sides (or a small pressure chamber) also differs and this is mostly in the 3-5kHz range (concha + pinna) where the ear canal is a bit lower and narrower in frequency and higher in amplitude.
So... some people might prefer a bit more (or less) in that area depending on how one's brain is calibrated (how one perceives every day sounds).

 

[MRC01]

Add to that most people listen to sounds coming from the front of them and the position of the pinna plays a big role here.
Protruding ears have a different response to less less protruding ears.
The brain 'calibrates' to sounds perceived in every day life and the difference between protruding pinnae and less protruding pinnae compared to sounds coming from the sides (or a small pressure chamber) also differs and this is mostly in the 3-5kHz range (concha + pinna) where the ear canal is a bit lower and narrower in frequency and higher in amplitude.
So... some people might prefer a bit more (or less) in that area depending on how one's brain is calibrated (how one perceives every day sounds).

Audeze says this is why they angle the earpads on the LCD series and they have a dip in that frequency range, compared to most other headphones. Perceptually, they are one of the few headphones that sounds darker than reality to me, so maybe they overcompensated for this.

 

[Hasan Aydin]

Thanks for the clarification!

I had always wondered why everyone talks about natural mids with headphones like HD600 or those with similar frequency response. This boost at 2-5khz was always fatiguing to me.

@solderdude recommended the Ollo S5X. Honestly I didn't like the highs and the lack of resolution, but the 6db lower gain around 3khz was perfect for my ears. That means from now on I will only look for headphones with similar frequency response. Maybe the LCD series…

 

[solderdude]

HD660S2, Audeze LCDX, HD800S, HD58X, Sundara, NDH30 come to mind.
OLLO S5X needs the felt/toilet paper mod when used for music enjoyment otherwise the treble just is too hot and not of excellent quality.

Not all ears confirm to specific standard fixtures, which by themselves only comply to specific standards which hopefully should be based on 'an average' ear. Too much confidence is put in certain test fixtures to represent 'reality' for all ears.

 

[Soandso]

From a study of 207 19-25 year old healthy adults: 1st 2 photos are of narrow ear canals (9% of cases); 3rd photo is intermediate proportioned ear canal (26% of cases, and statistically more common in females than males); and the last 2 photos are variants of broad ear canals (65% of cases).