Feelas
Senior Member
- Joined
- Nov 20, 2020
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The idea is pretty short I would like to propose an experiment, which would enlighten us on something I've been wondering for a while now. Maybe somebody has already bumped on scientific papers testing this one out? I don't have in-ear microphones available to run this myself.
One would wear in-ear microphones (with a fairly good attenuation to protect hearing) and use open-backed headphones. In a room with fair attentuation of outside sound, run the test with increasing loudness (maybe in 70-94dB range, no higher than 94dB peak) on only one driver (either left or right) and note down which one it was. Afterwards, see whether the other sides' microphone caught any signal apart from env. noise & microphones' own distortion.
Program material wouldn't matter very much, since it's just to note whether there was any considerable input on the other ear or not. I consider in-ear mics to be necessary since it's hard to block the ear canal well enough as not to hear anything on the channel being voiced.
I guess that establishing the possibility of cross-ear sound perception on the well-known open-backed constructions (K701, HD800, HD600, HD650, etc.) would be an interesting experiment to run, even if the possible sound level would turn out outright to be too low for a stereo situation to matter (being masked by the signal for the proper ear). The question that bothers me is whether the leakage from the other ear contribute to enhanced soundstage perception in open-backed designs.
Anybody wants to run this one & publish the resultant WAV (maybe spectrum), even just for the kicks?
One would wear in-ear microphones (with a fairly good attenuation to protect hearing) and use open-backed headphones. In a room with fair attentuation of outside sound, run the test with increasing loudness (maybe in 70-94dB range, no higher than 94dB peak) on only one driver (either left or right) and note down which one it was. Afterwards, see whether the other sides' microphone caught any signal apart from env. noise & microphones' own distortion.
Program material wouldn't matter very much, since it's just to note whether there was any considerable input on the other ear or not. I consider in-ear mics to be necessary since it's hard to block the ear canal well enough as not to hear anything on the channel being voiced.
I guess that establishing the possibility of cross-ear sound perception on the well-known open-backed constructions (K701, HD800, HD600, HD650, etc.) would be an interesting experiment to run, even if the possible sound level would turn out outright to be too low for a stereo situation to matter (being masked by the signal for the proper ear). The question that bothers me is whether the leakage from the other ear contribute to enhanced soundstage perception in open-backed designs.
Anybody wants to run this one & publish the resultant WAV (maybe spectrum), even just for the kicks?
