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Yes, but the OP seems to be suggesting a headphone should measure *actual* fiat. Not perceptually flat /neutral.
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Flat/transparent amplifier but not speakers/IEMS/headphones
- Thread starter Haider
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Sgt. Ear Ache
Major Contributor
no I know...but I'm responding to the point about the HC having an added 4khz boost over what headphones normally have...unless I'm not understanding the point.
edit - yeah I think I missed the point fpitas was making. Actual flat tonality would probably be very dull...
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Sgt. Ear Ache
Major Contributor
The bass boost looks much closer to universal to me than a 4kz boost. Again though, I'm not talking relative to "flat." I'm talking about a boost relative to what headphones normally measure...which sort of re-enforces the idea that headphones that actually measured flat would probably sound pretty crappy.
Just to rotate back to the original post's question, yes in theory you could design a headphone that produced an essentially "flat" tonality and then EQ it to whatever you wanted. But the end result would be that most people would come up with an EQ setting that would look something like the HC...because that's how the HC was arrived at - by having people choose their preferred tonality and then measuring what they chose. Also, the implication that we "sneer" at colorful amps but we allow speakers to do whatever they want is pretty much false. We shoot for flat with speakers too right? The anechoic measurements show the frequency response of the speaker and if it's wildly off flat (the classic +/-3dbs from 20hz-20khz you might say) we "sneer" at them too. lol...
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I see your point, although bass boost for speakers or headphones is definitely by preference.
Sgt. Ear Ache
Major Contributor
yes true but that's a known factor with the HC. The HC gets it to an area that "most" (as in something like 66%) people like, and then you can play around with that bass shelf to fine tune it for yourself. Personally, I drop the bass shelf by a couple dbs (iirc) from the HC setting which I find slightly bass-heavy.
I haven't seen that, honestly. Amir compares headphones to the Harman Curve, and uses the Klippel curves for speakers. Can you show an example?
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Think you need to explain what colouring of sound means in the context of transducers then.
Yes, something is unclear.
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Yup. We can see such on measurements of enectronics.
I wasn't sure if this was a "Harman is bad" thread or something else.
I don't honestly know.
In any event, Amir judges speakers by how flat they are on-axis, among other things.
- Thread Starter
- #33
I'm not against the Harman curve but that changes the sound of the recording; it's no longer high fidelity to the source...
I think you're misunderstanding the whole process. The headphone response is influenced by the ear canal and pinnae.
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- #35
So to understand, that the Harman curve is to allow the headphone and ear to work together to give a true representation of the source?
Exactly. Having said that, everybody's ears are made a little different, and some people like more or less bass.
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Yes. Or at least to a place the majority would recognise as neutral and /or prefer. Allowances for personal preference of course, particularly in the bass.
No two peoples' ears the same but the theory is a Harman tuned headphone should sound close to good speakers in a well treated room. And good speakers in a good room should have a gentle downward slope at listening position. And as others have said, physics and anatomy conspire to make those targets hard to achieve in reality.
Caveat: in an anechoic environment, the same speaker will have a flat response. To see the true speaker response you need to somehow take the room out of the equation.
Sgt. Ear Ache
Major Contributor
yeah, but speakers that are flat in an anechoic room will pretty much always have a downward slope in a "normal" room...
Yes, they will. But I *think* the perception was that makes the speaker response flawed.
