Harman is working on a new IEM target curve

[solderdude]

Use real life sounds. Record accurately, reproduce so it sounds like what was recorded.
It's what recording engineers do every day. The reference is already there including the recording and playback system.
No room needed, no speakers needed.
Skipping that speakers in room stage completely.

What Jermo said is directly related to Harman research where speakers, headphones and IEMs are not perceived tonally the same when solely looking at EDRP measurements.
The input to the brain is not just the cochlea it seems.

 

[markanini]

Use real life sounds. Record accurately, reproduce so it sounds like what was recorded.
It's what recording engineers do every day. The reference is already there including the recording and playback system.
No room needed, no speakers needed.
Skipping that speakers in room stage completely.

What Jermo said is directly related to Harman research where speakers, headphones and IEMs are not perceived tonally the same when solely looking at EDRP measurements.
The input to the brain is not just the cochlea it seems.

This may sound intuitive, but in reality the amount of variables and uncertainties grow substantially. That's why the control room, where the content was mixed, is a better basis for target development.

 

[solderdude]

Why would uncertainties not be there in a control room where speaker directivity, acoustics, EQ and measurement microphones as well as positioning are variables ?
Is the Harman listening room the same as a studio control room ?
Control rooms can have different sizes, speaker distances etc.

In that case the Harman room makes more sense but limits any research to that room (at Harman) or someone else would have to build an exact copy.

No solution is perfect but ditching an intermediate step seems to be the logical thing to do.

 

[Yorkshire Mouth]

I’m just an uneducated, relative newcomer, but…

It does seem to me, having read all that’s said here at ASR, that THD and distortion from the electronic side of things generally makes little difference at the levels we see in most fairly decent kit, unless it’s well out of control.

Can people hear a difference in a blind A-B test? Yes, I’m sure they often can, but it’ll usually not be a huge difference, unless something’s badly broken.

I’m more interested in the level of speaker distortion that can be heard, as I suspect this has far more impact on sound quality.

I believe that, in his video tutorial on speaker reviews:

From c.45 minutes, indeed at just gone 47 minutes Amir says 50db is his reference simply because he has to have one. He’s far more ambiguous about what’s good and what isn’t than he is about other areas.

At what point can someone notice distortion? At what point will most of us notice the distortion in normal listening?

I feel these should be areas where we should be able to have a reference figure, even if only ballpark, but every time I read up on the issue there appear to be substantial differences of opinion.

 

[solderdude]

At what point can someone notice distortion? At what point will most of us notice the distortion in normal listening?

This largely depends on the type of distortion as well as the used music.
So one cannot name a single number but could assume that below a certain number, for a type of distortion, is most likely a safe value.

For DAC's amps and transducers different limits exist depending on the application it is used in.

Such are the difficulties with the word 'distortion'

 

[Da cynics]

"raw" performance

NFS for the headphones.

I totally agree.I wonder why we don’t go in this direction.

 

[solderdude]

NFS for speakers is also including a calculated target (an imaginary room).

RAW measurements on a standard fixture are basically that.
The problem is that it really does not say anything at all other than comparative.
For those plots to make any sense you need a target.
That one, by definition, will be an overly smoothed average based and needs to correlate with the reference sound.

 

[staticV3]

I have had custom made IEMs, for many years and wearing them at first is always an adjustment, the sound is vastly different, but you adjust.

FWIW, CIEMs are somewhat known for their often wonky frequency response, so I'm not surprised that you had such an experience.

At least to my ears, well tuned IEMs can have remarkably similar tonality to my speaker systems (with room correction).

In my experience, it's possible for IEMs to sound "right" from the start and for there to be no tonal adjustment period.

 

[markanini]

Why would uncertainties not be there in a control room where speaker directivity, acoustics, EQ and measurement microphones as well as positioning are variables ?
Is the Harman listening room the same as a studio control room ?
Control rooms can have different sizes, speaker distances etc.

In that case the Harman room makes more sense but limits any research to that room (at Harman) or someone else would have to build an exact copy.

No solution is perfect but ditching an intermediate step seems to be the logical thing to do.

There is no solution ditching intermediate steps. Live music is affected by positioning, of both the source and the listener, and in relation to the space which varies by venue. Everything combines in endless variables.

 

[solderdude]

Yes but when you record at the same spot as you listen to the original variables are less.
Accuracy will improve with rigor and numbers of tests under scientifically controlled conditions.

The varying conditions are always an issue. The biggest ones with IEMs are likely seal and insertion depth and the measurement gear's deviation with actual ear canals.

For that reason the current measurement standard is probably fine if you want repeatable results so it is easier to compare.
What needs to be resolved is the target and exactly that seems to be incorrect for Harman IE target for the majority of people.

That's the only part that, most likely if done correctly, will be adjusted.
As 5128 is finicky and it is not easy to get consistent results most likely that fixture may not be most suited for that job despite being more anatomically correct.

 

[oratory1990]

Those otoacoustic emissions being analyzed may be as simple as the result of the shape of the outer ear and tympanic membrane, which the GRAS might replicate since the microphone membrane isn’t at the surface right?

Otoacoustic emissions are generated in the inner ear (cochlea).
No electroacoustic ear simulator contains an inner ear.

 

[GXAlan]

Otoacoustic emissions are generated in the inner ear (cochlea).
No electroacoustic ear simulator contains an inner ear.

Right. But it would be a negative control to show that it is measuring true otoacoustic emissions and not just the fit of the canal and resonances against other stuff in the external ear.

You would expect the simulator calibrated and disabled mode to be identical and then the mode calibrated to Amir’s ear to be different.

But if the plastic model generates something different from disabled, we get into the question of disabled being intentionally made worse so that the calibrated version sounds better even though it’s not actually calibrated (much) to your own ear.

 

[alumnicesar]

I wonder how long we'll have to wait

 

[solderdude]

That might depend how serious they take the IEM curve (this time).
A lot of the research has already been done but mostly for speakers, perception and over-ear headphones.

 

[Guess it]

Otoacoustic emissions are generated in the inner ear (cochlea).
No electroacoustic ear simulator contains an inner ear.

they also just don't actually simulate much of the body at all or any muscles that control your hearing or any of the filtering done by the brain it's still pretty rudimentary science done for profit off other corporations. they are just doing business selling metrological authority not honestly seeking answers or solutions or even problems! their efforts always stem from the same root incentive.

 

[Guess it]

We maintain a pretty tight ship on that discord - which of course will never prevent folks from being taken out of context, but that's why we ban people for doing precisely that.

If you'd like to join and see for yourself, please consider this a formal invitation, we could always use more folks interested in an earnest conversation about audio science.

sorry that's a very strange way of phrasing things could you elaborate? a tight ship that requires blocking any leaks yet also an inviting earnest possibly authentic community trying to reach out?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning just thought you might want a light read while you consider your growing history of involving threads to weave some narrative before you get carried away with the why.

 

[Guess it]

I don't see how accusations of racism aimed at members of this forum, fostering an "us and them" attitude, or exposing some of that Discord conversation publicly actually helps anybody.

By all means, let's be robust in matters of audio, of course. But there is no need to be more than that.

a common tactic by brigading groups is to throw out chum, some weak evidence against themselves that is very attackable but carries no weight so before any defense of actual malicious tact they exhaust you and misdirect your attention about their potential harm. you're a school and they're a fishing boat trying to extract.
mythos or stories are how many economists talk about money which is a notion that comes to our lineage from ancient greece where a ship like a person would be named but an object and name doesn't create full experiential meaning without a story where it can relate and so it goes on journeys. money circulates like a ship navigates returning to a mother port or the circle back to the treasury after receiving a number like a name tragically with the exact same intention as colonialism and other abuses enabled by myth where obviously you get to shape the story people believe and buy separate of the real journey or maybe any aspect of reality at ally! why not skip the whole weight of a king and gold just to punch in digits because both still attempt to break down a narrative into chunks that can be manipulated into an acceptable order and keep people from seeing the whole story which would include their exploitation which is so often kept under denial by the weight of being unwilling to admit your own easing from the abuses of the other as it's cyclic.
I hope you all can see the many stories told around here without really needing an account of the journey or proof of the ships provenance and so on, both relating to physical practice and social pratcice.

 

[Guess it]

a nice read for everyone is the cleaned up gentlepersons guide which is very handy for paying attention to corporate interests trying to prune progress for the sake of the profitability of their narrative authority over practical competition like doing science which can be really brutal when they callously apply it to consumers and critics reviewing their process as a source of what help they need rather than someone else seeking the same profit https://safenetforum.org/t/the-gentleperson-s-guide-to-forum-spies/30059

btw fwiw these are all just extensions of greek rhetoric where agents would be planted in colonial outposts that attracted all the locals to their promise of democracy only to help build it into an unassailable city extracting from the local land backed by an army for the elites in the motherland who ensured and promised positions in the colonies to these plants. things sure have come a long way.

 

[markanini]

a nice read for everyone is the cleaned up gentlepersons guide which is very handy for paying attention to corporate interests trying to prune progress for the sake of the profitability of their narrative authority over practical competition like doing science which can be really brutal when they callously apply it to consumers and critics reviewing their process as a source of what help they need rather than someone else seeking the same profit https://safenetforum.org/t/the-gentleperson-s-guide-to-forum-spies/30059

The BK5128 thread that was closed was rife with this one, but not only:

18. Ignore proof presented, demand impossible proofs.

This is perhaps a variant of the ‘play dumb’ rule. Regardless of what material may be presented by an opponent in public forums, claim the material irrelevant and demand proof that is impossible for the opponent to come by (it may exist, but not be at his disposal)

 

[IAtaman]

a common tactic by brigading groups is to throw out chum, some weak evidence against themselves that is very attackable but carries no weight so before any defense of actual malicious tact they exhaust you and misdirect your attention about their potential harm. you're a school and they're a fishing boat trying to extract.
mythos or stories are how many economists talk about money which is a notion that comes to our lineage from ancient greece where a ship like a person would be named but an object and name doesn't create full experiential meaning without a story where it can relate and so it goes on journeys. money circulates like a ship navigates after receiving a number like a name tragically with the exact same intention as colonialism and other abuses enabled by myth where obviously you get to shape the story people believe and buy separate of the real journey or maybe any reality! why not skip the whole weight of a king and gold just to punch in digits because both still attempt to break down a narrative into chunks that can be manipulated into an acceptable order and keep people from seeing the whole story which would include their exploitation which is so often kept under denial by the weight of being unwilling to admit your own easing from the abuses of the other as it's cyclic.
I hope you all can see the many stories told around here without really needing an account of the journey or proof of the ships provenance and so on, both relating to physical practice and social pratcice.

Yes I agree, exploitation of IEM users is one of the major problems of our generation.