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Harman preference curve for headphones - am I the only one that doesn't like this curve?

So it's a preference of a preference which tries to mimic something which it isn't and changed true time. Not very convincing, I hope you would agree. Only thing I agree is that I would try to boost speakers a bit at 30 Hz up to 60~70 in falling down manner and only if driver can take it. Wouldn't tame it down before 8 KHz and only a little if they feel bright. I even prefer slight boots in mids. Now the hedaphones are entirely different thing superior when it comes to lows reproduction (because energy there fades fast and distance makes a big difference). So why would I want them to mimic speakers (especially if they can get all the way down to 20 Hz)? This is a big question for both parties (Harman and Fostex - Foster alike) all do they "prefer" very different "preferred" curve they try to do the sama with hedaphones. For me old raw diffuse field (study dating back to 80's) have much more sense preference aside and letting drivers do what they can.
The Harman target lives of a debunked myth that headphones/IEM's need 6db extra bass to mimic the output of a Speaker. But like you said 90% of every Speaker have a -12.8db roll off under 65Hz which something headphones don't have a issue with like the ER4SR/DT880. So in a way the ER4SR & DT880 will sound like a Speaker with a woofer, The HT is just that a preference tuning I find the 3 ~ 4db boost on the ER4XR more than enough assuming I cut the 190Hz(Q 1.6) area by -1.9db.



I am actualy taking about below 200Hz content in the male voice. it just sounds so unatural. and spoken human is the best test you can have, since it is the sound we most know how it should sound.

I've noticed that too doing a 190Hz cut of -2db helps or do a 55 ~ 79Hz Low shelf since sub bass doesn't get in the way like mid to upper bass does.
 
@2M2B the other mentioned party (Old Japanese) keeps insisting on the roll of at 65~70 Hz even when drivers are perfectly capable of doing it on 0 dB level (Fostex planars for example) even they do rest good in my book at least.
 
In that region to me it's more about response time resonance. Harman actually have a drop there and boost is up to 150 (where specter is always hottest). But a drop of 2 dB + bost of 3 below is 5 dB which is more than enough to mask anything in the area from 200 all the way up to 1 KHz where its 0+3.

the masking wouldn't go up to 1Khz. here is a test I created for the 200-400Hz masking of a bass boost: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ixing-engineers-only.26450/page-4#post-913782
 
@dasdoing I agree, masking is to strong word, interfering with bass impulse response would be a better one.
 
I think when you are young you are basicly "midrange deaf", cause you focus on the bass. the older you get the more you percieve the boost as unatural.
o a sidenote, I don't think hearing loss above 10Khz has any relevance. content there doesn't contribuite to the overall impression. when you low-pass music at 10Khz it wont get less bright. what we percive as brightness is below that
 
I think when you are young you are basicly "midrange deaf", cause you focus on the bass. the older you get the more you percieve the boost as unatural.
o a sidenote, I don't think hearing loss above 10Khz has any relevance. content there doesn't contribuite to the overall impression. when you low-pass music at 10Khz it wont get less bright. what we percive as brightness is below that
I think it's other way around mid range is where most of information will always remain and the bass boost and in less extent mids is a try to compensate for aging. Or maybe I am wrong. Of course its not Scientifically experimental approved (nor dismissed).
Also I don't agree about side note. Content above 8 or 12.5 KHz do influence spartal quality perception but we can do very little about either hedaphone drivers or the fact that it's a more severe loss there and that we cannot compensate for, and there for it doesn't make any sense trying (until technically something changes fundamentally).
That's only my humble opinion.
 
afaik the bass boost is manly preference of younger people
Another problem is that I know people of our age who like youngsters had that preference and a permanent hearing demage later it's not that I can say they didn't exaggerated it.
 
Another problem is that I know people of our age who like youngsters had that preference and a permanent hearing demage later it's not that I can say they didn't exaggerated it.

while there exist hearing loss in the low range, it is not very comon. it's called reverse-slope hearing loss and they say it's one out of every 12,000 people with hearing loss
 
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@dasdoing I meant more on conductive hearing loss but I understand statement regarding perfect hearing, reading about pediatric audiology and looking at audiograms right now.
 
Try the 2013 Harman Curve, the blue one in the first pic of this post - in fact this is the curve that most accurately mimics an anechoic flat speaker in a listening room as it is a direct translation of the Harman Curve for speakers into what would be measured at the eardrum of a dummy head within that room, there is no extra bass added onto the 2013 Curve. I know this because in REW software I applied the downwards tilt of the Harman Speaker Curve to the baseline dummy head measurement of in-room flat EQ'd speakers (tracing the graphs of the Harman research), and this directly equalled the 2013 Headphone Harman Curve - so the 2013 Headphone Harman Curve is the most neutral headphone curve you could use if you agree with the downwards tilt & shape of the Harman Curve for speakers which is very similar to how an anechoic flat speaker would behave in a room.

View attachment 170289

Basically, the blue line in the above graph is the same thing as the black line in the following graph (which is the Harman speaker curve, black line in following graph):
View attachment 170290

EDIT: if you've already got a Harman Curve EQ'd headphone, eg you're using an Oratory EQ, then you can use the EqualiserAPO config file attached to the end of this post to convert your Oratory EQ (2018 Harman Curve) to the 2013 Harman Curve, obviously you'd still keep your Oratory EQ activated, but you'd activate the attached config file too, which does the conversion process:

That's interesting.

I usually drop the bass shelf down by about -3.5 dB compared to the ASR curves in reviews, which ends up being close to the 2013 curve.
 
I don't have any valid research data. Its not my preference, for me bass boosted under 1 KHz over the midrange destroy part of information in mids and I definitely don't use it. If you have more valid research data (proper done with at least intermediate number of samples) I would like to see it. Please don't bring one done on employees (no one saine will approve that). I am not claiming that people don't like it like that just want to try and found out why. I agree it's a convenient mid ground (Harman preference headphone curve) for those who do and those who don't but personally I don't like to EQ it (headphones) when I am doing any serious work (mixing - mastering) so it doesn't work for that regarding me.
We have published several papers on headphone and loudspeakers that show that in-room loudspeaker and headphone target curves with flat bass contours below 1kHz are not preferred by most listeners whether they are Harman employees or not, trained or untrained( see https://www.aes.org/e-lib/online/search.cfm?type=elib)

The graph below taken from (https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17500) shows the results from a study where 238 listeners from four countries rated 4 headphones. HP1 is the Harman Target (2015) and HP2 is a headphone with flat bass. HP3 also has flat bass but also less energy at the ear canal region @ 3 kHz. Three of the listening groups included external listeners-- recording engineering/mastering students from Canada Harris College, USA Citrus College and Loyola Marymount University-- all preferred the HP1 (Harman Target ) over that flat bass headphones HP2 and HP3. These recording engineering students tastes were no different than those of the untrained Harman listeners.

I am a trained classical musician and formally trained Tonmeister and I do not prefer loudspeakers with a flat in-room response or headphones with flat bass below 100 Hz. The people who tend to like flat bass headphones are disproportionately represented by females and older listeners who are more likely to have hearing loss. Less bass and more treble tends to compensate for hearing loss making voices more intelligible

Whether listeners are from Harman are not is really irrelevant because all of the listening tests are conducted double-blind and listeners are unaware of the products brands and models being tested. Also, there is 25+ years of data showing Harman listeners' sound quality tastes are representative of external listeners tested outside Harman. The main factor influencing how they rate loudspeakers and headphones is whether they are trained or not. While both trained and untrained listeners tend to have similar tastes, the trained listeners are more discriminating and repeatable as the graph below indicates.

Contrary to what you say, many "saine" (sic ) people accept the results of studies done using Harman Listeners including audio scientists and engineers who peer review our papers for publication in scientific journals.


1638828265054.png
 
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afaik the bass boost is manly preference of younger people
Here is a study where 249 listeners were asked to adjust the bass and treble level of a headphone equalized to match a flat in-room target curve of loudspeaker. The graph shows the settings for different age groups. Younger listeners liked more bass and treble than older listeners-- but the average differences are within 1-2 dB. The oldest listeners liked more treble than the other groups, and less bass.

All of the listeners on average adjusted the bass up and the treble down. A flat in-room response is not the target for a loudspeaker or a headphone. You also notice that there is about an 8 dB delta between the bass and treble levels which a close approximation to the preferred 1/dB per octave downward slope of the preferred in-room target response of a loudspeaker





1638830104071.png
 
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Is that a 9919 paper?
That would be the future.. Have not yet learned to time travel but if I could it would save a lot of time and money conducting research today.
2015
 
So it's a preference of a preference which tries to mimic something which it isn't and changed true time. Not very convincing, I hope you would agree. Only thing I agree is that I would try to boost speakers a bit at 30 Hz up to 60~70 in falling down manner and only if driver can take it. Wouldn't tame it down before 8 KHz and only a little if they feel bright. I even prefer slight boots in mids. Now the hedaphones are entirely different thing superior when it comes to lows reproduction (because energy there fades fast and distance makes a big difference). So why would I want them to mimic speakers (especially if they can get all the way down to 20 Hz)? This is a big question for both parties (Harman and Fostex - Foster alike) all do they "prefer" very different "preferred" curve they try to do the sama with hedaphones. For me old raw diffuse field (study dating back to 80's) have much more sense preference aside and letting drivers do what they can.
View attachment 170325
DIffuse field sound curve dates back to research done in the 1980s in Germany. You realize it was based on mimicking the response of a loudspeaker measured in a diffuse field. That is how they measured it. Put a listener or a dummy head in a reverberation chamber and match the response at the ear either by using a probe microphone inside the ear, or a subjective loudness matching exercise where noise is played in 1/3-octave bands in both the loudspeaker and the headphone and listeners adjust level for equal loudness. The resulting curve represents the sound power of the loudspeaker measured at the ear drum.

Several studies done by Lorho (2009), Fraunhofer (2012) and Harman (2013-2019) have since shown there are more preferred targets than DF. Instead of measuring the loudspeaker in a DF they are measured in a semi-reflective listening room as a starting point. Why? Because most recordings are not optimized for playback in reverberation chambers because most listeners don't listen in them but rather semi-reflective rooms with an average RT60 of 0. 4 s. There is a strong frontal direct sound component and some strong early reflection contributions from lateral and other directions -- not at all like a DF field where the arrivals at the listener are random and uniformly distributed in direction. The rooms tend to reinforce the bass below 200 Hz so the in-room response is not flat.

Since recordings are optimized through loudspeakers in a semi-reflective room, they sound best over headphones that emulate that response. And there are lots of experimental data support it.
 
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We have published several papers on headphone and loudspeakers that show that in-room loudspeaker and headphone target curves with flat bass contours below 1kHz are not preferred by most listeners whether they are Harman employees or not, trained or untrained( see https://www.aes.org/e-lib/online/search.cfm?type=elib)

The graph below taken from (https://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=17500) shows the results from a study where 238 listeners from four countries rated 4 headphones. HP1 is the Harman Target (2015) and HP2 is a headphone with flat bass. HP3 also has flat bass but also less energy at the ear canal gain region @ 3 kHz. Three of the listening groups included external listeners-- recording engineering/mastering students from Canada Harris College, USA Citrus College and Loyola Marymount University who both preferred the HP1 (Harman Target ) over HP2 and HP3 -- but having flat bass. No different than the untrained Harman listeners.

I am a trained classical musician and formally trained Tonmeister and I do not prefer loudspeakers with a flat in-room response or headphones with flat bass below 100 Hz. The people who tend to like flat bass headphones are disproportionately represented by females and older listeners who are more likely to have hearing loss. Less bass and more treble tends to compensate for hearing loss making voices more intelligible

Whether listeners are from Harman are not is really irrelevant because all of the listening tests are conducted double-blind and listeners are unaware of the products brands and models being tested. Also, there is 25+ years of data showing Harman listeners' sound quality tastes are representative of external listeners tested outside Harman. The main factor influencing how they rate loudspeakers and headphones is whether they are trained or not. While both trained and untrained listeners tend to have similar tastes, the trained listeners are more discriminating and repeatable as the graph below indicates.

Contrary to what you say, many "saine" (sic ) people accept the results of studies done using Harman Listeners including audio scientists and engineers who peer review our papers for publication in scientific journals.


View attachment 170730
Thanks for this, Dr. Olive. I'm going to keep this post as a reference for when these questions inevitably come up again. I appreciate the fact that you come back repeatedly (and patiently) to explain your research when questioned by those who have not taken the time to read and understand for themselves.
 
Thanks for this, Dr. Olive. I'm going to keep this post as a reference for when these questions inevitably come up again. I appreciate the fact that you come back repeatedly (and patiently) to explain your research when questioned by those who have not taken the time to read and understand for themselves.
Thanks. I appreciate you doing that. Then we can just point them to a FAQ for people who haven't bother to read the research and literature.
 
That would be the future.. Have not yet learned to time travel but if I could it would save a lot of time and money conducting research today.
2015
Very funny.
Screenshot_20211206-235857.png
Didn't reed 9382 so I won't talk about it until I do.
 
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