Blake
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- Joined
- Mar 1, 2021
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I'm baffled that the Harman curve is so controversial. For me, its use as a baseline has revolutionized my approach to listening to headphones. While I generally like the curve, I find it a shade bright and tend to adjust the higher frequencies downward. This has resulted in the most pleasing sound I've ever gotten. I couldn't have done that without that reference point.
Pre-Harman was like adjusting the color on my TV set in the 1980s with no instructions or reference. "Okay, flesh tones are maybe a bit green still, but I think that's as close as I'm getting." I would try to get a rough idea of what headphones sound like from reviews, maybe seeing frequency response graphs without fully understanding how that would translate to the sound in my ears. Maybe I would find a subjective opinion on how it sounds compared to a common headphone, typically the HD 600 or 650/6XX, which was a looser form of reference. I would typically listen to headphones without EQ, but if I did apply any, it would be more or less blindly, just trying to get a feel for what adjustments were agreeable, rarely hitting on something I was happy with. ("Flesh tones look right, but now the sky is purple.")
Post-Harman is like having a modern TV with color calibration equipment. I can get the color as close as possible to an agreed-upon reference, and then adjust further if I still prefer, say, a brighter image with cooler tones. Generally I do that by loading oratory1990's settings and adjusting from there. But now I'm adjusting from a known reference (more or less), making my adjustments much more predictable to me.
So, while I don't exactly prefer the Harman curve, I am very grateful for it. It's a baseline, not a requirement.
Pre-Harman was like adjusting the color on my TV set in the 1980s with no instructions or reference. "Okay, flesh tones are maybe a bit green still, but I think that's as close as I'm getting." I would try to get a rough idea of what headphones sound like from reviews, maybe seeing frequency response graphs without fully understanding how that would translate to the sound in my ears. Maybe I would find a subjective opinion on how it sounds compared to a common headphone, typically the HD 600 or 650/6XX, which was a looser form of reference. I would typically listen to headphones without EQ, but if I did apply any, it would be more or less blindly, just trying to get a feel for what adjustments were agreeable, rarely hitting on something I was happy with. ("Flesh tones look right, but now the sky is purple.")
Post-Harman is like having a modern TV with color calibration equipment. I can get the color as close as possible to an agreed-upon reference, and then adjust further if I still prefer, say, a brighter image with cooler tones. Generally I do that by loading oratory1990's settings and adjusting from there. But now I'm adjusting from a known reference (more or less), making my adjustments much more predictable to me.
So, while I don't exactly prefer the Harman curve, I am very grateful for it. It's a baseline, not a requirement.