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HD6XX bass

bobbooo

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Isn't that the 2014 video?

The other comment I posted references a 2019 article that Brett Butterworth wrote based upon a recent Olive presentation in Los Angeles. You'll want to look at that article which clearly shows there is an age difference.

Yes age seems to have a slight affect on bass preference when listeners were given EQ controls in the later study, but overall headphone preference doesn't seem to be affected. In any case there's no evidence of cultural differences playing a role, and I think the age effects could mostly be explained by HF hearing loss really.
 

bobbooo

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Thanks, but unless there are measurements of the LCD-2F using the exact same equipment it's almost impossible to make any useful comparisons. Even then, here's what Oratory has said about comparing CSD plots using the same equipment (and its his profession to measure headphones):
Two CSD measurements can not easily be compared due to the vast amount of variables (and nuisance variables) in such a plot. As shown by measuring one and the same headphone twice on the same setup - even those two measurements look drastically different.
Now imagine measuring two different headphones - of course the CSD plots would be different. But does that mean that they are showing different behaviour, or are you just seeing the inherent variation of CSD plots? Hard to know. Which is why they are rarely used.

Here are two CSD measurements of the HD800S, using identical equipment:
tFyYVYp.png


rtVCv79.png
 

MRC01

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Neither of them are the same as the HE4XX. Compare the professional measurements of the HE4XX I linked to above with the HE400i, the latter showing a larger average deviation and worse bass extension.
Ah, yes. Now I realize the HE4XX is a specific model, not a general reference to the 400 series.

However, my point remains the same. If anyone wants to hear what reference quality bass sounds like in a headphone, they need to listen to a good planar. In bass response, the best planars are better than the best dynamics.
 

raistlin65

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Yes age seems to have a slight affect on bass preference when listeners were given EQ controls in the later study, but overall headphone preference doesn't seem to be affected. In any case there's no evidence of cultural differences playing a role, and I think the age effects could mostly be explained by HF hearing loss really.

Maybe you might want to reflect on it a bit, as an hour ago you insisted there were no age differences. I would not call 2 to 3db less bass in the 21% group a "slight" effect on preference.
 

MRC01

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... Here are two CSD measurements of the HD800S, using identical equipment: ...
Those graphs are different, but I wouldn't call them drastically different. The key resonances are at the same frequencies, though their strengths are relatively different. And in both graphs the HD800's skull-tingling resonance at 6-7 kHz is the strongest one, which we know from experience to be correct.
 

solderdude

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Thanks, but unless there are measurements of the LCD-2F using the exact same equipment it's almost impossible to make any useful comparisons.

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...deze-lcd2c-measurements-and-impressions.5556/

= LCD2C though but these differences are known

besides I never mentioned CSD's.
On a flatplate the CSD's I took of the same headphone always look the same when repositioned, even carelessly, unless it has a totally different position of course.

LCD bass is quite different from hifiman bass.
 
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bobbooo

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an hour ago you insisted there were no age differences

Maybe you want to read what I wrote again:
This research suggests otherwise, showing that cultural and age differences have little affect on headphone preference

I never 'insisted' age has no affect, I said cultural and age differences taken as a whole have little affect specifically on headphone preference, not bass preference. And no, even if we're talking about bass, I do not consider a minority of people preferring 2-3dB less bass a big deviation from general Harman target preference. Finally, this group was only identified as "disproportionately female and older than 50", which is not specific enough evidence to conclude a definite (anti)correlation between age on its own and bass preference.
 
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bobbooo

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https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...deze-lcd2c-measurements-and-impressions.5556/

= LCD2C though but these differences are known

besides I never mentioned CSD's.
On a flatplate the CSD's I took of the same headphone always look the same when repositioned, even carelessly, unless it has a totally different position of course.

LCD bass is quite different from hifiman bass.

I think Oratory's point is, if repositioning a pair of headphones over a realistic artificial pinna (better approximating the human ear than a flatplate) as he uses can drastically change its CSD, yet repositioning headphones on your ears does not drastically change their sound, then CSD plots are not a very useful measure of sound differences between different headphones, as they are not even a very useful measure of sound differences after repositioning the same headphone.
 

A Surfer

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Those graphs are different, but I wouldn't call them drastically different. The key resonances are at the same frequencies, though their strengths are relatively different. And in both graphs the HD800's skull-tingling resonance at 6-7 kHz is the strongest one, which we know from experience to be correct.
I think the CSDs displayed were for the HD800S which had come along way towards solving that particular issue. I owned and loved the 800S driven both with great tubes or solid state and I have to say that even at pretty high playback volume across multiple genres I never found any resonance issue. I do completely agree with you, as an aside, that planar bass is typically better than dynamic drivers and I have owned some pretty renowned dynamics (TH900/600, D7000, Z1R, HD800S/700/650/600) and some nice planars (HE Edition X V2/560/400i, LCD 2F, ZMF Vibro).
 

A Surfer

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I think Oratory's point is, if repositioning a pair of headphones over a realistic artificial pinna (better approximating the human ear than a flatplate) as he uses can drastically change its CSD, yet repositioning headphones on your ears does not drastically change their sound, then CSD plots are not a very useful measure of sound differences between different headphones, as they are not even a very useful measure of sound differences after repositioning the same headphone.
I think that changing the headphone's position while listening does make a difference, but I am not sure if the difference while wearing effects things as much as changed positioning when on a measuring device. That would be extremely hard to quantify as we could only go by the subjective judgement of the person as to the effect position made on their listening impression.
 

bobbooo

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I think that changing the headphone's position while listening does make a difference, but I am not sure if the difference while wearing effects things as much as changed positioning when on a measuring device. That would be extremely hard to quantify as we could only go by the subjective judgement of the person as to the effect position made on their listening impression.

To be clear, this is the measurement equipment Oratory uses: https://www.gras.dk/products/ear-simulator-kit/product/737-43ag

It's specifically designed to deform like and mimic the acoustic properties of an average ear, so it is likely to react similarly to headphone repositioning on a real human ear.
 

garbulky

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This amp makes your HD6XX stand up with power.
The Emotiva Basx A-100 (with the jumpers engaged mode)
 
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raistlin65

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I never 'insisted' age has no affect, I said cultural and age differences taken as a whole have little affect specifically on headphone preference, not bass preference.

I'm sorry. I still don't see "taken as a whole" in that original statement of yours.

Moving on...

And no, even if we're talking about bass, I do not consider a minority of people preferring 2-3dB less bass a big deviation from general Harman target preference.

Actually, 1 out of 3 overall people prefered bass that is different from Harman target. I see 1 out of 3 people as significant.

Finally, this group was only identified as "disproportionately female and older than 50", which is not specific enough evidence to conclude a definite (anti)correlation between age on its own and bass preference.

The qualitative descriptions for each of the three groups has an age correlation as part of the description.
 

bobbooo

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I'm sorry. I still don't see "taken as a whole" in that original statement of yours.

Moving on...



Actually, 1 out of 3 overall people prefered bass that is different from Harman target. I see 1 out of 3 people as significant.



The qualitative descriptions for each of the three groups has an age correlation as part of the description.

You really should read the actual paper you're talking about instead of drawing rash conclusions from from a third-hand source - a blog post, that misrepresents a presentation, that's summarizing an AES paper. So let's look at the actual conclusion of the primary, instead of tertiary, source - the AES paper:

In this paper we conducted cluster analysis to identify different segments or classes of listeners based on their headphone sound preferences. The analysis included preference ratings of 130 listeners for 31 different models of AE/OE headphones reported in [1]. The demographics of the listener (age, gender and prior listener training) in each class were examined, as well as the acoustic features of the headphones preferred in each class. A summary of the three classes of listeners is given as follows:

Class 1: “Harman Target Lovers”
They make up the majority of listeners (64%) tested, and prefer neutral sounding headphones equalized to the Harman Target response curve. Membership includes an approximately equal balance of members across gender, age groups, and trained/untrained listeners. The exception is listeners over the age 50 who are more likely to be members of Class 3.


Class 2: “More Bass is Better”
This is the smallest class (15%) of listeners who prefer headphones with 3-6 dB more bass than the Target curve below 300 Hz. Members in this group are predominantly male, and include 30% of the trained listeners in our sample.


Class 3: “ Less Bass is Better”
The second largest class (21%) prefers headphones with 2-4 dB less bass than the Harman Target curve below 100 Hz. Membership is comprised entirely of untrained listeners, and predominantly female and older listeners (50+ years).


Due to there being three (not necessarily independent) demographics quantified in each class, it's simply not possible to come to firm conclusions about any possible correlation between age and preference. For example, it's plausible that older women are least likely to be trained listeners, and the primary causal factor in Class 3 is in fact being untrained, with age and gender being mostly correlative factors. The fact that this class is composed of 100% untrained listeners is also suggestive of this. It's notable too that Class 1 is not only the majority class, but incudes the widest range of demographics, suggesting it's the most generalizable over a wide range of people, as well as the most popular purely on numbers, both of which are important for a target response to be useful. Also notable is that the exception of over 50 years old is the age most people can only hear up to 12kHz, which is breaching frequencies in music that are fairly common, and so reducing bass may compensate for this perceived darkening of spectral tilt when listening to music. So hearing loss may be a hidden causal cofactor (possibly not only age-related hearing loss). Or maybe not. It's impossible to tell from this data. So no, this research does not show there's a big deviation from Harman target preference; it in fact suggests the majority of listeners from the widest range of demographics prefer it. Moving on...
 
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raistlin65

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You really should read the actual paper you're talking about instead of drawing rash conclusions from from a third-hand source - a blog post, that misrepresents a presentation, that's summarizing an AES paper. So let's look at the actual conclusion of the primary, instead of tertiary, source - the AES paper:

You can take it up with Butterworth if you feel his reporting of the conference is not valid. I'm satisfied with his reliability.

If you have ever been to conference presentations and then read the papers, you'd know that the presentation often imparts more information than the paper. Moreover, it is not correct to claim that the paper is the primary source for the presentation. The presentation is the primary source for the presentation.
 

solderdude

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I think Oratory's point is, if repositioning a pair of headphones over a realistic artificial pinna (better approximating the human ear than a flatplate) as he uses can drastically change its CSD, yet repositioning headphones on your ears does not drastically change their sound, then CSD plots are not a very useful measure of sound differences between different headphones, as they are not even a very useful measure of sound differences after repositioning the same headphone.

You can also read it differently. If repositioning headphones leads to different CSD's on HATS but is not audible yet repositioning on FP is not as measurable and not as audible then FP is closer to reality... ;)

Repositioning a headphone can be quite audible is my experience. It is headphone dependent though. Tyll's grey lines confirm this as well as my own measurements. About CSD and audibility. I consider 'ringing' in the 2-5kHz range quite benign as long as it is reasonably short lived. The reason I think this is the case is that the ear canal resonates as well and the brain takes this into account (ignores it).
Besides, the choice of used filters also has a huge impact on what the filters show.
Do I think CSD is worthless ? No, when something is 'wrong' you could see much longer than usual ringing. Only in those cases I can correlate CSD nasties with sound. In all other cases only with FR (which often peaks when there are resonances).
Remember, nearly all musical instruments have a decay by themselves as well. We are not listening to test tones but music and not listening with 'average' Pinnae but with different Pinnae to music mixed and recorded with different Pinnae and different monitoring gear and preferences than the listener.
 
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solderdude

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Don't connect it to your HP50 though. :p
 

bobbooo

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You can also read it differently. If repositioning headphones leads to different CSD's on HATS but is not audible yet repositioning on FP is not as measurable and not as audible then FP is closer to reality... ;)

Haha, there's no way it can be argued a flat plate is a better acoustic analogue to the human ear than the industry standard GRAS 43AG, and that's the most important thing to get right with headphone measurements.

Repositioning a headphone can be quite audible is my experience. It is headphone dependent though. Tyll's grey lines confirm this as well as my own measurements. About CSD and audibility. I consider 'ringing' in the 2-5kHz range quite benign as long as it is reasonably short lived. The reason I think this is the case is that the ear canal resonates as well and the brain takes this into account (ignores it).
Besides, the choice of used filters also has a huge impact on what the filters show.
Do I think CSD is worthless ? No, when something is 'wrong' you could see much longer than usual ringing. Only in those cases I can correlate CSD nasties with sound. In all other cases only with FR (which often peaks when there are resonances).
Remember, nearly all musical instruments have a decay by themselves as well. We are not listening to test tones but music and not listening with 'average' Pinnae but with different Pinnae to music mixed and recorded with different Pinnae and different monitoring gear and preferences than the listener.

I think the point is any differences in sound after repositioning can be explained by frequency response changes anyway, so CSD tells you nothing more there. In fact, if headphones are mostly minimum phase, the frequency response will encode all temporal behaviour anyway, so CSD is redundant. A possibly more useful plot would be CSD normalized to 0dB at t=0 to ignore frequently response differences, such as the ones Reference Audio Analyzer produce, but if the headphone is not minimum phase, an excess phase / group delay plot would likely be a better way to identify this behaviour.
 

maverickronin

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Haha, there's no way it can be argued a flat plate is a better acoustic analogue to the human ear than the industry standard GRAS 43AG, and that's the most important thing to get right with headphone measurements.

It's kind of pointless to go to all the trouble of constructing an "average" pinna only to have to come up with a transfer function to remove its effect...
 
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TankTop

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What I’m hearing, mostly Call of Duty is on deep bass explosions it sounds similar to a blown speaker. I’ve turned the volume down which helps but I suspect I don’t have enough power to control the speaker. And no, I haven’t blown them yet...
 
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