headphones with well-matched channels

[amogus]

Hi guys, is there any headphones which is nicely matched channels? After looking into it a bit, I found that 'generally' Beyerdynamic and Shure do the job well, while Audio Technica and Akg don't.

 

[staticV3]

Beyerdynamic does pretty poorly WRT frequency response consistency:


The HD800s is the gold standard AFAIK:


Though be aware that these graphs show overall unit variation, not strictly channel matching.

It's possible (though unlikely) for a headphone model to have terrible unit variation, but good channel matching.

That would require extensive binning from the manufacturer, which is surely more expensive than it would be to reduce manufacturing tolerances.

 

[Dunring]

Sennheiser driver matches their highest end headphones, but they were vague about specific models. Grado matches their 225 series to 1db and the 325+ models within .5db. I get a lot of headphones for the business and do basic channel balance testing for each. With a stereo mic set on a 90 degree spread, it's just good for spotting obvious defects sweeping frequencies. An amplifier with digital volume helps a lot, or a combo unit amp/DAC to have a baseline accurate setup.

 

[Mr Swing King]

Hifmen are usually very well matched. The same goes for most Sennheisers. That is my personal experience but also what I’ve witnessed looking at graphs the past 7-8 years.

 

[Postlan]

If you go to an ENT specialist and get tested, you'll quickly see that your ears have more of a frequency balance discrepancy between left and right compared to typical headphones.

If you really want to match the left and right channels accurately, you'll need to manually adjust the EQ while monitoring a sine wave separately for each side. Once you create a template for the differences between your ears, you can easily use it with any headphones, which is quite convenient.

 

[oratory1990]

It's possible (though unlikely) for a headphone model to have terrible unit variation, but good channel matching.

That would require extensive binning from the manufacturer, which is surely more expensive than it would be to reduce manufacturing tolerances.

This is actually not so uncommon.
The more unit variation is expected on a speaker level, the more likely the manufacturer will be to use IQC-data to match speakers, at least within their respective allocated batch.
As in: measure all speakers that plan to be used that day, and match them up. (Which means that theoretically there could be a better matching speaker in tomorrow's batch that would now be ignored and be matched with something else).
What constitutes "matched" is up to the manufacturer of course, but typically matching will be done to less than 1 dB.

Some manufacturers don't use matching at all and just rely on the fact that manufacturing tolerances for the speakers are so tight that any two speakers are always close enough together.

Of course, matching is typically done only on a speaker level, but there's other components in a headphone other than the speaker, which also affect the sound and hence will affect the channel matching (and unit variation).
Meaning that even if two speakers were matched to 0.01 dB, the end user could experience more than 0.01 dB of channel mismatch (e.g. due to the earpads not being 100% identical, or the damping foam in the earcup, ...)

 

[Cadillacofminds]

If you go to an ENT specialist and get tested, you'll quickly see that your ears have more of a frequency balance discrepancy between left and right compared to typical headphones.

Is there any possibility that the brain compensates for imbalances in hearing ability, throws out imbalances stemming from this, but is bothered by imbalances that are external?

 

[Cadillacofminds]

I don't know how to start a new thread for this, I am perplexed as to why there is so little discussion of this topic, I have JBL wireless phones on the way, I'm very worried about channel mismatching. These active headphones have left and right cups containing different components, why is there not more discussion of what mismatches are present and their audibility?

 

[staticV3]

I don't know how to start a new thread for this, I am perplexed as to why there is so little discussion of this topic, I have JBL wireless phones on the way, I'm very worried about channel mismatching. These active headphones have left and right cups containing different components, why is there not more discussion of what mismatches are present and their audibility?

In case it helps, the review website rtings measures frequency and phase mismatch between left and right channel.

Here's a table with every headphone they've measured this on, sorted best to worst:

Headphones Table Tool

www.rtings.com

 

[oratory1990]

I don't know how to start a new thread for this, I am perplexed as to why there is so little discussion of this topic, I have JBL wireless phones on the way, I'm very worried about channel mismatching. These active headphones have left and right cups containing different components, why is there not more discussion of what mismatches are present and their audibility?

Active headphones like that typically have a part that defines the back volume of the speaker, that part being separate from the earcup as seen from the outside.
That's done specifically so that left and right side have the same back volume.
And this also helps in the development of the headphone, as the acoustics can be designed separately from the electronics, and a change to the electronics doesn't affect the acoustic system.