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Objectively measured/designed headphones?

Jimbob54

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I have heard that Elear with Clear pads are virtually identical to Elex
da6d16bf68422e435b59ca33f81e787f067ebd03.png


Too bad they are $190 :eek:

One can always boost the highs with the Elear using the Dekoni elite velour pads
https://dekoniaudio.com/so-you-want-some-focal-measurements-with-the-dekoni-audio-ear-pads/

Yes, I have heard that too. But like you say , I aint paying that for pads. Also, Elear are showing as only a shade under the Clear for price - so the pad swap would make them dearer than the Clear Pro.

I might have to bite the bullet.
 
D

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I have been a very satisfied owner of NAD HP50's for a few years. I believe they have been discontinued. My pair were getting a bit beaten up (I haven't taken great care of them) and the ear pads were starting to deteriorate. A local electronics chain had them on a clearance sale. I happily bought another pair for $80 Canadian Dollars. In the meantime, I ordered a new set of earpads online and replaced them on my original pair. I now have a back up pair of headphones in storage.

Very nice sounding headphones. They do not not require amplification. I primarily listen plugged in to my Pixel 2 XL (via dongle) or directly plugged in to my chromebook.
 

raistlin65

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Yes, I have heard that too. But like you say , I aint paying that for pads. Also, Elear are showing as only a shade under the Clear for price - so the pad swap would make them dearer than the Clear Pro.

I might have to bite the bullet.

I was lucky. I got a factory refurbished/factory warrantied Elear pair for $379. And I wanted them over the Elex, as I wanted the slightly bassier signature.
 

gorman

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I have been a very satisfied owner of NAD HP50's for a few years. I believe they have been discontinued. My pair were getting a bit beaten up (I haven't taken great care of them) and the ear pads were starting to deteriorate. A local electronics chain had them on a clearance sale. I happily bought another pair for $80 Canadian Dollars. In the meantime, I ordered a new set of earpads online and replaced them on my original pair. I now have a back up pair of headphones in storage.
Which earpads did you get? Could you link to them?

Also, regarding Oratory's settings not being the end all be all, I agree. On the other hand, though, I could not believe my ears for what they did to my old DT880. And I'm 100% positive I can not trust my ears to get better results. So I trust somebody else that clearly knows what he's doing and I'm happy enjoying the music I like, like I've never before.
 
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Robbo99999

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I don't know if the pads are identical. They appeared to be at least nearly identical. They were a huge improvement over the deteriorated originals. They are comfortable and the headphones sound very good. I didn't bother measuring them.
 

Robbo99999

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I don't know if the pads are identical. They appeared to be at least nearly identical. They were a huge improvement over the deteriorated originals. They are comfortable and the headphones sound very good. I didn't bother measuring them.
Yeah, I'm sure they're better than the deteriorated originals, especially if the original pads were no longer making a seal. I think it'll be a few years until I need new pads on my HP50 as I only bought them in May or June or something.
 

SpaceMonkey

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Yeah, I'm sure they're better than the deteriorated originals, especially if the original pads were no longer making a seal. I think it'll be a few years until I need new pads on my HP50 as I only bought them in May or June or something.
Pads on HP50 go like in a heartbeat. Pleather there is rubbish. Mine started flaking very quickly. So just rubbed off pleather and washed off the rest of rubbish, left only inside (no flakes there and i think it is best to keep it for more bass response). Not the most aesthetic, but works very well, softer, and less stuff to worry about.
hp50.jpg
 

Robbo99999

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Pads on HP50 go like in a heartbeat. Pleather there is rubbish. Mine started flaking very quickly. So just rubbed off pleather and washed off the rest of rubbish, left only inside (no flakes there and i think it is best to keep it for more bass response). Not the most aesthetic, but works very well, softer, and less stuff to worry about. View attachment 83230
Thanks for the future tip. Yeah, I would imagine it's important to keep the inside surface of the cup with the pleather still on (like you have) because with the sound waves bouncing around in there I can imagine a smooth pleather surface reacting differently to a fabric surface when it comes to affecting the soundwaves. In terms of taking the pleather off the top of the pad where it contacts your head - I suppose if it makes a good seal still then perhaps it doesn't affect the sound signature much (if at all) (conjecture), because the sound waves aren't impacting at that point (because that's the part that's pressed against your head, so that's just about the seal).
 

KeithPhantom

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so the pad swap would make them dearer than the Clear Pro.
I digress. The Clear Pro is better than any Elear or Elex in my opinion.
 

Robbo99999

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Well, thank you very much! Now the pressure is on me to try and learn how to program the RME! :)
Hey HooStat, I did that EQ for you....so you can use the EQ on your RME, so that's 2 Shelf Filters and 5 other EQ Filters, that was all we were allowed to play with for this EQ. As I said, this is taking Oratory's measurement of your Neumann NDH20, and then I used REW and created filters for it manually. I think I got a pretty good result with the EQ in terms of it tracking the Harman Headphone Curve pretty darn close over the whole frequency range.....if I was allowed to use more filters then I would have smoothed out the frequency response of the bass & mids a little more, but for sure it's a smoother response with less overall peaks than what you have at stock without any EQ. So here's the result along with the filters in the following pic:
Neumann NDH20 EQ:
Neumann NDH 20 Oratory Measurement, My EQ.jpg

Don't forget to add in a Negative Preamp to the above filters, you'll need -5.1dB preamp.

You can see that Filter #1 is the Low Shelf Filter, and Filter #7 is the High Shelf Filter. If you feel like the headphones don't have enough air with the EQ then just don't use Filter #7. It'll be interesting to see what you think to the EQ, given what the EQ is doing in the bass & mids then I think your headphone will be less muddy and have greater clarity, but just have a listen & see what you think.

The blue line is the Harman Headphone Curve. The "highlighted" line in red (most visible) is the frequency response after EQ. The faint red line that you can barely see (in the back ground) is the original frequency response of the headphone. And finally the turquoise coloured "area lines" is showing the "filters effect". But the one I mentioned already, the "highlighted" line in red is the most important as that's showing the final Frequency Response of the headphone after applying the EQ.

And the following is a pic of the Neumann NDH20 EQ in Equaliser APO, so you can see the EQ curve in the Analysis Panel at the bottom of that pic....you can see that the EQ curve is very smooth as I didn't use high Q filters, so I think that's a positive attribute that the EQ curve is so smooth.....in my experience smooth EQ curves sound better, and I think it's accepted knowledge too (less ringing & other artifacts I think):
Neumann NDH 20 Equaliser APO.jpg


EDIT: double check your inputted settings in your RME against the filters I've listed here......in my experience it's so easy to do a typo whilst reading or entering the filters which will end up with an incorrect filter curve, so I'm kinda paranoid and triple check my filters I've entered to make sure I didn't do a typo, lol!
 
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D

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Yeah, I'm sure they're better than the deteriorated originals, especially if the original pads were no longer making a seal. I think it'll be a few years until I need new pads on my HP50 as I only bought them in May or June or something.
Sorry I am a bit late in posting this. Here are the replacement earpads:
 

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HooStat

HooStat

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Hey HooStat, I did that EQ for you....so you can use the EQ on your RME, so that's 2 Shelf Filters and 5 other EQ Filters, that was all we were allowed to play with for this EQ. As I said, this is taking Oratory's measurement of your Neumann NDH20, and then I used REW and created filters for it manually. I think I got a pretty good result with the EQ in terms of it tracking the Harman Headphone Curve pretty darn close over the whole frequency range.....if I was allowed to use more filters then I would have smoothed out the frequency response of the bass & mids a little more, but for sure it's a smoother response with less overall peaks than what you have at stock without any EQ. So here's the result along with the filters in the following pic:
Neumann NDH20 EQ:
View attachment 83752
Don't forget to add in a Negative Preamp to the above filters, you'll need -5.1dB preamp.

You can see that Filter #1 is the Low Shelf Filter, and Filter #7 is the High Shelf Filter. If you feel like the headphones don't have enough air with the EQ then just don't use Filter #7. It'll be interesting to see what you think to the EQ, given what the EQ is doing in the bass & mids then I think your headphone will be less muddy and have greater clarity, but just have a listen & see what you think.

The blue line is the Harman Headphone Curve. The "highlighted" line in red (most visible) is the frequency response after EQ. The faint red line that you can barely see (in the back ground) is the original frequency response of the headphone. And finally the turquoise coloured "area lines" is showing the "filters effect". But the one I mentioned already, the "highlighted" line in red is the most important as that's showing the final Frequency Response of the headphone after applying the EQ.

And the following is a pic of the Neumann NDH20 EQ in Equaliser APO, so you can see the EQ curve in the Analysis Panel at the bottom of that pic....you can see that the EQ curve is very smooth as I didn't use high Q filters, so I think that's a positive attribute that the EQ curve is so smooth.....in my experience smooth EQ curves sound better, and I think it's accepted knowledge too (less ringing & other artifacts I think):
View attachment 83754

EDIT: double check your inputted settings in your RME against the filters I've listed here......in my experience it's so easy to do a typo whilst reading or entering the filters which will end up with an incorrect filter curve, so I'm kinda paranoid and triple check my filters I've entered to make sure I didn't do a typo, lol!

I have just played around with this a bit as I try and configure the RME to use this as one of its presets, so I can switch back and forth. So far, it sounds great. Thank you so much!
 

Robbo99999

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Sorry I am a bit late in posting this. Here are the replacement earpads:
Ah, thanks. They look a little different from the stock pads when I look at my HP50 now, they look a little thicker, plus they have a different "seam design on the inside of the pads - as in they don't have any seam on the inside.....so it looks to me like they might react a little differently with the headphone than the stock pads. Are the stock pads really expensive or something, I've not looked into it?
I have just played around with this a bit as I try and configure the RME to use this as one of its presets, so I can switch back and forth. So far, it sounds great. Thank you so much!
Excellent, glad it made an improvement, if you want any help tweaking it to a taste of your choice, eg more bass or whatever, then let me know and I can adjust some of the filters for you. Most often, it's deemed perfectly acceptable to the people that created the Harman Curve that changing bass level is a proper & right thing to do with headphones, their research showed bass level was largely down to preference.
 

100rounddrum

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AKG K540. Nice elevated harsh upper-mids, recessed low-mids, boosted mid and sub-bass, and a nice, peaky emphasized upper-treble.

Follows the Harman curve closely.
 

Robbo99999

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AKG K540. Nice elevated harsh upper-mids, recessed low-mids, boosted mid and sub-bass, and a nice, peaky emphasized upper-treble.

Follows the Harman curve closely.
I don't really know anything about the K540, but the Harman Curve doesn't have harsh upper-mids, recessed low-mids, nor a peaky emphasised upper-treble. The whole idea of the Headphone Harman Curve is that it is a headphone version of the speaker Harman Curve which is simply a downward sloping frequency response with a slight bass boost from around 105Hz, so both Harman Curves (headphone & speaker) are flat/neutral in nature in terms of perceived tonality with a touch of bass boost below 105Hz. If the Headphone Harman Curve sounds wrong to you it's most likely because your own head & ear anatomy is quite different from that of the average population, which would make headphones sound quite different to you than the "average population" (which can be quite normal). Another reason for why you might not like the Headphone Harman Curve is perhaps because for whatever reason you don't like the speaker Harman Curve, so by extension you wouldn't like the Headphone Harman Curve......it's probably the first one though, your head & ear anatomy is probably quite different to average.

(Or if I've misinterpreted your post & you do indeed like the Headphone Harman Curve, then I think maybe you're a bit confused about how to interpret the Headphone Harman Curve frequency response, for instance this one)
HD600 Oratory.jpg


EDIT: Ask me some questions, or say where you're at in terms with what I posted, and then we can see what you're getting at?
 
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100rounddrum

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I don't really know anything about the K540, but the Harman Curve doesn't have harsh upper-mids, recessed low-mids, nor a peaky emphasised upper-treble. The whole idea of the Headphone Harman Curve is that it is a headphone version of the speaker Harman Curve which is simply a downward sloping frequency response with a slight bass boost from around 105Hz, so both Harman Curves (headphone & speaker) are flat/neutral in nature in terms of perceived tonality with a touch of bass boost below 105Hz. If the Headphone Harman Curve sounds wrong to you it's most likely because your own head & ear anatomy is quite different from that of the average population, which would make headphones sound quite different to you than the "average population" (which can be quite normal). Another reason for why you might not like the Headphone Harman Curve is perhaps because for whatever reason you don't like the speaker Harman Curve, so by extension you wouldn't like the Headphone Harman Curve......it's probably the first one though, your head & ear anatomy is probably quite different to average.

(Or if I've misinterpreted your post & you do indeed like the Headphone Harman Curve, then I think maybe you're a bit confused about how to interpret the Headphone Harman Curve frequency response, for instance this one)
View attachment 96168

EDIT: Ask me some questions, or say where you're at in terms with what I posted, and then we can see what you're getting at?
Well I got a few Harman tuned headphones and IEMs in the past.

K540, Philips SHE3590 IEMs, Blon BL-03 IEMs, NAD Viso HP50, Ostry KC06a.

They pretty much all sounded like each other in terms of fr response, some had more refinement than others, but the balance was the same, as I described in my previous post. Except for the NAD, which had a smooth upper-treble, but still was too emphasized in the upper-mids.

It could be that my ears are different from average, I don’t know. But, I also have the HD650, and even though it’s upper-mids are slightly emphasized, it’s slight, and not intrusive at all due to the low distortion.

You need very low distortion to pull such a fr curve off correctly in my experience. In practise, most transducers can’t do that.

Edit: Also, how can you say that such a huge peak on that graph is anywhere near perceptually neutral?

The B&K curve, is far closer to perceptual neutral than the Harman Curve. Our human ears are sensitive to 3 - 5khz, so a downsloping response in that area, comes off as neutral to our own ears.
 
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