• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Poll: Should We Get Into Testing Headphones or Speakers?

Should ASR get into testing speakers, headphones, or neither for now.

  • Speakers

    Votes: 145 56.0%
  • Headphones

    Votes: 77 29.7%
  • Neither. Can look again in a year or two.

    Votes: 35 13.5%
  • Never

    Votes: 2 0.8%

  • Total voters
    259

Wombat

Master Contributor
Joined
Nov 5, 2017
Messages
6,722
Likes
6,459
Location
Australia
My guess is that the probably younger and less experienced people are headphone listeners and the old fogeys who have been playing around with hifi for decades mainly listen to speakers.
The young ones are much more active on forums and have far more questions due, perhaps, to their lack of experience. This leads to far more posts about headphones and headphone amps than speakers and power amps giving a false impression about the overall interests of the forum membership.
I have had headphones for almost 50 years now but never listen to them by preference, only when speaker listening is impossible or intrusive, which for me nowadays is rarely.
I listen to speakers several hours per day.
I never could listen to music when working, either I was totally distracted by the music and giving my business poor value for my time or I was concentrating so much on what I was doing I didn't remember hearing mosty of the music, either way, pointless for me!


Ditto.

Those who don't have 'ownership' of listening space tend not to use loudspeakers above a low volume.

Cars and headphones release listeners from those constraints, particularly younger folk - to escape the calls to 'turn it down' or 'what's that crap'?

Hey it happened when I was young but affordable hifi headphone gear and car sound systems were but a future dream.
 
Last edited:
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
My guess is that the probably younger and less experienced people are headphone listeners and the old fogeys who have been playing around with hifi for decades mainly listen to speakers.
Our membership age is much lower than typical audio forums. That led me to think we are more headphone focused than other places.

Still, let's get the data from the members at least. I have a new poll for that: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/are-you-a-headphone-or-speaker-guy.7956/
 

solderdude

Grand Contributor
Joined
Jul 21, 2018
Messages
15,891
Likes
35,912
Location
The Neitherlands
Doesn't Solderdude measure headphones? Maybe Amir and he could help each other for the good of their respective communities?

Our measurement systems will differ substantially.
Amir's will be very expensive and off the shelf, mine was extremely cheap and had to be designed and tweaked from the ground up including a mic pre-amp for the (now obsolete and unobtanium) Panasonic WM61A capsules (the ones found everywhere are fakes and/or alternatives)
I would rather think that the measurements could complement each other because of differences in methods.
Could start some interesting threads this way to explain found differences.
Looking forward to this.
 

Erik

Active Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2018
Messages
137
Likes
271
We already have a great source of headphone measurements, which are compatible with the Harman Target and provide corresponding EQ filter settings. I don't see any reason for Amir to start doing the same thing. Especially since he is less expericed in that, doesn't have access to such large amount of headphones and needs to purchase the equipment.

www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/9o2f5n/psa_oratory1990s_list_of_eq_presets/
www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index

Measurements of $50,000 Sennheiser Orpheus. Pretty close to the Harman Target.

1561978955700.png
 

tential

Active Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2018
Messages
187
Likes
133
Just due to the backlog of current amps/dacs I have to say neither.
Example, there's a post saying you'd review the es100 and its been months. You also regularly say you have too much gear waiting for review.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
As far as speakers ... how do you really measure them unless in a anechoic chamber? Even there ... how do you position them ... do you toe them in? For instance, Magnepans: do you have the tweeters on the inside or outside? Are they 3 feet apart like nearfields or are they 7 or even 20 feet apart for using them for mixing a film in surround?
The Klippel measurement system is able to extract anechoic measurements from in-room measurements. The measurements are performed hemispherically, i.e. all around the speaker so we will have full data. Finally, the system measures near-field but solves the wave equation and hence, is able to extrapolate to far-field.
 
  • Like
Reactions: sm5

svart-hvitt

Major Contributor
Joined
Aug 31, 2017
Messages
2,375
Likes
1,253
The Klippel measurement system is able to extract anechoic measurements from in-room measurements. The measurements are performed hemispherically, i.e. all around the speaker so we will have full data. Finally, the system measures near-field but solves the wave equation and hence, is able to extrapolate to far-field.

The Klippel sounds like a dream.

So how come Apple built a multimillion dollar anechoic chamber (for the Pod etc.)?

Do we have measurements that compare Klippel to a high quality SOTA anechoic chamber?
 

DDF

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 31, 2018
Messages
617
Likes
1,355
This is an interesting criticism of DF, which I don't believe I've seen before, but it seems a bit out of alignment with ex. Theile's arguments for the diffuse field target. Could you point me in the direction of some citations/research on this? In principle, it doesn't seem to me that time windowing should necessarily prove problematic here, as it was the lack of directional HRTF cues was the purpose of diffuse field (since, if you follow Theile's line, they inevitably lead to timbral errors), but I may be missing something.

I could but I hope I dont need to. Please forgive me for now, its Canada Day celebration today and then Im preparing to travel for work, but consider that a longer term DF calibration in room doesnt leave allowance for the precedence effect to more heavily weight early arrival in perceived tonal balance. In terms of interpretation, please note that I was specifically referring to DF calibration in the users end room.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
Do we have measurements that compare Klippel to a high quality SOTA anechoic chamber?
I have one sample:

Klippel.png


The red line is Harman's anechoic chamber. You can see that it curls up as we get down to 30 Hz or so as even their room is not anechoic at that frequency.

The black like is Klippel Near Field Scanner (NFS). As you see, it slopes down perfectly down to 20 Hz.

The reference checks I have done so far all point to the system working well.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
The Klippel sounds like a dream.

So how come Apple built a multimillion dollar anechoic chamber (for the Pod etc.)?
Anechoic chamber has other uses such as listening tests, measurements of people sitting there, research into room reflections, HRTF for headphones, etc.

My understanding is that many of the largest companies now own this system. Most likely that includes Apple. The rooms they have were built prior to Klippel NFS coming to market.
 

Hugo9000

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Jul 21, 2018
Messages
574
Likes
1,749
Location
U.S.A. | Слава Україні
Apple might have been hoping to unseat Microsoft as reigning champion of the world's anechoic chambers haha! I think Microsoft still has the best, although I think the USAF recently spent millions of dollars renovating their own chamber. One of the things the military is researching is sound localization abilities by humans, including how many simultaneous sounds can be accurately localized. They also test lots of instrumentation in anechoic chambers. (Sadly, the USAF has a huge array of Bose speakers in their chamber lmao. I'd rather visit the one in Copenhagen with the KEF LS50 array, personally. :p :D )

Google also has an anechoic chamber, probably in an attempt to create a working version of Professor X's chamber as Google continues their evil plots to know and control everything everyone is doing all over the planet (and probably beyond). Remember their old slogan, "Don't be evil" haha those days are long gone if they were ever sincere in the first place! :D
 

Jim777

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
May 28, 2019
Messages
124
Likes
203
Location
Greater Boston
We already have a great source of headphone measurements, which are compatible with the Harman Target and provide corresponding EQ filter settings. I don't see any reason for Amir to start doing the same thing. Especially since he is less expericed in that, doesn't have access to such large amount of headphones and needs to purchase the equipment.

www.reddit.com/r/headphones/comments/9o2f5n/psa_oratory1990s_list_of_eq_presets/
www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/wiki/index

Measurements of $50,000 Sennheiser Orpheus. Pretty close to the Harman Target.
I tried the HD650 10-band EQ and it's definitely a huge improvement. Thanks for sharing this! I'll probably want to do more headphone listening now :)
 

Mad_Economist

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Audio Company
Joined
Nov 29, 2017
Messages
543
Likes
1,618
I could but I hope I dont need to. Please forgive me for now, its Canada Day celebration today and then Im preparing to travel for work, but consider that a longer term DF calibration in room doesnt leave allowance for the precedence effect to more heavily weight early arrival in perceived tonal balance. In terms of interpretation, please note that I was specifically referring to DF calibration in the users end room.

Ahh, I see what you're saying - if you're referring to an in-room measurement as DF, that makes sense to me, I had interpreted that as referring to DF-HRTF following Theile or Møller or similar, which I would not expect to be impacted by time windowing. For what it's worth, I would be interested in seeing the impacts on in-room HRTF from increasing weights on earlier arriving sound if you do happen to have citations handy - that sounds interesting, and it'd be neat to compare to ex. Hammershøi & Møller's variant design goals:
hammershøi møller design goals.jpg


Thanks for the clarification, and happy Canada Day!
 
  • Like
Reactions: DDF

Juhazi

Major Contributor
Joined
Sep 15, 2018
Messages
1,717
Likes
2,897
Location
Finland
I just read the Klippel papers about the NFS https://www.klippel.de/products/rd-system/modules/nfs-near-field-scanner.html

I was left uninformed of how it handles a typical floor-standing 3-way loudspeaker with double bass drivers... Some extra calculations for multiway speakers were mentioned briefly a couple of times. This requires more than smple math, because each radiator has high- or lowpass and certain phase characteristics and physical separation, which make troubles to calclulate summed response...
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
I was left uninformed of how it handles a typical floor-standing 3-way loudspeaker with double bass drivers...
I agree that the way they state it, it sounds like you have to measure one driver at a time which is a no-go for hifi speakers. But then as I post, they have measured the Revel F208 that is 3-way with dual woofers. I will have to ask them more about this.
 

JJB70

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 17, 2018
Messages
2,905
Likes
6,148
Location
Singapore
I think that it would be interesting to see objective evaluations of the more prosaic speakers that dominate the market now, such as BT speakers and sound bars.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
So a bit of an update on this.

I decided that I should be the one to take a chance on buying or not buying the speaker measurement system instead of asking you all to fund it in part or all in advance.

But there is a major setback. The actual cost of the Klippel system is higher than I thought. It is basically a US $100,000 system. With any kind of reasonable discount, it is still massive amount of money. If I reviewed 100 speakers at that list price, each one would cost $1000 to test if we amortize the cost that way. Just shipping and handling alone clocks at $1,500 from Germany. This stuff is just not made for hobbyist use.

We also have the cost of purchasing and/or shipping speakers to add to the basic system.

The high cost means that if I don't do this, no one else will either. There are days that I think I should bite the bullet and spend the huge dollars to do this for the good of the industry and consumers alike. And then I do the math per above and I think it makes no sense for someone like me to step up alone in such a big way.

So what do we/I do? Any words of wisdom?
 

SIY

Grand Contributor
Technical Expert
Joined
Apr 6, 2018
Messages
10,383
Likes
24,749
Location
Alfred, NY
Give me the $100k and I’ll make up impressive looking graphs that will say anything you like.
 

RayDunzl

Grand Contributor
Central Scrutinizer
Joined
Mar 9, 2016
Messages
13,202
Likes
16,982
Location
Riverview FL
Buy/sell 100,000sh of MSFT.

When it goes up/down $1, sell/buy.

Repeat, scaled, as necessary for individual speaker purchases and shipping.

1566152274932.png


$1,300,000 up for grabs right there at $1 a pop
 
Last edited:
Top Bottom