Susvara vs HE1000se (vs Stealth)

[tifune]

Some people continue to champion CSD plots, but they’re really hard to interpret, especially in isolation.

Can you elaborate on this a little? I've heard this a number of times, including from our host, yet the waterfalls continue to be published as part of most comprehensive reviews. For the hobbyist like myself, they're very easy to understand but if I'm being mislead or not fully grasping their gaps then of course I'm probably worse off than simply not having them.

Anecdotally, I haven't been keeping a spreadsheet or anything, but most well-measuring speakers that come to mind show a very clean plot. Kef R3, Revel Performa and Be series are a few I can immediately think of.

 

[Red@]

Can you elaborate on this a little? I've heard this a number of times, including from our host, yet the waterfalls continue to be published as part of most comprehensive reviews. For the hobbyist like myself, they're very easy to understand but if I'm being mislead or not fully grasping their gaps then of course I'm probably worse off than simply not having them.

Anecdotally, I haven't been keeping a spreadsheet or anything, but most well-measuring speakers that come to mind show a very clean plot. Kef R3, Revel Performa and Be series are a few I can immediately think of.

Csd for speakers makes a lot if sens; you are subject to positioning accuracy, vertically and horizontally.
headphones though are in your ears. And, I couldn’t stress this enough, any resonance or weirdness will systematically show in the FR anyway ( not necessarly true for speakers, cause depends where you sit).
for headphones, FR is a king parameter up to 8/9khz.

 

[tomtrp]

View attachment 164434

Yes, you are correct. Susvara is indeed poorly damped. And I dont like these ringing and those small peaks in the frequency response as well. For an ultra expensive headphone, the engineering is not close to perfect at all. But the effect of those small peaks in the frequency response is argubly not audible so combing with the low distortion, great spatial effect and the overall very good trend of frequency response(except for the 1-2khz dip), the experience is actually top notch as noted in DIY Audio Heaven's review.

 

[charleski]

Can you elaborate on this a little? I've heard this a number of times, including from our host, yet the waterfalls continue to be published as part of most comprehensive reviews. For the hobbyist like myself, they're very easy to understand but if I'm being mislead or not fully grasping their gaps then of course I'm probably worse off than simply not having them.

Anecdotally, I haven't been keeping a spreadsheet or anything, but most well-measuring speakers that come to mind show a very clean plot. Kef R3, Revel Performa and Be series are a few I can immediately think of.

I think the real problem is that the CSD is a 3-D plot and often hard to analyse from a single perspective. The physics involved means that they only really cover the top end of the range from around 1kHz on.

Here are a couple of examples of speaker CSDs from Stereophile. In both cases JA comments that they are 'clean':
Magico A5:

Estelon Forza:

Both show some ridges in the plot, but the decay is reasonably monotonic.

The Dynaudio Confidence 30 is described as "clean, though some very low-level hash is present in the treble. I suspect that the apparent ridges of low-level decayed energy that can be seen in the upper midrange are due to early reflections of the midrange unit's output."

It appears that between 1-2kHz there's a dip or valley in the decay just past 1.26msec followed by a boost, in other words the decay isn't completely monotonic. This may be undesirable. This behaviour might be easier to see if we looked at the second derivative of the data.

In comparison to all these the Focal Aria K2 936 looks almost perfect apart from the metal-dome tweeter resonance past 20kHz:

But ... does this mean anything? I'd be more worried about the slightly uneven lateral dispersion in this model.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

Yes, you are correct. Susvara is indeed poorly damped. And I dont like these ringing and those small peaks in the frequency response as well. For an ultra expensive headphone, the engineering is not close to perfect at all. But the effect of those small peaks in the frequency response is argubly not audible so combing with the low distortion, great spatial effect and the overall very good trend of frequency response(except for the 1-2khz dip), the experience is actually top notch as noted in DIY Audio Heaven's review.

I haven't heard susvara, but arya and ananda were beyond terrible and devoid of any midrange and treble resolution. My IEMs have 100x better special effects. I highly doubt Susvara is better.

 

[Georgrig]

I haven't heard susvara, but arya and ananda were beyond terrible and devoid of any midrange and treble resolution. My IEMs have 100x better special effects. I highly doubt Susvara is better.

‍ "special" effects.. Thanks for your worthless input.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

‍ "special" effects.. Thanks for your worthless input.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1217584220152815616

HIFIMAN planars can't even get #1 right...

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

People are taking the psychoacoustic illusion of how a headphone feels on their head too seriously. R is negative infinity for headphones.

 

[Georgrig]

People are taking the psychoacoustic illusion of how a headphone feels on their head too seriously. R is negative infinity for headphones.
View attachment 164589

You have no idea what you are talking about, right?

 

[Galliardist]

‍ "special" effects.. Thanks for your worthless input.

Possibly meant "spatial"? Not a great improvement, but still...

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

Possibly meant "spatial"? Not a great improvement, but still...

Oh yes, didn't see the typo. Spatial effects are often glamorized here, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

You have no idea what you are talking about, right?

Headphones operate in a pressure chamber. The only things you hear are the frequency response and distortion.

 

[GaryH]

Headphones operate in a pressure chamber.

Only partially. See this exchange with Oratory.

The only things you hear are the frequency response and distortion.

True, but in the more free-field conditions that occur at higher frequencies in headphones, the influence of pinna interactions and internal earcup reflections influence the frequency response reaching the ear drum.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

Only partially. See this exchange with Oratory.

True, but in the more free-field conditions that occur at higher frequencies in headphones, the influence of pinna interactions and internal earcup reflections influence the frequency response reaching the ear drum.

"Excursion (which is the source of sound pressure in pressure chamber conditions) therefore is constant below the resonance frequency, and drops at 12 dB/8ve abovethe resonance frequency."

I'm not claiming a headphone sounds the same at everyone's eardrum.

 

[GaryH]

"Excursion (which is the source of sound pressure in pressure chamber conditions) therefore is constant below the resonance frequency, and drops at 12 dB/8ve abovethe resonance frequency."
View attachment 164755

I didn't say headphones are 100% free-field, I said at higher frequencies the conditions are more lIke free-field, as Oratory says later in the exchange (the first paragraph is describing the lower frequencies in which pressure chamber conditions hold):

What happens is the sound gets emitted as a wave just as in free-field, but when the volume is smaller than the wavelength (meaning the distance the sound wave can travel before it is reflected), then the wave never fully propagates, because the same value is reached anywhere in that volume.

The higher the frequency becomes the more we then obverse more wave-like behaviour. When the frequency comes into the same dimensions as the volume of air, we see resonance modes arising (when integer multiples of the wavelength fit exactly into the volume, leading to standing waves).

With even higher frequencies, we then see the sound wave behave more and more like in free-field.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

behaving like free field does not mean it is in free field

 

[GaryH]

behaving like free field does not mean it is in free field

Again, I didn't say that. I said "more free-field conditions", which is equivalent to saying more like in free-field.

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

Again, I didn't say that. I said "more free-field conditions", which is equivalent to saying more like in free-field.

Even if diffuse sound isn't 0, it's close. That's why R is negative infinity in headphones.

 

[GaryH]

Even if diffuse sound isn't 0, it's close. That's why R is negative infinity in headphones.

I think you need to check your math...

 

[HRTF_Enthusiast]

I think you need to check your math...
that came directly from @oratory1990. Maybe I am misunderstanding him.

"there's no diffuse sound field in a headphone"

"R would be -inf"

"
that's one of the main differences between loudspeaker listening and headphone listening:
You're hearing absolutely zero influence of the room. No additional coloration by the reflections and reverberation of the room.

Which is also one of the factors that makes it difficult to home in on a target frequency response for headphones."