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Testing Methodology - Why do we seek preference curves?

Eddie_Vanjovi

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Jun 26, 2020
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Why don't we take a known linear sine sweep from 0 hz to 20'000 hz and record it in various simulated ear shapes and measure the frequency response graph?

For in-ear monitors, why then don't we then measure the frequency output in that same simulated ear from a IEM and compare the frequency response graphs?

Why don't we then take a complex song, take a snap shot every millisecond (frame) and compare it against a recording measured from the headphone and calculate the deviation over the length of the song for each frame?

Why don't we measure headphones like this? If the recording produces a unique sinewave, wouldn't the "correct" sounding headphone produce the exact same sine wave? For IEMs, obviously there is no acoustic interaction with the ear, so then some modulations would then need to be made to account for this. However, for everything else, why don't we do this as opposed to reference to some subjective preference curve?

I've noticed audio engineers do this, but no one else in the hobby.
 
For an example:

Why isn't this the standard as opposed to diffuse field/harman targets, harman simply being a preference curve?
 
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