The Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality- What Do Listeners Prefer?

[sweetchaos]

Today, @Sean Olive had posted a new article he's written about the "Harman Target Curve".

Title:
"The Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality- What Do Listeners Prefer?"

The Perception and Measurement of Headphone Sound Quality- What Do Listeners Prefer? - Sean E. Olive

acousticstoday.org

Publication:
Acoustics Today

Date:
Spring 2022

I'm reposting this for visibility, since this deserves it's own thread.
Discuss!

 

[Merkurio]

I remember see this posted in the oratory’s subreddit about two months ago.

A very good summary of the Dr. Olive research, indeed.

 

[sweetchaos]

I remember see this posted in the oratory’s subreddit about two months ago.

Thanks. I found the link.

 

[dresler]

Good to see this posted here. I hope people will read this article. It clears up a lot of the misconceptions people tend to have about Harman.

One thing I find interesting is that no trained listeners preferred the 'less bass is better' variant, which is the opposite of what you often see claimed (e.g. "Harman is bass-boosted to appeal to untrained listeners"). This may simply be due to the low sample size (n=130?), though.

 

[posvibes]

Thanks for link @sweetchaos , I wonder if it is possible that the less bass protagonists (predominately female) may be making such a judgement, and here I go out on a real limb with no no proof at all just an inkling, that more bass can be associated with aggression for instance? Music is such a trigger for any number of seamless physical and mental responses outside of time and space well beyond the music being played.

 

[Robbo99999]

I had a quick skim through that article, is there anything new included in there that hasn't already been published? It seemed to be a recap of some of their previous work, so nothing new?

 

[Madlop26]

Great article, some thoughts:
"The preferred target curve for IE headphones is almost identical to those for the AE and OE targets, except it has an additional 4 dB of bass (Olive et al., 2016)"
Using a modified 4 dB bass boosted Harman curve when testing IEMs would be more appropriate?

"Although the study established that listeners, on average, preferred Harman target, it had not explored whether segment or classes of listeners exist on similarities in their headphone preferences and what those sound quality features or profiles are."
Very important point for me and I suspect for the audiophile industry, the study showed that differences in age and sex exists, certainly, preferences of the group of older males is the one the industry would like to know.

 

[MCH]

Just curious: Is it known what was the proportion on women in the trained listeners group referred in table 1?