TRUTHEAR x Crinacle Zero IEM Review

[GaryH]

What Sean is right about is that the tuning is only valid for one volume range. But that's true for everything in audio because we are always dealing with human perception. The volumes I use for testing are representative of what most people use when they listen to music.

He's not only saying that:

Sine tones are good for identifying buzzes and rattles... and perhaps peaks/dips within a local frequency region where loudness sensitivity is constant.

So he's saying they're only maybe useful in terms of judging transducer frequency response within a frequency range that is flat on your equal loudness contour (otherwise you would not be able to differentiate between a change in loudness due to a change in your ear's sensitivity with frequency, and a change in loudness due to the frequency response of the transducer):

That's not much of the contour at all (or it requires 'zooming in' until it's locally flat i.e. a sweep with a very small range of frequencies). Regardless, as he says there are much better ways to identify good spectral balance and resonances:

But there are more efficient ways to determine if the headphone has a smooth response/accurate spectral balance.In order of efficiency:
1) Measure it
2) listen to broadband pink noise -- the most sensitive signal for detecting low/medium/high Q resonances.

If you are trained you can identify the frequencies at which the resonances/anti-resonances occur. The more it rings or whistles the higher the Q

Also, his comment about how using a tone sweep would lead to corrections that look like an equal loudness curve, so use music instead - what do you think music is? The result would be the same. It all has to pass through our ears.

There's a perceptual difference between listening to a sine sweep of one frequency after another, which we do not intuitively know how it should sound because no natural sounds are anything like this, and we cannot differentiate between dips in our equal loudness contour and transducer resonances this way; and broadband sound like music composed of many different tones simultaneously, which we do know how it should sound, and for which our brain intuitively 'filters out' our equal loudness contour when listening for how 'correct' it sounds.

 

[RandomEar]

You shouldn't EQ frequency response by equal loudness:
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/rrive8/_/hqgtd7n

The argument that you're "not listening to sweeps, you're listening to music" is essentially the same argument self-proclaimed audiophiles use against testing THD with 1 kHz test tones. It's a non-argument from my perspective. I also haven't used sweeps yet, since those don't easily allow you to tune specific frequencies. But they are certainly useful to identify resonances and other quirks.

Nonetheless, it's debatable, whether all tones should have an equal loudness when played through IEMs. I would guess that for most people, a perfectly flat speaker in a well treated room will not sound equally loud at all frequencies. Therefore, this tuning method may be flawed. Nonetheless, I was surprised by how quickly I got better results than by tuning with music - which I tried extensively a couple of weeks ago.

All in all, it's without a doubt more difficult to tune IEMs than than tuning speakers, because you can't just use a measuring microphone and go "yeah, there's 3 dB missing at X kHz". For IEM tuning, you have to rely mostly on your ears, which makes it much harder to objectively quantify the results.

 

[bunkbail]

Does it sound like neutral speakers in a room?

It sounds good but as soon as there are vocals in the song, they'll start ear raping me. I can't listen to them more than a few mins before I start getting headaches.

What's your reference?

HD660S or EQ'd ZX110 (thewas' EQ), both of these two sound the most tonally correct (closest to real life) to my ears. My other headphones, IEMs and speakers all sound colored in some ways.

 

[Chromatischism]

It sounds good but as soon as there are vocals in the song, they'll start ear raping me. I can't listen to them more than a few mins before I start getting headaches.


HD660S or EQ'd ZX110 (thewas' EQ), both of these two sound the most tonally correct (closest to real life) to my ears. My other headphones, IEMs and speakers all sound colored in some ways.

Thanks. You're probably even more sensitive than me, even after bringing down the highs 3-4 dB.

So I can test, what song really bothers you? I'd like to hear it.

 

[Robbo99999]

Still not using the same coupler (the GRAS RA0402) as Harman used though (the RA0045), which as seen in the post by @staticV3 you quoted above, can produce significant differences in the measurements. The point is neither of them use the coupler Harman used when developing the in-ear target (Crinacle using a fake RA0045 clone), so measurements from both will result in a less accurate approximation of the Truthear's (or any IEM's) deviation from the Harman target than measurements using a (genuine) RA0045, as Oratory does.

Well, that really is something!

 

[bunkbail]

So I can test, what song really bothers you? I'd like to hear it.

Pretty much anything rock or something that has loud woman vocals. If you need some examples, now I'm listening to Minami - Crying for Rain (woman vocal) and Steve Vai - For the Love of God (electric guitar solo). I've been listening to these 2 tracks a lot for the past few weeks, on my HD660S they sounded great without any harshness but on the Zero IEMs they sounded harsh and headache inducing even after secs of playback. Both are driven directly from Apple USB-C dongle on my PC.

 

[airs]

Linsoul Tripowin cable arrived today. It feels a little better than stock, but underwhelming overall - not as nice as say, the Fiio FD5 stock cable. Going to send it back and slum it with the stock cable.

 

[Robbo99999]

@Robbo99999 an expensive rig does not guarantee good measurements. See here, here, here

What's wrong with the Meizu Hifi USB-C Headphone Adapter review and the Hifiman Ananda Review? I understand your 1st link.

 

[Robbo99999]

The tone sweep was invaluable for identifying resonances. All of the things I knocked down coincide with all of my music testing, they just helped me get to that point much faster and more accurately. Everything is confirmed, including additional tweaking, referencing against my neutral speakers in a room and deep understanding of the music I'm using for testing. My "tuning forks".

What Sean is right about is that the tuning is only valid for one volume range. But that's true for everything in audio because we are always dealing with human perception. The volumes I use for testing are representative of what most people use when they listen to music.

You can't assume that all frequencies should sound the same volume level, in fact they won't because our ears have natural sensitivities to certain frequency ranges and are less sensitive in other areas, so if you EQ for all your sine tones to be the same perceived loudness then that will be a long way off neutral. You'd end up with an extremely V-shaped frequency response.

 

[Chromatischism]

You can't assume that all frequencies should sound the same volume level, in fact they won't because our ears have natural sensitivities to certain frequency ranges and are less sensitive in other areas, so if you EQ for all your sine tones to be the same perceived loudness then that will be a long way off neutral. You'd end up with an extremely V-shaped frequency response.

Except I didn't, so something about that theory isn't right.

 

[DrRobert]

You can't assume that all frequencies should sound the same volume level, in fact they won't because our ears have natural sensitivities to certain frequency ranges and are less sensitive in other areas, so if you EQ for all your sine tones to be the same perceived loudness then that will be a long way off neutral. You'd end up with an extremely V-shaped frequency response.

Is there any sweep that is calibrated so that when we tune our EQ to make the sweep sound the same at all frequency levels, we roughly end up with the Harmann target?

 

[Doodski]

if you EQ for all your sine tones to be the same perceived loudness then that will be a long way off neutral.

I used to EQ via a Technics SH-8055 EQ using pink noise with each band set to the same level and the result was erm... midrangy sounding. It sounded pretty aggressive.

 

[Chromatischism]

The only area I intentionally left "not the same" loudness was where it's perceived to drop off under 40 Hz, which is where the curve shoots up on the equal loudness contour. It would be silly to follow that, and I know that area is sometimes brought up in the studio on content so I don't want to double up the compensation. Leveling the rest of the range however resulted in reducing the V-shape of the stock tuning and brought neutral-sounding music. I didn't find any change to have a negative impact on music. The correlation between the two was very positive. I stopped when music sounded like it was 95% "there", and I wasn't sure what to do next because the changes became so small.

 

[smcc]

Pretty much anything rock or something that has loud woman vocals. If you need some examples, now I'm listening to Minami - Crying for Rain (woman vocal) and Steve Vai - For the Love of God (electric guitar solo). I've been listening to these 2 tracks a lot for the past few weeks, on my HD660S they sounded great without any harshness but on the Zero IEMs they sounded harsh and headache inducing even after secs of playback. Both are driven directly from Apple USB-C dongle on my PC.

Just listened to that Via track and I would say it sounds a bit harsh as mix on my 310s...good example though, that makes my 310s sound like the Zeros, if that makes any sense...

Sorry I would have liked to try that track on the Zeros, but I'm not putting them back in my ears for the moment as I ended up blocking up one of them with all the messing...managed to clear it with some makeshift syringe...now I remember why I stopped using IEMs lol.

 

[staticV3]

What's wrong with the Meizu Hifi USB-C Headphone Adapter review

By using the SE input of his APx555, Amir's measurements were dominated by GND loop induced common-mode noise.
Here's how it measures under actual use:

and the Hifiman Ananda Review?

Poor fitment to the GRAS fixture left an air gap. The resulting FR is most likely only representative if you wear glasses.
If you're not, then the Ananda measures more like this:

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

My Truthear Zeros arrived earlier than expected and my first impressions are very positive so far.

 

[Chromatischism]

Pretty much anything rock or something that has loud woman vocals. If you need some examples, now I'm listening to Minami - Crying for Rain (woman vocal) and Steve Vai - For the Love of God (electric guitar solo). I've been listening to these 2 tracks a lot for the past few weeks, on my HD660S they sounded great without any harshness but on the Zero IEMs they sounded harsh and headache inducing even after secs of playback. Both are driven directly from Apple USB-C dongle on my PC.

I tried those and they sound ok, though they are on the more "exciting" side, recording-wise.

Try these from the beginning:

I don't normally use this last one for tuning since the density is much lower, however the quality is just too good to pass up:

They sound spot-on to me from Deezer. They sound different on Spotify but I may be getting a lower quality stream since I don't have an account there.

 

[GaryH]

The argument that you're "not listening to sweeps, you're listening to music" is essentially the same argument self-proclaimed audiophiles use against testing THD with 1 kHz test tones.

It's not in the slightest. Read my above post quoting Dr Sean Olive for why. (Hint: an Audio Precision Analyzer doesn't have an equal loudness contour, psychoacoustics or cognitive bias to deal with.)

Nonetheless, it's debatable, whether all tones should have an equal loudness when played through IEMs.

It's not. They shouldn't.

I would guess that for most people, a perfectly flat speaker in a well treated room will not sound equally loud at all frequencies. Therefore, this tuning method may be flawed.

Now you're getting it.

All in all, it's without a doubt more difficult to tune IEMs than than tuning speakers, because you can't just use a measuring microphone and go "yeah, there's 3 dB missing at X kHz". For IEM tuning, you have to rely mostly on your ears, which makes it much harder to objectively quantify the results.

Or rely on objective measurements and EQs that take you close to the scientifically-backed Harman target, then statistically most people won't need to make big adjustments (if any) from there.

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

I can't really find anything wrong with the tuning or timbre of these IEMs.

Not a fan of the earbud tips, harder to properly fit and seal with these. I had to borrow a pair from my Blessing 2 and that's much better.

I like the build quality feel

Perhaps a couple of minor adjustments in the treble here and there for personal taste but that's it.

 

[smcc]

Not a fan of the earbud tips, harder to properly fit and seal with these. I had to borrow a pair from my Blessing 2 and that's much better.

Could u post a pic of the tips you used...just curious...similar problem (only large small bore ones kinda worked for me)