Engineers never badmouth them because they are never far off. Some really expensive ones are, but sound very good. They are a safe bet. And you can bet Dave is singing into a $4-10,000 mike with his $90 headphones. Probably a Neumann U-87. It's hard to tell from than angle.
Ah, I don't understand what you mean. What rising bass slope, this headphone doesn't have a rising bass slope? And about the range of modern music you mentioned, if that's in reference to the bass then there are plenty of tracks with bass down to 30Hz, even 20Hz, so it's worth having a good bass response in a headphone even down to 20Hz. Also about the range of modern music you mentioned, the highs in modern music go all the way up to 20kHz, cymbals can be up there in the 17Hz+ range I think....certainly when I've watched a spectrum analyser when listening to various tracks then there's stuff happening up there, but the measured frequency response of a headphone in that area is not very predictable, so you'd just use the measured frequency response above 10kHz as a guideline to your general EQ up there, and most of the time you'd be using High Shelf Filters up there to get that measured response into a sensible relationship with the rest of the curve combined with your listening testing (but my comment about the Utopia 2022 frequency response was not really in relation to it's above 10kHz measurement). So basically the whole measured curve from 20Hz-20kHz has value & meaning, and certainly in the bass.
I understand your point. I've not looked into tissue paper mods, but heard about them - have you seen specifically above which frequencies they affect?
This one.
Ah, so you're talking about the rise in the bass of the Harman Target Curve rather than the rise in the bass of the headphone, because the Utopia 2022 does not have a rise in the bass. That rise in the bass of the Harman Target definitely makes a noticeable change to the sound, so it's not beyond the realms of what's included in modern music (that you mentioned), in fact it makes a difference on almost all music. I think it's a positive part of the Harman Target, but not everyone likes their bass hump to be that big, or some like it bigger, some people prefer no bass hump - but according to the research most people prefer the bass hump that you see in the Harman Target there. I prefer either the bass hump of the Harman Target or sometimes 1dB more, but it depends on which headphone I use. But unit to unit variation can mean that sometimes you'll need to dial more (or less) bass depending on which headphones you own, regardless of what target you know you prefer down there.
I stand corrected. I just mean I've seen that pattern and know what these headphones sound like. They aren't bass head headphones, but don't sound bad either.
My statement was related to the technical capabilities of the new Utopia.
For practical purposes, I would guess "none". I'll wrap the UMIK-1 and see if anything changes, for grins.
I think we'll go by the measurements, and I'm not interested in the concept of TOTL headphones in the sense of what that means in the audiophile community - it's a created concept by people that are more swayed by appearance & cost (high price) rather than actual music reproduction capabilities. Your term of "technical capabilities" is kind of meaningless, which is a term that some people use, there's frequency response measurements & distortion measurements, anything coined "technical capabilities" beyond that is pretty meaningless. I'm not saying the Utopia 2022 is a rubbish headphone, I'm just saying it's crazy to call it "The Benchmark", that's ridiculous (& especially because the frequency response is not ideal), and is probably a fundamentally silly thing to say about any headphone anyway. Your last sentence, we don't need those kind of arguments, especially in reference to me calling you out on calling it "The Benchmark".
I'm not certain that wrapping the UMIK is 100% indicative of it's effect within the headphone. I just wondered if you've researched online what the measurement effect is of "tissue paper mods", I'm sure it's been measured, I guess I've not googled it for details because I think it's a pretty crude generally unnecessary thing to do given parametric EQ and or simply buying new headphone pads (after your nine years of use) which would come with the foam discs that you require anyway.
That's a pretty sensible & useful angle to look at the phrase "Benchmark Headphone". The point I was pulling Bow_Wazoo up on was him calling a headphone (his Utopia 2022) "The Benchmark", which implies a different thing to the phrase you're using. He's more saying it's the best gold standard by which all headphones will be compared to and bow before....that kind of drama.
Well those are pretty fucking good.
It's funny. For years I used K52 for casual listening because they are so comfortable, thinking they sound great. I think all my other headphones sound better now. I even ordered K52 when I saw them on sale for around $30. I can wait till they go up and resell them for $40. Haven't touched the box.
