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I greatly respect NwAvGuy and agree with almost everything he says, but I think in practical terms that's a slightly over-simplified perspective. Look how inacc
by ubercow13 11y ago
I greatly respect NwAvGuy and agree with almost everything he says, but I think in practical terms that's a slightly over-simplified perspective. Look how inaccurate even these headphones are [1], arguably the best or one of the best ever made.
Getting the inaccuracies to be the right inaccuracies is quite subtle and very important in my opinion. See for example this review of his [2] and in particular the paragraph near the end:
>AN EQ EXPERIMENT: I tried using highly configurable parametric EQ to tweak my Denon D2000s to be similarly forgiving and I failed. When I filter out equivalent amounts of sibilance and harshness with the Denons, more of the music is gone and the result sounds veiled and artificial. The HD 650, to my ears, somehow works more like polarized sunglasses. They largely remove what I don’t want while revealing more of what’s left. It’s not just a simple frequency response difference. My objective side wants to pin down what’s going on but I don’t have a full explanation besides the HD 650’s lack of distortion.
[1] http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009.pdf http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009.pdf
[2] http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/sennheiser-hd-650.html http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/sennheiser-hd-650.html
- chroma 11y agoI was mostly talking about DACs and amplifiers, not headphones. Headphones have to deal with more trade-offs: comfort, size, isolation, and the fact that it's really hard to get them to accurately reproduce sound. Still, so what if current headphones suck at reproducing sounds? That doesn't mean we should ignore quantitative measurements. If the "right" inaccuracies are so subtle-yet-crucial, it's important to quantify them! Then we can evaluate headphones based on how accurately they create those inaccuracies. And I think you're missing the point of the EQ experiment. NwAvGuy wanted to see if there was more to quantifying headphone quality than a frequency response curve. He was right. That just means that objective evaluations of headphone quality will need to include more measurements. That doesn't mean we should disregard measurements and go with subjective impressions. Otherwise, something as mundane as a warm drink can skew the reviewer's opinion.[1] 1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7688315.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7688315.stm
- nitrogen 11y agoWith speakers and headphones, low distortion probably is more important than a flat response. Bad response can be EQed away, but distortion can't.