3 ms·

This trope that ‘the best audio product for you is a highly subjective personal choice’ directly contradicts decades of well-established science, and is a long-

This trope that ‘the best audio product for you is a highly subjective personal choice’ directly contradicts decades of well-established science, and is a long-standing myth that plagues this industry — and not coincidentally, serves to sell a ton of over-expensive garbage to under-educated (by design, via marketing bunk) consumers. If you read ASR’s materials on headphone science and the HD800S review in particular, it will become entirely clear why it sounds the way it does, and what you need to do to EQ it to fix its tonal character issues out of the box. I own the HD800S and if it wasn’t for the scientifically derived EQ filters some community members have developed, I would be entirely unable to listen to them for the reasons exactly as you describe. But once the EQ is applied fixing their FR curve to the Harman target curve, suddenly the sound signature dramatically changes from unlistenably painful (for metal music, for example) to perfectly balanced sound. I should add though that headphones are definitely more subjective than speakers. This is because we are shoving a speaker 1 inch from our ears and hoping it will sound like the music is in the room around us instead of actually shoved right up against our ear — and the way this sounds actually does differ from person to person due to different ear canal geometry! This limitation is not the case for speakers, though! The consensus science shows that for speakers, an “objective best” does exist (such that the objective “best” has extremely high likelihood of sounding best to >95% of people), whereas for headphones this number is not as high (though I don’t know that number off the top of my head). And you know what’s great about ASR? They explain all this! All you need to do is read their resources and understand what the science does and does not help with.

throw0101a 5y ago
> The consensus science shows that for speakers, an “objective best” does exist (such that the objective “best” has extremely high likelihood of sounding best to >95% of people) Are there some product(s) that you can name off the top of your head as examples?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- electrograv 5y ago
  For the absolute best, cost is no object? Genelec 8351B + W371A, Revel F328Be, Dutch & Dutch 8C, Kii Three BXT, and many others. But you really don’t need to pay this much unless you want the absolute best quality AND quantity (capable of going extremely loud, which is an engineering challenge that requires expensive solutions). You may find the “Speaker Attr Comparison” tab here useful to explore the price vs performance spectrum: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/SpeakerTestData/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe... I would recommend learning to read the individual reviewed speaker measurements though, since there definitely is some information lost when compressing these incredibly rich measurements down to a single number, and the science still has some room to improve since there are some dimensions (e.g. the importance of low distortion at high SPL, or beam width) that this fairly old aggregate score model does not currently incorporate. There definitely is some subjective taste involved, but the important thing is that we can measure these dimensions objectively and understand which is subjective (and why), and which is not a matter of subjective personal taste. We can explore these personal preference tradeoffs without completely surrendering to the subjective nonsense that ‘anything goes’. For example, it looks like the most subjective factor remaining in speakers is the overall beam width — whether you want a more directional sound, or a more omnidirectional one that fills the room more broadly. This topic is at the edge/fringe of the established science, but the general consensus here is that the objective best would be a multichannel surround sound system of medium beam speakers, where you can either replay recordings meant for multichannel systems, or for traditional stereo recordings at least dynamically select how frontal vs surround you want a particular stereo recoding to be reproduced (just as you can e.g. easily adjust bass boost to taste depending on what you’re listening to, if it wasn’t recorded/mixed the way you like). But given that most people want to minimize the number and size of speakers in their room, there does tend to be a practical challenge of preference here if you can only pick one style (wide vs medium vs narrow beam) for stereo recordings (which while not an ideal format, constitute 99.999% of all music people enjoy).
  - fortran77 5y ago
    We have top-line Genelecs in our home theatre (with a custom center channel horn for dialog). But most "audiophiles" won't like them even though they are as accurate a speaker as you can get. As a 58-year-old, the sound I like when listening to music is probably a bit off from "accurate". It's a combination of trying to match the sound I grew up hearing (which admittedly was colored by the way records were mastered in the 70s!) and the fact that my high-end hearing isn't what it used to be. I think considerations like that are what drive "audiophile" audio. Plus, when you get to be 50+ and have some money to spare, there's a cool factor. A preposterous turntable is just like a luxury wrist-watch. You don't buy a $80,000 watch because it tells better time....
- brokenmachine 5y ago
  I went with Kef because they measure almost as well as Revel/Genelec, but were much cheaper than either of those options in my country. Also Kef has a slightly higher directivity than Revel which I believe means that the room makes less difference to the sound than it would with a lower directivity speaker, so therefore it should sound better in worse/smaller rooms. I prefer the aesthetics of Kef over Revel/Genelec as well, but that's a matter of taste. Very happy with my decision.
gmadsen 5y ago
I think you missed the perfectly valid critique, that sennheiser sub bass roll off very quickly. An eq filter won't fix this without distorting sound.
- electrograv 5y ago
  I didn’t miss it; it’s just not valid. (1) The HD800S is actually not as highly regarded as you may think on ASR because these issues do show up in the measurements and are pointed out in the review (did you read it?), but also (2) the HD800’s issues are indeed very much fixable with EQ, and I can confirm this subjectively with direct experience with my HD800S. I hope you’re not thinking I’m advocating a crude N-band equalizer to broadly boost the bass and reduce the treble to fix the HD800’s thin-ness and brightness. I’m talking about very precise filters that the community has optimized mathematically to fit the measured response to the ideal Harman target curve: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/sennheiser-hd800s-review-headphone.18424/page-43#post-779935 https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/s... There is no reason scientifically to believe this wouldn’t work, other than the maximum driver excursion and distortion limits of the headphones. Fortunately the HD800S bass is extremely clean and undistorted, and they respond really well here. I’ve tried this with other headphones, and most cheaper headphones do struggle greatly, while the HD800S sub-bass is extremely impressive, clean, and powerful when EQ’ed in this way. And even more importantly, this works wonders to smooth out peaks in the treble that sound too harsh to be prior to EQ. Even if it couldn’t be fixed with precise EQ though, this is still something we can measure objectively via max SPL and distortion vs frequency tests. For example, another highly regarded headphone is the Focal Clear, and it unfortunately has severe bass SPL / driver excursion limits that rules it out from being corrected in this way. Of course it’s a fair criticism that such expensive headphones should require EQ at all! And the HD800S are indeed criticized in this way on ASR! Sadly though, it seems virtually all headphones do require EQ to sound remotely near their maximum possible sound quality potential, in terms of their physical capability. I personally love the HD800S for a number of reasons, but one of them is extreme comfort (which definitely is subjective), but I will be the first to admit their sound is painful to my ears until corrected with EQ.
  - 5y ago
Bayart 5y ago
>I own the HD800S and if it wasn’t for the scientifically derived EQ filters some community members have developed, I would be entirely unable to listen to them for the reasons exactly as you describe. But once the EQ is applied fixing their FR curve to the Harman target curve, suddenly the sound signature dramatically changes from unlistenably painful (for metal music, for example) to perfectly balanced sound. That's why I prefer flat, little coloured gear (IEMs in my case) and do minute adjustments in EQ if I really must. I've got enough of a wide range of styles I listen to in any given time frame that I would get more bad than good from gear with a strong signature. I've been happy with my Etymotic ER4.

throw0101a 5y ago

> The consensus science shows that for speakers, an “objective best” does exist (such that the objective “best” has extremely high likelihood of sounding best to >95% of people) Are there some product(s) that you can name off the top of your head as examples?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
electrograv 5y ago
For the absolute best, cost is no object? Genelec 8351B + W371A, Revel F328Be, Dutch & Dutch 8C, Kii Three BXT, and many others. But you really don’t need to pay this much unless you want the absolute best quality AND quantity (capable of going extremely loud, which is an engineering challenge that requires expensive solutions). You may find the “Speaker Attr Comparison” tab here useful to explore the price vs performance spectrum: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/SpeakerTestData/ https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?pages/Spe... I would recommend learning to read the individual reviewed speaker measurements though, since there definitely is some information lost when compressing these incredibly rich measurements down to a single number, and the science still has some room to improve since there are some dimensions (e.g. the importance of low distortion at high SPL, or beam width) that this fairly old aggregate score model does not currently incorporate. There definitely is some subjective taste involved, but the important thing is that we can measure these dimensions objectively and understand which is subjective (and why), and which is not a matter of subjective personal taste. We can explore these personal preference tradeoffs without completely surrendering to the subjective nonsense that ‘anything goes’. For example, it looks like the most subjective factor remaining in speakers is the overall beam width — whether you want a more directional sound, or a more omnidirectional one that fills the room more broadly. This topic is at the edge/fringe of the established science, but the general consensus here is that the objective best would be a multichannel surround sound system of medium beam speakers, where you can either replay recordings meant for multichannel systems, or for traditional stereo recordings at least dynamically select how frontal vs surround you want a particular stereo recoding to be reproduced (just as you can e.g. easily adjust bass boost to taste depending on what you’re listening to, if it wasn’t recorded/mixed the way you like). But given that most people want to minimize the number and size of speakers in their room, there does tend to be a practical challenge of preference here if you can only pick one style (wide vs medium vs narrow beam) for stereo recordings (which while not an ideal format, constitute 99.999% of all music people enjoy).
- fortran77 5y ago
  We have top-line Genelecs in our home theatre (with a custom center channel horn for dialog). But most "audiophiles" won't like them even though they are as accurate a speaker as you can get. As a 58-year-old, the sound I like when listening to music is probably a bit off from "accurate". It's a combination of trying to match the sound I grew up hearing (which admittedly was colored by the way records were mastered in the 70s!) and the fact that my high-end hearing isn't what it used to be. I think considerations like that are what drive "audiophile" audio. Plus, when you get to be 50+ and have some money to spare, there's a cool factor. A preposterous turntable is just like a luxury wrist-watch. You don't buy a $80,000 watch because it tells better time....
brokenmachine 5y ago
I went with Kef because they measure almost as well as Revel/Genelec, but were much cheaper than either of those options in my country. Also Kef has a slightly higher directivity than Revel which I believe means that the room makes less difference to the sound than it would with a lower directivity speaker, so therefore it should sound better in worse/smaller rooms. I prefer the aesthetics of Kef over Revel/Genelec as well, but that's a matter of taste. Very happy with my decision.

gmadsen 5y ago

I think you missed the perfectly valid critique, that sennheiser sub bass roll off very quickly. An eq filter won't fix this without distorting sound.

electrograv 5y ago
I didn’t miss it; it’s just not valid. (1) The HD800S is actually not as highly regarded as you may think on ASR because these issues do show up in the measurements and are pointed out in the review (did you read it?), but also (2) the HD800’s issues are indeed very much fixable with EQ, and I can confirm this subjectively with direct experience with my HD800S. I hope you’re not thinking I’m advocating a crude N-band equalizer to broadly boost the bass and reduce the treble to fix the HD800’s thin-ness and brightness. I’m talking about very precise filters that the community has optimized mathematically to fit the measured response to the ideal Harman target curve: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/sennheiser-hd800s-review-headphone.18424/page-43#post-779935 https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/s... There is no reason scientifically to believe this wouldn’t work, other than the maximum driver excursion and distortion limits of the headphones. Fortunately the HD800S bass is extremely clean and undistorted, and they respond really well here. I’ve tried this with other headphones, and most cheaper headphones do struggle greatly, while the HD800S sub-bass is extremely impressive, clean, and powerful when EQ’ed in this way. And even more importantly, this works wonders to smooth out peaks in the treble that sound too harsh to be prior to EQ. Even if it couldn’t be fixed with precise EQ though, this is still something we can measure objectively via max SPL and distortion vs frequency tests. For example, another highly regarded headphone is the Focal Clear, and it unfortunately has severe bass SPL / driver excursion limits that rules it out from being corrected in this way. Of course it’s a fair criticism that such expensive headphones should require EQ at all! And the HD800S are indeed criticized in this way on ASR! Sadly though, it seems virtually all headphones do require EQ to sound remotely near their maximum possible sound quality potential, in terms of their physical capability. I personally love the HD800S for a number of reasons, but one of them is extreme comfort (which definitely is subjective), but I will be the first to admit their sound is painful to my ears until corrected with EQ.
- 5y ago

Bayart 5y ago

>I own the HD800S and if it wasn’t for the scientifically derived EQ filters some community members have developed, I would be entirely unable to listen to them for the reasons exactly as you describe. But once the EQ is applied fixing their FR curve to the Harman target curve, suddenly the sound signature dramatically changes from unlistenably painful (for metal music, for example) to perfectly balanced sound. That's why I prefer flat, little coloured gear (IEMs in my case) and do minute adjustments in EQ if I really must. I've got enough of a wide range of styles I listen to in any given time frame that I would get more bad than good from gear with a strong signature. I've been happy with my Etymotic ER4.