Calling daddy @andrew and @taronlissimore again!
hahah yes, if people actually listened to us and did what we do ourselves, probably not good for business. But even then, there are things we look for that make this easier, like better ergonomics for starters, but also better treble. It’s way harder and more annoying to EQ the treble than to just add a bass shelf.
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I feel like when people say stuff like this ironically they don’t know that what they’re saying is literally, unironically true.
A DT 1990 off an iPhone with like 5 bands of EQ would embarrass even the best headphones I’ve heard… and I don’t even like DT 1990 
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Tell that to my ringing ears. BS. BS. BS. BS.
Do you happen to have an HD 800 S on hand? There may be ways to demonstrate this.
Closed back headphones do typically tend to have considerably more forward midrange tilts (less low midrange, more upper midrange), and the LCD 2 Closed (and LCD-XC) are some of the starkest, harshest examples I can think of… especially since neither of them produce bass very well either 
I had the same experience when writing a review of the LCD-XC. Thing was a damn chore to listen to.
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He recommended the bloody DT 1990, not the HD 800 S!
Sure, either one. Though I thought the point applied to either.
I think I listed the recording I used in my review.
Put the headphones on your head.
Listen.
Forget the graph. Open backs don’t give the problem. There were other recordings that were unpleasant with those headpohones. This one in particular clarified what much of the problem was due to the liveness of the room.
I’m not being ignorant of the graph. Any flat line or minimum phase explanation doesn’t explain the actual sound.
Again, you should have spent years listening to the source. My Mother taught classical guitar. I’ve heard many of them in many rooms.
This was a very good recording. Perhaps my description of the internal reflection is misleading, but I only got it with a closed back, and the odd perception was of something close around my ears.
There has been extensive testing of human hearing and it’s sensitivity to time and echos in the real world. It’s one of the human super powers.
No one’s saying trying things is a waste; in fact we’d probably both say frequency response discussions are moot/useless compared to actually listening to the bloody things.
We review headphones because other people find it useful; I don’t think either of us consumes much review content in our own time because we both understand that impressions between two listeners are bound to vary enough to make one person’s impression of the sound not especially useful to the other.
NO. NO. NO. Many headphones result in screechy treble artifacts that cannot be EQed in my experience. Beyer treble sucks no matter what. Sennheiser treble doesn’t suck.
Gotcha. Yeah I agree with you regarding the screetchy treble on those. But that’s 100% FR, and it can be fixed. This is exactly what I mean - genuinely if you have one on hand, you should try doing some manual tone-gen and try to identify the peaks you hear.
I think the operative term @generic said was ARTIFACT.
How to you FR EQ out an artifact?
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I think you misunderstand… we’re saying the perceptual artifact is FR, and in turn fixed with EQ. Unless you’re saying it’s due to high order harmonic distortion, which I have a hard time believing.
And if you’re wondering how to EQ it out, tone-gen. We need to understand how it’s behaving on his head.
Beyer treble artifacts are more of a spray than something to pinpoint.
I’ve been playing guitar—classical, steel-string, and electric—for almost 20 years, man
I will grant you one thing: closed backs are fuckin weird dude. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were getting a way, way different sound profile when wearing the headphone than anything you would’ve seen on a measurement, which could definitely help explain why you feel what you experienced doesn’t align with the data.
Yes, but headphones ain’t the real world dawg! They’re a helmet of sound that follows you around and has basically no acoustical space cues.
What about the cheap delta-sigma DAC problem? I haven’t had the issues that @generic has had, but I never played cheap DAC through good headphones. Unless you count the time that @Torq properly took me to task for using the Dragonfly Black to power HD-6xx. 
At the time I thought the HD-6xx were good headphones - but that was before I permitted my wallet to extend itself.
The easiest way to ID a set of headphones is through a cheap DS dac and a clean SS amp. Painful, but generally easy.
I’m not sure which specific problem you’re referring to here with delta-sigma DACs.
Interesting. You should make a video about that. And how you use a heavy EQd HD800S off a MacBook. I’m sure the members of the community would love to see how you make a DT1990 sound good off a phone with 5 band EQ.
You want do it…. Guaranteed!
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