Love it or hate it, the Harman Target curve is having a considerable impact in the headphone hobby (and industry). However many people misunderstand how it was developed and what it means. Much of that is because the full research is behind an AES paywall. I came across this article written by the head researcher, Sean Olive, that gives the most complete summary I have seen so far:
Overall I am a fan of the research and target in general, but there are a handful of caveats:
It’s good for a reference point but shouldn’t be EQ’d to in my opinion
Individual HRTF may not fully agree with the target, and that’s perfectly fine. Personally, I find the upper mids too shouty; -3dB sounds much more natural to my ears.
The measurement equipment used wasn’t all that accurate above 10K, and I personally like slightly more air above that region
The smoothing of the target is too aggressive; I want to see a raw target without smoothing
There’s too much bass in the most recent target iteration. Straight up.
Resolve does a really good job of explaining the pros and cons of the Harman Target in general, for what it’s worth. I think the research is extremely educational and invaluable; it’s also misunderstood by a lot of the community it seems, at least based on my viewing of other forums, reddit, YouTube, etc.
P.S. I am a huge fan and proponent of Floyd Toole’s work; his book “Sound Reproduction” is highly recommended!
Hey thanks for posting that. I think I need to do an update video on the target that goes through more of the research in detail. But I actually think this video is the more comprehensive one when it comes to the beneftis/downsides of the target we most commonly use:
I’m very interested to see the research done on the 5128 and how that’s going to shake things up.
I’m not sure what’s going on there - they may be working with it and just not making it public, which would make sense given that it’s technically part of the way they tune their headphones. Why give everyone else that same advantage.
Dr. Olive is in his 60s. After 22 years as the Director of Acoustic Research at Harman, he moved on to what looks to be a more emeritus role of Senior Fellow in 2015.
I’m sure there are other people who are more actively involved in day-to-day research.
One thing would be useful is some sort of translation function or map between the different rigs. I assume that should be straightforward. The only thing I can think of that could make it kind of nontrivial and research worthy is if measurable volume as a function of output power into the headphone transducer is non-polynomially affected by frequency and rig (pinna, canal, etc.).
I might add that if there are others taking over the R&D of it all then I would love to see an updated version of the Harman How to Listen. I downloaded it, and it’s very useful, but is showing it’s age.
Of course this is coming from a guy whose company I work for still uses mainframe…dos…lol
