There isn’t a test that can measure details to my knowledge. Just go try out the Utopia and compare to your Panasonice RP-HT21. The details are readily available compared to one where you might need to strain to listen to. There’s no need for this hypothetical discussion when you can easily buy an old TOTL and a new TOTL and compare. I’m definitely not the only person who has done this comparison.
But you’re conveniently leaving out TOTL estats, like the Sennheiser Orpheus in what, 2013, and most of the TOTL STAX headphones for maybe 30+ years.
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Detail in headphones doesn’t have much to do with the ability to hear subtle sounds. When you know what to listen for and when, you’ll hear it with almost any pair of headphones. But if you don’t know what to listen for, you might not realize it’s there. Or if you’re asked to listen for a certain sound without being told what that sound is, you may have trouble identifying what exactly that sound is.
In an attempt to visualize how I perceive “detail” in audio, it’s more like this:
The same information is visible in both pictures. But if you’ve only ever seen pictures like the bottom one, and see that top picture for the first time, it will instantly be apparent, make you look a bit closer, appreciate how crisp the water droplets look, how the light reflects and brings out the colors of the leaves. You can see all of that on the bottom picture too, but on the top picture you’ll probably notice and appreciate those things more.
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Yes, but a cheap smartphone can take a photo of that quality, and cheap LCDs also display it pretty well now.
I guess it depends on how much value you put on each thing. I also have photography as a hobby and there’s no way that the quality of a cheap smartphone can match that of large format. Just try printing it out or pulling out the shadows. Monitors are the same way.
At the end of the day, if you don’t care about the gain in quality, there’s no need to pay it. A camry today is basically as luxurious as a S Class mercedes from the 80s. But if you compare a Camry to an S Class now, there’s still plenty of gains to be had.
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Abyss 1266, you mean? Imagine if planars one day marry the tech of Abyss 1266 to the Meze Empyrean, to get the best of each in every department. Would there be anything at all left to improve on planars after that?
Is it your opinion that the Susvara and Diana Phi don’t already reach that level?
Good question. It is my opinion that I really would like to have a chance to test listen to all of these headphones one day! So I only go by what I hear. Some think Susvara are perfect (but a little heavy). Others don’t. So anyway, complete package in terms of comfort, weight, solidity of build, aesthetics, not the least sound … yeah, is that too much to ask for?
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There’s the rub. It’s not always true with audio. The brain’s visual system can process a wide range of colors and fine details – and a large percentage of the brain is devoted to vision. In addition, vision is processed in a piecemeal fashion so one attends to foveal (center) content as the brain fills in details on the periphery.
In contrast to vision, the brain’s auditory system is relatively small and simple. It is forever tied to the sequential, time-based processing of sounds as they occur. Presenting super details to the ears (e.g., ultra-clean solid-state amps and brighter headphones such as the HD800 or Utopia) certainly draws attention from the source sounds overall, and may lead to fatigue because of the ‘excessive’ details. I’d need to research the specifics more. However, more than a few audio hobbyists strongly prefer smoothed, less punchy, and less sharply defined audio content.
Second, humans habituate (get used to) whatever they are perceiving after a while. The additional detail may initially “wow” a listener, but the brain effectively forgets/ignores it after a few minutes or hours.
Finally, some less-than-technical audio sources such as tube amps may involve a kind of preferred distortion (e.g., harmonics) over simple clarity. This preference could be a function of how noise/distortion is processed (aka ‘improved’) or a random evolutionary quirk of humans.
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Not too much to ask for! Goals. I don’t believe the perfect headphone currently exists and all involve some level of tradeoffs, whether it be build, comfort, or certain sonic elements.
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This applies to vision just as much as hearing though. When using an average resolution 60Hz TN panel for a monitor on a daily basis, that’s your “normal”. It doesn’t look bad because your brain has normalized it. But then you go up to a higher resolution IPS monitor and the difference will strike you hard.
It’s not an apples to apples comparison, and audio is a lot more complicated than vision as we can’t simply stop time to study a still sample in our music to find out what’s happening. Everything we hear is gone within a split second.
I think much of this has to do with our references of live music experiences. The venue’s acoustics, the far from perfect listening position, the noise of the crowd, that’s all stuff that isn’t present in any recording which was recorded from either an optimal recording position during a live event or in an acoustically treated studio environment. And in my experience with tube amps, their “imperfections” somehow seem to make me feel closer to a live experience.
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Yes, habituation happens with vision. I detest 60Hz monitors. The old interlaced CRTs caused me instant headaches. Each sensory system is different in an arbitrary fashion. Must follow the data and the biology.
Audio is not as complex in terms of bits per second of processing. Compare the file sizes for 1 hour of music versus 1 hour of 4K video. Vision must capture spatial relationships, color via multiple cell arrays, motion, brightness, and small changes in the scene. The nerves pass through the brain from the eyes and feed spatial cell arrays in the back of the brain (see classic cat vision research).
I think it may be related to weirdly human perception of nested/recursive audio tone illusions. I need to research this more.
Yeah that’s fair. There’s a different complexity to each of our senses.
What exactly is happening, I’m still trying to learn about it. Whatever happens in reality, the tubes have been doing a good job convincing me of coming closer to the sound of a live experience. A necessity? Certainly not. Just the icing on the cake, for me at least. 