well with differing altitudes comes physical changes to the body also, which would affect how you hear things. Think ear pressure, you can take experiences of popping your ears while flying in a plane for instance.
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Typical cabin pressure at cruising altitude is about the same as outside air pressure at around 7000 feet, so it’s significantly different than what most of us flat landers are used to.
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Yeah, I grew up in the mountains, and can definitely say as a kid playing soccer tournaments with the “lowlanders” we had a distinct running advantage. 
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Fair enough, but living with higher gravity gives us the better muscle mass 
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I do have some chicken legs…
What I don’t understand is how Old Pulteney, which comes from Wick, so close to the coast that it’s practically in Norway can be a “Highland”.
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I’m glad you asked this, as it caused me to learn something new. After doing a little bit of “research” cough Wikipedia cough, it seems that the “Highlands” is actually the whole northern region of Scotland and represents as much a distinct cultural unit as a geographic one.
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Yes, I found that out several years ago while doing some Clynelish “research”
Beautiful place is Scotland especially the Highlands. They get very remote and it takes a hardy person to live there. Famous as you guys already know for it’s whiskey amongst other things.
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also pioneers in air ballon driving…if I remeber correctly… but back to the very cool thread …
slàinte
When I think of “very dynamic” I think of horn speakers. Electrostats have the kind of “accuracy” that horns have over a narrow range, but over a much wider range, but with much less of that immediacy or impact or whatever is the best term for horns.
If I were trying to create a system with ultimate dynamics from macro to micro etc., I’m thinking several different types of drivers with nearly unlimited power behind them. Then there are the issues of how to make that power perfectly clean, to eliminate phase and driver-interference distortions, and other problems.
In the end, getting the mids as perfect as possible, then tweaking the top and bottom to be as good as possible with no negative influence on the mids - that’s probably the best thing to do.
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I think this is one of those things that communities can benefit from having a mutual understanding of relatively obscure concepts.
My own overly simplistic version of microdynamics vs macrodynamics: Sennheiser’s HD660S is (arguably) an improvement over the HD650 in terms of the latter but is a definite downgrade from the same in the former.
In my opinion cans like the HP-3 (and apparently the Atticus, which I’ve not gotten ears on yet sadly) are ridiculously visceral not only as a consequence of their respective bass bumps or any individual aspect of FR but also as a matter of driver reactivity, how it responds to signals and how well it expresses large, abrupt changes in SPL. It’s a sense of speed and immediacy that to me could be made manifest in how well something images (could be interaural delay or perhaps just me talking out of my first deuterostomal orifice) besides being able to present music “quickly”. I dunno, I’ve always felt planars like the HE1000 v2 (have not heard v1) were always exceptionally ephemeral-sounding in many senses of the word, at least based on lengthy store demos with my own headphones on hand for direct comparison at one. I am well aware that there are those who perceive them differently with better upstream components, components I’ve not yet had the pleasure of listening to myself, but if I may paint with broader strokes than usual this is that whole whole dynamics vs planar debate that has been beaten to death, distilled; planars don’t quite have the same macrodynamic capacity dynamic drivers do, by which I mean they don’t slam nearly as well. Could be FR, but I rather doubt it (not to say one cannot perceive something as having better macrodynamics than stock if EQed a certain way).
Doesn’t mean I don’t want HE1000v2s for myself, mind. They’d make an excellent change of pace can to complement what I currently have (but sadly, they’re priced well out of my league for now).
Microdynamics I’d define as what happens immediately after large changes in SPL, as in the “air” surrounding strings on a guitar as it vibrates after being plucked (I swear guitar is to me what piano is to Torq, only I don’t play guitar myself— just have a distinct liking for the sound). Now as to how this relates to macro-stuff, I’d say it could be illustrated in how quickly a vehicle can brake and completely stop after having reached top speed. Driver control matters a lot, and if something were absolutely shit at taming subsequent ringing following high excursion (can be illustrated in impulse response performance) then low-level details that would in an ideal driver system be audible could very well be masked by that same ringing.
Don’t think Tyll’s measurements of the HD660s and HD650 are necessarily directly comparable so pending someone’s posting impulse response results of the both off the same measurement rig I’m going to assume I’m maybe talking out of my ass.
On that note I took measurements of my Klipsches with an EARS rig but cannot post them at the moment because… the cat is using my laptop as a bed at the moment and she gets very angry whenever I try to take her favourite pillow away. Will edit this post to include those later on. Anyway, keeping in mind the fact that the MiniDSP shiz is very rudimentary (to be polite) and that the silicone pinnae are ridiculous for CSDs, impulse response, etc, I’ve found that relative to other headphones I have lying around right now (Meze 99 Classic, Beyerdynamic DT880) the HP-3s ring for absolutely ages in comparison. This is backed up by Tyll’s own squiggles. To my ears the Klipsches do this weird thing where nuances that would normally be much lower in a mix get pushed upwards, almost melding with the fundamental signal. Going back to guitar, there’s this one track I can’t recall at the moment (might have been Fleetwood Mac?) where, listening on a pair of HD650s I had on extended loan, I caught quiet little nuances like fingers sliding on string and that “air moving” crud I mentioned earlier that I didn’t recall ever hearing on the Klipsches. Now I know the HP-3s aren’t TOTL by any stretch of the imagination, but I was very much wondering what the fuck was going on because I didn’t think they were that bad at resolving details.
Long story short, it took more than a few minutes of A/Bing with my brows furrowed and a crease digging into my frown that I realised the Klipsches actually were resolving the same sonic elements I noticed on the Sennheisers, only they were far less subtly presented than on the HD650, which in comparison sounded far more “natural”, at least on my emphatically not-high-end home rig.
Why’d I get into microdynamics? Dunno but I ended up typing all this on my phone and I’m not about to waste that effort because my fingers ache. Also could provide talking points as relevant to macro-stuff, so eh. I do think macro and microdynamics are inextricably linked to overall resolution as often defined in headphone circles, but that they aren’t indicative of the other. That’s to say good macrodynamic performance isn’t necessarily contingent on microdynamic performance, and vise versa.
I’m curious how macrodynamic performance might be related to dynamic range as defined by others as being “the highest and lowest points of loudness within a given recording”. The Klipsches (the only reason I keep bringing them up despite being quite unpopular and not serving well as a reference is… I do like them and they get the most head time, hah!) despite being excellently punchy seem to fall just short of putting their whole body weight into those punches. This is mostly evident during swells in large orchestral works, they lack that last bit of “being washed over in sound” that I do actually get with the HD650s
ADD:
Rchannel Impulse response for Klipsch HP-3 (BLUE), Meze 99 Classics (TEAL), and Beyerdynamic DT880 [250ohm] (GREEN). Please do note the MiniDSP EARS is not optimised for these sorta measurements and as such these are highly suspect. I have my measurement methodology pretty much keyed in but some headphones seem to interact with the fake pinnae more than others for reasons I can’t yet discern, manifesting as weird resonances in CSDs, IRs, and spectrograms:
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Can’t underestimate power driving the headphones having a profound effect on micro dynamics. There is more and more accurate detail for both my HD-6xx and Hifiman HE-560 when driven by the Schiit Lyr3 from the iFi xDSD in line out mode than when using the xDSD alone. And the xDSD has a decent amp section.
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Facepalm, that’s what I get for typing that much on my phone, hah.
Addendum, my earlier post should be taken as meaning all driver systems there mentioned are driven optimally by one hell of an amp 
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