I mostly agree, as does Rtings. Their measurements for soundstage go well beyond simple frequency response.
When I was asking for counterexamples, I meant examples from Rtings’ list where the ranking doesn’t match up with subjective experience, e.g. “headphone X that’s ranked low for soundstage actually sounds like it has large soundstage”.
Not sure if Rtings is useful: I briefly looked for the headphones I am most familiar with and they seem to not cover the more expensive models (no Utopia, Susvara, D8000, MDR-Z1R, … then I gave up). I.e. arguably their top score would not necessarily reflect “art of the possible”? Also looking at a 2018 list of soundstage ratings, they score LCD-2 at 8.6/10. I would put the LCD-2 as average, its soundstage its neither remarkably wide or narrow - should be a 5.0 (mid point)?
I’m not sure why you’re looking at an old list, the link I gave had their current list.
They don’t have the most expensive of headphones, but they do have the HD800S, Arya, T1 and Clear Mg, so they have some fairly high end stuff on the list.
The Audeze they tested is the 2C, not the 2. I actually owned the 2C, and to my ears it is in fact quite spacious sounding, if a bit diffuse and 3 blobby.
I’ve owned and auditioned several of the headphones in that list, and their relative ranking actually matches my own experience quite well.
HD800S
HE400i
LCD2C
DT1990 Pro
HD58X
The one outlier for me is the HD598, which I would personally rank above the DT1990 for soundstage width.
5.0 as a midpoint for open back headphones wouldn’t make sense, since the list also includes closed backs and even IEMs.
I’m not claiming their list is perfect or complete, but it’s remarkably good and the best effort at quantifying soundstage that I’ve seen.
If I may chime in, I owned HE6sev2 and currently have the Arya V3 and am pleasantly surprised with it.
Honestly, straight up without modding or EQ, HE6sev2 is priced where it should be at $549. It sounds like a glorified Sundara, and tbh less tonally correct.
I would not give it the monicker “HE6”, as it is not so familiar to the OG sound.
It seems like bashing, but I genuinely think it’s a poor sounding headphone with incredible technical ability - it needs work to be “worth” its price, otherwise that money can be spent better elsewhere.
That being said, Arya V3, imho, is superior value even at more than 2x it’s price, just because it can play any content and do so well.
Here’s a quick impression of HE6sev2 & my pair of HE6 (the exact pair Andrew reviewed).
I need to do a video on this but with headphones, CSD doesn’t provide any additional information beyond frequency response, because headphones are generally minimum phase, meaning that time domain information is proportional to frequency response. This is also why I’m not sure about some of the claims from RTINGS but I like that they’re exploring it.
Your description sounds exactly what I had experienced with my new pair of HE6SE v2. It DID sound like a less tonally correct Sundara. However, my old trusty pair of HE6SE V2 sound GLORIOUS. Check to see if your membrane and magnets have failed in your drivers. I think that Hifiman has been producing defective headphones lately. I returned mine that I purchased new on sale for $550 as the sheer number of people getting duds was not worth the time of sending back and forth for me. There are widespread accounts of this in the Head-fi forums with one gentleman getting three duds in a row. I own many Hifiman headphones, but I am no longer going to purchase any more because of the stress that I would feel knowing what I know.
I’m often puzzled by many discussions of headphone stage width, as perception follows from recording methods and well-understood spatialization processing effects. Compare the following two versions of the same song. The first sounds quite rustic and narrow, while the second is relatively modern and wide.
I agree fully. The underlying question is how much (1) the track versus (2) the hardware provides the spatial sense. For valid perceptual comparisons between people we’ll all need to use a standard set of tracks.
Yeah, that’s a good point. Once that is worked out, it can be standardized. And then all headphones can have a fairly accurate soundstage rating (minus HRTF).
Gotcha! I appreciate your detailed response. I suppose it’s potentially helpful that Amir grants a portion of the headphone’s “spatial qualities” to something other than FR. Perhaps that mild qualification could be the seed for a greater curiosity in the entire phenomenological experience of listening (be it sighted bias, psychoacoustic, an effect of the coupling, driver distance, etc.) not just that measured in FR?
Yes it would. And interesting article of course it was a while ago but shows what a engineer a producer and the artist decisions can impact on how a song is recorded and heard. The Impact of Technology on the Musical Experience. its long but interesting.
Thanks for the response there. This is pretty interesting…
It seems like bashing, but I genuinely think it’s a poor sounding headphone with incredible technical ability - it needs work to be “worth” its price, otherwise that money can be spent better elsewhere.
That being said, Arya V3, imho, is superior value even at more than 2x it’s price, just because it can play any content and do so well.
Would you say is it because of the tuning why the Arya v3 is a better all-rounder? You say it has incredible technical ability, so is that just like a super Sundara level or around or slightly behind what the Arya can do? If you were to EQ it before hitting any distortion or pad roll to fix some tonality issues, I wonder how they would compare then?
It’s interesting to me because I have the v1 Arya, and I have never heard the stealth magnet Arya but I do see that they sound quite different from one another. It makes me think how the og Arya compares to the HE-6SEv2 in that regard. My complaint with the Arya was that it feels quite limp in the bass which was somewhat also my complaint with my HEKv2, that I think is inherent to the egg-shaped Hifimans with the exception of the Susvara. I read the HE-6SEv2 was atleast a bit punchier in that region which is opting me to switch out my Arya.
Do you use a hearing aids with your headphones at all? I wear 2 hearing aids; I used to have the behind-the-ear kind but those were no good for headphones, so I got in-hear hearing aids, and wow, what a difference!!!
