Resolve's Official Headphones.com Community Forum Thread

The HEADPHONE Community
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We’re making an effort to improve the visibility of our various impressions on things, current perspectives on audio, and general thinky thoughts. Griffin already has a thread up for this purpose and I believe Cameron will be putting one together as well.

In the spirit of that, this is going to be the canonical place where I post my general thoughts and initial product impressions, as well as whatever happens to be going on for me. Feel free to drop questions or suggestions below and I’ll do my best to answer them, or if there’s something folks feel I should take a look at, by all means don’t hesitate to bring it to me here.

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I’ll start by giving some commentary on our recent Noise Floor podcast:

It’s made me think about a distinction that we intuitively try to navigate, which is how to deal with situations where we get special information about a given product, such as the ability to have a conversation with the engineer behind it, where any potential buyer of that product would never have that context.

On the one hand, there’s a good chance that products would get more vociferously roasted without that context, but on the other hand we’ve had very real examples where those conversations revealed key information about how the product is meant to be used. As it relates to our evaluations, I think we feel a lot better having that context because we can feel more confident that our criticisms are applied to the right things.

But I’d ask what folks here think about this. Should reviewers have NO interactions with engineers or anyone behind the scenes in the product development? Or should they strive to have those conversations when possible?

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I really enjoyed your video about the Hyper X Cloud III S recently, and the only thing I would have added to the video is that for the budget oriented, the one and done, and those who just use onboard audio…. wireless is an incredible deal because it offers a dac and amp along with all of the other added benefits. I’m not an EQ guy, never have been, but I’m not a denier. I know that DSP can work wonders just not in my hands. I have spent a few years in a tech forum trying my hardest to convince people that a dac and amp is worth it. But when you can tell them it’s included…. and has a mic with no TRRS crosstalk….. that’s as valuable as it’s weight in gold.

Another thing I would love someone to cover, is the crosstalk in TRRS headphone/mic combo’s because no one talks about it. I don’t know if it isn’t prevalent or just unspoken, however I’ve had it happen on multiple computers and multiple headsets. I don’t know if this is one of those thing’s that people don’t talk about because it’ll hurt sales or not, but now that wireless is getting good I see another option to bring up instead. I had previously sent a couple back and forth messages with Hart Audio Cables to discuss making a custom cable for my Rode NTH-100m that would use only the connector and immediately transition into two separate cables, however as life goes my wallet and my attention soon went somewhere else. So I’ll never know whether it’s inherent with the connector or has to do with the cable because I got a project car and still working off my end game audio chain debt before I start buying parts for that car.

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I’ve actually had this too, particularly with IEMs.

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Should reviewers have NO interactions with engineers or anyone behind the scenes in the product development? Or should they strive to have those conversations when possible?

It’s great that you’re asking this here. I started to think about a similar question after watching your HEDD D1 review in which you disclose that you’d had some conversations with HEDD about a prototype (IIRC).

I do think reviewers should have as many conversations with engineers as they practically can. And I also think it’s critical that those conversations be disclosed to the viewers and listeners. Please don’t take this as an accusation, but I think your disclosure could have gone a bit further, i.e. as to what elements were discussed, what suggestion(s) you made, and whether you felt it was accepted or implemented. (Or if you signed an NDA, you could tell us that.)

Conflict of interest is a very tricky issue in medicine and pharmaceuticals – which of course is a very different business, but it’s interesting to compare and contrast the incentives – and it wasn’t until all that recently that authors of journal articles began to disclose potential conflicts. Arguably the current practice doesn’t go far enough, but disclosure is considered the standard.

There are (at least) two potential issues with contacts, one fairly obvious and one a little more subtle. If a reviewer is invited to join conversations about a product, there is some likelihood that that reviewer will form an opinion based on early impressions and how the manufacturer reacts to the reviewer’s shared impressions. And this isn’t a question of integrity – someone with all the integrity in the world is still potentially affected by his inclusion in the conversation. The more subtle issue is that once someone is in conversations they’ve become sort of adopted into an ecosystem, gained a status, as it were, and become less likely to compromise that status. That’s a very real risk, again even with someone with integrity.

In any case, I think readers benefit from a reviewer’s access and participation in conversations – but should also have the benefit of disclosure. And I get that this could lead to some dumb accusations in the Youtube comments. But, overall, we’re much better off with the disclosure.

Thanks again for asking. Many of us here as you know value your judgment quite a bit. That can only go up, I think, with further participation, and disclosure.

Cheers

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I think you should strive to have those conversations. If you don’t want them to influence your opinion then have them after recording your subjective opinion, like measurements. If the conversation changes your opinion or perspective in some way, you can disclose that in the section about the conversation while keeping your original subjective opinion intact.

However you decide to have these conversations though, I think the benefit far outweighs any risk of losing objectivity.

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Yeah I actually think I’m okay to talk about what I helped out with and the process for that. I also want to talk about it so people don’t attribute undue credit to me on this. It’s very much what it is because of Dmitry’s execution on good ideas.

The short version of this is that I helped them with product tuning by making use of the B&k 5128.

HEDD has a GRAS-based system, and like most manufacturers, they don’t yet have the 5128. So they sent me a prototype to both get feedback on and for measurements to see how it behaved in a more load-sensitive condition. The key change I suggested was to reduce the primary ear gain rise, so between 1-3khz. This is one area where we can expect the 5128 to present a more humanlike response, given its canal transfer function does seem to behave more accurately than the GRAS sims.

Another way to think of this is like… if you perfectly match a preference-adjusted DFHRTF on GRAS, it’s likely to sound shouty/glaring to humans because it’ll have an elevation in the 1-3khz band in practice. So that’s the main region I helped them out with.

It was still up to them to act on that feedback, and in no way did I have the opportunity to mandate any changes like you’d see in a traditional collab-like scenario. This was more of a consultation / feedback situation, and I hope people are able to make sense of that distinction.

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I would like to reiterate the sentiments expressed by others: these discussions can be extremely beneficial for forum members, channel subscribers, and potential buyers. As long as transparency is maintained, I do not see any conflict of interest.

Additionally, I would appreciate seeing more manufacturers engage in similar initiatives. I no longer visit AVS Forum or Headfi regularly, but do manufacturers still actively participate in dedicated threads or seek opportunities to appear on podcasts or YouTube streams? If they are not, that would be unfortunate.

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I actually want to give a shoutout to Jermo and Axel from Grell Audio. Regardless of what folks think about their headphone, those guys are awesome when it comes to engaging with the community and putting their ideas out there.

People should check out their YouTube channel as well:

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Excellent. That seems to me a meaningful, positive contribution and something that helped everyone. Thanks for sharing!

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Just posting what I’m working on next. The Moondrop Edge got a firmware update with PEQ, so it’s kind of like a budget HDB 630. I still hate this headphone for various reasons, but its sound quality now has much bigger upside potential.

Interestingly, the default tunings within the app like “Balance” and “Extra Bass” seem to be different from the baseline sound signature you get when using the PEQ option without any filters active - so everything at 0.

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Teal is Moondrop Edge with Balanced and ANC mode. Purple is the Edge with PEQ on (no adjustments) in ANC mode, all with the same seating.

What’s also interesting is… I don’t seem to hear that 5khz peak.

Anyway I’ll be posting my EQ profile for it as well in the coming days. PEQ for the win!

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So the FR changed simply by enabling PEQ but not having any filter values? That’s odd. I may have experienced something similar with the Audeze Maxwell. When switching to one of the custom presets in order to move the sliders, I could have sworn the bass level increased when compared to their stock “Audeze” preset. Perhaps the mids and highs were lowered, thus giving a perceived increase in bass level, similar to what happened with the Edge.

Do you think this is by design in order to compensate for the lack of gain level adjustment?

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I’m not sure. I think this is just them baking in a given tuning for their own profiles and then reverting to a baseline when people are manually adjusting. Though it raises the question as to whether people are applying filters erroneously because they think they’re making adjustments from one of those baked in presets.

Perhaps more concerning is that this device gives you access to a whole bunch of automatically applied targets or emulation of other products. I suspect they’re rather quite far from the intended results there, leading to a bit of confusion as to how those products or targets sound.

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Funny enough, from my experience as someone who has worked a bit in pharmaceuticals, I find that the physicians interact with industry so much that their conflict of interest ends up being a long list of names/companies that they put on a single slide and spend 10 seconds acknowledging. Almost every top level key opinion leader is sponsored or works in some way with half a dozen pharma companies. And everyone in audience knows that… because most of them are also in the same boat.

The other funny parallel to audio is the practice of showing frequency responses from different sources plotted on the same graph when we really shouldn’t be doing so. In the same way, clinical trial data aren’t meant to be compared against one another (i.e. cross-trial comparisons), yet everyone does it anyway for lack of direct head-to-head studies. Physicians acknowledge it in their presentations, then show the data. It’s the practical reality of an resource constrained world.

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Just posted a trip down ANC headphone lane.

I’ve been spending a lot more time with ANC headphones this year… and it’s an absolute wild west. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

I’ve mainly been thinking that the reason the HDB 630 is eating the lunch of everything else right now is because of just how many boxes it ticks. Like yes, there are some foibles here and there, like the mechanical design could be better, and the treble could be a bit better. But given that it has PEQ and the low latency dongle… there’s just nothing else that competes, apart from situations where the strongest ANC is a requirement.

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So upon further testing, the HDB 630 has genuine competition from the Bose QC Ultra Gen 2, and it’s actually a much more sophisticated device than people realize. When tested correctly, it’s effectively compensating for both the acoustic impedance conditions of the head and ears that it’s placed on, and applying a corrective EQ to the canal transfer function variation from head to head.

This means if you heard it while primed on someone else’s head, it likely won’t sound ideal to you, but if you prime it on your own head, it should be very good.

This speaks to the importance of measuring / testing closed-back devices on real human heads, or at the very least sufficiently load-sensitive systems, not commonly available measurement rigs. Like just think how many people are going to measure this on systems that don’t actually have ear canals - most rigs just simulate the canal transfer function. That’s not going to yield the correct priming for the device, since it depends on being placed on an ear with an actual canal.

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That’s great news. Can we expect an official review soon?

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Yeah, currently working on it. But it’s a compelling alternative to the HDB 630. There are reasons why the HDB 630 is still better, but as an ANC headphone for travel, I actually think I’d gravitate towards the QC Ultra Gen 2.

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What does “primed” mean for the QC U2? Does it do some analysis of head and ears, and then adjust through DSP?

EDIT: Reading the company’s page now and I take it this is the “CustomTune” tech.

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CustomTune yeah. Basically it runs a stimulus when you turn the headphone on and then applies the EQ based on that. But this means you need to put the headphone on your head (or the rig), then turn it on. It also means any minor change in position as a function of turning it on could yield more strange results in measurements, however the bigger issue is that most people aren’t measuring with rigs that have physical ear canals. Ordinarily it’ll be correcting for that specific transfer function, but if the rig doesn’t have anything for it to interact with on startup, it’s not going to be correcting appropriately.