Gentlemen please retreat to your corners. Plese remember “Marquis of Queensbury Rules”.
Mark Gosdin
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I think we can safely ignore him. He has four posts in this entire forum. Bold move to come in flame throwing on the HE-1 thread, though. I wonder how many cables he’s compared, with his own ears, on an HE-1… 
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I didn’t know cables were sentient and changed properties based on what headphone they’re connected to.
I agree, in general, except that @orrman had posted about his impressions about a specific set of cables on the HE-1, which is completely relevant to this thread. Everyone (including @pritster5) is welcome to contribute their own impressions, and even note that they tried some cables and didn’t hear a difference, but what isn’t acceptable is coming in flamethrowing on cables, before/without any other contribution, with your third post ever. It’s a very unflattering way to introduce yourself to the community. This forum prides itself on being respectful, even in disagreement.
If you don’t think cables matter, good for you (genuinely)! Save a ton of money! You can do so while leaving those that (believe they) hear differences alone, or at the very least, contribute in a constructive and respectful manner (e.g. “I tried cable X and Y and didn’t hear any difference myself” as opposed to “you idiot; didn’t you read ASR; cables are bullshit.”)
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Yah… for sure read your comment as being aimed at the wring person. Deleting my firat one 
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Fair enough, if I came across as harsh, my bad.
As for the notion of “if a belief (especially one that is a factual claim) harms no one, why bother disputing it”, that’s something I’d love to discuss in the appropriate area (which being new here, I am not aware of).
Judging from your previous post(s) it seems that whatever is discussed regarding cables, whether through experience, experimentation, or scientific data seems like it won’t benefit you in any way. I suggest to skim over any cable talk you see unless you’re actually willing to try them yourself.
Just make a thread kn the general discussion or off topic section if you would liek to start the discussion.
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Stick to the HE-1 stuff here guys. If you want to discuss cables or other amps/dacs etc., I suggest using one of the other threads, like this one: https://forum.headphones.com/t/the-objective-subjective-dejected-thread
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A post was merged into an existing topic: The Objective, Subjective & Dejected Thread
Hi, do you have the distortion measurements?
@Resolve, Only place I can find the distortion measurement is at your Youtube show, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zVwVd-1ytIk&t=11s
You mentioned that it’s measured at 114dB, but if you look at the video at time stamp 5:15, the fundamental is specified at 104dB (look at the bottom of the screen). So is this distortion measured at 114dB or 104dB?
I’ll have to double check the data. That’s the percentage view though, not absolute values. I believe I based my calibration off of a tone at 1khz at 114dB. But yeah I’ll see if I can dig that out.
EDIT: You’re right, that is 104dB. I wasn’t using my main measuring setup so it could be that REW was set to -10dB on the sweep and not the calibration. Even still, it’s shockingly low at 104dB.
Harmonic distortion is often over focused on, but it really is just a measure of how flexible something is with EQ unless it’s awful. So even if this were like 2% it wouldn’t be audible, and certainly not at 104dB since even higher order products would fall outside the masking window.
@Resolve Thank you for posting the THD graph. Yes, I agree that it wouldn’t be audible, I just need it for EQ flexibility. Since you’ve done a video and harmonic distortion measurements on the Audeze LCD 5 and CRBN at 104dB fundamental?
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That was a long time ago and we’ve since overhauled our measurements process once we got the 5128 so I’m not sure. When it comes to THD, I don’t want to contribute to some of the snake oil that’s resulted in people over focusing on this data, thinking slightly less inaudible distortion = more clear sound (people do this regularly, and with DACs and amps as well). So I typically don’t publish it unless there’s something notable about it - like a limitation to EQ potential in a given region. Still, there is value in that data to those who understand it, so I’ll need to figure out a way to navigate that. But from my testing the LCD-5 was also ultra low distortion.
Understood. But it’s nice to to have extra information beside just FR (tonality). I also wish to see the spectral burst decay to know if there is any resonance in the driver, as this can also affect our subjective listening and the sound of the headphone. Thank you again @Resolve.
Ah, do you mean like… time domain stuff? Because that is one that only matters if there’s something seriously wrong, since headphones are minimum phase. Where did you read that it affects the subjective listening experience?
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Yes, time domain. I wouldn’t say it’ll affect subj listening directly, but if there’s long tail ringing in the burst decay, it can have an effect that could be pleasant or not, such as the artificial trailing decay that is not present in the recording. It’s subtle. Long tail ringing can be a spike in FR (tonality) to name one example. I’ll see if I can find the papers on it.
This is a website that might be of interest: CSD/waterfall & spectrum | DIY-Audio-Heaven
That’s literally just FR though. Like folks need to realize this is just a worse view of the same information in headphones, because time domain is proportional to frequency response. Fix the peak in the FR with EQ and the time domain stuff is fixed with it.
The exception would be rare cases when things are very wrong, and it may be worth showing excess group delay for the sake of indicating things are fine in that regard most of the time. But as Blaine has said on our live streams, time domain information in headphones is almost always a nothingburger as far as relevant metrics are concerned.
This is also something that’s been demonstrated over and over again, and discussed at length. Check out this video on the subject.
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