Many of you will be familiar with the regularly occurring Live Streams that @Resolve, @Mad_Economist, and I have been doing for a while, and some viewers may have even noticed that we’ve been trying to make it a little more structured and enjoyable for the viewers.
Part of that has been things like trying to get our audio better sorted before going live, implementing a new visual format, giving the podcast a proper name (many thanks to LuXifR on YouTube for the suggestion), as well as ironing out a discrete list of topics to cover and sticking to it before we go live.
To that end, we decided it’d be great to open up a thread so that members of our community can suggest audio-related topics or questions for us to cover on the podcast. So if you have an interesting idea or topic that we should talk or fight about on our podcast, drop it here!
We’ll likely cover it if we think it’ll be fun to talk about, or if people show interest in the idea. If you like someone else’s idea, make sure to give it a like so we can see what people want us to discuss. The only thing we’ll likely not want to cover as a topic is purchase advice, but everything else is fair game.
Also, we’ll be prioritizing entries from this thread above suggestions given in the live chat on our YouTube streams, so if you want to give yourself a better chance of having your topic talked about or your question answered, definitely drop it here!
I feel like a good and fun discussion would be something to the effect of "if you dont like X(popular headphone) you may like Y (other popular headphone) and heres why. As someone whose been called many things for just not liking hifiman Arya hard as ive tried, i feel like this is good reason for open discussion to preference differences between similar priced headphones. I feel that headphones are often compared on how similar they are within a price point. I wanna know if Audeze MM500 should be something to consider if i found Arya too thin, sibilant, and a little wonky. Just a thought as a person who only getsbto hear alot of this stuff once or twice a year at canjam or capital audio fest
This is a bit too close to purchase advice for what we’re looking for, I think. Like, this isn’t really something that prompts discussion among the contributors as much as one of us just giving an answer and moving on.
That said, I would say MM-500 is a great choice if you found the Arya tonally thin. Just be wary of the comfort issues of MM-500 (clamp is high, headband strap is not especially comfortable).
Capra Audio should have a strap coming for the MM-500 within the next week or so—I sent him my personal unit so he could make it—which should help with the top-of-head comfort, at least.
For future posters: please try to keep in mind that these topics should be topics, and not so much just opinions about a single headphone. Thanks!
How about a topic on covering different headphone measurements (Impulse, water fall, thd, graph, soundstage (rtings uses this one) ) to educate the audience on the different type of measurements, and why some of them might not be all that useful. for an example mad economist might say there is no need for impulse measurements, so then it could be explained why someone would hold that opinion. & of course the usual livestream bingo
Always enjoyed the live streams, The Noise Floor has a nice ring to it! (hopefully inaudible )
A topic I’ve always been interested in but can’t quite find a definitive answer on is the effect of crosstalk/crossfeed in headphones vs speakers.
In particular, why is it more desirable to minimize the mixing of channels in headphones, but it isn’t nearly as much of an undesired, if not actually desired, result for the listener to hear both stereo loudspeakers in both ears? Wouldn’t it actually be a good thing, particularly for a more coherent imaging presentation, especially for panning?
Pretty much all of them are red herrings 99% of the time, which is why folks like us and various others don’t talk much about them. We’ve actually done videos on this, in the 10 stages of headphone measurements. With regards to the rtings soundstage metric… we’ve had many conversations with the guy who came up with it, but there’s ultimately no correlation there where FR wouldn’t be the key factor. So, it is an issue, and maybe we can talk about this since people are likely getting misled by it and we haven’t covered it all that much.
I think a nice, neat breakdown of these things is likely merited. We’ve probably touched on it here and there, but maybe a stream dedicated to “all of the measurements you shouldn’t care about” is likely a good idea.
Re: RTINGS soundstage measurements, I’m going to echo what Resolve said: there is very little “there” there. I think it could make sense to talk about this one too.
Great topic! I think this might be one a few people are curious about so I’ll add it to our list along with the other good ones that have been mentioned so far.
I have heard many in the community hypothesize a hidden role of acoustic impedance that is not accounted for in the FR of minimum phase systems. What role, or lack thereof, does the acoustic impedance of a driver/transducer-HP system have in the perception of the common audiophile terms “detail, dynamics, and resolution?”
If I can use PEQ really well should I just get my hrtf measured and eq everything to my hrtf? (I am very inexperienced and have a basic understanding of this topic so I am curious).
I’ve recently heard about many people loosing their hearing or just partially loosing it in the news, almost like an epidemic. How should I go about protecting my hearing? Like finding the right listening levels? What kind of earplugs should I use and knowing when to use them? Does anc help with protecting your hearing? Etc.
if you had a sizeable but realistic R&D budget, what are the experiments you’d be most interested in doing next ? What methodology ? What plan of action (I want specifics !) ?
perhaps attached to a video on some old, vintage headphones - in particular if you can get your hands on primitive pre-WWII headsets : history of headphones. Early use cases, design / ergonomics, technological challenges and evolutions.
Compete to find the zaniest suggestion possible for Pud’s next headphones design
Most ridiculous commentaries or ironic situations you’ve overheard or witnessed at an audio show
The increased “platformisation” of audio : ex Apple’s vertically integrated but locked in spatial audio chain from content to earbuds. How will third party players compete with audio companies who also own the platforms ?
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