If …
… why should one care about damping factor in headphone amplifiers?
Definitely not all true. Even if the research he sites is accepted as fact, I think there are serious flaws in the conclusions he draws from it. But I’d really like to see what the Noise Floor crew have to say about it.
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I would like to extend the topic to “What will the hobby look like in 5-10 years?”
A conversation on how the various sectors of the audio landscape (headphones, IEMs, DACs, amps, speakers, streaming services…) might evolve could be very interesting.
This could also serve as an opportunity to debate whether IEMs have a higher ceiling than over-ear headphones, provided we can solve the recurring challenges associated with both types of devices in the future.
While thinking through what you posted, as a newcomer to the recent developments in personal HiFi, I’m thinking that the market is dominated by what people buy, in large numbers.
At this time, definitely there are certain fads, not dictated by performance but by perception.
We have a corollary in the auto industry, which has become dominated by what I call “raised cars”, SUV’s, and anything that has the driver seating higher up the ground. From a function perspective, this configuration of car is about the most inefficient from an engineering point of view/physics - with a higher center of gravity, needing more materials to make, weighs more, costs more, and has less interior seating room and leg room, guzzles more fuel and costs more too run, than previous generations of saloon cars. Makes no sense whatsoever, but that is what lots of people have been “marketed” to like, and this makes more money for the manufacturers, delivering a product that has no advantage but the psychological superiority of sitting higher than other road users, which makes the owners of these “raised cars” feel better.
What’s driving the market today - Wireless. In spite of the fact that it took so many year to get to lossless wireless audio in Bluetooth devices, and Apple still does not have lossless wireless audio!! A bit of an anomaly. So the customers of Apple, for example, prefer the convenience of their AirPods, in spite of its technical inferiority. But I can imagine, most of them are completely unaware of the limitations, so they pay for lossless streaming, cos typically its people who buy Apple products who can afford such luxuries or prioritise such luxuries as essential, but no one seems to have sent them the memo, that sorry, this lossless audio ecosystem, does NOT extend yet to your sexy shiny Airpod wireless thing in your ear, so Apple gives you with one hand - lossless on Apple Music, and cripples you with the other, with lossy audio to their wireless listening devices on your head.
How they accomplished this, and no one seems to be highlighting the discrepancy, is amazing.
So I think wireless will stay a dominant feature. I was on a train recently and was the only one with a cable on my IEM. Felt like a dinosaur. How do I explain to those onlooking, I’m the one who is guaranteed to be listening at lossless quality- but that also begs the other question, what’s the point in hi-fidelity in an environment with so much ambient noise? !!
I’m concerned that Dongle DACs will become extinct. As lossless Bluetooth replaces dongles and IEM cables, its hard to justify the need for a cable. I have been told, it is frustrating to run out of battery power, on a wireless earbud. I’m hoping we get more proper IEM like wireless devices with excellent isolation, rather than a digital attempt to noise cancel, with a tiny device that does not isolate the outside world, well enough.
Replaceable batteries in all chargeable devices would be super.
Hoping we will see breakthroughs, especially using AI, to capture HRTF’s and improve the listening experience. Hope we have more progress in binaural listening. I hear Apple’s immersive i.e Spatial Audio is good enough, but have not heard it myself.
The free streaming services are good enough sound quality, for casual browsing and discovery of new music, so why should we pay any more to hear this at lossless quality, which Spotify does not have yet anyway. For those who are critical about their listening, if they are like me hae a few favourites they listen to regularly, so rather than pay a subscription, to get higher quality audio, for a relatively small number of albums that I listen to regularly, best I buy the high quality digital files, or CD’s and extract to FLAC. When you really love a track, would be nice to be able to read through the liner notes, of the small collection of things you simply must OWN, as a keepsake.
I think physical media, for those like me, is on its way back, in a revised format - slimmer cases, more durable cases and ideally when you buy the CD, you should also get access to download the lossless compressed or uncompressed digital version, as standard - this is already so, on some online music storefronts, possibly. Let’s extend that. If I have paid for the digital or physical copy of a track, I should have access to be able to stream it losslessly also, whenever I listen to that track on any streaming service.
I’m hoping the current crop of poor sounding budget IEM’s will simply go extinct. When you have heard better it is impossible to unhear this. With the fantastic quality of today’s DACs, the last frontier is the distortion @ the transducer. Hope that a more demanding and enlightened public, demands better quality at the budget end of things.
Hope we can arrive at a measurement for audio quality @ playback i.e the transducer, by which we can authoritatively rate and compare listening devices. At this time, we have standards for loudness, and SPL, why not have playback device audio quality standards for speakers and head worn devices. to make it easier for consumers to sift through the jargon, and not have to be a geek, to learn how to choose good sounding audio gear.
Looking forward to planar magnetics in TWS’s. so I can think of making the transition. I’ve become a bit of a planar snob. Will not listen to anything else, at this time.
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There’s only so many way to design a headphone. At what point will everything start to look like a knockoff even if it’s a novel design?
For example, are there any truly new suspensions systems that can be made? Or are we at the point where makers should embrace iterative design and leave aesthetic considerations (eg “copying” a tried and true suspension design that is traditionally subconsciously tied to a particular company) to others for commentary?
(This also begs the question of how much of a headphone can be patented, but I’m unfamiliar with the patents that currently exist and that may be beyond the scope of the podcast)
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Here’s one I’ve been thinking of.
In your eyes, what is a “review”? What is the purpose of a review and what is it trying to accomplish?
I find a lot of the discourse and drama surrounding reviews and reviewers (be it for any hobby) is because people often have different expectations of what a review is and what it should be.
Lastly, why do you each review products? Is it for personal enjoyment? What are you each trying to accomplish with your reviews?
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See watches, and the endless discussion between “knock-offs” versus “homages.” With technology function comes first, so creating a rotating bezel, or GMT hand, or chronograph function is perfectly legal. Copying a brand name, no.
I hope we see breakthroughs, especially not using AI, which is currently the SUV of computing 
, burning grotesque amounts of energy for only modest benefits produced in the world, some of which could already be produced with simpler methods.
I have since discovered this and agree with you, some fundamentals cannot be avoided
This has become my icing on the cake.
Indeed. See the “Big Data” fad of 10-15 years ago. You don’t need economical statistical sampling, just process everything you collect through a new warehouse full of servers. It’s great for sales.
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Suggestion: “How much potential is there in manual equalization?”
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TLDR - It depends.
Three factors, come to mind.
- It depends on the clarity(accuracy) of the transducers, which have an impact on how well a listener can hear the anomalies using a tool like owliophile.com, by listening to test tones at different frequencies. Better quality transducers allow us to hear anomalies better. Poor quality transducer will cause the listener to exaggerate their manually defined EQ correction filters, because it is more difficult to hear the aberrations. That has been my experience.
So I would highly recommend, start with better devices, which have lower level of the following anomalies :
1.1 Harmonic distortion
1.2 Ringing/resonances
1.3 Compression/Limiting - which is also a form of distortion
-
The listener - how good is their hearing, are they a trained listener?, do they understand things like the Fletcher Munsen phenomenon in human hearing?, are the able to listen at the right volume when performing the manual definition of EQ correction filters? So the natural and teachable abilities of the listener are an important factor. How good is a car or plane or helicopter - it depends on the pilot or driver.!!
-
The source material one is listening to further to applying EQ filters. This point applies to any kind of EQ correction, whether derived manually or via any other methods of definition/creation. Does the source audio have any significant content in the frequency regions altered by corrective EQ filters?
If we listened to white or pink noise, then equalisation would have the most impact. But we almost never listen to music that sounds like that. (hopefully).
We do not listen to white or pink noise, albeit some music can sound like that, and look like that in an analyzer - with very even frequency distribution across most of the audible frequencies.
When I have used owliophile.com for manual EQ, by listening to test tones at different frequencies, by ear, to define EQ correction filters, I am also able, in my DAW Reaper, to listen to the difference introduced by the filters. A feature in Reaper which can be toggled to enable and disable this feature, achieves this by subtracting the before and after effect of the filters, and leaving behind just the difference, i.e the change introduced by the EQ filters.
For a lot of music, the difference introduced by the filters is audibly negligible, cos there may not be that much audio in the frequencies affected by the filters, in the material I am listening to, at that time.
Occasionally I then run into some audio material, that does have a significantly audible difference, that is notable, most likely because the audio does have a significant amount of audio within the frequencies affected by the filters.
Topic for discussion:
I some times see people say that an amp doesn’t have enough current for a given pair of headphones. What does it sound like when this happens? And how can people check for this before buying an amp?
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Topic for discussion:
As a big retailer, could you guys standardize amp specs? Some manufacturers give their amp output in volts, some in mW at 32 Ohms, some at 100 Ohms, etc. It’s hard to compare and hard to know if an amp has enough current for my headphones for example.
Given my limited knowledge, I think RME does this very well. They give graphs showing their power, voltage, and current at various impedences. See page 95 of their RME ADI Pro SE 2/4 manual: https://rme-audio.de/downloads/adi24pro_e.pdf
I think you guys are in a great position to shine more light on this and either get manufacturers to provide the graph, or you can test them yourselves. Either way, I’d love to see those two RME-style graphs on every amp on your storefront.
I think this would also allow you to make a new type of search feature where people can ask something like “given that I own headphone X, only show me amps that can sufficiently power them” or even better “this is my collection, only show me amps that can power them all”.
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Topic for discussion:
Let’s say you’re in the middle of a listening session and want to change headphones/IEMs. How long does it take you to get everything swapped and reconfigured (volume, gain, EQ profile, etc)?
The fastest I’ve found so far is with the RME ADI series of DAC/amps. I can remap the four front face buttons and seven custom buttons on the remote control to load various setups (which covers every setting on the device). So I can switch between up to seven different headphones/IEMs using the remote by just double clicking one button.
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Here’s a suggested topic and sub-topic:
- Knowing what we know about variability of headphones across heads (including HRTF effects and non-HRTF-related HpTF variation) and the private language problem, is it irresponsible for reviewers to use subjective language when reviewing headphones? Should only the language of FR be used? Or should reviewers with an understanding of FR lead the discourse for relating FR features to particular subjective terms to describe their experience?
(For context to this topic, see my discussion with Andrew on the Arya Unveiled review thread).
- How much should viewers be trusted to understand that a reviewer’s experience might differ from their own, or that language limitations might result in differences of understanding? How much caveating is necessary for a review to be ‘responsible’ to viewers?
I was about to be snarky/humorous until I saw that this was posted in the Suggest Topics thread.
I mean, why should that stop you from being snarky and humorous?
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