It’s compensated to my HRTF, so the lack of a dip suggests an actually smooth response on my head, not the presence of a peak on my head.
It may well have a large peak on other heads, but not my own. The results of the on-head measurements are much more perceptually relevant to me (I hear no peak or dip in the 7-10 kHz area).
I wouldn’t say my current setup is properly calibrated for THD, but at 94dB @ 1 kHz I was getting roughly 4% at 20 Hz when I was using 5128 for a bit. So similar to things like HD 600/650, but with the bonus that you’ll basically never have to boost bass if you’re a reasonable listener who isn’t a basshead.
Thank you for the reply, and the additional data above, listener. It’s helpful to see that.
You’re assuming that because you hear no peak, and don’t see a peak on your compensated plot that there is no resonance. That’s not the way I see it though.
What I see is a fairly consistent pattern of dips on the other headphones at around 7-8 kHz. And no similar dip on the MV1. That strongly suggests to me that there is a resonance in the MV1 in that range… whether you personally hear it or not. And I’d still be curious to see how the MV1’s response compares to the average of the other headphones in that range. The easiest way to show that is to use the average response curve to compensate the MV1’s response. This will eliminate the sine effect, and show only the differences between the two.
It sounds like you’re trying to separate the behavior of the headphone from the head its placed on, but I don’t think this is advisable (or really even doable with simple in-situ acoustic measurements like this) because the headphone’s behavior is altered by the ear its placed on. This is why we don’t use flatplate measurements; they’re an unrealistic condition for showing how the headphone would actually behave, you need an ear load.
Yes, most other headphones produce a dip on my head, so if I compensate the MDR-MV1’s response to an average of those responses, it will show as a peak… but that doesn’t mean it has a peak, it means the others have dips.
It may be different on someone else’s head where most headphones don’t dip, but if MDR-MV1 peaked significantly on this same head, I wouldn’t say the other headphones that are measuring with no dips have dips… that is both vastly overcomplicating the interpretation and also just not actually correct when it comes to the acoustic event that is transpiring.
I think its important to reiterate that I don’t see much value in orienting the evaluation of a headphone’s response based on how it compares to other headphones, because in this case its treating the errors of the other headphones as the target.
I think you hit on something earlier regarding EQ that warrants further mention. The fact that the source music varies widely, and could also use EQ as well.
What I’m finding is that when applying EQ, some music “subjectively” does seem to improve. Other music, on the other hand, sounds WORSE with the same EQ settings. Reminds me of the old saying from an Ohio State coach who was fond of saying: " When you throw the football, three things can happen, and two of them are bad. The same could be said for applying EQ.
Whilst I think it’s a noble effort to pursue EQ, it’s not easy to achieve consistent desired results.
A resonance or sibilance does not always have to be represented by a peak on a headphone FR plot. This is one of the points I was trying to make in a different topic here related to the M50X. And it is one of the more common misconceptions people have when reading headphone graphs.
If most headphones have a dip at around 7-8 kHz on your head, that is most likely part of the normal resonant characteristics of your own head and ears, probably produced by the concha. (GRAS fixtures also have a fairly pronounced concha notch in the same range. I believe Oratory1990 even mentions this in the instructions for reading his measurements. A concha notch at around 8-9 kHz is normal on Ora’s plots and I believe also on Resolve’s old GRAS plots, because it’s part of the resonant characteristics of that type of rig and simulated ears.)
If most headphones have a fairly deep notch there, and one particular headphone (like the MV1) does not, that means the headphone is louder or greater in amplitude there than most other headphones. Another way to say that is that the headphone resonates with more energy at that frequency range than most other headphones. We don’t know what the cause of that additional resonance is on the MV1. But we do know that it exists because of the differences we see in the levels of your measurements there.
Is it possible that the MV1 is the only headphone with the “correct” amplitude or resonant behavior there, and all the other headphones that you’ve measured are somehow exhibiting the same defect there? Yes, in theory that is possible… But it is not very likely.
From your remarks above though, it seems you believe that the MV1 is the only one with the correct behavior on your head there, because it comes closer to matching your own DF HRFT (with a slope) there. I think that might be an example of what some call confirmation bias though. Or seeing what you want or expect in the data, rather than looking at it and trying to analyze or understand it with a completely unbiased and dispassionate eye. That is really the hard part of data analysis for most people, including many scientists. And I certainly struggle with it as well.
If so, this would be subtracted away by the DF HRTFs… and it is not. In the GRAS rigs, that notch in headphone measurements is almost completely subtracted out by using DF compensation, which means yes it is a characteristic of the ear, not the headphone.
Fwiw, Oratory has almost certainly updated his own take when it comes to interpreting headphone measurements on that fixture—yes, in a raw plot the dip is supposed to be there, but now we have a much better understanding why: it’s a feature of the ear itself, even present in measurements of sound sources in the far field (like a DF measurement).
With DF compensation (like, I’m doing on my own head with these measurements), any idiosyncrasies due to the head itself are taken out, thus you’re left solely with the interaction between the headphone and the ear—the HpTF—and this is likely the best visual representation of what we hear given our brain subtracts the HRTF out from sounds we hear anyway.
It is not only likely, it is evident. As said, the dip is not a feature of my ears, it is a commonly occuring feature of headphones when placed on my head and the MDR-MV1 is one of the only headphones that does not dip so strongly. The dips other headphones have are clearly, obviously audible as dips, whereas the MDR-MV1’s treble is one of the few times I do not experience a large dip perceptually (both listening to music, as well as sine wave generators) in this region.
The reason I think this is not confirmation bias, I’ve actually been able to test it. I’ve been developing a listening test for the other reviewers to take so we can better understand our own preferences, and in using it I’ve found that when blind tested with music and pink noise I prefer this region filled in vs. left as a dip. That’s not to say everyone will prefer it, but only that I seem to prefer what measures smoothly on a measurement taken and DF-compensated at my own EEP, even across different headphone designs.
Absolutely. I think if you strive for a truly neutral response though, the results will be pretty good with most stuff.
What you’re describing above sounds alot like Floyd Toole’s “circle of confusion” btw. In a nutshell, even if you could design or EQ a speaker or headphone to have a perfectly neutral or “flat” response, not everything will sound the best on it, because not everything is mastered or produced on, or for the same type of gear.
Toole just released the 4th Edition of his textbook on Sound Reproduction btw, which might be an interesting read, if you want to delve more deeply into the science of all this. I am still tryin to pull together some dough to get the soft cover version.
Whether you can hear the dip or not on a sine sweep is not really the issue though imho. You’re assuming the notch is somehow alien to hearing because it isn’t filtered out by your DF HRTF compensation. But the measurements of various other stimuli on your own head seem to strongly suggest otherwise.
The notch at around 7-8 kHz appears to be a normal feature of your hearing. And I personally WOULD NOT try to fill it in with either EQ or a headphone with resonances or sibilance in the same range. They are your ears though, and you can use and abuse them however you want. Just remember though that you only have two of them. And you can’t really order more.
There are undoubtedly some differences in the way the DF and headphone measurements were done on your head though. And also the way they are done on a measurement rig, for that matter, at the DRP. And that might possibly be one place to look for further answers to the above conundrum, if you think it’s important.
If you are doing measurements on your own ears though, then I’d be more interested in seeing some in-ear measurements of neutral speakers in semi-reflective rooms, if/when you have the ability to do that. And comparing that raw data to the raw headphone measurements.
The difference is these “other stimuli” are, unlike headphones, basically always going through normal, location-laden HRTF processing by the brain, whereas the processing committed to the perceptual “chain” with headphones (for lack of a better term) is diffuse; if diffuse stimuli like headphones commits any dips, it would be accounted for in the diffuse field head measurement provided it is adequately bereft of frequency response coloration arising from specific source incidence. In other words, dips are common features of HRTFs, especially ones based on single sound source locations at specific azimuths and elevations, but diffuse HRTFs tend to be a bit less prone to large dips in this area, and since we’ve eliminated the HRTF, we can conclude the dip is not a feature of my HRTF or my hearing, but of the interaction between headphone and ear—whether that be due to ear geometry/input directivity, driver positioning, acoustic impedance, or some mix thereof, your guess is as good as mine.
Not a normal feature of my hearing, but a normal feature of the system comprised of my ear + headphones when coupled to my ear via a small, pressurised spring of air. I appreciate the concern for my hearing, but I think its simple physics that if there’s a lack of magnitude, there’s a lack of sound pressure, thus I am not committing any damage to my ears by filling in a dip hahah
What do ya mean by this? Like, small positioning differences between when I got the DF measured vs. when I use the mics at home?
Would be interesting, but again the issue is that with the speaker measurement, if I’m listening to the speakers, my brain is subtracting all of the idiosyncrasies in the measurement that would arise due to source incidence. So even if, say, I find a headphone that perfectly matches the sound measured at my EEP with the microphones of a neutral speaker in-room, when I actually listen to this headphone it likely wouldn’t sound the same because my brain is bringing different processing to the table.
Well, I see there’s a video out. Now that they’re taking it away, and/or rebranding and probably bumping up the price, the HD6xx looks pretty good.
I’ve got mine, safely stashed in a cardboard box under my desk on top of boxes of tubes I am not using in the Eufonkia. So if I happen to drop the ZMFs into a cup of hot coffee…. No that won’t happen.
