Would moving it to a pertinent (or new, I suppose) thread be possible?
1 Like
Itās possible to move it anywhere, we just need to decide where it fits, or, in the case of a new thread, what this thread will be titled (just so we create something that will continue to grow with relevant conversation rather than fade into darkness).
1 Like
Grado and Ultrasone always had wonky sound signatures and you can see that judgement back in the early 2000ās. The general sentiment for those brands havenāt really changed. The biggest change for those is that they didnāt really adapt and there is just more competition out there.
The biggest issue to me is the change in views when the T1 came out and the current view of it. Iām still waiting for any type of proof where my previous statements on how the industry has shift is wrong. There has been a shift in the type of headphones amps that are more popular from the 2000ās to now. There has been a shift to lower OI for amplifiers. I think people are just ignoring these market movements and assume that all Beyers are terrible when they were easily in every conversation when it came to TOTL great headphones in the 2000ās.
So youāre saying that thereās no characteristic sound to amplifier topologies but opamps are extremely diverse devices. So this means that you do believe there might be a difference in sound between amplifiers but not necessarily linked to their topology? Am I understanding that correctly?
1 Like
This can apply to Beyer as well, of course - the oddities of the DT770/880/990, the first-gen Teslas, and the current gen ones are all pretty uniform.
Relative to the T1, this is wrong. In the early 2000s, the marginal headphone amplifier output impedance was higher, but not to an extent thatās significant to the T1, or even HD600. At that point, youāre talking about stuff like the Headroom amplifiers (1-5 ohm), Meier Audio Cordas (again, roughly 4 ohm), perhaps something based on a TPA6120A2 opamp like a FiiO E9 (about 10 ohms), etc. There were higher-Zout designs then, as now, but the shift to lower output impedance has been relative to very low impedance designs - 20 ohm planars, 10 nominal ohm IEMs with complex impedances, etc - when weāre talking about ārun of the millā amps.
If your view is that opamps are similar enough to call a single topology - on the basis of being integrated circuits with an inverting and non-inverting input and an output - then it would be pretty surprising if there were associations between ātopologyā and sound. The analogy Iād go to here is that itās kind of like suggesting that āanimals with four legsā would share a similar experience to ride.
There are ways that you can make an amplifier design audible - the classic case, other than output impedance, is improperly biasing a class B output stage, producing zero-crossing distortion. And, of course, many tube designs are intentionally made very nonlinear in ways that are very likely audible.
That said, if an amplifier is designed competently with the intention of being transparent, it will be - itās not hard to make the amplifier nearly as insignificant to the signal at your ear as the cable connected to it.
5 Likes
I guess agree to disagree. The DT series have shown to have better staying power than the Grado/Ultrasones back in the day.
These examples are still all SS amplifiers (and not necessarily great ones at that). My initial point was that T1ās do better on tube amplifiers and possibly better on high OI SS amplifiers like beyers A20 or the SPL Auditor that both have a 120 ohm OI (compared to low OI SS amps).
Iām not but you brought in the point that any opamp should be able to power these high impedance headphones easily. From my experience, there is a preference of what type of component is used and how it is implemented. I rarely find someone who is excited to listen to an amp full of opamps. If they were, might I suggest looking at the Sparkos headphone amp.
That seems to be an interesting claim that I would like to see happen. AFAIK, everything in the chain can affect the sound. Iād love to hear how you would design this amplifier that is completely transparent.
So basically the same thing as when it canāt source enough voltage?
Even when driving either low or high impedance headphones?
Sorry, I somehow didnāt see this - my notifications must be bugged, half the time it shows 200+, half the time zero.
Well, yes, you get clipping if you give an amplifier an input that would require it to go closer to the supply voltage than itās capable of (or past the rails) and if you tell it to output more current than itās capable of. The exact āshapeā of that clipping may differ, however - it isnāt always an instant transition from a smooth rise into a flat line.
Yes, high Z headphones are very easy to drive, lower-Z ones are more troublesome because of the currents required, but still nothing at all troublesome when weāve had transparent speaker amps dealing with 2-4 ohm loads for decades.
Look into the work of Douglas Self and the āBlamelessā amplifier premise, and you have roughly my views as they apply to discrete designs.
4 Likes
An interesting video essay, albeit with some provocative/controversial vibe.
Thought it might be of interest to the community. What do you guys think?
5 Likes
Nice callout to the Headphones.com SINAD article by @Resolve and @Mad_Economist. 
5 Likes
I donāt see too much controversial there - well, other than implying that sensitivity is always expressed in dBSPL/mW (I strongly prefer dBSPL/V). A nice video!
3 Likes
I find it mostly fine, he makes sure to put the distinction between what is NEEDED to power a headphone properly and what people might want so thereās nothing really controversial here.
3 Likes
Click-bait title to draw us rubberneckers in to a ānothing to see here, move alongā situation.
1 Like
Ah, the Crinbait. Works everytime.
1 Like
It was a great video to watch. Definitely agree with his reasons behind it as Iāve made the same mistake when I upgraded my low cost Amp/Dac to something higher end. Did I notice a differenceā¦yesā¦but did I notice the difference in terms of the amount of money I put into itā¦that is the debate.
As we all know - once you take the pill, down the hole you go!
1 Like
Re
Exactly! The law of diminishing returns does in fact exist. Yes you can get better stuff when you spend more $, but is it a dollar for dollar improvement? No. I would someday like to upgrade my Schiit Lyr 3 to a Pendant SE or some such, but will it be a dramatic difference? I donāt knowā¦
As an aside, I got really irritated when I saw a TAS blurb on āThe Law of Accelerating Returnsā in an Upscale Audio email, what a crock.
āA fool and his money are soon partedā
6 Likes
For buyers in the āabsolute soundā or luxury market, this ad may be correct. Their logic is not related to double blind tests, actual sound quality, or direct return on investment. The blurb gets at the basic logic of luxury: āā¦capture the actual experience of moving up through the ranksā¦ā Many people buy houses, cars, yachts, jewelry, and other showy products to prove their status. Higher rank, or top rank in a power pyramid. This is as old as humanity, and can indeed influence many that they are somehow superior.
If a personās goal is to show they are better than you and they thereby deserve respect, āaccelerating returnsā can reveal pragmatic reality. This strategy doesnāt work on everyone and it backfires on others, but it works on enough people that it continues.
Archeologists dig up graves from many thousands of years ago and find wealthy people buried with jewelry. This was last seen at their funerals, but the family impressed the neighbors and held their status for the next generation. The pyramids still stand in Egypt.
8 Likes
According to Will Rogers, āA fool and his money are soon elected.ā
4 Likes
This topic came up in a recent live stream, and I think Iāve spoken about this before but I figured Iād use this space to organize my thoughts on the subject a bit.
Soap Box - Objectivism vs Subjectivism
This āproblemā that seems to exist among various audiophile communities is a fabricated one. That is to say, itās a semantic challenge at worst. In some ways the conversation surrounding this topic fuels the disagreement we see in various places, or even community silos being pitted against one another (head-fi vs ASR vs SBAF vs us etc.).
Iād argue that if weāre able to think clearly about this subject or be willing to accept nuances, these debates sort of stop.
But letās play out a typical scenario for how conversations on this topic tend to go.
A reviewer or enthusiast will describe a headphoneās sound with reports of subjective qualia that use all kinds of audiophile terms like ādetailā and āresolutionā, even ātechnicalitiesā and so on. The āobjectivistā is then likely to ask āwhat is detail? show me detailā indicating either by a given metric like frequency response, THD or some tangible acoustic property of the headphone. To that, the āsubjectivistā either has to say āI donāt knowā, or suggest that our current metrics arenāt fully capturing all there is.
This is then where the objectivist can feel comfortable with the notion that descriptions of ādetailā, āresolutionā or ātechnicalitiesā is all just sighted biases, framing effects, or some other type of confirmation bias, because the subjectivist canāt prove that any of what theyāre talking about actually exists in a tangible fashion.
The problem with this is that itās a bit like saying āconsciousness doesnāt exist because you canāt show me consciousnessā, or that any other indication of an experience isnāt real because itās not tangible.
Simply put, these two āsidesā are speaking past one another in the strongest of ways, but are ultimately pointing to the same thing. And Iām going to go out on a limb and say the fault lies with the subjectivists for this misunderstanding. In other words, we havenāt been careful enough with our subjective reports of sound quality.
Subjective reports of ādetailā and so on typically take the following form:
- Product X is or isnāt detailed (or any other subjective qualia being assessed)
This would indicate that thereās some property of the product that really exists in the way itās being described. But because these subjective reports are actually descriptions of the subjective experience - and I should say, merely descriptions of the experience, we should more appropriately report them like this:
- I experience product X as detailed or as not detailed
or
- Product X sounds detailed or not detailed to me
The point here is that if we put limits on what subjective reports actually refer to - reports of the subjective experience rather than statements that seem to indicate certain facts about a product that arenāt verifiable - then thereās really no debate to be had.
āDetailā isnāt a real acoustic property of headphones, neither are āattackā and ādecayā (letās leave aside questions about CSD and impulse response at the moment because these are really just frequency response in minimum phase devices like headphones). Moreover, semantically, ādetailā isnāt even frequency response, even if thatās ultimately what is responsible for the various reports we see - and Iād argue that this is likely the case, but we canāt demonstrate it yet.
Instead, these reports of ādetailā and so onā¦ they are merely descriptions of the experience, and nothing more.
Now there is of course the bigger question of what leads to these experiences, but this is where we have to point the finger at the objectivist who thinks that either,
- A) target adherence is all there is,
or - B) people making these reports arenāt hedging against any biases or framing effects that might be responsible. Or in other words theyāre expressing a falsehood.
In the case of A), this person simply has more to learn about measurements, and Iād direct them to this video here. But B) is actually quite plausible, and itās worth acknowledging that this is an important factor in many subjective reports. But even if thatās the case, we shouldnāt dismiss reports of the experience outright. That would effectively be closing the door to all the things we might potentially learn about frequency response, headphone acoustics, transducer behavior and so on - that is of course, if thereās something to learn there.
Of course, you could say there isnāt anything new to learn there, but now youāre no better than the subjectivist. You simply donāt know that for sure unless you try.
A Case for Dualism
Thereās an analogy to be made with classical mind/body dualism, for those who are philosophically inclined. That is to say, subjective reports could be thought of as āmindā and the objective side of things could be thought of as āextensionā or ābodyā - tangible substance.
Dualism was an important problem in metaphysics for years, mainly because itās unsatisfying and doesnāt have a particularly parsimonious conclusion. But we donāt really have to grapple with this problem today. Thatās becauseā¦ by and large, the more we learned, and the more science advanced, the more the ābodyā portion pushed the āmindā portion out, and the problem has effectively eased. That is to say, we could describe or understand mental stuff in terms of physical stuff.
I imagine that same thing will eventually happen with sound science as well. Weāll eventually understand the tangible physical and acoustic properties so well - and importantly psychoacoustics - that weāll be able to reliably predict and draw a straight line between objective measured results and subjective experiences.
And, there are some who think we can do this already. Iād argue that we canāt, but I think it wouldnāt be a stretch to say that we can always learn more, do more comprehensive studies - and as Jude reminds me, Harman is after all just the best publicly available research at the moment. Thereās room for improvement, and I think even most objectivists should be okay with that.
I wouldnāt ordinarily argue in favor of dualism, and thatās a very deep subject for reasons as to why, but if we at least admit that currently, we canāt reliably and exhaustively predict all aspects of the experience by looking at a graph, then we can at least treat the subjective and objective elements of evaluations as valuable. Even the Harman research valued and recorded subjective reports when they were conducting their research.
Currently weāre still stuck in the kind of mud-flinging debate of āobjectivists are wrongā vs āsubjectivsts spew nonsenseā (and you can see evidence of that in many places online), when really we should probably think of them as describing two aspects of the same thing. And just like the problem of dualism has lessened over time, this debate will likely also go away the more we understand.
Now the last bit Iām going to say here has to do with which ācampā has the right of it, because thereās also the practical element of āhow should we approach audio?ā. In general, I think itās fine to do both, as long as we know and are conscious of which one weāre doing. Or better yet, do both in the same evaluation (Crin and I take the same approach for example).
When doing the objective assessments, approach it with the care and diligence thatās required to get accurate information but also with the recognition that it canāt exhaustively predict listener experiences. When giving subjective reports of the experience, treat those as claims about our experiences rather than claims about acoustic behavior.
If those providing subjective reports recognize those reports for what they are - descriptions of their experiences, and not descriptions of facts about the product - and objectivists are honest about what they donāt know or are unable to correlate, then there is no right of it. These two approaches can, and should coexist, until we can exhaustively predict the experience with the use of data.
14 Likes
In a short and personal opinionā¦
I believe that objectivism is great, it is very useful and helps guide us, helps things be improved and is a way of explaining something that is not open to debate.
In other words, if measurements (which will hopefully improve over time like you say) are made of two devices in the same set up, there is no way two people can understand something different from the same measurement. It is far more exact than āwarmā and āspaciousā etc. which can be interpreted in different ways by different people.
Objectivity is greatā¦ untilā¦
I put the headphones on my head. Once I am listening to a set of headphones, the measurements are totally irrelevant. The only, ONLY, thing that is important is that we like what we are listening to. At which point, measurements are no longer an indication, to me personally, as I am listening to said headphones.
My point is that, if a measurement says something is extremely bassy, yet I hear it as lacking bass, no amount of objectivism is going to change what I am hearing, be this real or just a figment of my imagination.
8 Likes
Yeah and there could be objective, factual reasons as to why this might happen. Thereās a whole element of the objective side of things thatās much more about confidence in a purchase than actual enjoyment. People think āit matches the target so objectively bestā, but that doesnāt mean their enjoyment of it isnāt being influenced by a different kind of confirmation bias.
4 Likes