The Spice Must Flow! - Official SPICY TAKES Thread

Hey all! We’ve had a ton of fun with Spicy Hour on the weekly livestreams, but we want to see even more of your spicy takes!

I figure it’s not fair to ask for spicy takes if we don’t come with our own, so here are a few spicy takes from our content team!

Me (@listener)

“Large bass shelves in headphone targets are a result of people being unable to cope with the midrange treble errors inherent to headphones not adapting well to people’s HRTFs when placed on their head”

@Fc-Construct

“IEMs are better than headphones”

@GoldenSound

“IEMs are bad cause they don’t provide the same spaciousness effect you can get with open back headphones”

@Resolve

“Headphone target curves should primarily be evaluated on methodology and communication, not the curve itself so long as it’s reasonable. Very different targets can be rated similarly by the same people.”

And that’s it for our takes, so feel free to disagree with us in this thread, but also definitely go ahead and share your spicy takes here. Who knows? Maybe someone else will agree with you :wink:

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What does “unable to cope with midrange treble errors” mean?

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Here’s another one, though perhaps less spicy:

If a headphone has mediocre treble, it doesn’t matter how good the bass and mids are, I still won’t want to listen to it.

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How’s this:

“I refuse to watch any Youtube videos that are offered with a goofy-faced thumbnail, no matter how enriching the information offered therein may be.”

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Exactly this, if I see a shocked looking face in the thumbnail I avoid

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howlo

for the ultimate in audio transparency
just listen in the nude

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You call this a “spicy take,” but I call it “just a straight up good take my brother.” :grin:

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Headphones are inherently maladaptive devices due to their extremely close proximity to the ears they’re funneling sound into, which is different than… basically all other sounds in the world.

Consider a speaker. Due to their distance, their sound radiates into the space we’re in and interacts with the whole of our anatomy—head, shoulders, ears, torsos, legs, etc.—just like every other sound in the real world.

This group of anatomical factors and the effect they have on incoming sound makes up our HRTF, and our HRTF is always affecting all incoming sound in the world around us. More than that, because we’ve been acclimating to it for so long, we are also always expecting the sound of our HRTF. With sounds in the real world, we need not worry or think about it, because sounds in the real world interact with all of this stuff and our brain’s expectation is met. We don’t consciously hear the sounds in the world plus our HRTF, our brain subtracts the part it’s gotten used to (HRTF) automatically.

For this reason, we do not need to consider HRTF with speakers: they actually interact with the whole HRTF. This is why we don’t use Head and Torso simulators for evaluating speaker measurements, our brains already subtract the effects that our anatomy impart to the sound so we can just use flat microphones.

With headphones though, due to their placement on our heads (and the fact that they follow our heads when we turn them), they do not interact with our full HRTFs, and thus we need to evaluate headphone response in terms of the error relative to our perceptual expectation (HRTF), which includes the subtraction of the HRTF that our brain is still bringing to the processing of incoming sound.

In other words, headphones on human heads are only interacting with our ears at a fixed proximity and angle, and this means two things:

  • the acoustic event at the eardrum is not colored by the full HRTF
  • the brain subtracting the HRTF like it does for sounds in the real world introduces error, because the full HRTF is not present to be subtracted

Lets say I have a pair of well-measuring speakers EQed to a target I like, it’ll probably have a fairly smooth response above 1 kHz measured with a mic, but measured at my ear it’ll have large peaks and dips (but the brain subtracts the peaks and dips because it is used to these peaks and dips being there in the HRTF).

Now if I put an HD 650 on my head, the peaks and dips that are introduced because of that headphone’s placement relative to my ear (as well as it’s actual acoustics, of course), will not perfectly match my HRTF, because it is not interacting with it.

This maladaptive (ie. headphones do not perfectly adapt to the HRTF) character of headphones causes large peaks and dips relative to our HRTF expectation when measured on human heads, and my conjecture is that the degree of bass boost often arrived at in preference research is a band-aid to help balance the colorations that occur on human heads with headphones.

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Not gonna surprise anyone, but treble has a disproportionate relationship to sound quality relative to the other regions for me.

If there’s too much bass, i’ll deal with it. Not so for treble.

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I can appreciate your attempts in trying to work out some of the finer points in the Harman research, like the preferred bass response. But I still think this is missing the forest for the trees.

In retrospect though, maybe it would have been better for Harman not to publish any curve at all. There was alot of interest in what they were doing though, both from the enthusiasts and developers. So we can’t really fault Harman for giving us a peek under the hood of their research.

In this case, the fault was not in our stars, but in ourselves, when thinking the curve was the thing, when it was really more the idea behind the curve that was the real thing.

Not mine, but interesting: “Frequency response of headphones doesn’t matter because our brain adjusts to it anyway.”
And another as a consequence of the previous one: “Equalizer is not necessary, it only worsens sound of headphones”.

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The “IEMs are better than headphones” is a bit of a low hanging spicy take so let me give another one.

This hobby would be a lot more enjoyable if people are willing to admit that its OK to spend lots of money on memes.

Like, by all means buy that $800 cable. Not because you actually think it makes a night-and-day difference in sound quality, but because you like the look and feel of it. And similarly, other people should say “cool cable man” instead of “omg all cables are the same ur an idiot!!!”.

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Based take imho, listener is way more educated in audio than they would like us to believe and i would relaly appreciate more educational videos from him as well as reviews. Please kindly.

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Yes, we keep Listener locked away in the warmpoo corner. There is no escape!

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Even ultra expensive headphones should come in actually portable cases. While they’re nice for long-term storage, what am I supposed to do if I want to take my headphones with me on a trip and the only available means to safely carry them is a pelican case with a cutout?

ZMF is a better pad manufacturer than headphone manufacturer. (Though, this is not even putting down their headphones - their pads are just excellent.)

Discussing measurements of products that you’re not seriously considering as options to get is almost completely useless. It’s cool that Erin or whoever measured this or that product but you’re only talking about the results because you’re starved for topics that have any relevance to you but still want to participate in this as a hobby.

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I think a lot of you here are displaying some reasonable opinions and the spice really isn’t that hot. :smirking_face:

Now based on my recent experiences lately I will say that in the closed back world of headphones, the LCD XC has better technical performance capabilities than the Caldera Closed. I will also say that when the LCD XC is EQ’d properly it is a better headphone than the Caldera closed in stock tuning.

I think this outta make some mouths burn. :zany_face:

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Yes, and that makes Grell more interesting than DCA. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Damn i knew it, the warm poo corner sounds terrible.

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I have two:

  1. More drivers do not always equal better quality sound in IEMs. The trend infecting the IEM industry lately, especially this year, is to stuff as many drivers into a shell as possible and use that as a marketing ploy. IEM quality is about tuning and driver quality, not driver count.

  2. IEMs offer FAR greater value for money at $300 and less than headphones.

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Wow, these takes are indeed spicy - the spiciest in the thread thus far!

Regarding the FR comment, I’ll simply say that getting used to a sound doesn’t mean that the sound is now “good” or “correct.”

Some really good takes thus far; I look forward to reading more.