We finally did it—we packed up the team and headed to the UK. On the surface, it was a chaotic travel vlog full of rain, banter, and questionable snack decisions. In reality, the whole trip revolved around one very specific goal: getting our individual HRTFs measured so we can take our headphone reviews to the next level.
The main reason we crossed the Atlantic was to visit the HRTF measurement dome at Imperial College London—specifically inside the Dyson School of Design Engineering. The lab houses a rotating measurement system that captures a full 360° head-related transfer function (HRTF). In simple terms, it measures how our individual heads and ears shape incoming sound.
For years, we’ve relied on industry-standard rigs like the 5128 and GRAS systems using Diffuse Field HRTF calibration. Those systems are incredibly useful—but they’re not our ears.
So we’ve decided to take the next logical step and move to measuring headphones on our own heads as well.
By capturing our own Diffuse Field HRTFs, we can now:
- Measure headphones directly on our own heads using in-ear microphones
- Better understand why we hear things differently from one another
- Test assumptions about “technicalities” and frequency response at the eardrum
- Put tools like AutoEQ to the test in a way that’s actually personalized
To be clear, this isn’t about winning points for a narrative or proving people wrong. This is scientific inquiry, so it’s about answering the myriad open questions currently still out there when it comes to headphone sound. We genuinely don’t know what we’ll find, and that’s the fun part!
Walking into the dome at Imperial felt surreal. From the outside, it’s just a very British-looking tower. Inside, it’s a tightly packed spherical measurement system with a rotating chair and a 5° speaker increment arc. You sit there for roughly 30 minutes while sweeps are played from every direction, then you get 3D scanned and photographed for morphological comparison.
We also got to learn about the broader research happening there—like large-scale HRTF databases, work on estimating individualized HRTFs from scans or photos, and even testing the sonic adaptation of ferrets! Fascinating stuff, but for our purposes, the key takeaway was simple: we now have calibration files for our own heads and ears which we can use to measure headphones to the standard we’ve already set.
We explored London in proper gray, rainy fashion—walking along the Thames, seeing Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and spending far too long at the British Museum making jokes about “borrowed” artifacts. We visited Winchester Cathedral (casually about a thousand years old), ate an unreasonable amount of Nando’s, and subjected ourselves to British snack taste tests.
We also spent time in Cameron’s studio, listening to his meticulously tuned speaker setup—dual subs, independent correction, proper crossovers—the works. The imaging and depth on that system were genuinely standout. It was one of those listening sessions that resets your expectations and reminds you that the “tonal/technical dichotomy” is just a symptom of audiophiles not understanding frequency response or the playback condition of headphones. This system had both in spades.
We even explored some experimental ideas involving prosthetics, 3D replicas, and future testing possibilities. That’s all we’ll say for now.
More than anything, the trip reminded us why we do this. A week earlier, we were scattered across different rooms and countries mulling over impressions and frequency response graphs online. Suddenly we were all around the same table, measuring our own ears in a world-class lab, debating things in person, and pushing our process forward together.
This was easily one of the nerdiest things we’ve ever done in this industry—and but also the most fun.
There’s a lot more coming from what we measured and tested, so stay tuned!
