There’s that word again - ugh, hobby. Audio really isn’t a hobby, not unless you’re into DIY hands-on with speakers, amps, etc. Anyway, why pigeonhole it and label it?
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Hmmm… I disagree.
Isn’t that exactly what you just did? Pigeonhole it as not a hobby?
Maybe it’s different things to different people, just like sound preferences differ.
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At first glance, this looked like a car ad! The new Kia Hobby. 
Agreed. I don’t find “hobby” as being derogatory.
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I subscribe to many audio reviewers, all the big names Z, JV, Metal571, John Darko, Steve Guttenberg, Resolve, Max Settings to name a few. I watch and listen for all the different views and opinions. I don’t really care for all the flashy pictures and video quality as that takes my attention away from listening to what is being said as I am very easily distracted - SQUIRREL!. But I am somewhat bias to this one particular reviewer, I think his channel is DBS Tech Talk 
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I will check out your channel! Honestly, I have found so many new channels since joining this forum. Learned about @metal571 recently now you, always cool to check out new perspectives.
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Haha! I see whatcha’ did there…
I think I’ve actually seen a couple of your videos. Subscribed.
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I don’t. You’d have to ask Mad about that one since I’m not sure if he’s posted that anywhere else
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@ValentineLuke - I think I was the one who asked to see a video of his headphone tree a few times - he only kind of showed it though!
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Yeah, I was hoping to see more. Fascinating to get a glimpse of the evolution of headphones through that ‘tree’.
He’s has quite a collection. I’m glad he shared it with us.
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I’m also kinda interested in the binaural mic that oluv used and @Mad_Economist recommended. I saw a couple on Amazon that look interesting. Would be curious if they perform better as a “measuring” tool than EARS. In Oluv’s vids, they sure sound more accurate than EARS does.
I guess I can ping you guys on discord too.
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That is definitely one of my favorite parts from a production standpoint of his videos. The binaural Mic, is pretty cool.
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Just talked with @Mad_Economist briefly. He says he will post some info and links about all of this stuff in the coming day or two.
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Nice.
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I’ve been playing around with one of these:
https://www.soundprofessionals.com/cgi-bin/gold/item/SP-TFB-2
It’s small and sits fairly deep in the concha, so it should pick up the pinna’s gain at least as well as a little of the concha’s gain. I’ve been playing with calibrating it against my nearfield monitors as well as doing some headphone EQ based on the measurements. Still lots to learn.
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Yea thats the one I saw on Amazon. Curious to hear how you think of them!
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My “one-to-two days” almost up, consider this a relatively brief comment on the subject - I had hoped to get some additional data together, but a lot of fighting with production machinery stopped me from doing anything metrological this week. I’m a man of my word, however, particularly when @metal571 is concerned, so some commentary on my tinkering with in-ear microphones and my take on their general usability.
As folks who’ve talked to me before may be aware, proper measurements of headphones and potential problems with measurement systems is a concern of mine. For my own lab, I have laid my worries mostly to rest by acquiring an industry-standard, anthropomorphic measurement system (my beloved Brüel & Kjær 4128C Head and Torso Simulator), but such systems are priced far beyond what is reasonable for hobbyists, and frankly impose a pretty onerous cost on small firms, so I’ve long been interested in whether there were more economical alternatives.
A starting point for my projects was an older HATS also in my possession, the Cortex-made “MK2 HATS”, which has IEC959-compliant pinnae terminated with a 1/2" measurement microphone next to the canal entrance - I referenced this in my older post regarding measurement systems, and recently compared quite a few headphones on them, finding that the difference on a headphone-to-headphone basis and on-average was very similar, less the “noise” of positioning/placement. The fact that this system seemed largely comparable - the differences of its IEC60318-4-less ear canal’s transfer function being relatively “static” with respect to headphones, so it could be compensated with a single frequency response compensation file or EQ - was quite intriguing to me, and made me wonder how suitable measurements done using a microphone occluding a canal would be.
I fabricated a small in-ear microphone using a Primo EM258, a Comply T600, and a small 3D printed spacer glued into the tip to keep the microphone in place, and put this in my HATS. More measurements than this looks like later (note that each of those lines is an average of five measurements…), I had an average difference between the two that looked quite a lot like the response of a 60318-4 coupler (e.g. the lack of ear impedance didn’t seem to change much other than the lack of its consistent gain), and subtracting the averaged difference from the minimum and maximum differences per headphone showed that the two tracked essentially with the variation of my placements (last measurement is two sets of 4128 measurements compared using the same methodology).
Around this point, I recalled that Hammershøi & Møller 2008 had included data for blocked ear DF HRTFs (Table II, column “BE” under heading “∆LDF”), and became intrigued about how well a generic compensation and a $10 capsule would compare to the ear simulators and individual unit compensation of my 4128’s internal mics. I measured six largish over-ear headphones (averages each, of course) with both the ear simulators and the probe microphones, then compensated the ear simulator measurements with my HATS’ DFHRTF, and the probe measurements with Hammershøi & Møller’s population average blocked ear DFHRTF - you can compare the results for yourself, but I’m fairly pleased with them.
Do note that the positioning of the capsule relative to the canal entrance is quite significant - as an example, the HD800 with a few difference placements, not far apart, and the same with the flush microphone measurement subtracted. A microphone sitting in the concha bowl will not yield the same response, and cannot be compensated with Hammershøi & Møller’s data - additionally, there is some reason to suspect that measurements from in the concha bowl rather than the canal will vary meaningfully between headphones in ways that measurements in the canal would not; the sort of headphone-specific variations which make a single compensation vexing.
I had hoped to bring some additional new data - including in-ear measurements on some human subjects with the same compensation - to bear here, but I’m quite busy these days, so I’m afraid you’re stuck with what I’ve got for the moment. I can provide links to some freely-accessible academic information on this subject if there is interest, but I don’t have time to summarize at the moment, so I’ll hold off on that until tomorrow I think.
@antdroid this may be of interest to you.
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