ronoeh

Jun 30, 2021 10:20 AM By  Dylan Crete

Hey all, I just wanted to say we genuinely appreciate all of your feedback and the time and effort you have put into these messages.

Thank you, man! And many thanks to you and the test devs for all the work that y'all do!

Well, the SHP9500s are rated higher than HD600s for the entire Neutral Sound category, so there are definitely some significant things missing or imbalanced in their measurement rating methodology.

As for soundstage, that actually changes from person to person because of head/ear shape, so who knows if the Ananda is always more spacious than the Arya for everyone.

May 14, 2021 06:32 PM By jfrink

100

Actually, Philips had a very competent team(in Netherlands) that designed the drivers for SHP9500 and its predecessors. I remember reading some article where they explained how they used a laser to track the surface of the diaphragm to see how it responds.

Then who knows what I’m hearing. The lack of dynamic range could all be in my head. But measurements would be nice, and I have never been able to find any.

It would be great if someone could show some, even if they are completely uninteresting.

May 14, 2021 06:32 PM By jfrink

100

If the headphone was designed by a major manufacturer, you could be rest assured that these non-linearities have already been taken care of.

There are no guarantees of that. In fact, major manufacturers are more likely to cheap out on the cheaper products.

Engineering is all about getting within certain tolerances, and they may care about some non-linearities more than others, and they care about those tolerances less when the product they’re making is cheaper too.

May 14, 2021 06:32 PM By jfrink

100

SHP9500 is an amazing headphone and I do use them regularly.

I wholeheartedly agree. They are fantastic headphones for their price. But there is something about them that makes them significantly lower quality than HD600’s or Sundara’s, and it’s definitely not the frequency response or the harmonic distortion or anything else that Rtings currently measures.

Rtings has them rating higher than the HD600’s in the neutral sound quality category, which is obviously untrue with any A/B listening. So there is some measurement of quality that they are missing.

May 14, 2021 06:32 PM By jfrink

100

It is important to enjoy the music rather than worry about some unknown technical detail.

Sadly, I am cursed with an obsession for unknown technical details, especially when they make a noticeable difference in the quality. My enjoyment of music is forever hindered by my nitpicking, and it may never be unhindered again. Truly a tragedy.

May 14, 2021 03:51 PM By jfrink

100

I understand what you are saying, but why is that a concern as a consumer?

My concern is that it sounds, to my ears at least, like many lower quality drivers are non-linear within standard listening volumes, and that that has a major impact on the quality of the sound. As I described in my first post, the dynamic range of the SHP9500 sounds compressed compared to higher quality headphones.

Also, more than half of the music I listen to has a wide dynamic range (especially classical music). I’d rather that range be accurate to some degree rather than all at the same volume.

Without measurements to prove my ears wrong (which they just might be), I can’t simply assume that all headphone drivers are perfectly linear at standard listening volumes, especially when it doesn’t sound like it.

May 14, 2021 11:02 AM By jfrink

100

Amplitude to power relationship is nothing but sensitivity which is already published for all headphones.

No. That’s a single number. It tells us nothing about how higher amplitudes are effected as the power increases.

May 14, 2021 11:02 AM By jfrink

100

The FR graph also shows the sensitivity with respect to frequency. Isn’t it?

No. I’m not talking about volume, THD, frequency, or sensitivity. I’m talking about the displacement of the diaphragm of the driver relative to the power of the input signal.

Here’s a more mechanical explanation:

Every driver has limitations to how far forward or back the diaphragm can move. It has restoring forces that pull it back toward a neutral position. Those forces increase as the diaphragm’s position approaches the limits of its suspension system.

This means that as the input signal increases linearly, the diaphragm will follow the input signal less and less as the restoring force of the suspension system pulls it back toward neutral. Once the diaphragm hits the limit of the suspension system, it stops, even if the input signal continues to increase.

What I’m asking for in physical terms is what the displacement of the diaphragm looks like compared to a range of power in the signal. A well designed driver will displace almost perfectly linearly for the entire range of amplitudes that correspond to standard listening volumes (even up to 100db and higher). A lower quality system will be non-linear within standard listening volumes, and in that case, the audio is compressed (not in the data compression sense, but the audio compression sense), meaning that the peaks of the signal are brought down, which reduces detail and dynamic range, and also causes the instruments to be difficult to discern individually. This effect can also differ depending on the frequency.

This happens mechanically one way or another with every driver type, whether on speakers or on headphones. My question is to what extent on different headphones.

You can get a sense of the effect of this by looking up how audio compression works. You’ll probably see a graph like this which shows that past a certain point in the input level, the output level is brought down so that the peaks of the sound are flattened. This is usually done so that the perceived volume of a track or section of a track can be increased without clipping the audio, and is used in “normalizing” audio tracks for things like radio broadcast, podcasts, and so on where the recordings of voices can have a wide dynamic range but you want it all to play at the same perceived volume. (a basic google search will bring up some good resources to start learning about audio compression and normalization).

May 14, 2021 04:43 AM By tankjunior

43

Actuallty, Rtings already test headphones for non lineareties. Because of a bunch of laws about orthogonalety between frequencies, non linear distortion appear at a multiple of the frequency being played. These are refered to as harmonic distortions and is something Rtings measure and show.

Again, that’s not the information I’m looking for. There are multiple types of non-linearities, and that is only one of them. I’m looking specifically at the amplitude to power relationship, or the output amplitude to input amplitude relationship.

And sure, it’s partially encoded in some of the other measurements, but only partially, and in an incredibly obfuscated way.

I’m looking for a graph similar to this, where I can see at what volume we start to see amplitude compression.

May 12, 2021 11:24 AM By jfrink

100

Dynamic range compression in passive headphone drivers? Unheard of. Is there any published study or is it more audiophile BS?

There are a few studies and online discussion about how it applies to both loudspeakers and headphones. (Example with loudspeakers: http://www.klippel.de/fileadmin/_migrated/content_uploads/Loudspeaker_Nonlinearities–Causes_Parameters_Symptoms_01.pdf Discussion of headphones on a forum: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/an-attempt-to-measure-headphone-non-linearity.18937/ ) Sadly though, it doesn’t appear to be much looked into.

The word that would be used would be “nonlinearities” which actually applies to a few different aspects of how drivers function, but the one I’m interested in is how the amplitude’s relationship to the power is non-linear, resulting in slight compression in many cases, especially at higher volumes, with lower frequencies and transients.

Now, it could be completely meaningless when it comes to most headphones and I could be imagining the whole thing, but I would not be surprised if cheaper headphone drivers displayed more nonlinearities in amplitude vs power compared to more expensive headphones, and I think its still something worth looking into.

May 12, 2021 12:27 PM By  Dylan Crete

Hey! Hope this helps! :)

How interesting! Thanks for giving me an update! I’m looking forward to the next bench!

May 07, 2021 04:16 PM By  Dylan Crete

I agree, it’s definitely a little confusing, we’re actually looking into it a bit further so I’ll let you know as soon as I have an update! :)

Thank you!

Apr 30, 2021 09:34 AM By  Dylan Crete

Hi danegraphics, I spoke with our testers, and they confirmed that the graph is not rotated! Truthfully, we understand that the imaging box may be a little unclear, so our test devs are actually trying to come up with a better alternative in the newest test bench update! Regardless, thank you so much for the good question! :)

Interesting! So does that mean that the audio on these headphones plays inverted?

And surely it shouldn’t affect the score right? I can’t really tell how close the correlation looks, but it looks well correlated to me. I guess my question is if 179 degrees and -179 degrees would be counted as being distant despite only being 2 degrees apart.

The score for that mismatch seems exaggerated to me for some reason.

In my experience, not really no.

Everyone’s PRTF is completely unique to the shape of their ears.

The only thing that the PRTF test measures is how much the sound interacts with the pinna of your ear. The curve that they show is specific to the ears on the head of the dummy they use. Your PRTF curve will be different.

Such correction would also depend on the shape and type of headphone that you are using.

If it is possible, it would not be easy in any way for those reasons.

You’re very welcome!

Can the hifiman sundra image instruments beside or behind you?

The Sundara’s have a 9.0 score in the Imaging section of the review. They image incredibly well, assuming that the music you’re listening to was recorded/mixed to give that effect.

However, that doesn’t mean that the imaging of other planar magnetic headphones will be as good. Every set of headphones is different.

Do I need a specific kind of amplifier to use a planar magnetic headphone?

It depends on the headphone. Every headphone has a different impedance (resistance to the signal). Higher impedance means it takes more power to get the volume up.

32 ohms is low impedance and works with regular phone or computer headphone outputs. 100 ohms and up is higher impedance and would benefit from an amp of some kind.

The Sundara’s are only 37 ohms, so they don’t need an amplifier.

The following is just my personal advice but you can ignore it depending on your budget.

Though once you’re looking at upper mid-fi to hi-fi level headphones like the Sundara’s, you might want to get a DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter) which decodes the digital music into a good clear signal (better than your phone or computer might do).

Something like the FiiO Q1 MkII or the FiiO K5 Pro is a perfect place to start. (You’ll want to connect via USB so that it’s getting the digital signal, not your computer’s lower quality audio output)

There are the HiFiMan Arya’s (https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/hifiman/arya), HiFiMan Ananda’s (https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/hifiman/ananda), Sennheiser HD 800s’s (https://www.rtings.com/headphones/reviews/sennheiser/hd-800-s), and a handful of others: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tools/table/51293

Also, soundstage is affected by the listener’s ears, so the soundstage may be slightly different from person to person.

As for the PC38X’s, you can vote for them to be reviewed here: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/suggestions

They’re currently in 4th place.

It may be a bit tricky to use, but you can use Rting’s table tool (https://www.rtings.com/headphones/tools/table) or the My Ratings tool (https://www.rtings.com/user/ratings) to customize what you’re looking for and filter down to only the features you care about.

In the table tool, click “add column” and it will add the filter types you may want. For example “Type” would be filtering by in-ear, over-ear, etc. “Wireless” would be filtering by whether the headphones are wired or not. And then you can filter by scores for things like office use and phone calls.

Mar 11, 2021 09:11 PM By aroundthebend99

34

If the suggestion (which if I understand is allowing users to customize target curves) isn’t feasible, one alternative could be to just have a selection of curves (Harman, Diffuse Curve, Oratory1990, warm Harman, etc.). Sounds like Danegraphics might want something like the Etymotic curve.

I think that would be a spectacular start! And perhaps even some basic curves that people tend to enjoy in music and headphones like a general “bass boost”, or a detail focused “10khz+ boost”, and others like that.

That would be awesome!

Mar 10, 2021 11:40 AM By  Dylan Crete

Hi danegraphics, Thank you so much for sharing your feedback with us! I’ve seen you active in our discussions quite a few times and it’s obvious that you put a lot of thought and effort into your posts! While you raise some good points, we don’t have any current plans to remove it for in-ear only since we work very hard to consistently test products. That said, I’ve shared this information with our test devs for future consideration! :) It might also be worth mentioning that we’ve recently been looking at adjusting the weight of the neutral sound score as we want to make sure it’s in-line with the community. If you have any other questions or concerns though, do not hesitate to reach out! :)

Thanks for the consideration!

I do understand the desire for consistency, but consider that in-ears are different from over-ears/on-ears enough that they are basically different products with different use cases. Almost as different as speakers are from headphones in general.

If there were an overall headphone score, I wouldn’t weigh the Sports/Fitness category the same between in-ears and over/on-ears. In fact, Sports/Fitness really can’t be reasonably looked at for over/on-ears almost at all (except for in like, I dunno, cycling classes or something).

So I think that different weights should be used between different product types depending on the features that customers tend to reasonably look for in them.

Regardless, I’m happy that I can at least create my own ratings chart to filter out what I am and am not looking for.

But thank you again for at least considering it!

Mar 10, 2021 12:20 PM By  Dylan Crete

Hey danegraphics, nice to see you again! Thanks again for such detailed recommendations! I think you raise some good points and it does seem to be a good idea to add a test of how to measure how faithful they are to the original signal. We’ve also been considering adding a Cumulative Spectral Decay test! That said, I’ve added this to our TB suggestions for future consideration in a TB update! It’s worth mentioning though that it’s unlikely to be included in TB 1.5 as this test bench has been dedicated to fixing an issue! With regards to overshoot/ringing amplitude, I’ve passed on this information to our test devs and they mentioned that it’s an interesting idea. It’s something they’ll be looking into! :) Thanks again for always being so active! :)

Thanks for the response! I would love a Spectral Decay test! That would totally cover the ringing that I’m curious about. The only thing missing would be overshoot, which is mostly covered by frequency response anyway.

I’m excited! Thank you so much!

I second this notion. Everyone has completely different tastes and being unable to score for those tastes makes it harder to find the right headphones.

The Harman Curve is a great start, but for my taste, it’s slightly lacking in treble and promotes too much bass.

Mar 09, 2021 01:31 AM By OP listener800

42

Soundstage (as measured on RTINGS) should have no bearing on scores for an in-ear, as it bypasses the pinnae.

Wholeheartedly agree.

Oh, so you mean a recommended EQ setting for headphones that have an EQ app?

That would probably be difficult because most EQ apps have very little control, or have preset settings with just names that don’t accurately indicate what they do. They would probably have to retest each setting’s frequency response in order to find which one is the best, even if they had graphical control, and that would be quite a bit of work. Not to mention that everyone has different tastes and preferences, so the setting that gives the flattest response might not be the one that sounds the best to you (for example, I prefer less base and more treble).

Also, every EQ app is unique, so it might be difficult to show the capabilities of the different apps in consistent ways.

So who knows? I do think it would be interesting to be able to quickly see what the potential of a headphone is in Rtings. View what kinds of Frequency Responses can be achieved with the companion app.

At the very least, there should probably be a yes/no box that indicates whether or not the headphones even have an app considering that EQ apps are becoming incredibly common.

You can go vote for it if you want. Looks like it already has 23 votes as of my response: https://www.rtings.com/headphones/suggestions

I think that would depend on your EQ software. Also, manual EQing is almost as simple as creating the inverse shape to the weighted frequency response of the headphone in the visualizer. Just take the sound profile image, flip it upside down, and try to match that.

This is great advice for those who want to adjust the treble a bit.

But honestly, something like this shouldn’t be hidden in the accessibility settings that only apply to the phone. There should be a true EQ setting that is saved to the headphones themselves and will work regardless of the device being used with them.

I returned my Max’s specifically because of this issue. I could never get them to sound right, and even if I could, whatever changes I made would only apply to whatever device or software I made the adjustments on.

If Apple adds a true EQ setting for the Max’s. I may just get them again because their DSP and lack of distortion is incredible. But until then, they’re not worth the price to me.

It’s not something that is easily tested.

HRTF (how your head and ear shape affects the sound and allows you to discern direction) can be wildly different from person to person. Each pair of headphones will probably have a different HRTF profile that works well for some people but very poorly for others.

Because it’s so individual, there is no way to really test it in a way that they can say “This surround sound will work well for you” because they don’t know what your personal HRTF profile is.

Jan 15, 2021 01:59 PM By  Adam Babcock

When we reject a product for vote manipulation, it stays rejected for a few months, until the manipulated votes expire. Once the votes have expired, we’ll reset the status and allow people to vote on it again. These were initially rejected in November, so the votes should be expiring soon.

Okay, thank you!