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Topic: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps) (Read 4184 times) previous topic - next topic
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Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Are there any companies out there that do not give into all the audiophile crap you see everywhere, but actually base the quality of their products on objective measurements? I know of JDS Labs for headphone amps and DACs, but are there any headphone/speaker companies that really care about measurements and objectivity?
There's a lot of well respected headphone companies, Sennheiser for example, who give in to the audiophile market. Sennheiser came out with a balanced headphone amplifier, the HDVD800, which in an interview Axel Grell says the balanced outputs "sound better". He was the lead engineer for Sennheiser, and yet is claiming something that had no scientific proof at all. I think only Etymotic and Sennheiser actually supply frequency response graphs with some of their headphones. And there really isn't any full visual measurements done by any headphone manufacturer that include Waterfall plots, harmonic distortion, frequency response, phase, impedance, etc. We have to rely on third party measurements on the internet.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #1
Many, if not most,  of these devices are actually built by engineers, even thought the marketing department may not want the public to know that.
The most important audio cables are the ones in the brain

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #2
Genelec
Neumann (Klein & Hummel)
ME Geithain

and many many others...
"You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air to breathe - and you've got The Rolling Stones!" (Keith Richards)

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #3
The majority of companies making products for the professional market, actually.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #4
So pretty much most if not all the pro audio companies. I just wonder why some companies come out with very poorly measuring equipment, at least concerning headphones. For example, Shure's SRH-1840 is their supposedly best over ear headphone intended for studio use, but it has terrible harmonic distortion measurements, very high 3rd and 5th harmonics (above 10%). And many say it's clearly audible. I know that's just one example, but the same goes for any other company that comes out with poorly measuring gear. Not so much with amps and DACs, but with headphones. Is it just ignorance or do the engineers really think high distortion is still inaudible?

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #5
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For example, Shure's SRH-1840 is their supposedly best over ear headphone intended for studio use, but it has terrible harmonic distortion measurements, very high 3rd and 5th harmonics (above 10%)
What do other/better headphones measure?   10% would be bad for an amplifier,* but I'm not so sure it's bad for speakers/headphones.    In the context of music, much of the harmonic distortion is going to be masked by natural musical-harmonics and overtones, or it may just be perceived as natural harmonics.

And, it depends where in the frequency range those harmonics fall...   Above 4kHz, the 5th harmonic is above 20kHz so it's out of the hearing range...  You're not going to hear 100% distortion if it's out of the hearing range.   And, anywhere near 10 or 20kHz, the ear's sensitivity is down, so at 10% the harmonics may also be below audibility.    If the distortion is occurring at lower frequencies the harmonics may be more troublesome.

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Is it just ignorance or do the engineers really think high distortion is still inaudible?
I don't know what the threshold of audibility is for distortion, but I know that headphone (and speaker) design is a compromise.     Unless the distortion is terrible, the biggest influence on the "sound" is frequency response...   When you hear a difference between headphones (or speakers), it's usually a difference in frequency response.


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And many say it's clearly audible.
"Many say"?   I wonder if those were scientific-blind listening tests...   I wonder if that's with test-tones or with music...   I wonder if they saw the distortion report/graph before they heard it...     It's kind of hard to do a blind headphone test, and any two headphones are going to sound "different" anyway, so I'd say it's difficult to prove the listeners are hearing distortion.  



* I'm not saying10% distortion sounds worse in an amplifier, but it's easy to build an amplifier much better than that so there's no excuse for that much distortion in a (non clipping) amplifier.   And, you don't want the distortions adding-up.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #6
Are there any companies out there that do not give into all the audiophile crap you see everywhere, but actually base the quality of their products on objective measurements?

Why should any of us care? Audiophiles and even trained engineers vary considerably in terms of their ability to correlate measurements with actual sound quality and IME are mostly on the deficit side.

For example one the the most prolific measurers around, John Atkinson of Stereophile is a proud Golden Ear, and he's hardly alone.

In a vast number of cases, measurements have lead to a specifications race, where adding leading zeros becomes the basis of unfounded claims for sonic quality.  For example, almost every piece of modern audio electronics has THD measurements of 0.05% or better, while audibility under the most ideal circumstances starts above 0.1%  and may be as high as 10%. 

Furthermore, published measurements are tuned by using.g the results of tests where equipment is intentionally pushed into clipping to raise measured distortion to a number that is consistent with marketing goals, when common sense suggests that the correct thing to do would be to decrease the power rating a few watts,.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #7
Well, those audiophile crap you have mentioned are more in the marketing part rather than the engineering part actually.

I find that in the pro-audio world, "audiophile grade" standard is seen as a joke, a gimmick.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #8
Quote
For example, Shure's SRH-1840 is their supposedly best over ear headphone intended for studio use, but it has terrible harmonic distortion measurements, very high 3rd and 5th harmonics (above 10%)
What do other/better headphones measure?   10% would be bad for an amplifier,* but I'm not so sure it's bad for speakers/headphones.    In the context of music, much of the harmonic distortion is going to be masked by natural musical-harmonics and overtones, or it may just be perceived as natural harmonics.

And, it depends where in the frequency range those harmonics fall...   Above 4kHz, the 5th harmonic is above 20kHz so it's out of the hearing range...  You're not going to hear 100% distortion if it's out of the hearing range.   And, anywhere near 10 or 20kHz, the ear's sensitivity is down, so at 10% the harmonics may also be below audibility.    If the distortion is occurring at lower frequencies the harmonics may be more troublesome.

Quote
Is it just ignorance or do the engineers really think high distortion is still inaudible?
I don't know what the threshold of audibility is for distortion, but I know that headphone (and speaker) design is a compromise.     Unless the distortion is terrible, the biggest influence on the "sound" is frequency response...   When you hear a difference between headphones (or speakers), it's usually a difference in frequency response.

99% of headphones have less than 1% distortion across the range at 90 dB. I can clearly hear 0.5% 3rd harmonic distortion in the Klipsch X10 earphones at around 1 kHz. You can hear this type of distortion yourself by generating a 1 kHz sine wave in Audacity along with a 3 kHz sine wave, and reduce the volume of the 3 kHz one by -46 dB (which is 0.5% distortion). Then play them together. Even though it's low, it's much easier to hear because it's an odd harmonic instead of an even harmonic, and it is at the most sensitive of human hearing frequencies.

Anyway, imagine what 10% 3rd harmonic distortion sounds like at 1 kHz! It looks like the distortion calms down a little bit in the SRH1840, but clearly still audible, at least with sine waves. With real music, probably a little less.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #9
Probably a *lot* less, possibly inaudible; but you'll need to test it objectively rather than speculate. Extrapolating audiblity with real content from pure tones is never a good idea.

Re: Objectively minded audio companies? (speakers, headphones, and DACs/Amps)

Reply #10
Probably a *lot* less, possibly inaudible; but you'll need to test it objectively rather than speculate. Extrapolating audiblity with real content from pure tones is never a good idea.

I wish you could say the last sentence much louder.  The example that was given which involved two pure tones that were not necessarily phase locked, is a good example of how badly it related to actual listening with music.

(1) The spurious harmonics of a pure tone generated by nonliner distoriton are generally phase locked to the fundamental, while two independently generated pure tones are unlikely to have a consistent relationship..

(2) The cause of spurious harmonics is nonlinear distortion which produces both IM and HD. with music. The IM is typically aharmonic and ls far less likely to be masked.

(3) Typical generated pure tones are constant for seconds or minutes while the component tones of music are often of very short duration.

(4) Real world nonlinear distortion is usually a mixture of a number of different orders.

(5) The intensity of real world nonlinear distortion typically varies with frequency and loudness, and the signals that generate it are also varying1

In short, almost nothing is comparable and any evidence generated with pure steady tones is irrelevant to that generated by real world music.