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Topic: Soundstage and headphones (Read 33749 times) previous topic - next topic
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Soundstage and headphones

Reply #25
At various times in the history of recording, people have allowed different amounts of ambience/reverb/etc onto the final version simply due to changing tastes, and to a lesser extent changing recording technologies. This happened completely independently of whether more people were listening via headphones or speakers.

Cheers,
David.

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #26
Based on my observations, headphones with elevated treble (bright) tend to sound great ("crisp", "detailed" or whatever) for acoustic instruments. But all sorts of artificial/distorted sounds (electric guitar through a guitar effect with too little low-passing, synthesized "instruments", "C64 music" and whatnot) are fatiguing or outright painful on those.

Could this be also the case for HD800?


There could be some of this , but I have an additional theory. Here's my  (2 cent ? )  opinion : this happens at the transient level. From my understanding, when a note/sound  is  played there's the "attack" (how fast it reach max volume) , and there's the sustain (the tail, how fast we go back to silence) . With the hd800, it's as if each sound/notes played , have a shorter than usual tail (or it would be also that resonances are inaudible, or both).  Imho, some "artificial sounds", do not have much tail, and the hd800 makes it sound worse .  All right, I hope you'd forgive these speculations . But  this is how some head-fier are qualifying the hd800, "as fast" .

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #27
With the hd800, it's as if each sound/notes played , have a shorter than usual tail


And what would shorten the "tail" (sustain?) of those sounds/notes? Some kind of non-linearity that acts as a dynamic expander?

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #28
With the hd800, it's as if each sound/notes played , have a shorter than usual tail


And what would shorten the "tail" (sustain?) of those sounds/notes? Some kind of non-linearity that acts as a dynamic expander?


No, I think it's actually the contrary. Regular playing device (i.e headphone or speakers) "elongates" a bit the tail, because of little resonances, or whatever explanation. The hd800, just does not do it (or not much).  The trick is that sometimes, such "lack of tail" makes for me, some music less enjoyable.

Anyway, this was  related to the original remark :  not only the mastering of music is influenced by room acoustics, but I'd think by the playing device themselves. Probably  if better technologies for headphones/ speakers become mainstream,  lot of currently produced music , might actually seem less enjoyable.  I remind someone explaining me, that the best way to enjoy some Glenn Miller recordings , is through some "boombox", and to avoid headphones.







Soundstage and headphones

Reply #29
If I remember correctly, it's the lack of damping in a transducer causing it (and one can't eliminate the momentum of the transducer's moving parts and air around it).

I recall a somewhat similar "smearing" effect from (heavily played or many-times-copied) analog tapes. When I later got the same material on CD (from which the tape was originally made), it actually sounded "worse" because the sound was no longer softened. This is purely subjective - the CD utterly destroyed the tape in objective comparison.

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #30
If I remember correctly, it's the lack of damping in a transducer causing it (and one can't eliminate the momentum of the transducer's moving parts and air around it).

Interesting. Regarding the "momentum from air" , it's quite reduced on the hd800;  because I  remind , it's a "ring driver", and air is going through it.

the CD utterly destroyed the tape in objective comparison.


And yet you'd see today some music producers /audio engineers , having some nostalgia for some distortions introduced by the tapes.
I  noticed that the vst "tb ferox" is quite popular at kvraudio (well, if I  rely on all the raving) , and according to the description of the vst:
Quote
Let’s face it – with all the benefits of digital audio processing and recording (low noise, high dynamic range, virtually flat frequency response, low distortion) it is sometimes difficult to get that fuzzy vintage warmth. This is where TB Ferox comes in. It provides smooth compression and saturation that reminds one of the good old days of tape recording [...]

http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-ferox/

There are plenty other "tape saturators" tools as a mastering or creative effect , so I guess not everything from the old tape sound was bad.

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #31
Sorry, I'm drifting off topic here  -

I remind someone explaining me, that the best way to enjoy some Glenn Miller recordings , is through some "boombox", and to avoid headphones.
    Or, get Glen Miller Project by DMP Big Band, recorded in 1996.  I enjoy that older-style music a lot more when it's a modern high-quality recording. 

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #32
Where did you find it on an ordinary CD? I only ever found a DTS CD, and even that is stupidly expensive now.

FWIW I think 78s sound fine over headphones, if carefully transferred (and much better than most 1960s stereo mixes!), but I know other people don't.

Cheers,
David.

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #33
For a realistic sound stage try CD's like
-- Wicked Jazz Sounds Band - The Biggest Sin  (rather unknown Dutch Jazz band)
-- Arne Domnérus - Jazz at the Pawnshop (1976 - XRCD 1996)


Very bad sound field is for instance:
-- Miles Davis - Seven steps to heaven (1963)  This cd is mastered so Miles' trumpet is dead centre, drums/other copper is panned hard right and the piano is panned hard left. Too much (artificial) stereo separation to my liking and very tiring to listen to.

There's more of these awful separated stereo albums from the 60's.


For fun an giggles try to get your hands on a dolby 5.1 copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and listen to it with Dolby headphone enabled (especially Money with the cash register intro)

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #34
Have you tried the Bauer stereophonic-to-binaural DSP in Foobar ?
This is the best I have found and it gives pretty natural results (at least for me, as you know we listen more with our brain than with our ears)

Soundstage and headphones

Reply #35
(...) BTW, the only form of crossfeed that I've ever found satisfactory is the Meyer crossfeed in Rockbox. It merely removes the annoying "in your ear" sensations while leaving the rest alone. I have no idea what the special magic of this implementation is, and the code is all Greek to me since I don't really understand how RB handles its int32 samples.


AYCS, someone has already mentioned crossfeed on this same thread last month. Though Rockbox's, they're pretty much the same.
Listen to the music, not the media it's on.
União e reconstrução