HiFiMAN HE1000 V2 Live Impressions & Measurements - Resolve Q&A

okay so we're live right now um I mainly want to start this off uh just making sure that all of our levels are good and that everything is working and then I get the green light from YouTube that I've set this up correctly and then we will Dive Right In so let me know in the chat guys uh how is everything looking and sounding um are there any issues it's clipping it's freezing you guys know the drill those of you have been here for a while good to see familiar names in the chat Brandon good to see you DMG R2 a lot of familiar names which is great we're gonna go in here in about a minute so no clipping for you okay that's good what if I move it like really close if I go like right here cheers from Germany makes me think it makes me wonder what time it is there okay I think no drop frames I think things are good okay uh let's let's get going here uh with today's live stream I know I haven't done one of these in a while so um so we're back um yeah lots of good stuff coming in so what we'll do it's the same sort of format that we've been running with for these sorts of live Impressions Live reviews whatever you want to call it uh where we'll talk about that first then we will get into you know regular q a and then after that we will get into spicy hours so save your spicy questions for then um but right now um I just before we get kind of get going here um I want to do the usual thing I'll let you guys know that if you would like to participate in our Discord we have one of those Linked In the description down below we also have the community Forum also linked in the description down below I still need to actually post the measurements of this up on the thread but we'll do that shortly thereafter so if you're watching this after it should be up there um and um of course uh if you guys are interested in all things headphones check out headphones.com that's also where we have the audio files the guides reviews and features educational articles all that kind of stuff and it is also a place where you can buy some headphones if should so choose obviously you don't have to buy from there but that is that is the company that uh runs this channel so uh if you would like to support us consider checking us out um so with that out of the way let's dive into the Hi-Fi man he1000 V2 there are many different uh iterations of this headphone oh and just a disclaimer here this uh this is a production unit so this was sent up I believe uh on loan uh this was sent up uh by headphones.com so this is a production unit um and yeah so uh let's let's get into the iPhone he1000 V2 and just I've seen some of the comments already about the potential stealth magnet version this is not the stealth magnet version that I'm aware of I believe this is just the regular version um if it turned I will dig into this but if it turns out that this is the stealth version um I have no reason to believe that it is guys and you'll see why um but uh yeah I will update uh I will update uh the information afterwards but um this is the non-stealth for everything that I'm seeing right now um and I actually haven't even seen a uh anything to do with these a stealth magnet version of this one but we will talk about the stealth magnet thing in a little bit as well um I think we should do that after this so uh for those of you guys who are wondering about the stealth magnets I will talk about that as well first let's dive into build design Comfort Aesthetics and accessories and just a quick note on the cable you do get two of them but this is the cable the hell is this this is the uh as we you know affectionately know it the surgical tubing style of cable so you get one that's a XLR which is nice and then you also get a 3.5 or quarter inch it's a stream still working seems like it maybe YouTube is just paused on me I don't know so that's the cable uh not one that I think is particularly great but that's that's what that is um the connectors on the bottom side are 3.5 millimeter uh yes three yes I believe 3.5 millimeter um so for the rest of the build the design Let's uh let's talk about that I'm not a fan it's no secret of the sort of wood veneer style thing going on here right like this this P the sort of wood ring that goes around it I get why they do it wood is a popular thing on headphones and this is a way for them to sort of like you know speak that kind of design language um and you see it on the swissvara as well to a certain degree I will say this has a different color than what is or like a different sort of uh Sheen to the wood um than what you find on the susvara uh which is cool it's interesting um and the rest of the design is the sort of silver um metal material you know for the yolks as well and you get a a leather leather feeling headband strap with holes in it which is nice uh you get the clicks on the side right so if you're a big head you can you know go all the way up on the clicks if you want and it does have cup swivel right that's the sort of the the benefit of this style of headband uh for the cups themselves they have the egg shape to them which many of you guys will be familiar with if you've seen any of the other Hi-Fi man eggy man uh cups in the past and you can actually if you shine light three you can even see kind of through to the driver which is pretty cool uh big massive pads huge openings for ears always great but this is one thing to consider if you have a short head uh there's a chance that the bottom part here can actually stick down below your jawline and it can actually compromise the seal that's always something that that has the potential to happen with these style of uh cups uh when I wear it it's very comfortable I got no issues with the Comfort I think you know if you have a larger than average head this is going to accommodate it reasonably well as it does for me right um there's nothing really that I can complain about as far as comfort um I I think that you know for me I actually find the Edition XS to be even more comfortable the addition XS is the much less expensive one the one that's that's around 500 um and uh but you know put that headband but I think a lot of people had trouble with that headband so this is the more traditional style of headband that Haifa men's had in the past just one actually one comment here on price I know I didn't mention that earlier uh the price for this this is currently on sale um in various different places that I've seen for I think two thousand dollars it used to be uh quite a bit more than that I think it used to be even like three thousand dollars and now it is in the you know 1999 it's a two thousand dollar price bracket um which is interesting to note I don't know this is going to be like a consistent thing like they've done with their other uh headphones in the past where they've dropped the price at a sale price and then kept it at that price I don't know if that's what's going on with this one but I would not be shocked just put it that way um but you know for all I know you know a week from now they can put it back up to three grand I don't know um but uh with out of the way that's basically the ergonomics the design the build quality does not Inspire the most confidence in the sense of I would still want to baby this and be very careful with this because you know um it's in order to keep it lightweight it feels like you know this is not the like but I'm just thinking by contrast some other headphones are are built better right but this is lighter so it's more comfortable that's kind of the trade-off that you have to go with um but as far as like the the build on this compared to the build on some of hifman's newer headphones I actually think the build here feels a lot better so that I don't know if that gives context um but for high five men headphones this is um this is I would say on the better side for high five and headphones for the build quality um so that's that's what that is um now let's uh talk about the sound quality and we'll dive into the graphs here thank you techmed keep it up will do all right you guys ready for the squiggly lines behold the squiggly lines all right so this is the uh frequency response of The Hyphen Edition uh sorry oxidation access hyphamen he1000 V2 um and so there's a familiarity and similarity to Hi-Fi men's other headphones and I will compare this to the Arya stealth here in a second but um this is what you get uh with you can see the different seedings there it has that usual sort of high for man dip in the mids and then it is a little bit you know brighter in the ear game so you can think of this as being somewhat neutral bright if you're looking at the Target here this is the harm and combined Target and for those who are unaware we do not want our headphones to measure flat on a raw graph because our ears impact incoming sound and this is a measurement taken at the eardrum simulated at the eardrum um and uh so that's why you see the rise going up here like that um but uh if you just for a moment take a look at the base you can actually see in the bottom part of the ear game there is you know some warmth so um I'm gonna say ear gain that's the that's basically the the way that your ears impact an incoming sound um the amplification that happened as a result of your you know ears impacting the sound um and so the effects of the ear here mean that um you know you'd probably this is probably going to come across a little bit thicker and warmer in the presentation because it is in the upper base lower midsection so we're fundamental tones for certain types of music um you know come through are often prominent you will get that sort of sense of fullness and richness coming through but it's not massively boosted or anything so it's not like you know super bleedy or anything like that into the different frequency ranges it's just a little bit more full there as a result um but then of course it doesn't have the sub bass shelf so there's that and that's expected on open back planar magnetic headphones basically um then yeah um the rest of it we can think of as basically neutral bright uh you have a little bit more of a brighter tilt here with you know the frequencies above the Target and I want to show you guys just what this looks like with the same smoothing as the Target because this is something that often gets missed when we do this kind of stuff that's what it looks like with the same smoothing as the Target right so um you can see that it's a little bit higher there for you know uh the frequency response uh in the upper mids and in the treble meaning that there's a little bit it's a little bit brighter a little bit airier a little bit uh more clarity focused however the trade-off is that for more aggressive music This is likely to come across as a little bit more on the fatiguing side um you know so if you're listening to like you know rock and metal and stuff like that I probably would recommend not this headphone um but um yeah apart from that this is very similar to the style of tuning that you get with hyphen men's other headphones um I just see someone asking their uh puppy talks asking about shout um so this is the thing right with this style of tuning it actually isn't really shouty because the balance between the upper mids here well I guess it's like yeah this region here the balance between 2K and 4K uh and and the lower treble above it is intact it's it's the shape that you want to avoid shout now it is still going to be a little bit on the glary side for certain types of tones like you know if you have if you're listening to heavy metal and yet there's a ton of like electric guitar the upper edges of those guitar tones like the bite is going to come through a little bit more strongly so I don't recommend this for those genres just straight up I mean it's not unless you're looking for that right like if you want your music to sound with a little bit more extra bite if if you're listening to those genres then by all means but that's not the way that I would listen to those genres if that makes sense um that's a personal thing as is many things to do with sound quality um so uh yeah I don't find this one to be shouty even though it has very strong ear gain um I mean it it is on the edge of being fatiguing though for certain genres my preferred genres with he1000 and actually also the Arya um my preferred genres are um Jazz acoustic and classical and those are the genres that I happen to really enjoy stuff that is also like I'm just thinking like there's other genres too like the singer-songwriter stuff is great with this um there are certain Blues recordings that would be great soul is good r b is solid with this um you know I just wouldn't use it for rock metal and EDM you know the more like genres where this level of ear gain is bound to be a bit fatiguing right let's just put that way um okay so that's that I want to just quickly draw your attention to um this is the average result I want to draw your attention to the upper treble here because this is where the the stealth magnets if there is a revision to this headphone at some point and they add the stealth magnets this is where that's going to show up and I'll uh I'll talk a little bit more about that with the Aria style actually let's talk about that now so let's just compare this to the Aria V3 and there actually were some people who were suggesting that The Hyphen and he1000 V2 or or V1 is the same driver as the as the REM I I strongly suspect it is not and whether that is a difference of diaphragm material or some sort of structural differences I don't know but this result is different enough where I would expect it to not be the same driver at all and it doesn't sound the same um and certainly not uh because of you know the stealth magnets but even before the stealth magnets uh because the other one that's the only real difference apart from some changes in the lower frequencies as well but um in the treble it is this that is what the stealth magnets affect so if they release a a future version here the upper trouble uh would be a bit brighter um for the for the V2 and I straight up don't think that it is necessary I mean it is something where it might be enjoyable it might be totally fine no issues there with it in situations where it's implemented well um and I think there's a sense in which in the Aria V3 it actually makes a certain amount of sense because you have pretty strong upper mid-range and lower treble you know and so if you if you have that you want there to be more air up top you want there to be more 12K um because otherwise you're going to end up with that sort of compressed kind of uh congested sound for percussive tones and symbol hits and things like that and having the upper harmonics there be you know sufficiently elevated makes it so that that's not the case everything kind of like the the everything sounds like it it resolves well if that makes sense um so you know if they release a future stealth magnet version for the V2 or I'm sure they will if they haven't already we could expect it to be you know a little higher here in this region um but but apart from that the comparison for the frequency response between the he-1000 and the Aria to me indicates that there is a difference in the driver um not just the stealth magnets um and I'm going to go ahead and say that for the overall balance there is a there is a extra sense of refinement that I hear with the he-1000 over the Aria um it sounds a bit smoother and it could just be the shape of the ear gain you know a little bit but I also wanted to show you guys what I hear or what I did with EQ so let me just show you guys so that's the frequency response by default and with the Q this is what I did and and I really kept most of the shape there intact because I wanted to kind of just see how that sounded to see if the hrtfe effects of uh to the Head related transfer function you know if if I kept that intact would it still sound good and it did so I just dropped it with a um with a shell filter and so some of that characteristic that it has um I I just left it there but you know for the rest I let me just hold on you can't really see that well um let me just pop that okay so for the rest yeah I gave it a bass boost and then I kind of evened up the mids a little bit um and then just kept some of the rest of that intact and when you smooth this again to the same degree as the Target right it's pretty close that's that's that's reasonable right I think this maybe you could drop a little bit more depending on the genres that you're listening to but um oops that's the raw there we go uh but that's the end up that's the result that I ended up uh going with uh for the filters that I chose and I will leave uh I'll add a link to the stream here afterwards um for my EQ settings with this one um but let me just swap over back to the camera so that is all of the squiggly lines bam I've returned uh um so how so that's how it is on the graph right and I'm gonna again just describe it once again as neutral bright similar to what you get with the other Hi-Fi man headphones that are around with the egg shape style right very similar to that but I do think that overall this has a slightly more refined presentation overall to the treble compared to the REM uh the V3 specifically and I find this to be more resolving and speaking of which let's get into the subjective technicalities stuff which is difficult to identify frequency response the he-1000 again there are I think there's a narrative that this is just a more expensive Aria and I can understand why that narrative exists but to me it doesn't sound like that now whether this is due to the changes the differences in Fr or fr the eardrum or whatever subjectively this sounds more refined more resolving more clear for the images um it sounds more precise a little bit less less um I actually found it to be a little like less fatiguing not in terms of level but in terms of balance I don't know if that makes sense um and so yeah it sounds super clean uh very spacious for the presentation extremely good sense of depth and instrument separation some of the best that I've heard and this is unsurprising because it is in a similar sort of style to what you get with other Hi-Fi man headphones that also perform well for these same qualities and the same drawbacks that those headphones have I find this one has as well which is that it is not the most Punchy and impactful uh and engaging uh as far like if you compare this to like the focals for example like a Utopia is going to slam harder than this um same with other there are other Dynamic driver headphones that do that as well um so if you're really looking for that sort of Slammy thing for your for your EDM for your edms this is probably not the one that I would choose I would choose uh yeah probably something with a dynamic driver that's really punchy um this one is more for again that sort of sense of refinement uh you know instrument separation and it's wonderful for jazz and classical and acoustic um that's that this really it Nails it for those genres um and you know even when you sort of dial it in with EQ it's I I find that you know it's a better match for my ear um you know after dialing it in there but you know if you're an older listener you know I don't think you're going to have an issue with the trouble with this most likely it'll be fine um one other thing that I just wanted to note um I just want to pop back over the graph here um when talking about Sound Stage all right this type of presentation where you have the dip in the mids around like 1.5 to 2K and you have an elevation to the mid treble like that like like the way that it has kind of that is not I mean it's not quite the same but it is not unlike what you get with the hd800s the 1800s does similar types of things and this is kind of like the Sound Stage enhancing effect the frequency response can have I think that's why the he-1000 V2 sounds particularly spacious um and yeah for all the rest of the subjective qualities like you know incisiveness and it you know being able to hear the finer little nuances in the music it's bloody outstanding uh so that's all I have to say about that but I will compare it to um the sasvara because I think folks were wanting that as well um this is Vara I find has a simply better tonality better frequency response because at least for me because it is not quite as bright right the swara is a little more balanced there in the in the kind of upper mids and treble it is a little bit less bright so the overall overall balance is I think a little bit uh a little bit more versatile and put it that way as far as the sort of intangible qualities I hear them to be similarly good at similar things I would still place this as far ahead of the he-1000 V2 with that said I think that you know especially for those who are in the EQ gang you can get you know if you were to dial this in you know however you want you can get a lot out of this so if you do find uh if you want those qualities but you do find you know if you're trouble sensitive you can you can drop that down and you don't need to go out and get us as far to get that kind of balance is what I'm saying you could get very close um between the two yeah obviously I think this is Vara is the better headphone I think there's no question um and um yeah it's it's like this is Vara has some a closer you know type of presentation to um honestly it's closer to the Target um I think there's like this this very subtle thing on this is Vara that's at like four and a half k and a very subtle thing that said around 7K uh those are sort of the two you know quirks that this is Vara but other than that it's a sort of effortless thing and and I and there's a similarity in that sense with the hu-1000 but um it the he-1000 is still a bit brighter put it that way um so okay uh that's basically all I have to say about the he-1000 V2 um well let me just ask the question whether or not it's recommended for me yeah it's definitely recommended I'm going to put it which tier would I put it in I I struggle with it's it's one of the higher tiers it's uh I was initially thinking like tier one maybe like the you know this is a potential end game depending on you know how you use it and it's very close to that I think it is just a small step behind uh tier one for me that's how I'll put it and I think uh for those for what I just described right for people who are listening to those particular genres um I think it could be that I think it could be in that sort of endgame territory so yes I do thoroughly recommend it however I also think that you need to be conscious and cognizant of the genres that you're listening to and specifically how you want them to sound because if you're trouble sensitive or you don't like that kind of slightly brighter tilt the extra little sense of the details up there um coming through then you know if you want something warmer then this probably is not the headphone for you but okay that's the h1000 V2 uh let's um let's let's talk about it q a let's go um I'm just gonna start reading some of your comments here I'd love to see it's just for EQ yep I will post I will add those here shortly because I haven't actually posted those yet I was still tinkering very different drivers between the Aria and the h1000 V2 yeah that's that's my feeling as well here they do not sound the same to me like I know there are people saying that they don't sound the same to me um they've released the stealth magnet version yeah it could be that that's the he-1000se I don't know I've listened to the he-1000se and it's it's bright as uh I would not use that one without EQ personally but it is very detailed I'll give you that um yeah so okay I wanted to comment a little bit on the stealth magnets thing right there's no reason to assume that the stealth magnets magically improve the subjective technicalities or whatever all that stuff that we're wanting to sort of ascribe to headphone performance like there is a there's an idea that you know the stealth magnetism this big revolutionary thing it is not it is a parameter that they can tweak that they can decide to implement that they can add to the process of their headphone manufacturing and it will affect the frequency response so you will hear it you will hear it right please don't mistake me for saying that you won't the stealth magnets don't make a difference they do make an acoustic difference it's just that you can also measure exactly where that difference is and it is specifically in the upper treble and sometimes that's good to have more you know energy and presence there and sometimes it is not so it's really up to them to figure out you know okay this is the one that we want to put stealth magnets on and maybe we don't do it on this one because it's already too bright right it's up to them to really use or leverage that parameter to their benefit so when people talk about Stealth magnets as this big revolutionary thing just please make no mistake it is not something that you cannot measure you can measure it and uh and here's the here's what an interesting experiment would be if you took a headphone that had stealth magnets versus one that doesn't right like say you're going with aryas right or not even arya's like Ananda stealth versus regular Ananda and you eq'd The Irregular Ananda to match the Ananda stealth would it sound the same I bet it would I bet it would more trouble doesn't mean more details yep I agree and this also reinforces kind of my suspicion and assumption about all of this question around technicalities subjective aspects and all of that qualia stuff I think it is to do with the diaphragm material I think that is the key parameter that contributes the most to whether something is good or bad for this and whether that's whether that shows a difference of fr the eardrum or not right that's the thing that in my view we should be focusing on less so the thing about Stealth magnets or other you know other potential browners because actually the crazy thing that I was doing is I okay when I was eq'ing this headphone and I was comparing it to other headphones I'd actually I was comparing it to a sundara that I EQ to basically the same it's not even remotely close like it does not compare like this is Vara sendara is is is just not even remotely close to the level of like effortlessness and like depth that you get with this for the experience right it's anybody who tells you that they sound the same I I question I question what why they'd say that if they if they're listening to them EQ to the same result because they really don't um I would question if they've ever actually heard both of them side by side at the same volume um but let's let's continue here yeah so I don't know if the he-1000se is the stealth version or if there is a a different he1000 V2 stealth magnet version I have no idea guys this is just how I'm reporting this one and I don't think you need to care where is metal 571 where in the world is metal 571 yeah we should all um you know we should have a seance communicate to commune with the legendary metal 571 he'll watch this later and then laugh I'm sure uh I need to have him on the live stream again oh I see yeah somebody's asking about the sundara yeah all right uh let's continue more trouble don't mean more details thanks for answering the question subscribe yesterday welcome I'm glad we could be helpful there is stoppage to the sound wave on the non-stuff that doesn't mean anything um I mean it means like measurable yes you can measure the effect of that does that mean you can't like you can get that same effect with frequency response and other headphones that don't have the stealth magnets so there's no there's no magic there is a real tangible acoustic effect of stealth magnets and it shows up on the graph predictably now I will say some people some people will report that that makes it sound more detailed I I'm not saying that's I'm not saying they're you know misreporting things right like they may they may think that that's actually what's going on right because this is gets into the question of like is it all just frequency response and you know maybe right but to me the bigger thing is the effect of the diaphragm material for that quality right the technicalities the subjective stuff that is a far greater you know thing that we can't figure out or far more important thing that isn't you know easily available on a graph all right what's your favorite pizza topping pineapple no just I'm just kidding I mean I can you really pick one I like I like pizzas that are done in like that more like classic style but I have had some some amazing pizzas that were like Gourmet pizzas that are that are like um they're like uh are these like brie cheese and stuff like that it's awesome all right the he6sev2 is not the same build quality and harder to drive needing a powerful amp but it's still high fitment sound Sig and not as bright and they complement each other man I don't really know what's going on with he6se versus the V2 there but they yeah they are not the same and I think this could be due to the housing like the chassis design and some of the results that were measured looked very strange to me the one that I measured was very very good um yeah had a similar sound signature maybe not quite as bright but it was very very good I thought but then I saw another measurement of one that looked closer to the V1 with that really strong upper mid-range Peak and I was like what the hell is going on so I don't know I need to get another one in is what I'm saying I need to get more in it's that's a crazy deal it's a chance to be clear I recommend it it's high up on my good value list as long as it's consistent how does it compare to the lc5 all right this is a spicy take the tuning with h1000 V2 in my opinion is better than that of the lcd5 because the lcd5 is too dark in the trouble given how high up its upper mid-range is now it actually measures like it is more correct you know for a studio type environment but I don't find that it sounds as pleasant all right that's a that's an important distinction um and to me it just causes that sort of glare now with EQ the lcd5 is one of the most remarkable headphones I've ever heard in my life um it's like it's I wish they would make a wider headband like even wider than the one that they made so that I can actually you know enjoy it because right now it's just too it's too clampy but that's probably what I would buy if I were a normal sized head-sized person I would probably get the lcd5 and just EQ it it's remarkable um so for those subjective qualities the lc5 is even more impressive for sure definitely do you need a high current amp ah okay I should talk about amplification with this um I didn't find that there was any meaningful change with amplification like like yeah yeah you'd want an amplifier but it's not I didn't yeah I did use the i36 I used a bunch of other amplifiers that are around and I didn't find there to be any you know significant difference or change worth commenting on um it's it's I would plug in you know the to the power calculator I don't want to tell people like oh yeah you need to buy you know an app with this much power because I don't know actually how much power it takes it'll require to get loud enough and that also changes a little bit depending on how loud you listen but um I found that with this one it was pretty much the same off of the solid state sources that I tried it with um obviously it changes more off of two Vamps how are your dental implants doing yeah I I recommend getting them yeah you have to you should uh real audio reviews thank you I'm gonna get you to get to your question here um why isn't there more tubeless IMS you get true 3D sound close to speaker to box if I doesn't take this into account imagine Harman tubeless I am it's a couple of things on that I think we'll get more an interesting more and better interesting data from measurements done on the 5128 because it is more human-like I don't know what the actual like I know that the measurement rigs that we use they are they are excellent they are you know industry standard for a reason they're meant to simulate human ears but you know it's not wrong to say that the 5128 is more human-like you know we're closer to like an actual human and I think that for some of the more you know picky questions that we might have maybe we'll find you know some answers there I don't know but I think you know just because you don't see it on a graph right now doesn't mean that we couldn't at some point measure some of the effects that you're describing um but uh in addition to that the question why are there more tubeless iems yeah it's a good it's a good one uh I I think that there are I think there is a Trend but it's not like it's not like you know you know how like in the industry there's there are a lot of technological buzzwords right like like stealth magnets that's one of them like uh you know talking about certain special materials is another one um another one would be you know the whole flux density question these sorts of sorts of buzzwords get used a lot because they tell an interesting and important story about the technology that's being implemented um and it's not to say that those things don't have acoustic effects because they do but the important thing is that they have acoustic effects and oftentimes this is stuff I mean generally this is stuff where you know those effects could be measured and you'd be able to identify where the where those you know what those effects are so when it comes to the tubeless question um this is another one of those that it's a buzzword that you know could you get those effects some other way maybe but uh for whatever reason yeah it just hasn't taken off as a one of the Techno like one of the major technological buzzwords it it's you know taken off enough to where you know you're asking me about it um you know I think 64 audio were kind of pioneering that and uh yeah I mean they sound pretty darn good um but um yeah I I'm I'm also a bit surprised that that hasn't been as strong of a trend in the more budget segment have you already answered the question in comparison to the Aria yes yes indeed that's better h1000 is better um what's a good starter planar sundara probably or h-e1 he400se probably either of those two or X4 depending which one's cheaper and again for classical music listening I mean that's up there for sure probably like true end game for classical would probably be the Warwick acoustic Superior or maybe the I don't know I haven't heard the he1 so or at least yeah that's like the stuff that's like not attainable right I have heard the Shangri-La senior that might be on that list too but you know it's like even if you get to listen to that stuff it's like for 15 minutes at a show it's not enough time um have you tried to change this in the moon drop void I have I do have a void in the studio but I need to get it replaced with a new with a replacement one right to see how good that is um so I I actually it's still in its packaging I haven't taken it out of the packaging yet so I'll need to connect with um I think it's maybe Shenzhen audio um to see about that one it is it interesting that perspective of the industry experts is that headphones that measure good what do you mean by that will be good for all genres but that doesn't actually seem to be the case so it's not quite like that um I mean yeah I get why you're saying that um so yeah the genre question it's true that you can't you you can't like you know with a coarse grain brush just like sweep across a genre and say oh yeah this you know this headphone is is good or bad for that genre you can't do that because within those genres you can have very different recording styles that are going to be that's going to have a bigger effect right it's the recording Style but at the same time I find there are common Trends within genres not all genres but you know so for example in modern Jazz there's a common Trend in recording style in you know modern rock and metal there's common there's recording Styles mixing mastering Styles um and I think that there are there are ways in which you know there are certain types of music where if you have too much of a certain region it's going to be fatiguing where other types of music there won't be so I get both sides of the argument there um and and you know the research also does show that there is an effect on I think it had to do with like time that people spent listening uh for for you know different genres like the effect of that so yeah I don't think it's as straightforward as saying you know uh this response curve is ideal for all genres um I think it's I mean manufacturers might say that I don't think that's true um but uh it is also true the reasoning behind that like from what fangbian said a long time ago the reasoning behind that all behind why they say that it you know it's not the genre makes sense too right so I agree that you know like if you listen to rock for example there are so many different you know ways that rock music can come across you know recording and so you can't as simply just say like oh yeah um this headphone is going to be good for that and this headphone's gonna be bad for that genre because within the genre you can have so many different presentations like Dire Straits is recorded very differently from animal mother for example also way better but uh let's just leave it at that why oh somebody considers the Helios better than the u12t yeah if it works for them better I wouldn't I personally would take the utility over the Helios no questions asked but the reason for that is because the fit is much better on the u12t so for sound quality the healer is pretty freaking good for sound quality you know what's weird is the other day I had a dream about mems transducers this is this is when you go too deep is you start dreaming about that about specific driver types new technology uh what headphone would come close to sound signature wise to the HD 560s but less Sharp 6xx or 600 HD honestly more people need to hear the HD 600s um can you compare to the Utopia the h1000 V2 um what would you choose between the two and why between the two if I'm not eq'ing anything probably well definitely Utopia if I'm not iguing anything Utopia uh if I am able to EQ it becomes a tougher question because you can do things with this that you can't really do that would do with Utopia um just because the Excursion limit at like 107 DB so if you want to like you know crank up the base in the Utopia with the base Shelf you're gonna run into a limit there where you won't really run into a limit with this so depending on what you want to do with it um yeah interesting question it's an interesting question I think for instrument separation and like that type of incisiveness I think the hu-1000 and V2 does better for Dynamics and sense of contrast and punch the and physicality and impact those things the Utopia is on another level like the Utopia is probably the best out of any headphone I've heard for that um yeah I can't think of anything else um even though yeah their base level is not elevated it's just a very contrasty headphone um soundstage is better on this again so it's like what qualities are you interested in you know for the tonality the Utopia is a bit more like neutral balanced but there's also some mid-range you know quirks in the Utopia that make it really good for piano recordings and things like that but also there's a coloration there it's almost like the the opposite of the HEB 1000 in a sense for you know where the h1000 dips down in the mids and Utopia is a little forward there um okay a series of exhaustively explained videos about audio myths burn in cables balancers and unbalanced audio file rocks why why are audiophile rocks in that category because audiophile rocks are like the others are things that are worth talking about audiophile rocks or not um or a q a with Sean Olive and oratory 1990 yeah yeah I'd love to have those guys on again a big fan of both of those guys and what they do um I talked to Sean regularly on Twitter um his his Twitter is hilarious um yeah so interestingly I've been I've been diving into some of these these you know myths a little bit as well um so burn-in and cables are the ones that I've been kind of diving into right now and actually people have the wrong idea about both of these topics um because they think that you know as soon as people are talking about burn-in that it's immedially in the category of audiophile rocks or as soon as they're talking about cables it's immediately in that category body file rocks um yeah to tackle the cable thing specifically I'll have a video coming out soon about this but um for certain types of headphones cables that particular particular cables can uh can actually show a significantly different measured result not in terms of the overall frequency response even though there are differences there as well but I'll give you an example I even just uh yesterday I was measuring a pair of headphones with two different cables one was the default cable and one was a particularly unique custom ridiculous cable right and when measuring those at I didn't the volume knob stays the same the overall balance is about 6 DB different like the overall SPL like the sound pressure level is is 6 DB different um that's a lot that's that's quite louder on the other one and it has to do with the impedance and the relationship with that kit with that specific headphone which was a basically no impedance headphone um and uh so that was the first thing is that yes there are measurable results measurable differences in this case it's mostly just sound pressure level the second is there there was a consistent difference in the treble uh where the the custom one was um was warmer I posted these results actually in our Discord so if you want to see those results you can check that out um but yeah you can actually depending on the headphones and the system that you're talking about you can actually um find measurable differences in in cables very very Niche specific circumstances right I think in the vast majority you won't see a measurable difference and in a blind test people wouldn't be able to identify difference um and it again all has to do with the particular headphones and the system that you're that you're using it with so yeah um it's not as simple as just saying you know cable Believers versus cable deniers because there is actually a physical acoustic thing that that is happening it's just that in the vast majority of cases it is nonsense right in the vast majority of cases it doesn't make a difference um because most headphones don't ha most headphones aren't those really weird and unique uh you know types so I'll do a video uh soon about that um because yeah I think I think people go way too like they miss some of the actual information there um but yeah obviously like I just to give an example I use cables for thirty dollars that I buy off Amazon like I don't care they don't change the frequency response for any of the headphones that I would really care about you know using for a long period of time um and the other difference is literally just volume with just a little bit of a difference in the treble do I care about that um just EQ uh burning is another one that there is more to it than just Believers versus deniers versus brain burning right the first is that what has a bigger effect most likely for most headphones is padware and you can technically say that that's a physical change happening because the pads are conforming and compressing right over time and then it shows up there's a difference in frequency response so it's like yeah there's a real thing there um but if you're talking about like the driver right specifically that you know as things are moving it is also not as complicated as Believers versus deniers Because the actual phenomenon that's going on there is if you talk to oratory about this and some other people um they'll tell you that there is actually there are situations where um there is change um now it's what they're talking about is a little different from what oftentimes manufacturers are putting on the box or recommend recommending you know people do you know listen to this for 120 hours you know to burn it and all that kind of stuff like what they're talking about is not bad but and that's why for me like people ask me about burning my answer is it's not even though it is technically a physical thing potentially that that could happen right it's not something you ever have a reason to worry about right so to go through the process of burning in a headphone isn't really something like this it ends up being a distinction without a difference it ends up being a pointless kind of endeavor in my opinion unless of course we're talking about padware in which case this is not at all pointless you need to actually you know run the head like play music through the headphones or whatever or pink noise or whatever but yeah yeah so these topics like they're not as simple as deniers versus Believers right they there actually is something to those questions it's just that you know you get placed into different camps depending on what your answer is um and then people think you're in in either case people think you're in you know the the either people think that you're crazy or they think on the other side they think you're deaf all right let's continue are you coming to kanjam New York maybe I it hasn't fully been figured out who's going from the team just recently got the truth here hexa and I'm questioning the value of higher cost neutral iems is there much point in upgrading or is the hexa in good enough territory depends how much higher end I think at a certain point it doesn't become like it's the diminishing returns thing right it becomes less about better and more about just like something that's closer to your preference for like you know the tonal balance like you know bass mids trouble like the the course grain stuff right um like personally right now I'm really into the symphonium meteor um and that's not neutral but it's really good sounding same with the sa6 um um what's the status of the in-house headphone design it's it's a little bit on hold right now because we need to figure out what's going on with that so there's no update all I will say is that we have a sufficient driver but I yeah I can't really say more about that because it's it's a research project what's my opinion on r2r Dax um I don't really have one I I need to test more or measure more I need to dive into that world because for me I don't really care about amps and tax like even if they my opinion on absentax like let me just get that out of the way for people who don't understand or don't know it um there are situations where amps and Dax might make a difference like in blind tests but it's not something that we wouldn't expect to see by just the amplifier type or you know what we have find in measurements and things like that um obviously since that is nonsense like caring about sinat is is ridiculous like we did a video on that um but um but the idea of some sort of magical property from different amplifiers because they're more expensive I like I'm not interested in that other people might be and that's cool but um and if they find that difference that's awesome um but I I personally have not heard enough of and like in blind tests like eight like with the ABX Switcher I haven't found a difference from one amplifier to another unless we're talking situations where we we should expect there to be a difference like with specific headphones that have very different relationships with output impedance for example or um the way that a difference of behavior on current based sources for example or something like that or two tube amplifiers right like there are there are times when you would expect there to be differences um and that's then you find them but when doing Blind a b tests like with the switcher um with um yeah with like more normal sources I don't find differences among them like all of the stuff from topping in smsl it all sounds the same I'm just gonna say that um you know and and the lower price stuff often sounds the same as the higher price stuff right like when you're doing the comparisons between that too so I don't really care about that and even when you even in the times when you do find there to be a difference it is never enough to where it is proportional to the price of getting that other you know system so I think if you are going to get into amps and Dax and all that kind of stuff it should be based around power requirements it should be based around form factor it should be based around functions right and there are very good reasons to get the IFI devices for example because they have the base boost function and whatever else right all that stuff even on something like what's behind me you can't see it right now but it's in the thumbnail for this something like that what you get with the SPL thing with where it has the the cross feed if you care about cross feed I don't but like if you care about that that's a reason to go for that that kind of thing um rme to adi2 there's so much you can do with that you know DAC you know that makes sense um but the idea of you know getting something just for the output because you read somewhere that it is Magic I I don't I don't personally get that um now I that doesn't mean that I don't think certain combinations sound great I think they do sound great I just don't think they sound proportionally different to how much the price difference is if that makes sense but that's where I'm at in my sort of path through the audiophile Journey other people might be might be you know walking down a different path and that's fine don't let my comments here denigrate your experiences when you haven't used some headphones for a few years and they need to be burnted again it definitely has a cleaner base okay do you think a v-shaped tuning takes away uh let's let's get into spicy hour now guys it's it is time for the Spice do you think v-shaped tuning takes away from some clarity and texture and from the music uh I could clearly listen to additional upper mid-range texture with u12t that z1r wasn't able to reproduce so I don't know about the last comparison there but yeah I do think I do think that v-shaped tunings are inferior to more neutral tunings or more balanced tunings because like to me sound signatures like a sandwich and if it's just all based in trouble it's just bread with nothing there none of the ingredients and what makes a sandwich good is all the different ingredients that you have in the sandwich now not everybody feels that way I know people who well I know people who for who like I've taken them out to uh to lunch and and they weren't able to eat whatever thing it was because had too many ingredients and if you're watching the person who you know who you are it's one of my favorite uh thing or favorite lines to remember too many ingredients but yeah so like if you like that that's fine but I find I you know for my sandwiches I want there to be lots of ingredients there's an a90d tube model that's cool I want to check that out see that interests me right I don't care about any of the other sort of like A90 stuff right I don't care about it's like okay but you can I bet this Triple A one sounds the same I bet it does and it's like way less expensive red doesn't have as much power sure but it's less expensive and it drives like most headphones just as good um but yeah the idea of a a90d tube amplifier uh cool I don't know it's different right yeah like two amplifiers hybrids like all that kind of stuff there's they do have an effect They do change the sound um often um and actually you know the interesting thing is yeah the interesting thing about some I'm just trying to camera which one it was I think it's the forge um the absent sound Forge when I measured so when I was comp I was comparing the Euphoria measurements of headphones done on the Euphoria so like I measured like an HD 100s and of hd600 on the on the Felix audio Euphoria and then I did the same measurements on the forge like no change to the positioning on the headphone on the rig and on the Euphoria there's very consistent you can see very very like clear second harmonic elevation um like it's it's at like negative 40 or something like that negative 60. yeah but it's definitely Audible and that's what makes it 2B with the forge I could not tell I could not see a measured difference in the Distortion profile like like there yeah it was different because it always is but like the actual level of distortion like on average was not higher and I don't understand that so somebody can like yeah I'm sure the amplifier has harmonic Distortion right it's a Tube app of course it does but I could not I couldn't see it translated you know the effect I couldn't see it measured in the headphone it sounds very different from you know solid state sources but I couldn't actually see the measured effect so I don't know that's interesting or it's either that or like it's so subtle you know like that my you know I wasn't able to like analyze the Distortion profile to a sufficient degree I don't know Dax make a minor difference but you got to spend the big bucks amps make a huge difference with some headphones well you're not driving them properly I would agree like if they need more power yes definitely Edition XS plus IFI truebase is amazing yeah it's probably a great combination for those not in the EQ gang I think it's great what do you think of topping decks and amps yeah basically basically what I said um I didn't like the A90 because it had the ground Loop issue I'm not going to comment on the sound um but I think they fixed that with a90d right so that's better more isn't better more what hey what's up super good to see you I'm more of a bright sticks kind of fancy restaurants yeah it's just it's just all bass and all treble like the the frequencies from like 200 Hertz to like 5K are all just like dropped I'm just gone meteor versus sa6 summary ooh what's warmer uh sc6 is warmer like it's hard to really yeah meteor is the one that sounds like morph exciting more fun the bass is really good on the meteor sa6 is the one where it's like it's more just this warm relaxed kind of euphonic thing where it doesn't immediately grab your attention and stand out but then like over time you really start to appreciate that about it I I hope that helps I don't know that's kind of how I would describe it but they're both like yeah a ton of fun um it's not my most hated amp I think amps that explode are my most hated apps uh what there was wasn't there there was also one from I feel like it was like one of the past Labs apps that was also really bad um I could be just making that pulling out of the thin air but we didn't assimilating amplifier distortion uh article that Blaine put together and uh like he put together the the actual like simulations and uh the past Labs one was definitely Audible for the distortion or like it was the example was now whether it be audible with music is a good question if I remember correctly we did actually put music like simulated music with that Distortion profile in there if I remember correctly but that's why that amplifier comes to mind um what is okay that's a sound mode smsl and Topping have have it in their more expensive solid state sources but it's still solid state oh I see what you're saying okay but still okay I get yeah yeah I think I know what you mean then um yeah yeah I remember there was there was that in the s in the smsl one that I evaluated to um yeah that's not it's a simulated thing yeah but I I still think that's cool right I still think it's like they're giving you something that maybe you might like because it actually is going to change the sound rather than just stuff that sounds identical across the board so I think that's cool that's what's cool about those smsls and and toppings if they're doing that I don't know what top I don't know I haven't tried one the topping one that does that but the smsl one did so that's cool um after proper ABX test good influence good implemented dacs and amps sound the same I think it's more I think it's a bit more complicated than that because what like because then if you were to rule out like any sort of tube amp right that is a missing the forest or the trees problem that you know exists in audio in general um you know because people like tube amps right like um no not ever maybe there's a certain split some maybe more people like solid state right I think there's a good argument for that but you know um the idea of good implemented is a difficult one to sort of like you know hand wave with a blanket statement um but ABX testing does reveal lots of things that you didn't realize before I I said this before I don't think we should overvalue ABX testing but I think it's a good thing to include in evaluations um you know when you're when you're going through the reason I say this is because because of how bad auditory memory is um but I don't think it's like a sufficient thing to just say I did an ABX done like it's not it's not that simple I don't know anything about Culver's root beer um it's more fun to have a bunch of budget iems than two expensive ones depends on the budget ones and the expensive ones DAC is more important than amp Source matters that's not what I'm gonna like disagree with because there's that is like that is a can of worms [Music] um what am I missing out on the thousand dollar plus headphones compared to the sundara it depends on the headphones um but in good versions of that um yeah there's a lot like just comparing again he1000 uh V2 to the sendara EQ to the basically an identical result so different um and I think it is due to whatever's going on with the diaphragm here I think that's that that's the difference but what are you missing out on as far as the experience is concerned um I I don't know it sounds more like the big thing for me when I make that comparison is that it sounds like you're getting more depth out of your music you can hear the instruments or whatever whatever is coming through in the music more clearly for those individual lines right whether it's a vocal Harmony or something else like that is a more clear presentation of of whatever that line is whereas on lower end headphones they often tend to kind of blend a little bit more that's the biggest thing that's what I you know when I when I think of what is good in You Know audio experiences it's it's things that are more in in that direction if that makes sense the the separated and distinct and clear presentations for things um you know Tyler called this p airing into the music um or you know identifying finer little nuances in the music and that's really for me the thing that you know the higher end headphones do better not always but sometimes but can you know I think that's why you see the trends that you do though as well um like on critical's ranking list for example it's not always the case like you have headphones that are more expensive that are you know not as good for those qualities like I'm thinking of the like the expanse for example right it's definitely not on the level of the of this um for that but um or some just you know uh the Imperium or the elite right they're more expensive but they you know just because they're more expensive it doesn't mean that they're necessarily better than the less expensive ones but there can be more expensive headphones that are also better didn't you at one point agree that something like a rebel lamp sounded notably different from the A90 speaking in terms of Dynamics and intangibles I'll need to do I want that's one of the ones that I still have on my radar to ABX I didn't actually do that ABX I did the ABX with the magni heresy and the 890 and found no difference and then I also did that comparison with the I want to say the Army and the vioelectric and found there was no difference now um that also is with I don't remember the headphones I was using but it was with one pair of headphones so it could be that with different headphones you find you know again the headphones are a confounding variable so if you're running you know certain like certain headphones that don't really you know have a perfectly linear impedance curve for example and you you know your swapping sources maybe you won't find a difference but then there are other sources or other headphones where you have we don't have a linear impedance curve uh and you run it off of a high input output impedance source and suddenly you get more bass right there's those types of things happen um but in those examples that I was ABX testing I you know it was like I wouldn't be able to you know reliably get the right answer if that makes sense so yeah the rebel app is one that I want to try I mean the rebel amp the topology is very different um so I think that'd be cool to do with A90 it's probably next on my list to do but I also have like there's some really high-end expensive stuff that I want to try um and compare it with like some of the more budget stuff I think that's a cool video right to do like um I mean I think it's a more fun video than two mid-level amps you know battling it out um yeah would you would you spend 400 plus on an amp yeah personally I would yeah if it's the right if it has the right form factor the right amount of power for what I want to drive the right type of topology for what ideas that I'm trying to do uh the if it has functions that I find valuable yeah absolutely um but you guys know like what do I use for my like personal use it's not the expensive stuff um it's you know obviously I would you know the expensive stuff is nice I just don't find that there's a proportional difference and it you know what it is I think it's like at a certain point things stop becoming better they just become different um like is is a tube is a high-end tube amp necessarily better than a high-end solid state app well no or even like a mid-level solid state amp you know no it's just different but that different might difference might be important to people um you know so yeah Moon drip kado versus truth or hexa um it's a good question I think the Cotto sounds more normal but the hexa sounds more exciting in the trouble but the yeah the Cado is one where I think it is a little more balanced overall um the hex is just a little bit bright it's yeah um but for technicalities man like the hex is really freaking good um and I actually like I prefer the way that the upper mid range is handled on the hexa that's a spicy tape but I don't yeah that's why I don't use akato what's your ABX Hardware switcher look like I did it there's a video on the channel That that where I point at it uh it's the one where I'm setting up the new lab um eventually we'll need to move away from that space though because it's too noisy for uh filming videos but um but yeah it's right now just a PCB it's not it's not even a box people pay thousands of dollars to get two amp Distortion sure you sure you could get the same with good DSP um so in my experience no in my experience there's I have never heard a solid state piece of equipment sound the way that a tube you know the hybrids yes solid state and hybrid is pretty close but but uh I don't know if I want to say you know categorically yes but it's with it's closer within the ballpark there you know if they're if they're if they're doing things like rolling off the base or the treble or something like that you can definitely do that with CSP but I've never heard DSP in solid state be able to perfectly replicate what you get with tubes um now again personally most of my listening is through solid state solid state kind of guy I like you know solid state and planars I like solid state HD 600s I like that kind of thing right but I also enjoy you know running it off of two amps you know every once in a while get a little bit of that you know flavor in there it's good fun I would love to ABX test one day even comparing similarly priced amps with the jot 2. and rebel lamp yeah like okay so this is the thing right with the ABX testing it's like yeah that this is why like I don't think ABX testing is a sufficient thing right because yeah you might find like people a person who spends a lot of time with something and comparing things is probably going to have a better sense of you know what those things are than if you're just you know 15 minutes of going back and forth with the ABX tester right um but you know um it doesn't mean that those two things are incompatible right it doesn't mean that that you know um statements about long-term listening and you know short-term ABX testing are that doesn't mean they need to point to the same thing necessarily right you can just decide what is you know there's a bit of a dualism there right I think it's fine um the thing that kind of gets to me though is that like if you're spending a lot of time with one amplifier and then you're like all right I'm gonna say you have like the magni piracy right you're like oh yeah I'm really into this and then you're moving over to the other one other amplifier and you'd say it's a you know say it's a rebel amp and you're like oh this one has you know this kind of sound character whatever and you're getting super deep into like the differences in sound character and then you find that with an ABX you swap it over you go and you're like a true ABX where you find the results that you were only like you weren't able to get the answer you weren't able to to select you know the right one um more than 50 of the time well that kind of tells you that there's something else going on you know psychoacoustically or you know whatever else right when you're doing these these reports right um and and the thing is it doesn't mean that like we should discount that it's definitely a part of it but like it doesn't it's not necessarily something that has to do with the the physics going on um so yeah that's why that's also why like after I started doing that like I was I'm just like I'm never gonna go deep into this like you know let's wax poetic about you know the subjective intangible qualities of solid-state amplifiers um except in cases where there actually is a tangible difference that you can find when you do this sort of ABX testing because there are going to be you know differences that you find and again this goes back to what's saying before differences that you should expect based on what based on the design of the topology the measurements all the actual stuff right um so yeah that's that's what I have to say about that and of course two bams yeah that's another thing entirely that's where all those subjective things you know it's like yeah what else how else are we gonna yeah I'm gonna point it you know this is where the third harmonic Distortion is a little bit higher than the second harmonic like that that's not something that normal humans can make sense of yeah you were rushing over the Fidelis are in Dak impressions oh this is because it was all on my channels my old challenge where I deleted them um yeah uh so I didn't do an ABX with that one right so uh it was very possible that I could have been uh wrong about that one turns out um also another key variable there is volume this is something that I think that a lot of folks kind of uh discount is the effects of volume on um preference um and and this is why like when you're doing your the even if you're not doing like ABX testing but you're doing like comparisons with um two different sources if you are not perfectly level matched you can have it's gonna you know skew your preference towards the one that's louder it's yeah and so that's entirely possible to happen as well right so this is why like like I don't I don't want to over inflate the importance of ABX but I think it is something that's important to include if you can um louder equals more detail true fact yeah so here's what I want to do right and again this is what was you I think Chris you're missing the point there a little bit right I haven't done the ABX with that one what I want to do though is like ABX testing with the high-end gear and then the the low end gear right like the the magni 3 heresy and the like say the Magna three heresy and the RN DAC right so doing an ABX with that I think would be fascinating to do um and then publish the results right or you know uh uh what's the other JDS versus the Lena stack right or we have the um we have the he1000 sorry ef1000 um hybrid tube amplifier pardon me from Hi-Fi man which is like 15 grand or something crazy right that's one I want to do because it's like you know that's one where I actually I really would expect there to be a difference because it is a hybrid design and so for certain types of headphones I think you would probably find a difference but the question on my mind with that is like okay how significant is that difference right if we're volume matched and we're doing this ABX like is this a difference enough where I care fifteen thousand dollars worth um yeah like maybe it will maybe like I'll use this as Vara right like I'll try that because it's like a high-end headphone and um yeah I I think it'd be fascinating I'd love to publish the results it might be a little bit heartbreaking for some folks but here's the other thing I'm also just one person with one set of ears like maybe somebody else is able to score better you know um or maybe we find that there are maybe I'm reliably able to get the right answer so yeah I haven't done my point I guess is that I haven't really done enough ABX testing on specifically that you know like the high end versus the low end so that's when I do publish a video on ABX tested sources it's going to be that Placebo in a way is actually desirable for the headphone experience review slash sound descriptions can be a good source of good Placebo yeah if you're gonna just like bite that bullet you know if you're just gonna or I guess drink the Kool-Aid then it's like hell yeah like I mean and this is actually an interesting thing you know if if whatever framing effects lead you to have a better experience with a piece of source equipment regardless of whether or not it's actually making a physical difference if you if you are uh if you are identifying things and enjoying it more it becomes a distinction without a difference um to that person now for people making purchase decisions yeah I mean it probably is a thing you want to you know select against but because then you can maybe get more for your money that's I think pretty straightforward but you know I don't think I mean you guys are I'm I'm speaking to the choir here I'm pretty sure you guys are mostly on the same page here but like if if the story around a piece of source equipment is what leads a person to have a better experience power to them you know um it's fine no pun intended I'm not going to read the seventh acoustic Supernova but uh pre-cut data it's up on the on the website I'm not sure about the subtonic storm what's your idea of implementing DSP with wired IEM like let me drive quarks I am not familiar with that question but I don't see why not there's nothing wrong with DSP and wired IMS or Wireless I for those planars although like Timeless and whatever else like yeah I was doing that manually of course yeah Felix Envy uh is dope uh that's probably my favorite tube amp right now that I heard with the cesvara specifically but yeah I that's one I'm not able to steal off of taryn's desk or I could try I guess um do you have any insights into how much volume changes the frequency curve it it generally doesn't the only times it does is if so sometimes like with those Wireless um like the Apple airpods Pro 2 and some of those ones um they actually do have attenuation in the base in the trouble depending on you know how loud it is um so yeah in those situations foreign volume has an effect on frequency response but otherwise it does not or unless you go like up to the max SPL and like something weird happens with the driver then yeah but within like you know normal listening ranges yeah even up to like 100 uh 100 DB even though even higher than that that doesn't change for most headphones The Source ABX booth at an audio show set up as a challenge for customers manufacturers could be devastating yeah it could be it's a great idea though that is a really cool idea I mean it could be devastating but it could also be revealing depending on which sources it's hooked up to if you have a source that you're like yeah this is going to sound better to people and we're going to like say it's even like a Tube app right see okay even within solid state sources there are differences that are going to affect headphones right so like and there are multiple different types of differences but let's just use the tube versus solid state example because it's more strong one it's a clearer one if you had a you know crazy tube amp setup and you had like a you know uh topping l30 or something and you had the ABX you're right you could kind of reveal the differences that the Tube app made and uh and kind of show people that this is this is what that difference is for you in the music I think it'd be really cool so yes it could be devastating if it's like you know two amps that are basically the same like if you've hooked up a you know a topping to a you know smsl or whatever like if you compare those or or even like you know lower end like a magni heresy versus an A90 right people wouldn't hear a difference oh more money spent yeah is the placebo I want to see the headphone amp comparison high end result yeah that's in my at least in my mind right like maybe there's a reason to do the mid-range stuff too but at least in my mind I think the cooler thing is like I I have obviously I have assumptions with how that's going to shake out right I think it's going to be that like there are some comparisons where the difference matters and it's again to the differences that we should expect and there are others where it's not going to matter at all and you can't like where you can't even you know identify the result and the other thing is for those videos it can't just be me it has to be also like other people who are who are you know listening for because when I'm listening for stuff I have my way of listening you know to the to certain particular things to judge good or bad you know better or worse right I'm like talking about like amplifiers particularly like headphones just in general the way I listen is one way of listening but other people listen in different ways right what they pay attention to could be different so I think it has to include more than just me silver cable sound brighter black cable sound darker red cables sound warmer I have you missed it but I had a large thick boy copper cable that actually made a difference in SPL [Music] um do this with the cable that can jam the cable booths alongside I see I don't have an ABX for cables because as soon as you start doing that then then Cable cable Believers are going to goal post shift on you they're gonna be like oh yeah but that's running through your ABX and so that's coloring the sound no but see I even made that mistake right like I made the mistake when I went to when I just recently at uh kanjam SoCal right I walked in uh was um I think it was golden and schedule were telling me uh they're like this cable makes a difference and schedra is the it's the guy who makes the cables um and you tell me this cable makes a difference and I walked into that being like I don't believe it I'm not gonna hear a difference like these are all all in good you know Faith Like good natured you know people right but um but they were like yeah like you you will hear it guaranteed and so I approached it with this kind of like skepticism as a as someone who is like not taken by a lot of that stuff right and at first when I when I put the headphones on with because I did the I did the like the default cable first and then I put the other cable on put the headphones on and now I was so sure of myself I was like yeah like no there's there's no I was about to be like I can't hear a difference and then I was like wait a second this one is louder and warmer what the hell's going on so I got them to send it to me uh and to measure and sure enough it's about 6 DB louder across the entire frequency spectrum and it is also warmer the upper trouble is reduced so it's like okay yeah there are some situations where where it does make a difference um is it gonna matter for 99 of people no and so yeah there's more to it than just someone I see someone here says religion it's more to it than just religion versus Atheism it's uh there are there are tangible measurable things with some of this stuff foreign but I don't know the way I look at it too there was like even in those situations where like you have this particularly esoteric setup system where you have a cable that does make a difference because the headphones are you know no impedance or extremely low impedance or whatever right and say that there is a you know measurable difference I don't know that I would I would not be compelled to make a purchase if it's something I could just dequeue but that's just me um I still don't I don't think that as a reviewer I can expect people to EQ because I know they won't but how I personally use this stuff no I don't of course I EQ I take my sound quality seriously do you not EQ no I don't expect people to yeah so like another great example to try with ABX would be with the Zeal amp I don't know if I'll be able to get one of those in because it's really expensive but yeah um trying that against the l30 I don't know that'd be cool right you felt nauseated and a week after the shock what shock water heater to Jesus what do you be do you listen at and why I tested this recently it's in the 70s um yeah I was kind of surprised um I mean like the the average was maybe like 75 now for for what I felt was like enjoyable like I wouldn't I wouldn't reach for the knob to crank it up right um I was like all right I mean I'm digging the music I'm into it and then I I tested it on the rig to figure out how loud that actually was in an fft and it was around 75 ish so which is interesting because if I took that same volume and did a did like a sweep it would be louder so yeah oftentimes the what we're testing for what we're like measuring with test tones is louder than what you actually listen to music at all right [Music] um uh Tyson did you use an ABX in that comparison because if you did I would love to see the results because that would be you should publish that um yeah like I think this has turned into the amp DAC discussion again um I don't want people to misunderstand you know that like oh an ABX reveals that there's no difference like period might as well be using an apple dongle that's not what I'm saying I'm saying the ABX revealed that on sources where there wasn't a reason to think that there might be a difference in terms of topology in terms of the like the the measured results or anything like that they revealed that there's no difference there right um the measured results were for just noise and Distortion were you know low enough on both to where they're inaudible so you know that was their difference no right but there are other there are other comparisons to make where uh you are going to find a difference but guaranteed depending on what depending on what your the rest of the setup is um so yeah uh and and I actually think that there has been a positive blind test ABX I think the one that there was one that golden did um where he found he was able to reliably get get the difference among two different sources I I think it was Dax though not amps I'll have to have him on and ask him what that was because yeah he also has an AVX so there's a couple of us who are doing ABX testing with this stuff and um yeah um so so I think we probably have a slightly different uh you know opinion on on kind of like what's worth it but but uh or like you know I actually don't even know I should ask him I don't want to put words into his mouth um but um yeah he was able to find a difference in the ABX that he did so that's cool uh yeah let's let's get some more spicy takes here guys the problem with ABX it's so boring yeah couldn't agree more wait super do you have ABX do you not ABX bro do you even ABX that's how that's how all these are gonna go yeah Chris he's he has one yeah or maybe the stream is delayed but he he's he has a positive he has a positive finding which is cool are there some headphones that cannot be saved with EQ yes yeah Tyson if you don't ABX this your auditory memory is not good enough to be able to make that kind of call I are you talking like two different units one with this cable and one with another cable Because unless it's because that creates additional confounding variables because unit variation is bound to be a thing right and that actually has a much bigger effect than like if you were to measure that same headphone with two cables they would measure the same unless like as long as the coupling is the same unless we're talking about a situation like the one that I tested you know before like if the headphones were in one of those like like in this case it was a ribbon headphone right so like a no impedance situation very low impedance situation let's go more spicy takes guys I'll go for another 15 minutes here and we'll but it's it's spicy hour that's what we're gonna focus on foreign tax conversation has been spicy I probably wouldn't run the he-1000 off the qlex 5K I haven't tested that so I don't know but use the power calculator um or Google Power calculator if you want to try cable for your Iams that will without a doubt change the sound signature then try to get your hands on oh Jesus Christ yeah you could you can even design a cable with a passive filter in it if you wanted to that would make a difference or like some sort of um like an impedance adapter or something like that they can have an effect measurable all right I'll be talk uh Moon drop Aria isn't great at its current price in today's market even though it's not that old my only complaint there with those is like something in the treble is just not quite right and it is something that the hexa actually does better I don't know if you agree but yeah spicy take you to the measurement site can you like never mind Mr squiggling himself asking me to post episodes there's stuff there's stuff that we're working on behind the scenes to help with the representation of uh information let's just put it that way and that isn't going to be out for a while but it's being worked on because like the thing that I find a lot of the times like folks ask me like every day you know can you compare this measurement of this headphone to that headphone and while I've done the measurements of them I don't have specifically the comparison that people are looking for so the comparison aspect is super important developing new headphones is relatively pointless compared to developing new ways to do personalized EQ which would do so much more I kind of disagree I mean I I see why you say that and I think there's a sense in which that's right but the the bigger thing though is that you can't convince normal people to do EQ you just can't and I bet like there's people in this chat who you can't convince to do EQ so or that EQ is is is a good thing or that there's something that you know if done like that no matter what you know they people think no matter what there's always something lost when you do it right so like and I'm not getting into that debate right I'm not saying it is or it isn't I'm just saying like the bigger challenge for that idea is the the purchase that you need to get with the masses in order for that to gain any sort of Attraction right like that there's a sense in which like when headphone manufacturers are developing a headphone they are literally just trying to get it to you know uh get the sound signature to be one that they think is the right one and you could totally just get that with EQ right um if you wanted to but I think I think it's like you can't because I even I can even among this audience here like among you guys I can't expect you guys to do EQ I I know that's not gonna happen and so I can't purely base my judgments on whether or not something is good on on you know what I do with it right it has to be like okay for the you know we need two different kind of you know uh potential recommendations there's the recommendation for EQ gang and then there's a recommendation for everybody else you know the rest of the people out there and um it turns out that you know EQ can can enjoy far more headphones than uh you know than the rest but still it's like I I would I don't think we should I think okay this is my like it's not a spicy take but this is my sort of like view of the industry when we're talking about like high-end headphones like thousand dollar plus you should never expect people like if you're spending that kind of money you know you shouldn't ask people to EQ right it should be good enough for the tuning the difference is that people who are spending that kind of money thousand dollars plus on headphones are going to be usually or often more picky about sound quality than people who are spending a hundred dollars or two hundred dollars on sound quality and so there is a chance that if they listen to one of these right or say well that actually is fairly okay for its tuning right it's decent but say I don't know an lcd5 right there's there's a chance that an lcd5 is going to match more closely with somebody's hrtf um than like like more specifically or Utopia Utopia is a great example um you know that something perfectly perfectly matching the smoothness of Harmon because I would argue that would be bad like I wouldn't want to listen to something that is you know perfectly you know to the smooth Tarman Target or any smooth Target because we actually like if you look at what an actual hrtf looks like it's like it's not that uh all right let's go more spicy takes any IM that costs more than 200 is a ripoff unless it's made of gold I disagree I I think because of what we just talked about with sound signature right if you're not expecting people to EQ there's just so many different flavors and potential tunings that are going to fit people differently you know or sue people differently um that's exactly why it should be made easy enough that people can just try it for a moment yeah and credit to Odyssey for the reveal plus because I think that is a step towards what you're kind of talking about there I think um where they don't actually need to do the EQ they just need to turn on a plug-in I think that's a I think that's a cool way of um approaching it EQ is a skill that needs to be learned and ain't nobody got time for that yeah this is what I was just saying yes a lot of anti-eq people will try to EQ do it wrong and think EQ sucks and just ruins quality exactly exactly this is this is kind of like at the Crux of that debate um that it is a it's a time consuming you know process and there are so many different ways that you can mess things up um and if you're not doing it by ear you know if you're doing it to a graph there's there's a good chance you can mess like that that result is also going to be messed up um so it it is why I don't think we should expect that but if you want to get the most out of your out of your headphones of course of course you type in EQ Stuffs the need to own more than one headphone ah there are things that I'm not able to affect with EQ like for example I can never get the he-1000 V2 to sound like a Utopia no matter what I do it just doesn't no like you can turn the bass to the maximum with this it still will not sound as Punchy as a Utopia it's not so there are some intangible qualities here that again I point to you know diaphragm material driver type that kind of thing that I just can't see it in the graph um that you can't make it sound like that so and I think vice versa I don't think you can make a Utopia sound like an HTM 1000p2 I don't know what that I don't know what that means Rob but so here's the thing right like the mission that I would be on right like right like as a kind of like as a whole would be to try and push towards headphones getting released that don't really require EQ at all right where like even if there's something we're like I I prefer something that is a little Bassy or a little bit more trouble or whatever right that's fine but the fine grain stuff is reasonably balanced and reasonably you know it has a you know ear gain shape to it to some degree right I feel I feel like like that's that's kind of like my function in this industry is like to make sure that like this I mean if I had if if I have any influence on you know or put any ability to put pressure on on manufacturers it would be to do that so this it's like the headphones that you like the headphones that get sold at high price tags are still reasonably tuned right and uh for whatever and then whatever choices they want to make beyond that it doesn't need to be Harmon right it doesn't need to be Harman is just you know one type of preference research that's done it's great research I love it I use it all the time but it's not something where it needs to match or anything it probably shouldn't even but at the same time it's like I want it I would love it if we could just push the industry in the direction of you know no EQ required and if you do want to do it it's just because it's a preference thing and you want more bass add a base shelf or reduce the base or more travel like simple filters and done it's my mission statement because I okay some of you guys many of you guys know about you know the benefits of EQ but I would never expect that of people sendara texts are meh totally agree like I think they're they're good at the price tag I just don't I don't think they're you know meaningfully better than they're they're they are very good at instrument separation at the price tag they are good at that but they are not better than they don't go up to like you know lcd2f level or something like that like there's a pretty clear difference I think even like other stuff within that range I think that they are slightly better than that of the and aeon closed but that's that's about as high as I think they would go um but um but you know it's a well-tuned headphone with you know decent technical performance um planar controlled during busy passages it has the text that some people care about but I would agree with you that they are not killing any Giants I feel like there's a lack is a lack of Assessments for reliability slash consistency for product reviews there's a reason for that and it's because when if like as a any headphone reviewer kind of knows this like if you get a product in and you say you even say even you have like a month with it right that's often not when the problems are going to show up so uh if you have a long like a year along with something right and I think that's a much better indicator of you know reliability consistency though is a thing that um like for like you know unit variation stuff like that that's a thing that um we do test actually um and uh yeah I I want to get to a point where I can like kind of um indicate a unit consistency score but again how do you do that without having multiple units right so for reviewers you kind of got to review what's in front of you and if there's nothing wrong with it you know you can't really fault it um at the same time like there's definitely like you know that there are reports of driver failures and whatever else with given Brands and like everybody knows that that is going on and sometimes it's worth commenting on that if it's a common Trend but you can't know that that's going to happen with that unit that you have in front of you so that's why actually with um like the a good example this is the rode and th100 I had that in and it felt really solid and sturdy but then it came out like a few months later that like the side part of the headband kept cracking on people right so that was a failure point that in my review cycle I had no way of knowing about it if you could only own headphones from one brand what would it be Sennheiser well okay um only on headphones from one right it depends what you mean by that if you mean by like of the headphones that are available on the market and you had to pick one brand that was the brand that you could only own headphones from that's a tough question if the question is if there was if your favorite brand could make all your favorite headphones if one brand could make all your favorite headphones what would that brand be the answer for me is Sennheiser um but um but yeah if it's the former question that's a tough one I probably lean Hi-Fi man probably that's a tough question yeah Hi-Fi Manor Odyssey I think maybe I like planars what can I say it's uh it's fine the reason I say Sennheiser though is because they have a history of making extremely well engineered um headphones like the say whatever you want about some of the Duds like the HD 820 and the HD 700 some of the ones that were not well received they make really well engineered headphones have very tight tolerances their QC is great um generally um and uh they make in my view sensible products so it's like if I could apply that lens to you know my favorite headphones that they would all have that kind of you know uh process behind them I think that'd be great EQ by ear is harder than learning to play the violin at a professional level really I don't know about that impossible for most it seems unless you can brute force it something I kind of don't know about I think it takes a little bit of effort initially to get to a point where you can you know you have an easier sense of and you know what to do right I I think the mistake would be trying to do that just with music but I think you can do it um so yeah I think I I don't think it's it's like once you once you've figured out that process then doing it for other headphones I think is it's easier I'm gonna skip a bit let's get to the spicy stuff here just just a couple more cost is the answer to the one brand question no no no no no Sennheiser should make burgers I'd love to bun okay what type of headphones EQ better Dynamic plane or electrostatic well it's either plane or electrostatic depends on the headphones because I've had electrostatic headphones that actually do have higher harmonic Distortion as well so it depends but I would say yeah plain r or e-stat for sure uh in order to EQ well a headphone needs to avoid time domain errors like resonances and have low Distortion and to smooth that far that matters why here's a question right that's prompted by that why do we keep saying why do we keep seeing folks take on the idea that a run with the idea that time domain stuff is something we need to worry about as far as metrics is concerned because like maybe it's folks who are new to this Channel maybe I'm not not saying this just a single year but like it feels like every time we do we do these live streams or not just this but like even in the Discord I'm noticing it feels like every time we get these or all the time we get these questions about like you know um time domain stuff CSD waterfall plots um because yeah that's stuff that is is literally just frequency response that's predictive You can predict it from frequency response frequency response is the better view of that same information um same with square Wave It's the frequency response is the better view of that information um that same information um so yeah um I don't know why I feel like like we see a there's a there's a common Trend in it's a good Trend in uh you know sort of the public uh commentary on what contributes to good sound quality being focused more on frequency response I think that's a good thing but I don't see that same Trend when it comes to metrics that are less valuable or not valuable or showed the same stuff I don't know I don't get that maybe someone could fill me in why people still think CSD is important it to be clear it is important in situations well if you have excess group delay or something is something is really weird or broken with the driver or the way it's implemented you know um then that might um do an issue but you think it's because your ears don't agree with what you're saying it's not about what I'm saying it has nothing to do with what I'm saying it's that literally what the calculation is right it has to do with Fourier it's it's nothing to do with my it's not an opinion this is just a this is a simple calculation and and all you have to do to demonstrate this is with the measurement rate people with a measurement rate can demonstrate this you just find the thing that's showing your ringing in CSD EQ that and the ringing goes away completely gone it's a thing that is predictable headphones are minimum phase and you can predict the CSD from frequency response that it took me a while I was I was totally on board with that first Chris like I was like in your I was thinking about it that that way because it looks like it is something it looks like it's something in addition to frequency response right that's kind of what that view does but when you understand what what you're actually looking at a little bit more um and how that relates to what like what that is it's um yeah it it took me a while to come around but I came around and there's yeah there's so much information now out about you know the importance of CSD now here's the thing though right I would love it if I could say impulse response and CSD those are important metrics because they contribute to the subjective aspects of sound or or you know um other just other metrics Beyond frequency response I would love it because then if if I had something to actually explore you know beyond the frequency response it would help make sense of you know the problem that I face which is that what oftentimes What I Hear doesn't agree with the or there's more to what I hear than what the graph shows right um oftentimes yeah but um but it ain't CSD foreign and I and I think that this is something that you know maybe with probe mics you could you could figure it out but but here's the thing even if it is fr the eardrum how do we know what's what contributes to good or better or worse I don't know I I can I can tell you almost with certainty that the biggest contributing factor is um is diaphragm material you know and we can talk about stiffness we can talk about compliance and all that kind of stuff but what the actual like being able to predict that from a measurement is still a mystery because yeah it's certainly a measurement on a rig I don't know about a measurement of your drum that's why I want to explore that more hey now don't say anybody's ears are broken nobody's ears are broken this another thing is that in this in this hobby right like there are so many different ways for us to mislead ourselves or like you know like there are so many influences on us even just like from something as like time of day you know like I don't know say you right before you were listening you're walking you know down the street uh to get to go home and a siren went by you know and it's like then you sit down and listen Suddenly It's like ah there's this like weird thing like it's there's so many different effects on on our you know perceptual faculties that it is very difficult to to like yeah you're bound to get inconsistencies you know even internal inconsistencies um what is the one thing you wish you could measure but cannot at the moment you know talk about existing metrics pardon me um I don't know if there's anything from existing metrics um because we do now measure impedance um maybe sensitivity but I can do that too now it's just I haven't done it um but as far as intangible qualities I wish I could measure things like you know the the blunted bluntedness versus detail for trailing ends of tones that is one thing I really wish I could measure because that would be really revealing you tune your headphones to your audience for Cal retuned the Utopia and people got mad Megan has even stated that the OG Utopia was too bright and fatiguing you have to have to know your audience hey Chris hey no wait no worries man thanks thanks for hanging out and you're always welcome my dude sass away um yeah I didn't get I I understand perfectly why they retune the Utopia I personally didn't have any issues with the original but you know this is an hrtf thing I think you know some for some people that wear the resonances they're like 6K 8K uh I think maybe that's like fatiguing fatiguing for people and for other people it's totally fine um macrodynamics would be interesting to measure too yeah would be yeah but resonances don't always show up as Peaks on FR they can show up as dips and showing CSD helps people interpret the FR better well okay so if you have a headphone that is not minimum phase right in the sense that it is it breaks the proportionality ratio with frequency response in some way you would see that in group delay you'd see that an excess group delay and so you don't even need CSD to find that and I can tell you in all of the headphones that I've tested there hasn't been a single example of that I think the exception might be with well no even with the even with the harmonic Dyne g200 which is based on the platform that is the m1060 driver which is the famous example of that um even on the g200 it didn't have access group delay so there weren't any of those issues even with that headphone so it's a it's a very rare rare thing if you if you come across it that there is that headphone is not minimum phase I'm thinking of examples though like they're like I should test this on the Rel sr1a right to see because that's that's not like a cut it doesn't couple right there's a it just sort of hangs there the ear speaker design that would be cool I'll I'll look into that because that could be fun um but yeah ordinary it's not something we have any real reason to to worry about um and maybe actually this is a compelling reason to publish you know the group delay results because then you can know whether or not that's something that you should care about but I still think we need to get to a better like Collective recognition of what's important and what's not from a metrological standpoint because um yeah it seems like people still have a lot of ideas about like even just the fact that people bring up Square wave even the fact that square wave has been a thing right because tile used to do Square wave and he thought that that was an indication of something but it it wasn't it was an idea that got taken and you know misappropriated and then run with um and I I didn't know that I I learned about it like basically the history of that of that metric recently and all it takes is is like once I've learned about that I was like wow that's um once I was educated on that topic I I I yeah I realized like yeah there's kind of like what what the Hobby World has sort of done to distort the value of certain metrics um but yeah I thought there was a couple of extra spicy ticks here r70x is underappreciated not many headphones around its price achieve its staging capabilities without making significant sacrifices to fr that I think is a reasonable statement because you're right it's it does have good stage and it doesn't have Bizarro fr I think it lacks a little bit in detail compared to it some you know similarly priced stuff like I think sundara and 6xx are more detailed um but yeah for staging it's quite good a lot of people are looking for more bass in their equipment are a lot of the people looking for them are basing their equipment are coping their music has been has bad bass they need better music not equipment oh you are you are reaching deep into the spice jar my friend Cheers Cheers hobby talk good to see you yeah I am never gonna so I understand why you say that but I am never going to tell people that their music sucks because I think everybody's music sucks so you know within the landscape of like you know good and bad music um I live in a very I live in you know a very small corner of that landscape right and and for me that's a that's a peak but and everything else is just a valley but uh but because of that like who am I to say that you know Mumble rap is terrible okay Mumble rap is terrible I'm just gonna say it that's I call that a spicy dick um yeah we need to do we're actually working on an FAQ um for the website there's there's a lot of um actually there's a lot of articles on the website right now that go into some of this stuff it's just that they need to be updated um like I wrote an article I've written several articles a long time ago that was like how about how to read frequency response and how frequency response contributes to sound signature all that kind of stuff and I need to put it in a more accessible format an accessible place I think so that is coming down the pipe soon Mumble rap is an interesting example I don't listen to it but there is a ton of hip-hop that has awful awful bass and there's a ton that has great Bass um yeah I'm not into hip-hop really it's not my kind of thing um but I also yeah like there's I like some of the older stuff like I don't know if you'd call it hip-hop it's certainly not the modern stuff um but um yeah um I'm not that familiar with the modern genres that people are listening to these days are the modern artists I should say um because I it's just not my kind of thing unless we're talking about like you know piano jazz in which case I'm a wealth of knowledge on piano chess do you try to measure FR different volumes and check which parts of the FR compress and changes more than the others Aaron from Aaron's audio Corner does this with speakers and I think it could be interesting with yeah with speakers I I'm not too familiar with headphones it doesn't change uh well okay it it does if you go to if you're trying to achieve Max SPL you might find some results like that but even if in an fft if you just change the volume the shape isn't going to change for the frequency response between 60 DB and 100 DB for the majority of headphones and you're really listening within that range most of the time like you're not going outside of that so yeah it's not something that with the exception of those ones I mentioned before like you know like the Apple airpods Pro 2 and some of those ones that have like you know volume based attenuation and stuff like that what what I think could be interesting and different by the way tons of respect for Aaron's audio corner I love that dude and I yeah that's that's my favorite I've been watching that speaker Channel because I'm interested in getting some new speakers for my living room and uh that dude's channel is dope um so shout out to Aaron but I what I would be interested in it to kind of speak to I think what your hypothesis is there about volume and frequency response differences I'd love to do the same testing with probe mics like see on actual humans to if if there's any change I I'd be more curious about that because it definitely doesn't on the rig but because we do measure at all kinds of different volumes um oh yeah Chris is asking uh what volumes do you measure um so I don't measure at 114 DB that's what you're wondering I measure uh usually I try and measure around 90 at 1K right and the reason I do that is because I think that is a that is like uh I I will crank it to a hundred even 110 sometimes if I'm specifically trying to identify Distortion profiles but nobody should ever nobody's that's not a volume level that anybody needs to worry about and when I publish measurements it's usually at the 90 DB you know measurements taken at 90 DB because that is like the most representative it doesn't test the edge case or where the limits of the headphones are but I think you know because of what we know about auditory masking effect with volume and with music um it's not something that people need to worry about um the exceptions are like when you have um lower Excursion limits which shows up in the base and if people want to then EQ that up and boost the bass to whatever 100 DB because they're bass heads then you're going to hit the Excursion limit and that's when it does matter right but for ordinary use normal use of those headphones or whatever headphones you're talking about I don't see a reason to measure frequency response above 90 DB if you're measuring Distortion you want to go to 100 DB 110 105 you know that makes perfect sense because then you can actually interpret the Distortion or you can see it you know more clearly and see where the Distortion Rises because if you're measuring at 90 DB with good headphones oftentimes that's so the Distortion is low enough to where it's hard to make sense of it um so yeah but frequency response 90 DB is fine I think k612 Pro is the most underrated headphones especially on two bimps I'll have to give it a shot there's a lot of headphones okay here's here this is something I could use help with I I feel that for the last little bit when it comes to over your headphones things haven't changed that much we've gotten some new ones like the void the the void and the the Venus um we've gotten there's new ones that come out of you know some of the Chinese manufacturer Brands but there hasn't been that much big change in terms of like the there's nothing really that that is like I don't know industry shaking you know and I felt for a while that like we've gotten I want to think about how to say this on the path of of which headphones we kind of like look to to evaluate we tend to I feel like not just me but like all headphone reviewers kind of just go along the same path and we all sort of tend to evaluate the same things and the reason I'm thinking about this was something that came up with when I was thinking about the like you know best headphones of the Year and that kind of stuff right because this stuff like the technology doesn't progress in the same way with audio as it does in like you know computer chips and stuff like that the new stuff isn't always better and um so what I want to know is like what are headphones that are still available on the market that you know you can still buy today that you know just haven't been covered that even even like popular headphones that people are buying that haven't been covered by the current trend of like oh yeah this is a new thing that came out let's review that you know um I'd love to get a sense of that I think like there are Bayer Dynamic headphones I think that's actually a good example um maybe we need to cover those more but they don't I usually don't want I don't enjoy those that much so that's a hard it's a hard one but I'm thinking of other stuff like I really really want to evaluate that trx00 some more stuff from fostex um you know Denon as well right I want to check some of that stuff out Sony you know but this is where like you know if there's anything that you guys and this is also for folks who are watching afterwards if you can think of stuff that you want us to evaluate leave it in the comments because the more you know requests there are for that kind of stuff the more you know the better chance there is I I can get that kind of stuff in so yeah Chrono loves the dt770 that's yeah and I I tend to agree I think it is still it's too spicy for me in the trouble but yeah with EQ it's it's a really good performer oh we did the Tiger 300r my sphere that's one of the silliest the The Tiara headphone yeah we need we definitely need to do something like that hard to you I don't know I mean yeah if I was doing this independently I would do that but because it's not uh you know even though our opinions are all independent opinions but you know we we have the funding right like we have a there's a company here um if there's enough demand for us to review a TRX zero or sorry not TRX 0 but the Emu teak right if there's enough you know then we say oh yeah that's the one that we're going to Target for this month right we can come up with a process for that but I just I need to know what the ones are the people are interested in you know that are outside the scope of the scope of the you know current sort of reviewer cycle that other reviewers are covering you know and myself included um you know I mean I mean to a certain extent we have to cover the stuff that's new because that's what everyone's talking about but I know that there are stuff like the 612 that Chef Steve mentioned you know that's like that's out there um now now you guys have lots of lots of suggestions which is good yeah the den and stuff yeah exactly that's a good example uh do you think the RSV is the best tuned I am under a thousand no no no no no did you review the Avant tones I did not but I I have those drivers okay the drivers are okay oh man L 700 I want to get one one of those in like I heard that thing I was like holy crap that's nuts anyways I'm Gonna Leave the stream of that guys uh thanks to everybody for hanging out um as usual uh as I mentioned earlier on if you guys are interested in more of the information stuff and you want to chat with the community check out the Discord link below the in the in the video description um and come hang out uh and also uh the headphone Community Forum I will try and add the links to this video for the measurements of the 18000 afterwards I still need to do a post for that and I want to make sure my EQ settings are good um but yeah uh that does it for the live stream uh thanks to everybody and have a good weekend thanks for all of your contributions uh thank you feature cheers um yeah have a good one guys

Channel: The Headphone Show

Views: 393,083

Keywords: headphones, headphone, headphones.com, high end headphones, audiophile, best headphones, top headphones, most expensive headphones, headphone reviews, iems, iem review, amp, dac, audio, sound, resolve reviews, resolve live stream, headphones.com live stream, headphone show live, high-end audio, hifiman ananda, hifiman edition xs, hifiman sundara, hifiman he1000, HiFiMAN HE-1000, HiFiman he-1000 v2, He-1000 v2 measurements, he1000 v2 measurements

Id: IPHoiY_L4x0

Length: 137min 48sec (8268 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 10 2022