listener

Arya Unveiled is $1450, but they just released the Ananda Unveiled which is going to be the cheapest in their lineup with this "extremely open" approach to acoustic design ($550), so it may be worth waiting to see if that exhibits the same behavior & if so get that one instead. I'll keep you posted!

Very interesting, can say it looks quite a bit different than our results for the unveiled versions. Attached is data for the Arya Unveiled. The HE1000 and Susvara Unveiled both show similarly small difference in the part of the headphone response dominated by pressure effects <3 kHz (~1dB max).

Ahhh I see, thanks for sharing, this makes it very clear how it was done.

Got it!

It’s possible I’d opt for one of the Unveiled Hifiman headphones (AryaUV/HE1000UV/SusvaraUV) considering they’ve exhibited the least variation between Type 3.3 and 4.3 systems in our limited testing, but it’d have to be a unit that didn’t have the commonly-occuring THD issues around @ 4kHz/QC issues

Its tough, because for all of its benefits the HD 800 still has reasonably high variation depending on how its worn, and most electrostats aren’t exceedingly well designed such that many have unintentional leaks in the front volume that change with clamp force (subject head width). 1/2

Interesting. Was the metric tested “similarity,” or “similarity of preference”? I could see the former being a little harder/noisier to test than the latter.

Was the replicator headphone for this sufficiently placement/ear load invariant? Very excited for this but I confess I'm really hoping you didn't only use Dan's headphones for the replicator duties 😅

Just gave it a pass. Very interesting indeed. Wish I was going to the conference so I could be there for the discussion.

Love my SSL 2+ except that the Phones A output has nasty channel imbalance. Love that there’s no BS software to deal with though.

See ya there, big dawg!

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Come hang! www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vy4...

Any chance the HATS was a KEMAR with the Welti pinna? Your blocked canal measurements of headphones on humans + measurement fixtures showed good parity between it and humans iirc.

On that note, is there any chance you’ve done anything like a DF / SRF measurement of a KEMAR with the Welti pinna?

@resolvereviews.bsky.social has a video coming on them this week!

The latter I think would only work with a small sample size if you had access to a few of the same subjects from eg. the 2013 or 2015 papers though, so might be more pragmatic to do the other one :) 3/3

But if it was up to me, I’d be asking you to do listening tests for OE headphones based on similar human measurements (DF HRTFs + HpTFs at the blocked canal) but testing how the LS/HS adjustments would deviate from 2013/2015 when individual HRTF is compensated for 2/?

For CanJam audience I’d do “Does personalized EQ based on listener HRTF correlate to reports of ‘technicalities’?”

Can measure DF HRTFs + HpTFs for a few people at the blocked ear&do listening tests with an HD 800S and see which profile—stock or personalized—has more reported soundstage/detail 1/?

Ah okay that makes a lot more sense. Waaaay easier to avoid dealing with anything past the canal entrance 😂

& no kidding! Hats off to that engineer of yours.

Looks like very clean work. Done in 00 35 silicone, I assume?

I also assume you’re terminating this in a 711 coupler (or perhaps the ear sim from the HMS type 4.4 system), where did you decide to terminate the canal/place the microphone?

are those custom pinnae?

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jQJ... Come hang!

It is:

    Harman AE/OE 2018
- Harman In-Room Flat
________________________
That curve

I said this forgetting we have the 10dB slope 😓

Trust that the caveats I mentioned re: acoustic load interactions confounding confidence applies equally to this line 😅

However, the same caveats discussed in other parts of this thread still apply; the relevance and predictive power of the bounds as well as either of the DF baselines are still limited by unknowns (ear load and IEM load). For these reasons I tend to advise more caution interpreting IEM measurements.

If we did adopt some sort of target line—we're not, but if we did—we'd want it to be something performant in preference research. SoundGuys being so close to our chosen HRTF with prior well-performing adjustments does give us some confidence that the JM-1 DF as compensation baseline has merit. 2/?

As Andrew said, we don't have OE/IEM targets.

Considering how well SoundGuys has been testing, it seems a nice coincidence that using JM-1 (DF) as our IEM compensation baseline (not a target) makes SoundGuys damn near identical to the well-preferred Harman AE/OE 2018 target under 8 kHz, no? :)
1/?

However this is also why I think re: IEM preference testing, multiple replicators (or a single replicator with mutable acoustic parameters eg. modular venting) would likely be of interest to gauge how preference and/or in-situ response change with loading even if FR on eg. 4620 is constant 4/4

DF calibration on its own surely doesn’t solve this, & indeed one of the alluring parts of testing for preference is that you account for these impedance interactions by not accounting for them; acoustic impedance’s effects are in the results even if they’re not a separately controlled variable 3/?

I’m personally more interested to see IEM studies based on measurements done in human ear canals, because everything seems to indicate that the averages behind the 1/2 middle ear simulators we use to measure IEMs isn’t enough to represent the typical acoustic impedance deviation across listeners 2/?

Finally getting to this. Re: point 1, that’s partially why we’ve adopted a DF HRTF that’s a little less specific to the rig’s outer ear effects while still using the canal/eardrum components of the 4620 as our chosen DF for IEMs. However, as you say, acoustic impedance is a massive problem here. 1/?