Just a note - as far as we know, new Harman research being done on the B&K 5128 isn't being made public. If that changes, we can also re-evaluate all of this.
Awesome. Obviously saw this coming with all the discussions happening, but it really makes sense. Especially when (even though we hate to admit it), raw is harder to compare than compensated. Humans are really bad at comparing parallel curves compared to parallel flat lines
@generalframework what target do you prefer? This is essentially the same as the Harman target which most people prefer. The main issue I have with the Harman target is I feel 4-6k is a little too boosted, but this target solves that issue. But even the Harman research says to adjust the amount of bass and trebel to your preference, so yes you are supposed to find what you like the most and adjust to that
@generalframework Yep. I made a video explaining how the target was made. It's essentially the same process that Harman did, but using DF HRTF rather than Harman in room flat as the starting point (which comes very close to DF HRTF before the filters are applied)
That's a strong title, god damn! Isn't still the point behind the Harman target equally relevant as ever and the same target just needs to be translated to the B&K and now we can look at how it looks like past 10kHz and trust we're more correct in what we're seeing, right? EQ a headphone as close to current Harman as possible, measure it with the new rig and start fighting about how the highs should shape and pick a target. P.S. Diffuse field is garbo, xD
@@blainelacross5311 man I really wonder who came up with these target curves. Couldn't possibly be the guy I'm replying to right now with that profile picture or anything.
I can’t imagine what it would be like if crin wanted to move over to it and have to literally remeasure EVERY. SINGLE. IEM/headphones he’s ever measured and ranked
He mentioned on headphone show back in 2021 that he would not do that. They had a discussion back then, that this would happen. But you'r right: imagine!
That's also why when he upgraded his headphone rig to the Gras 43ag, he still uses the Chinese clone coupler for his IEMs. To keep them more comparable with the old database
I think IEMs are not that effected by this because the ears and the head aren't really "in the way" like on over ear headphones and can't mess with the perceived FR. For IEMs the ear canal of each person is much more important.
I checked the chapter selection and I was really excited. Turns out it was a bait and switch. Signed, Someone who prefers the diffuse field target for headphones (but not for speakers)
I bought the 371's after watching this video 2-3 days ago and just got beamed in to another dimension. After using my 560s for like a half year straight i could not believe how "fun" yet still technical they sound. I am glad i choose the 371's over the NTH-100 because i think they fit better into my collection. Now i got my ER4SR and 560s for gaming and my IE 300 and 371's for music movies etc. I will definitelly check out your channel before i buy my next headphone thats for sure. Thank You 👍👍👍
I use Shure SRH440 a lot. It happens to measure a super high 95 Harman score. In most ways that matter to me they are the best sounding headphones I've owned. Some called them a closed back HD600 when they came out and the measurements do support that. Things are different with Harmans IE target, any IEM that was compliant lacked warmth and was shouty to me.
srh440 is a great heaphone. Wish the new A versions retained the sound signature because the build quality is the only thing keeping me from buying them again after they broke.
@@dudemanismadcool The new 440As and 840As also come with an annoying proprietary cable connector and no spring cord version. I bought both of them to replace my old 440 and 840 sets that were worn out. IMO the 840A has the best sound signature. I occasionally use the NX Virtual Mixroom plugin which has an EQ correction for the 840 based on the Harmon target curve method which isn't bad. I would love to be able to just add my own EQ on the mix bus that emulates one of these correction methods accurately so I don't have to rely on Waves (who just implemented a subscription plan for their plugins to rip off their existing customers - and then walked it back after the massive negative response), but apparently I'm just not smart enough to make that work.
@@johngraham9878 Thanks for the comment. The SRH840 was my first bit of 'audiophile gear' way back in 2012 when I didn't even know headphone amps/dacs existed. It has been a long time since I have owned either but I have extremely fond memories of the 840. I sold them about six months after I bought them and ended up with the cheaper 440 some time later. I still remember, vividly, being blown away by their isolation and being able to hear every minute detail of a song. I grew to love the 440 dearly but I always remembered the 840 as being a cut above. I am now very curious about trying the 840-A.
This can only be good for the headphone community, in the long run. Big-up to all of you guys trying to fix a lot of the confusion us laymen have to strugle with.
But I don’t want to be like everyone else or like what “average” people like. I want headphones and IEMs that are too refined and esoteric for most people. “No, no, you probably won’t like those. They’re tuned to the ES (Elitist Snob) curve.”
I always thought the Harman target sounded awful. Diffuse field sounds the most realistic to me. I wonder how much preferences shown in the Harman research is related to how one is exposed to music. For example, if you experience live music primarily through earsplitting boomy PA speakers at rock concerts, perhaps the Harman target sounds the most "real." If you listen to live classical concerts, you'd be wondering why the cello is overpowering the violin in a string quartet with the Harman target. A diffuse field response might sound more "real."
I am new to the hobby and once you achieve having a headphone of high enough quality to not have a muddy sound in all areas. What is the point in having different headphones if we are going to eq them to the harmon target or another source if they are all going to sound pretty much the same when your done. I have a harmon target setup for all my headphones and keep wondering am I missing the boat and not appreciating the difference between the 5 pairs of headphones I have. I appologize if the comment sounds stupid.
Will you use the DF provided by B&K or measure it yourself (azimuth-only I guess)? Either way, very much looking forward to leaving the 1980s technology behind.
There's some internal dialogue going on for this point - the B&K DF, which nearest any of us can tell was measured in a real reverb chamber, is insufficiently high resolution for our purposes. Higher resolution DFHRTFs may be computed by a weighted power sum of FFHRTFs, see section 1.5 here vbn.aau.dk/files/227875122/1995_M_ller_et_al_AES_Journal_a.pdf and something using this methodology is likely what we'll be doing for the 5128.
What if you took a headphone that is really close to Harman's OE target (e.g. stealth) and then applied parametric eq to perfectly match the target on your old rig.. if you would then measure it on the new rig, would that not be the "new" Harman target for the new rig?
Because it's not a 1:1 comparison to different heads/rigs. Some headphones are likely to be very consistent, while others aren't. I suppose there's a version of this idea that you could do after a bunch of testing to pick the lowest variability headphone - like a headphone that's extremely consistent across different heads and then apply the result that way. But this would also involve a heavy degree of smoothing as well.
@@ResolveReviews You are absolutely right about the variability .. Sean Olive also posted on it recently and also I believe rtings measure for that kind of thing (if i am not mistaken).. for the second part, do you mean that even if you eq to be perfectly smooth on the old rig, it might not measure smooth on the new and you would therefore need to perform the smoothing yourself?
Is there a reason you can't compare the b&k measurement and the gras measurement, then apply a compensation for the difference, which allows you to apply the same harman curve to the measurement...
Hey, Resolve! Sorry to be off-topic, but could you tell me the band that you use as a reference for jazz music? I believe you mentioned it in one of your videos, but I can't remember. I think it's a jazz trio, but not really sure, unfortunately. Thanks and more power to everyone at the Headphone Show!
Ok, so we have a huge database of measurements with top-notch measuring equipment and two or three target curves that are very common and well-liked. We also have lots of head/earphones that stick to those target curves with remarkable precision. So why should anybody change this well-established system and create LOTS of confusion? The answer is : MONEY! Of course the industry needs to make a change and present us audiophile gadget-nerds with something "new and better" (even though it isn't) in order to stay relevant. We hit the area of diminishing returns a while ago already and further improvements are measurable, but not audible. In a world in which you can get top-notch performance below 100 USD, the major improvements aren't coming from the hardware anymore, but from correction-profiles, surround-sound-simulation and such things. So yeah...
Cool thing is it seems you'll be able to use tilt and possibly bass shelf as preference parameters? E.g. those of us who find Harman a few dB too shouty/harsh could use more of a tilt if needed. Could be really nice for auto EQ to preference.
Reaolve I recommend to use the FF+DF * Room Target, I try it with the averages from Møller and the 5128 (Moler FF + 5128FF / 2) and same with DF and sounds pretty good, you can try it with an specific room and angle from FF too and it will sound very cool
If you find this approach interesting, I'd strongly suggest reading Christopher Struck's paper "Free Plus Diffuse Sound Field Target Earphone Response Derived from Classical Room Acoustics Theory" - he sets out a very mathematically elegant way to turn a head's FF and DFHRTFs plus the RT characteristics of a room and the DI of a speaker into an "in-room HRTF" at a much higher resolution than would be possible with in-room measurement!
If a company (most mainstream HP companies today) cannot tune a HP properly with Harman, they are not going to do it with the new stuff either. Because they don't want to
It will be interesting to see how this shapes tuning going forward. I know, especially in IEMs, there's a bit of a move away from the traditional Harman curve, with an emphasis on a bit more sparkle at the cost of bass. While still Harman-ish, neutral-bright has been trending this year. With all the measurement systems getting up-ended, I'm curious to see if manufacturers take advantage of the chaos and experiment a bit until a new 'normal' is established.
I think the iem world is heavily dominated by reviewers' target curves (take the crinacle ief target for example) since more and more popular iems tend to match those curves, and even though there are some popular bright neutral iems, I think that "fear of sibilance" is also a thing, with most of the popular iems having "tame" treble to avoid the problem. Even though, the area of highest interest seems to be the midrange and the pinna gain region, since bass is mostly up to preference (and easy to eq) and treble measurements are still unreliable. If the new measurements rigs are going to bring more reliable treble measurements, I think the biggest improvement we will get will be in that region, as it will be easier to correctly compare different headphones in that range as well. Also, the main qualm some people have for Harman-neutral is that the high mids are too forward, making the vocals unnatural and harsh, therefore I feel like some of the more popular iems would actually measure a bit warmer than Harman neutral. Not sure that neutral-bright is going to be (or is) the most popular tuning style
Sooo... What does this mean for an M1 MacBook Pro FL Studio Music Producer his mixing music all in the box and was using SoundID from Sonarworks to get a flat frequency response in my beyerdynamic 700 pro x headphones...
Honestly, I don't think it's really going to matter much as to which standard is used. Having a decent reference point is always good, and it gives the builders something to build towards, but I have never selected gear because of how it measured; I have always selected gear (headphones in particular) based on how they sounded to me and my ear when I put them on, not because it measured a certain way against some graph. I rely on you, Andrew the human, to tell me what you think of a product. I put more stock in that. Am I going to chuck all of my headphones now just because there is a new standard set in place, and because of that, all of the headphones that I love are now suddenly no good because they no longer play nice with some new graph? Hell no. How ridiculous is that? This is much ado about nothing.
The problem isn't the gear measurement rigs, it's the lack of audiology measurements of the reviewers ears. When that sibillance complaint you have at a graphed 10K isn't in your hearing range then things will be more transparent
Why not take side by side measurements of a few headphones on both rigs and based on the difference to Harmon target on the old rig create a transfer function to define the Harmon target on the new rig.
@@ResolveReviews I didn’t realize new rig had different head types - makes sense - I was thinking each rig was set (not variable) and by mounting the same headphone on both you could get consistent measurements - Headphones are so much more complicated than speakers with ear head shape etc. btw love your content!!
@@kyleo2113 Well, no it is just one head type. But the the second part of what you said gets at the issue. You can have headphone A that behaves very similarly across two different heads (or rigs), Headphone B on the other hand could behave very differently between the two, meaning the delta from the first comparison wouldn't be able to predict the result for headphone B on the other rig. Now, we still need to test this with the new system to see how much this is something to worry about, but we can't expect a 1:1 comparison across different heads.
@@ResolveReviews ok, got it, thank you for the explanation - it will be interesting to see how much variation some HPs have with the new rig measurements - looking forward to hearing more on what you find!! 🙏
You should also do video on how headphones are the leading cause of hearing loss in today's youths. I believe Harman curve and all other measurements are only good on paper but in reality many people have some or the other hearing loss for some particular frequencies as they age as a result we see in a varied choice of sound signatures.
No thanks. Don't care about Harman or any other particular reference target, but switching rigs will make comparison to the abundance of existing data meaningless.
Ive stopped uaing eqs, i remember way back in the day i had an old iphone 3 with sony Extra bass earbuds. (Whatever bestbuy sells) and i always chose Rock for an Eq. Now like 15 years later. I try to go non eq and roll with an iems FR. Daily driver being ifi gryphon with Moondrop Variations.
It unfortunately doesn't work like that. The issue with measuring headphones on different rigs is they don't match eachother. You can have two headphones that measure almost identical on one rig, but if you measure them on a different rig they can look very different
With the oldschool stiff pinnae, no less - do you guys test headphones with something more...fleshy for pads that would deform the pinnae, or are most of your pads thick enough to avoid that question?
@@blainelacross5311 Ours is also earfield FYI, I'm working on budgeting a 5128-B into our AP rig currently. Will be huge news if we get one, probably will invite reviewers to come help design the new EQ profiles and do a video on it.
@@DekoniAudio Earfield? I'm not 100% sure you'll need the 5128, but if you go with it, it'll be good to have more folks on board with the new standard!
Never understood the whole graphing system with headphones/speakers and the way they are measured so be gentle. My question is this; do all these systems take in to effect that the human ear is different on everyone and that not everyone's ear canal is the same? Also, from what I have seen, all these rigs seem to be made of plastic and metal, ears are not. Is there any compensation for how an ear canal bends and twists and that is a way softer material that effects the sound going down it? And what is the distance from the outside to where the ear drum would be? Is the mic at an average length for these results. And of coarse there are other variables like canal diameter, cleanliness, and so on that can have one person really like something and the next one say "it's OK". No matter haw good you can measure and get the best objective look at something, the subjective side is what will sell the item.
There is definitely a lot of research put into the rigs. While they are made from different materials, they do follow the average ear acoustic impedance which is what's important when getting a measurment. It's not as simple as just measuring with a microphone at the end of a tube the same shape as an ear, as this would cause the measurment to be incorrect since again its just metal, not flesh. How these couplers work is they have parallel chambers in them. As the Frequencies change, the different size of the wavelengths bypass some of those chambers. So it ends up measuring like a real human ear. The parallel chambers lets it change its acoustic impedance depending on the frequency being applied to match a human
@@JamieVatarga Thanks, you see everyone talking about the rigs, but very few , if any, have explained how they work to get as close to the human ear when testing.
So… you said… what? If your aim is to keep the topic limited to an exclusive, small group then this was a great video👍 HOWEVER, if your aim is to EXPAND the field and bring the subject to new people who might then join you and begin expanding their options beyond Sony, Bose, Sennheiser, etc. then you need to turn the highly technical into commonly understandable explanations for people who know nothing on the subject. But hey it’s your channel 🤷
Never understood why the Harman Target is a thing. Its too boomy and V-Shaped for most headphones imo. Crinacles Target with a little more punch in the low end (+1 to +3db max) is my favorite.
There's a big issue with measuring speakers in a room, the reflections. Flat speakers will never measure flat in a room even though they sound flat and measure flat in an anechoic chamber. Since headphones are basically anechoic chambers they should more or less sound like flat speakers in an anechoic chamber.
I don't think anyone wants headphones that sound like a free field response. With headphones, the goal is usually to try replicating the tonality of an in room response at least
just be like me, spend a few hundred, make a 95% accurate low noise binaural setup, calibrate your headphones in REW, and use as is. pure flat for the win.
I never understood why they wouldn't use something like a given rig's measurement of an HD650 (or something like that) as a reference target. That way, you factor out the rig and you're getting the most apples to apples comparisons between rigs. Sure, you might need to flatten the bass around 50Hz or something, but you'd be able to compare measurements across all rigs.
Harman target sucks balls when it comes to the upper treble and lower mids. I can’t believe people were stupid enough to think that having a -20db drop past 16khz is a good thing.
Oh dear, all my headphones that sound good to me no longer do, guess I’ll just have to throw them out. I never gave a flying f about measurements to begin with. I’ve had phones that the community shits on that sound great to me and headphones that are constant top rankers I don’t care for at all, it’s all subjective.
Another new development that shows how far behind this field is from "real" scientific fields. If a standard is so tough to maintain, then that renders experimentation as simply that, without reason.
We, as a community, need a great deal more science in this hobby. This was a very good video but it’s sad that this is about as scientific as it gets. And,… it’s long past time the Harman Curve was dispensed with. It was a good study BUT for some inexplicable reason people appear to think it’s on the level of the Munson-Fletcher (or Equal Loudness) curve (which shows how our ears etc. amplify/attenuate different frequencies at different amplitudes [most people appear to overlook the first part]) when it was science for commercial purposes rather than science to figure out what curve to apply in order to tune IEMs as if they were speakers. An inverted Munson-Fletcher curve is the closest we have to that. And it’s an ancient study using long outdated equipment and methods. Harman COULD have redone that study using modern methods applied to IEMs, in which case the Harman curve WOULD have been useful for IEMs not sold at wal-mart. The Harman Curve was just for IEMs sold to the masses who couldn’t care less about flat/neutral or even sound quality. This isn’t a knock on Harman, they weren’t the ones who misrepresented their curve. They accomplished exactly what they set out to do. Who knows why anyone ever thought it was anything other than a commercial curve.
Equal loudness contours (be they Fletcher and Munson's work or more contemporary ISO226 curves) are not the proper response for either speakers or headphones - perceptually equal level isn't even achieved with headphones by applying an equal loudness on speakers EQ, something which Theile demonstrated in 1986, nor is equal loudness by frequency band at all preferable in most cases. The Harman studies (which I would in fact say are far better than Fletcher and Munson's work, as they should be, given that it's been decades of progress in scientific methodology since then) show us that the response we prefer in speakers (assuming "generally good speaker design" - e.g. constant directivity or near enough) is the same we prefer in headphones, something which matches well with decades of prior work on preferred response in speakers and headphones, as well as with our understanding of psychoacoustics. I would strongly encourage you to read some of the papers in Sean Olive's research programme - an AES membership is quite cheap and gives unlimited access to the past publications.
