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Comment by chroma | Hacker News Reader

I think his viewpoint is spot-on. The goal of most audio systems should be to accurately reproduce the original waveform. If you want to add "warmth" or "color" or whatever to the sound, it's better to quantify what that means, then purposefully distort the audio in a dedicated device (or in software).

Think about what life would be like if displays were built and reviewed like audio tech. Imagine companies like NuForce and Schiit sold screens that didn't accurately reproduce colors. Owners of these displays would praise them for their "warmth" or talk about how much green colors "pop" or whatever. It would be absurd.

We can actually measure contrast ratio, color accuracy, viewing angles, etc. That's how we evaluate displays. People who prefer a different gamma or white point change it in software. They don't buy defective monitors. But switch the topic to audio and people forget all that. It's bizarre.

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I greatly respect NwAvGuy and agree with almost everything he says, but I think in practical terms that's a slightly over-simplified perspective. Look how inaccurate even these headphones are [1], arguably the best or one of the best ever made.

Getting the inaccuracies to be the right inaccuracies is quite subtle and very important in my opinion. See for example this review of his [2] and in particular the paragraph near the end:

>AN EQ EXPERIMENT: I tried using highly configurable parametric EQ to tweak my Denon D2000s to be similarly forgiving and I failed. When I filter out equivalent amounts of sibilance and harshness with the Denons, more of the music is gone and the result sounds veiled and artificial. The HD 650, to my ears, somehow works more like polarized sunglasses. They largely remove what I don’t want while revealing more of what’s left. It’s not just a simple frequency response difference. My objective side wants to pin down what’s going on but I don’t have a full explanation besides the HD 650’s lack of distortion.

[1] http://www.innerfidelity.com/images/StaxSR009.pdf [2] http://nwavguy.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/sennheiser-hd-650.html

I was mostly talking about DACs and amplifiers, not headphones. Headphones have to deal with more trade-offs: comfort, size, isolation, and the fact that it's really hard to get them to accurately reproduce sound. Still, so what if current headphones suck at reproducing sounds? That doesn't mean we should ignore quantitative measurements. If the "right" inaccuracies are so subtle-yet-crucial, it's important to quantify them! Then we can evaluate headphones based on how accurately they create those inaccuracies.

And I think you're missing the point of the EQ experiment. NwAvGuy wanted to see if there was more to quantifying headphone quality than a frequency response curve. He was right. That just means that objective evaluations of headphone quality will need to include more measurements. That doesn't mean we should disregard measurements and go with subjective impressions. Otherwise, something as mundane as a warm drink can skew the reviewer's opinion.[1]

1. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/7688315.stm

With speakers and headphones, low distortion probably is more important than a flat response. Bad response can be EQed away, but distortion can't.

I think it's because with displays, you can put two of them side by side and say, "look, the shadow detail is gone in this part" but with audio you have to rely on your memory.

I think you just nailed why judging audio quality is so difficult. You can compare video frame by frame, or look at a still image for as long as you need to, but audio is always disappearing into the past as you listen to it, and the closest you'll get to freezing a moment in time is an annoying buzzing sound.

Or, you pop one in your left ear, and the other in the right ? Never tried, but I suppose this could work ?

Then again our brains play soooo much with sound-proccessing ...

The waveform you are trying to reproduce, though, was mixed and mastered by a guy on studio monitors or similar, and in such a way that it would sound appropriate on the systems his audience is going to use.. or some version thereof. He's not pushing things to the limit of what his studio setup can produce, because that's going to sound like crap anywhere else.

What you listen on to master isn't necessarily what you'd listen on for fun.

If you were taking raw recordings of something with mics with really flat response curves, and wanted to play it back as accurately as possible, this would hold - but that's not the case. It's all about what sounds good to you.

Again, consider displays: Similar to music, movies are mastered on high-end gear. Staff use properly-calibrated displays. They often view scenes in dark rooms. Similar to music, movies are mastered so that they won't look terrible on the audience's displays. Some dark scenes are made a little more contrast-y. Some colors are tweaked. Maybe even the white balance is altered (though this is often more stylistic than corrective).

Now if you're buying a display, are you going to ignore measurements and just go with whatever looks good to you? Hopefully not. Even if you prefer bluer tones or higher contrast, you'll want to know numbers for white point, color accuracy, and contrast ratio. You won't just eyeball it in a store. You definitely wouldn't trust subjective reviews where someone says, "This display seems more contrast-y and blue." It shouldn't be any different with audio gear.

A counter argument I'd give is has anyone ever described a TV as being too harsh, as in they can't watch it for an hour without experiencing "fatigue" that causes them to need to stop. Of course with a TV this sounds ridiculous we just want the most life like picture possible so these measurements are a great way to accomplish that.

With headphones though while something may sound more accurate it might not be enjoyable to listen to. It can be too harsh to our ears and cause listening fatigue. While the Sennheiser HD800 are a great pair of headphones I find them very difficult to listen to on a neutral amp for long periods of time. The only way I could really enjoy them was to get a warmer tube amp. In the end I replaced them with the Audeze LCD-3 which I would argue are less accurate headphones but are far more enjoyable.

Heh... Folks use software like f.lux to purposefully distort their displays in order to reduce fatigue.

The ability to adjust the output to one's liking should not be confused with an inability to faithfully reproduce input.

That's a pretty good comparison. In both cases you are adding warmth to a source one via software and the other via an amp.

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