Huh. Really interesting. If you ever find the interview I’d love to see it.
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One day 
(totally not)
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You can’t. The only way to produce “reference-grade” headphones is to tune them to some population-average target curve for neutral/natural FR, like the Harman target. You can’t evaluate a headphone vs. that target with your ears unless (A) you are the 1 in 1 mil. guy who has his HRTF shaped exactly like the Harman target or (B) you’re a trained listener with decades of experience listening, measuring and EQ-ing various headphones (like some sort of Tyll Hertsens or whatever).
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Yup. You don’t need Harman Neutral headphones, you need " @voja neutral " headphones. whatever they are.
Also, how detailed they are. Because I could seriously mix with Panasonic RJE-120s (they’re like, 5$?), but I would definitely not hear everything.
This seems like a jab at me. Am I wrong for trying to understand what “reference” and “neutral” mean?
If so, then I’d better believe whatever the manufacturer claims the product to be (aka marketing), and should just trust people who don’t know what they are talking about and write poetry (aka most of reviewers).
Completely unnecessary comment, immature too. We all (should) know that you can make music on basically anything, but if you are selling a 400 eur product that claims to be any better than your 5$ Panasonic’s, well then I am trying to understand why so =)
That would be true if all he wanted was to listen to neutral sound. But he wants to evaluate headphones as a reviewer, to make recommendations to the general public. “Voja-neutral” doesn’t help in that case. Equal-loudness EQ also doesn’t help. You need population-average based measurements to make population-wide recommendations.
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Might not help in the field of headphones but in the world of speakers/monitors, from the words of “reference and neutral” my brain is screaming “Genelec”. Pointing and looking at the studio and master studio series.
Have to say i liked the video @MaynardGK. It was very enlightening in the way of headphones and audio. So trying them is still the best way to find out how they sound and basically one could level them to reference speakers with the standards mentioned on video, then find out the differences or comparing them in sound, to you the listener.
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I think we have come to the conclusion that there is no such thing as reference headphones, especially due to the widely different perception of sound each person has. This could be real and accomplished with studio monitors, but not quite with headphones - at least not at my position. There would need to be done a great amount of research, averages, measurements, etc. to even try to call a headphone reference-grade.
This is the quote that I think explains it the most straight forward way.
This being said, I will proceed to make observations on my perception and explain what I am hearing (of course, using minute stamps and reference tracks to explain what I am hearing - this way other people can play the same minute stamp and conclude what they hear).
Thanks to everyone!!!
And that goes for all headphone, speaker, iem chains…all subjective, all a personal preference and that’s it really 
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Yeah and that’s exactly what “harman neutral” is, lol. An average of what most people believe sound better (not “most realistic” or “most true-to-life” even, afaik), most of these people being non-audiophiles, not working in the studio, not working in audio, not in a band, listening to mp3s on their phone or Beats headphones and using TV speakers for sound.
Nah, sorry. Let’s put it that way, “reference” and “neutral” means… not meant to be colored in any way. Bass boosted, or treble boosted, or “euphonic”. Some people think Harman got too much bass, so they remove some of it. Some people write “reference” on their headphones with too much treble, because it gives the impression there’s a ton of detail (but meh – it’s just boosted treble).
Not meant to be a jab at you at all, I just feel like what is immature is, calling everything “harman neutral” “reference”, lol.
That’s what I meant. 
Anyway, I think it’s fair to say most reference headphones will tend to be analytical, not veiled, not euphonic, not adding reverb, and probably not much soundstage, because for mixing/mastering – unless maybe they say “audiophile reference” ? – too much soundstage means the details are “too far away”.
Edit: I think it’s fair to say a “reference” headphone that is either “muddy”, veiled, euphonic, or has (too) wide soundstage, is pretty much a failure.
“Reference” for me means at least life-like detail, analytical, but without sounding artificial. But I got weird ears, so I need luck to find that and a decent frequency response (for me!). For example, I have Nad HP50s. It was “their take” at harman neutral. If you look at the graphs, it’s not neutral at all. Well, I’m glad they failed at it, because my treble-sensitive ears can now enjoy the highs.
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This is the whole purpose of this thread, I am not actually focusing on people who look for better sounding headphones, but to find out how to make sure that a headphone is “true”, a headphone that is aimed at audio engineers and studio use (the headphones I have are not meant for audiophiles, but exactly at studio use - mixing and mastering would be one way to use them, editing sound for films would be another).
Both of the headphones I have are claimed to be studio-grade, that’s their aim, that’s why I tried to find a different approach from the usual audiophile approach I had. But it seems like I’ll have to approach them from an audiophile approach mostly.
Yup, analytical is one of the qualities people look in “reference” headphones.
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No, I’m afraid that’s wrong. Harman is not based on pure user opinions about how “pleasant” the sound is. Harman started with a measurement head with average anatomical dimensions for all the components, and measured the sound at the level of the artificial eardrum when playing music from speakers in an anechoic chamber. They only added some extra tweaks afterwards based on user opinions like was there enough bass or not, but fundamentally the Harman curve is exactly about natural/neutral/reference-grade sound, based on how that sound is produced anatomically when listening to speakers.
It just doesn’t fit everyone perfectly because our heads are not the measurement head that was used. But it comes pretty close for a lot of people, and that’s the best they could hope for with a universal design - that’s what it means to make “monitoring headphones” at the current stage of headphone technology. There are already experiments with all kinds of apps that try to adapt the sound to your anatomy in some quick and effortless way, but I suspect those are all still pretty far off (especially some Samsung thing I heard about, where it instructs you to tune for equal loudness of all frequency bands, which is completely wrong and unnatural). Maybe in 10-20 years we will get headphones with some Griesinger Personalizer circuit included, which will sound perfectly natural for every user after a little calibration procedure, but we’re not there yet.
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All our heads are different shapes, all our ears are different shapes, concha, pinna, etc etc… So note there are two different harman graphs for headphones and in-ears too…
The tests in the video above are interesting, though. I think all of the participants had a margin of ~2.5dB maximum under 1000khz. Above that? It’s another story. I used to say a 5dB difference was not much – this proves me wrong again. Lol.
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Every day is a good day if you learn something new. 
I tune and play in the ~0.5db difference range, that is still in the range not needing measuring (good gear). It ain’t obvious right away, it’s hard. Takes some time and listening. In usual cases it is more a "something is off…or is it? " type of fibe.
With in the detail of fine tuning and measuring the values are more in the ~0.1db ranges, needs of course software & gear that can do that…
(Lesson to be learned = dont be or become a micro tuner!! it’s hell! devil really is in the details…)
Hours hours and more hours is needed, many days. Different week’s and more tuning.
Even with measurements since tiny tiny changes makes the smallest differences.
I’m not even mentioning delays and distances in range of 0.001cm / 0.0003". That’s another circle in my personal hell…
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Lol. Don’t forget to enjoy the music, huh. 
Sometimes you’re nitpicking and then you remember the last show you went to and did not even hear the main guitarist (but still don’t regret at all going to the show)… and you realize “so, yeah these headphones and speakers are excellent”.
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imo, speakers and headphones should have a perfectly flat response - this allows the user to customise their listening experience with EQ settings and not be forced into using their EQ to fix manufacturing flaws
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Welcome to the forums @Zee
The problem with EQ is, some headphones don’t react well to (software) EQ. Also, multiple EQ softwares would be needed on all the sources you’re using (smartphone, computer, etc). Also, a lot of sources don’t support EQ-ing.
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In theory this sounds “ideal”, but I am sure that it’s not quite as easy as that. There is definitely more to it. I mean, just tuning something to have a flat response is a big job… it takes quite a lot of time (if you truly want to be as close to a flat response as possible).
Also, as @LeDechaine said, software EQ just isn’t it.
The only limitation I’ve noticed with software EQ vs rackmounted is with portable devices which tend to have limited adjustability (only 3/4 adjustments 
). Maybe there’s an opening in the market for a portable DAC with parametric EQ?
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That comes after the hard work and listening. 
Haven’t touched or tuned anything in my setup in months. I have taken online courses to know more and details about the possibilities i have, there still are few things i should change and fine tune after.
But lately it’s been carhifi, friends sq competition project. only +15h of tuning with few issues and testing. It does sound pretty good but next time, measurements and more tuning.
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