OK: a light bulb just went off in my puny little brain.
I now know that when you use the word “flat” you mean “subjective flat” like normal people do, as opposed to “measurement flat”. I had been assuming you were a technical wonk because you do mixing, so I’ve been misunderstanding your statements from time to time.
I’m still mystified by your “natural” versus LeDechaine’s “neutral”, but I’m probably just not smart enough to ever understand such distinctions. So let’s leave that one alone, lol.
I’m more of a literal play it by ear kinda guy, so what I say sometimes might only make sense to me lol. Don’t really worry too much about technicalities
Sorry. Neutral, natural, flat, and the harman curve, means the same thing for me.
I was never referring to “flat” as in a flat line not compensated by anything.
Well well, after hundreds of dollars spent on multiple pairs of headphones and IEMs, I must say now that it’s not the case at all. I know what “natural sound” is to my ears and… it’s not flat. It’s not the harman curve, and it’s not “harman neutral”. And I know more.
What does “harman neutral” i.e.: “flat” sounds, to me? Dead. Because there’s not much bass (100hz-ish), the mids are laid-back and it’s treble-oriented. It’s a really airy sound that definitely does not remind me of all the shows I went to. Drum kicks sounds like they’re 2 meters away, voices are hidden under a veil of the microphone’s signature treble and hisses and I hear the highest frequencies of the cymbals (10-to-15khz+) like they’re in my face.
It sounds horrible but isn’t (well except for the 10khz+ TV snow hiss…). My ears aren’t as horrible as that.
If ‘neutral’ is synonymous with transparent to the recording, I’d say the Focal Elegias are strong contenders. Some find them to have a slightly metalic timbre, but from my experience, it’s fairly minimal and doesn’t get in the way.
Just looking at the graphs, they’re pretty much what my “neutral/natural/flat” is too. Boosted mids and reduced treble is also common in a lot of 1000$+ headphones.
I was just looking at the Ollo site a couple days ago… they have tune to a different curve than the Harmon (either Harmon)… but I don’t remember what it is called now. I meant to look it up, see who uses it and where it came from…
I like that they test each individual set and do a FR graph for each unit. Curious to hear these some day.
5dB peaks at 4, 7 and 15khz. Even K371s are flatter than that. This graph also got 10dB increments, not the usual 5dB or sometimes less, making these seem flatter (harman flat, harman corrected graph I guess) than they actually are.
Still excellent and yes, possibly sounding way better than K371s.
