Honestly I’m surprised this app isn’t more popular (considering the amount of people obsessed with flat FQR). I just installed the trial and it makes the NDH 20s perfectly flat and neutral. And given their extremely low THD across the spectrum, these would definitely make extremely good mixing/mastering monitors with the 'correction. You can also add a bit of bass or treble to taste. $80 doesn’t seem that bad considering how easy the app is to use… if I really wanted a flat accurate signature, I’d rather pay the price than mess with EQ APO or similar and setup custom profiles… etc…
Not sure I’ll actually purchase a license myself, but it’s interesting to mess with and see how different headphones take to EQ. Lol I personally think it’s worth looking into if you are the type to “chase” a flat “accurate” response…
Playing with it… There’ definitely a few tracks where the flatter response sounds better… but honestly in a lot of cases… the the out of box tonality of the headphones are more pleasing to listen to.
Well, that’s sonarworks version of “flat” so it’s not absolute lol. I sent in my clears to get an individual calibration for my pair from sonarworks. Mainly for only studio
Right, you’re referring to manufacturing variance headphone-to-headphone, right? I know they take an average and decide on a compensation curve basically.
Well I’m saying that when you set it to neutral, you are setting it to what sonarworks considers neutral. Their master fr is not universally accepted. It’s just what they think is correct neutral. Here is a summary of what I am trying to say by MaynardGK lol
So I think referencing the Harmon curve is a bit off as an example… since I don’t believe that is intended to be “neutral”… but rather a combination of what is “perceived” neutral and what would be considered “pleasing” to most consumers… hence the “bass” tuning part of the Sonarworks app. But I get the point.
In college, I had to do some mixing and mastering for some student film projects, something like this would have definitely come in handy then. I just remember what a pain it was to get everything leveled and tuned correctly for our films to sound decent in the theater setup… lol
Can of worms territory. Headphone neutral FR is typically defined as matching how anechoically flat speakers sound when put in a good room. Trouble is no one agrees as to what the correct room effect should be. Anechoically flat speakers are not flat in a “good” room (ignoring near-field?) because there is some degree of bass reverb but the highs tend to beam directly at the listener. The total effect of this is an over-all warm tilt. There is no correct answer to exactly what this tilt should be. And in part it depends on listening loudness.
Harman has a minority opinion that the tilt should be more extreme (bassier) than most others advocate for. But you can’t say Harman is wrong. You certainly can’t refer to a recording studio standard, since there isn’t one. I believe Sonarworks maintain they developed their take on neutral FR independently of Harman in consultation with customers of their recording studio software. They add that the similarity between their work and Harman’s work is simply evidence they’re both on the right track.
In the same vein Sennheiser did their own research years earlier and came up with their own modified version of the diffuse field curve. This suited their purposes because it has much less sub-bass than Harman and sub-bass seems to be the hardest thing to achieve with dynamic transducers in an open-back housing. But it’s perfectly legit. It’s just closer to a typical 2-channel sound than a 2.1-channel sound.
What the Harman team (Sean Olive, et al) say is that a) their FR target matches the tuning of their reference loudspeaker system. And b) their listener research was done to validate that this is also preferred by people listening to headphones as well as to loudspeakers. But where did the tuning of their reference loudspeaker system come from? Again, it has a greater warm tilt than is common. So far as I know it’s the result of Floyd Toole’s work at Harman that preceded the headphone research.
Could be wrong, but ‘b’ is where I think it’s off.
According to an innerfidelity article, it’s as follows.
Green curve, being the measurements from their loudspeaker setup in acoustically treated room measured flat… averaged from multiple eardrums.
Starting with the green headphone EQ curve, listeners were given headphones with ability to adjust bass and treble. In separate experiments, listeners arrived at the black (2013) and blue (2015) curves above, with somewhat more bass and slightly less treble, perceived as accurate or preferred.
Harmon arrived at the “Harman Curve” with the accentuated bass after letting multiple users adjust the parameters, starting from neutral/flat, to their personal preferences. Again, the Harman curve itself is not intended to represent “netural/flat” itself…
Maybe I’m wrong in all that, but that was my understanding.
I guess that’s true lol, I do try to keep my responses vague and un detailed because I don’t like to talk about it (even if I know a fair bit about it, sorry I seem intentionally dumb or negligent at times maynard lol)
M0N is excused from having to follow this digression from the TrueFi thread, lol. (Same for anyone else who works with technical data for a living and wants to get as far from it as possible during off-hours.)
Fascinating. When I first read this stuff a few years ago, I just assumed everything was correct. But it can’t be. Surely, the green dotted line is mis-labeled both in the place you cited and in the original location of that image, in Tyll’s own headphone FR tutorial (https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-measurements-explained-frequency-response-part-one). The green curve is essentially identical to the live-sound diffuse field measurements curve by Hammershøi & Møller published in 2008. This has nothing to do with loudspeakers in a room. Essentially, it shows the amplification effect of the shape of the human outer ear plus ear canal on sound arriving at the ear drum in an open-air environment:
where the red and green curves are the Harman reference loudspeaker system. These curves have the dramatic bass boost that is blatantly lacking in the dotted green curve you reference. Plus, when you merge either the red or the (solid) green curve from this second graph with the DF curve, you essentially get the solid black line curve from your graph. And that is the 2013 Harman target.
Having arrived at something similar to the black line curve (2013 Harman curve) in your graph, Olive and company, presented music samples to random listeners via headphones EQ’'d to a variety of FR response tunings including that black line curve. A statistically valid majority of listeners preferred that EQ over the others. They then did further listening tests using the set-up you describe to allow listeners to modify their preliminary Harman target to taste. The latest Harman target is the result of this input and is noticeably warmer in the upper mids than the 2013 version.
But … but … the record has to be set straight! Posterity demands we figure this stuff out and let the world know right here in this all-important HiFi Guides thread, lol.
Ill read through all of this including the article you sent when I have a bit more time. =) Definitely some new info for me there too… so it does look interesting, thanks!
Hi So my Mrs who works in education bought us a cheaper license for this app. I use it daily with my lovely old Sennheiser HD 600’s. Now I’m in the process of looking to upgrade my cans. I’ve kinda narrowed it down to either the Quad ERA-1 or the Drop Focal Elex. As a Brit I’m leaning toward the Quads but as I live in France I wouldn’t feel too guilty if I went for the Focal. However having just checked out the Sonarworks app neither of these two pairs of cans are supported. Now I have a dilemma, do I just stick to my HD600’s or do I go for it & lose the advantage of the Sonarworks. What do you think?
I suspect the reason you haven’t yet gotten a response is you’ve posted this in the True-Fi thread instead of the HD 600 thread.
What are you using for a dac and amp? If you’re not using a tube amp, there’s a strong feeling among headphone enthusiasts that doing so would transform your 600’s into something wonderful. But not sure how that would mix with True-Fi.
Other than that, of course in theory you could go with the Elex, then send it to Sonarworks for a custom True-Fi measurement. But doubt you’d consider that to be a practical scenario, grin.
I drive my HD600’s with the Modi & Magni duo & I’m quite happy with it. I know all about the Tube Amps & 600 talk but I don’t want to go there at the moment. I’m more concerned about loosing the advantage of Sonarworks if & when I upgrade my 600’s.
You’ve only yourself to blame for this, sir!
