You pay shipping and I'll Drop you whatever you want.True, and lucky you!
You pay shipping and I'll Drop you whatever you want.True, and lucky you!
Sennheiser 800 series
Sure. Just added it to the review:Is it possible to see harmonics plotted on log scale?
Looks like Focal's design philosophy re: headphone drivers is "low distortion until you hit the absolute limit of the driver" vs Sennheiser's - which appears to be "soft onset of distortion, but higher overall" - and in fairness, 114dB is loud as balls even in the bass. I wouldn't even really consider listening past 90 for the sake of my auditory health.
This looked nice! If I was not addicted to genelec and basically stored up my he-500 I would be tempted to buy this as next go to headphone! But btw, I remember seeing somewhere the cracklings sound was actually focal’s driver protection mechanism kicking in, so even it sounds horrible it won’t actually blow up the driver?
Thanks for the insight! I've been contemplating getting an Elex for a long time (since the Utopia is beyond my budget), and this piece of information is decisiveI suspect the 'driver protection' isn't something really well defined.
The Focal drivers have a very low resonance frequency and the only damping they get is damping from the air trapped inside the earpad.
This is evident from the enormous impedance peak.
Either the tick heard is the rubber edge ring that cannot be stretched further and 'stops' the membrane from traveling further (hitting excursion limit) or
the membrane/voice coil hits the magnet.
Blowing up the driver is unlikely (unless you really drive it way too loud). The pictures I have seen that have given up the ghost all had the tiny voicecoil wiring break at the same point. Most likely due to high excursions.
The voice coil wire, at some point, has to run from the voice coil (that moves) to the chassis which is stationary.
That wire is too short and excursions too high. They could (and probably already have) solved it by making the wire longer.
View attachment 123108
So the driver (at least in the past) could be destroyed by large excursions but not by too much power.
The main reason I do not own a Focal is because of these failures and the way it was handled in the past.
Anybody ever measure them at least as well as amirm has other headphones?
Well that explains it. I always wondered, why you didn't notice the driver hitting Xmax when you swept the Clear, because 20Hz at 114dB is definitely well beyond what it can handle.One difference though: this time I did not have my own headphones on and listened to the sweeps. I was horrified to hear the drivers crackle at 114 dBSPL! The clear must have done this as well given that signature response in green:
This...
Fletcher-Munson is your friend; 82-92dB SPL will keep your hearing going a long, long time as well as being the optimal SPL range for a 'flattish' response. 114dB SPL, not so much of either.
Not sure I follow. The 800 and 800S have had loads of reviews, ymmv on the quality of those reviews. I'm taking it you've seen amir's review of the 800s? https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...ser-hd800s-review-headphone.18424/post-601305Anybody ever measure them at least as well as amirm has other headphones?
Not sure about "extended" periods of time, but I have been alarmed time and again at the levels at which people around me listen to their music, even if they live in peaceful neighbourhoods or remote country sides. Found out when I let them hear music through my set up- they always complain about it being too soft and crank it up from what I deem to be effective discerning levelsDo many people actually listen to music for extended periods at anything over 90db?
With headphones, 90dB is my maximum level for extended listening. If I were to follow my impulses, I would probably raise it by 5-10 dB on a lot of tracks I really like. I generally refrain from doing so, in order to preserve my hearing, though sometimes I give in to temptation.Do many people actually listen to music for extended periods at anything over 90db?