Can you tell which headphone is more compliant to Harman Research?

[Bugal1998]

Same here, so I "voted" equally preferable (as compliant with Harman) but the vote is already closed of course and I will see what is the verdict.
My guess is, I would prefer HP1 as a listener.

Same. The bump centered around 200hz in headphone 2's response has turned me off to other headphones.

For those who thought the second one was better, what was your thinking?

More bass (as opposed to the bass deficiency in headphone 1) might have been weighted more heavily in favor of headphone 2, along with better compliance through the critical upper mids.

But per comment above, I would personally have guessed headphone 1 would be MY preference. Though that wasn't the question that was asked.

In general I'm more forgiving of too much sub bass, too little upper bass, and too little mids and highs (all within reason, of course).

 

[Dimitri]

For those who thought the second one was better, what was your thinking?

So far the question asked has at least three "versions" when comparing the two graphs for
1. "more compliant"
2 "more preferable"
3. "Which one was better"

So,
B is more compliant
A is more preferable
deciding on "better" is not quite as clear

Between baked brie and steamed broccoli, "preferred" and "better" could be two completely different answers.

 

[subframe]

@IAtaman i chose #2 for the same reasons you did: apparently better compliance across broad areas of the spectrum and seemingly lower deviation across the spectrum. Odd that the paper ranks them differently. Does the paper not explain the reasons for that ranking?

 

[olieb]

Headphone 1 is the category Good, and Headphone 2 is the category Fair.

That seems reasonable to me but maybe that is because of the wrong reasons?
I see a continuous down slope from 200 to 5000 Hz in HP1 and this seems to be a FR with less coloration than the bass hump and presence boost of HP2.
But this is not how the calculation of preference see it.
As I understand the model ranks according to two things: quadratic deviation from the reference/regression of the deviation (I do not know which) and slope of the regression. (Is the regression for 50-10000Hz or 20-10000Hz?)
The slopes of the regressions (dashed) look quite similar but hump around 200Hz might give a rather big contribution in the calculation of preference.

 

[Blake]

I chose HP1. I tried not to overthink it. I immediately thought the elevation of HP2 from 50-300 Hz would make it sound muddy or bloated. Sure, HP1 is slightly darker than HP2, but it hugs the curve pretty well otherwise, and the slight lowering of treble is offset by the lower bass. Actually, HP1 looks sort of HD650-ish to me (which I like).

 

[Robin L]

I would have chosen headphone 1 because the frequency response curve hugged 100hz through 6khz tighter than headphone 2. Headphone 2 had an obvious overabundance of the region between 100hz to 300hz, so it would more likely than not sound "thick" in the upper bass/lower midrange.

 

[IAtaman]

So far the question asked has at least three "versions" when comparing the two graphs for
1. "more compliant"
2 "more preferable"
3. "Which one was better"

So,
B is more compliant
A is more preferable
deciding on "better" is not quite as clear

Between baked brie and steamed broccoli, "preferred" and "better" could be two completely different answers.

Fair point. Could have been more consistent with my wording. Nonetheless, in this context "more compliant", "preferable" and "better" all mean the same thing which I think should be obvious from the question.

 

[IAtaman]

I chose headphone 1 but this was tough.

HP2’s error looks distinctly V shaped, which I don’t like. Particularly that midbass boost should leak into lower midrange and impact tone (up to 300 hz!).

Visually HP1 has a lot of its error in low bass and above 10khz which matters very little. But it hugs the target in the midrange. If you set the dashed trend line 2 dB higher it would be obvious how good HP1 is but it would look even more bass deficient.

If you look at the bottom graphs there is ‘parallel lines illusion’ which makes the 3khz+ shortfall of HP1 look much worse than the normalized graph.

@IAtaman this was my thought process for picking HP1 too. I imagined the dashed trend line a few dB higher as described and then guessed the large excess of bass in HP2 might bring the score down lower than the shortfall in sub-bass of HP1.

You gentlemen are smart. Looks like the key still was being able to "normalize" the error curve, and you have done that successfully.

 

[IAtaman]

Same. The bump centered around 200hz in headphone 2's response has turned me off to other headphones.



More bass (as opposed to the bass deficiency in headphone 1) might have been weighted more heavily in favor of headphone 2, along with better compliance through the critical upper mids.

But per comment above, I would personally have guessed headphone 1 would be MY preference. Though that wasn't the question that was asked.

In general I'm more forgiving of too much sub bass, too little upper bass, and too little mids and highs (all within reason, of course).

Same here, so I "voted" equally preferable (as compliant with Harman) but the vote is already closed of course and I will see what is the verdict.
My guess is, I would prefer HP1 as a listener.

You guys are onto something here I think. Paper also suggest that the common denominator for headphones that get poor rating is their excess energy in the 100-500Hz range. That also happens to align with my experience as well - there is only one headphone I own and hate and that is Meze Classic 99's that sound like a boomy, muddy carboard box

 

[Robbo99999]

Below you can see two raw FR graphs of two separate headphones, measured with the GRAS measurement rig that was used in the preference research, plotted together with Harman AE/OE target (green) alongside the error curve (red) showing how much they deviate from the target for each frequency.

Question is simple : in your opinion, which of these headphones are more preferable according to Harman research?

There are no points for getting it right or wrong, so would appreciate if you could vote, and vote as per your best guess please

Headphone 1

View attachment 334972


Headphone 2

View attachment 334973

If you have access to the A Statistical Model to Predict Listeners’ AE/OE Headphone Preferences paper, I'd appreciate if you didn't vote in the poll please.

Thank you.

I've only just seen this thread of yours, and I was going to vote headphone 1 until I realised vote was closed. Reason being is that it's very compliant from 100Hz-3kHz and the shortfall in bass might balance a little with the shortfall in treble above 3kHz, so it's probably the headphone I'd rather listen to vs the Headphone 2 which has a lot of muddy response from 100-300Hz. (You can also ignore what is happening at 8kHz as there should be a dip there anyway that is actually not allowed for in the Preference Score model, which is a weakness I'd say, as you can see Headphone 2 is close to 8kHz which could very well sound sharp, supposed to be a dip there.) In terms of which headphone I'd like to listen to after EQ, well headphone 2 looks easier to sucessfully EQ, so Headphone 2 might sound better with EQ than an EQ'd Headphone 1, as long as Headphone 2 wasn't too sharp at 8kHz which is what the measurements might suggest.

 

[Dimitri]

Fair point. Could have been more consistent with my wording. Nonetheless, in this context "more compliant", "preferable" and "better" all mean the same thing which I think should be obvious from the question.

I'm under the impression that the more compliant to the curve was not the most preferable.
So although objectively one can pick the more compliant graph as most voters did, the preference becomes a guess or subective choice.

 

[OnLyTNT]

If you take a technical point of view, a more compliant headphone with less distortion should be preferable "technically". You can always dial down bass region with EQ, but the reversal is more problematic. That would be my choice .

 

[Zim]

Didn't vote but if I did, it would've been #1. Can't really word my reasoning scientifically but the way I "read" the graphs was that HP #1 was a less bassy Harman-esque headphone whereas HP#2 was something that didn't comply to the Harman curve.

 

[preload]

Maybe it is our inability to eyeball curves?

This.

 

[markanini]

I would have voted Headphone 2 if the poll was still open.