TRUTHEAR x Crinacle Zero IEM Review

[Robbo99999]

From the man himself: The Harman Target is based on a stereo pair of anechoically flat loudspeakers measured at the DRP in a semi-reflective room, which is neither free-field nor diffuse field. The DRP was measured in the stereo seat using a +- 30 degree spatial average.

Although shouldn't he have said "loudspeaker equalised to in-room flat" rather than "Anechoic Flat", as we know they started off with the following before bass & treble tone controls were tweaked by the participants:

Or did they start off with the above graph for the Harman 2013 work but then perhaps actually use "Anechoic Flat" as a starting point for the Harman 2018 work instead? I'm not disputing "stereo seat using a +- 30 degree spatial average".

 

[DanTheMan]

And why is it not “loudspeakers”? This is exactly why I replied to him in the first place in order to get him to clarify. That’s the post you initially replied to @Robbo99999 .

 

[Robbo99999]

On listening to these I don't think the Harman curve applied to IEMs is works as well for me as it does with full headphones. For $50, these are fabulous but I think that their Harman tuning makes these sound a bit shouty to me. Interesting experiment to see if this tuning works for me. These sound good to me but just not as revelatory as Amir's enthusiasm suggested to me. Perhaps foam tips would work a bit better for me.

You could try the Maiky76 EQ earlier in this thread, it would reduce shoutiness to some degree:

TRUTHEAR x Crinacle Zero IEM Review

Loving mine so far :)

www.audiosciencereview.com

 

[GaryH]

And why is it not “loudspeakers”?

He says "loudspeakers" in the passage I quoted for you.

 

[staticV3]

On listening to these I don't think the Harman curve applied to IEMs is works as well for me as it does with full headphones. For $50, these are fabulous but I think that their Harman tuning makes these sound a bit shouty to me.

I agree! To my ears, Harman IE does not match Harman OE in tonality.
This does

 

[DanTheMan]

I can make sense of the EQing flat at the listening position because Harman’s data does say the we hear the source above the bass end of things and EQing that flat would show more of what we hear….by the data.

 

[DanTheMan]

He says "loudspeakers" in the passage I quoted for you.

I saw that—and I saw that before, but their data doesn’t show it. That was my first and several subsequent posts in this thread. In the articles I’ve read, they keep saying loudspeaker. I used to think it was the flat EQing…. I know my data exaggerates the head shadow because of the lack of ear canal resonance, but it should still be there.

 

[Fregly]

On listening to these I don't think the Harman curve applied to IEMs is works as well for me as it does with full headphones. For $50, these are fabulous but I think that their Harman tuning makes these sound a bit shouty to me. Interesting experiment to see if this tuning works for me. These sound good to me but just not as revelatory as Amir's enthusiasm suggested to me. Perhaps foam tips would work a bit better for me.

The graph of the treble shows above Harman, so it actually should be shouty if your ears are sensitive there.

 

[foxxx0]

A 50 € IEM to end most headphones? Wow. Now we just need this for speakers.

My thick cable sony IEM broke a few days ago. So yup, I just ordered these. 50 € in Germany and prime shipping

sigh, looks like I ordered 3 days too early then
my amazon order is now already on its way from china, otherwise they could have been arriving here next Thursday if I ordered now...

guess I'll just have to be patient a little while longer

 

[Astoneroad]

sigh, looks like I ordered 3 days too early then
my amazon order is now already on its way from china, otherwise they could have been arriving here next Thursday if I ordered now...

guess I'll just have to be patient a little while longer

Patient? You picked the wrong hobby for patient my friend... Buy Something else... while you wait. lol.

 

[Somafunk]

I’ve added the following clarification to my post on page 34,

EDIT - I’ve been doing further listening and the mention of listening at -22db above needs further clarification, the tracks I was using above are unusually quiet (nils frahm/loscil etc) and on further listening to “an average/normal“ track list I am now listening at -28db to -30db so perhaps not as hard to drive the Zero as I initially thought, they do need more volume than my 7hz timeless/Dunu vulkan though, just not as much as I stated above - apologies for the confusion.

 

[Music1969]

@crinacle - for the stock cable:

From the 3.5mm plug to the Y-splitter: are the left channel and right channel 'grounds' shared or insulated from each other ? (crosstalk)

 

[MZKM]

On listening to these I don't think the Harman curve applied to IEMs is works as well for me as it does with full headphones. For $50, these are fabulous but I think that their Harman tuning makes these sound a bit shouty to me. Interesting experiment to see if this tuning works for me. These sound good to me but just not as revelatory as Amir's enthusiasm suggested to me. Perhaps foam tips would work a bit better for me.

In-ears are harder to get universal praise for vs headphones. Your actual ear anatomy alters how you perceive sound. IEMs that measures flat sounds horrible and you have to have these target curves to get a semblance of what it should somewhat look like, whereas for speakers just being anechoically flat is pretty great.

This is why measurements are great though. If you can EQ then you can try, or you can find an IEM that natively sounds close to your target curve. Subjective reviews for speaker sound quality is one thing, but subjective reviews for IEM sound quality is not something I pay most mind to.

 

[GaryH]

In-ears are harder to get universal praise for vs headphones. Your actual ear anatomy alters how you perceive sound. IEMs that measures flat sounds horrible and you have to have these target curves to get a semblance of what it should somewhat look like, whereas for speakers just being anechoically flat is pretty great.

This is why measurements are great though. If you can EQ then you can try, or you can find an IEM that natively sounds close to your target curve. Subjective reviews for speaker sound quality is one thing, but subjective reviews for IEM sound quality is not something I pay most mind to.

Except your opinion on IEMs is contrary to Harman's research, which found a 91% correlation between actual and predicted ratings (the latter of course based on adherence to the Harman target) given by listeners in blind tests, compared to 86% for both over-ear headphones and speakers. Tangentially related, the correlation between virtualized and actual IEM ratings was 98% compared to 85% for headphones (prior to using Todd Welti's custom-built pinnae).

 

[MZKM]

Except your opinion on IEMs is contrary to Harman's research, which found a 91% correlation between actual and predicted ratings (the latter of course based on adherence to the Harman target) given by listeners in blind tests, compared to 86% for both over-ear headphones and speakers.

Stats are a funny thing (I’m a math major). 2 data sets can have similar parameters but be analyzed as being decently different.

Look at the Pred(Preference) axis and see the 2 right on 60% and then the top one around 68%. Yet you look at the actual recorded human preferences and the ones predicted at ~60% were actually ~40% and the one predicted at ~68% is actually >80%.

The difference between a 4/10 and an 8/10 is huge. Especially when you take into how humans rank things and that even a 5/10 is perceived to be below average (most people put average scores around a 6/7, going back to school where a 70% is a C and that is average).

I stopped computing headphone preference scores because I saw how even minor changes in the data (or just even cut-off frequencies) caused a decent score difference. I still do it for speakers though as I’ve found it more stable.

 

[GaryH]

Stats are a funny thing (I’m a math major). 2 data sets can have similar parameters but be analyzed as being decently different.

Look at the Pred(Preference) axis and see the 2 right on 60% and then the top one around 68%. Yet you look at the actual recorded human preferences and the ones predicted at ~60% were actually ~40% and the one predicted at ~68% is actually >80%.

The difference between a 4/10 and an 8/10 is huge. Especially when you take into how human rank things and that even a 5/10 is perceived to be below average (most people put average scores around a 6/7, going back to school where a 70% is a C and that is average).

You're deliberately cherry-picking the worst results. Most of the data points are close to the dotted line signifying high correlation for most IEMs. Anyway, your argument was that IEMs are worse than headphones and speakers in this regard. If anything the data actually suggests the opposite.

Headphones:

Speakers:

And compare the statistics.
IEMs:

Headphones:

The RMS error values show the average difference between predicted and actual ratings for IEMs was lower than for headphones.

 

[brandall10]

Massive Attack - Angel:

Oh man, that's one of the first things I listen to when sampling a new listening device for bass. Also recommend Canned Heat by Jamiroquai (yes, the Napolean Dynamite song).

 

[Robbo99999]

Except your opinion on IEMs is contrary to Harman's research, which found a 91% correlation between actual and predicted ratings (the latter of course based on adherence to the Harman target) given by listeners in blind tests, compared to 86% for both over-ear headphones and speakers.

I remember reading that earlier this afternoon when I was going back through this Harman slide presentation (in a bid to find a reference to some other topic we were discussing earlier), I've attached this link because this can be a useful general reference for almost anyone re the Harman Research:

https://www.listeninc.com/wp/media/Perception_and_-Measurement_of_Headphones_Sean_Olive.pdf

 

[DanielT]

This talk about the Harman Curve and what people think about headphones. How does Harman know that the FR they tested those headphones on is the one that the test subjects liked? That when our ear canals are so different. Different in this case in the way that FR between the same headphones and two different people can differ by 10 dB in FR. So what, how to interpret those results?

Unless Harman knows the FR, the individual FR, of those listening to the headphones, how can they draw the conclusions they do?

 

[MayaTlab]

Except your opinion on IEMs is contrary to Harman's research, which found a 91% correlation between actual and predicted ratings (the latter of course based on adherence to the Harman target) given by listeners in blind tests, compared to 86% for both over-ear headphones and speakers.

These correlation numbers refer to the 2017 and 2018 articles for both IEM and over-ears dedicated to creating a predictive mathematical model. They weren't "found", but rather they were "designed", as they concern how well the predictive model's math matches the scores listeners attributed during listening tests to various curves as reproduced by a singular, replicator pair of headphones. Of course the correlation is reasonably high, that's the whole point of designing a predictive model ! At no point did they involve the real headphones being compared to the replicator pair of headphones (that's the subject of the virtual headphones method validation articles, which come with their own set of interesting findings and limitations, particularly the IEM one).