Recent comments in /f/headphones

wagninger t1_jef5vcy wrote

Reply to Would I hear a benefit from upgrading? by LittleBoiDedoid

I learned by mistake that you shouldn’t just grab a multi-thousand $ headphone to “see what that is about”, as it ruined me for years. 12 years later I bought my first high-end headphone, when I could finally afford it. Start small and see what you like within your budget.

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Compgeak t1_jef36mr wrote

Reply to comment by YetAnotherWagie in Ordered a pair of Moondrop Chu from amazon. Received this. by Fantastic-Newspaper3

I didn't know about the nozzle diameter when I ordered the zero. Too big for my ears, I had a similar issue with the moondrop quark even tho the nozzle is thinner. Etymotic ER2SE have even thinner nozzles and I find them much more comfortable despite the added depth. Either way, I got my zeros to seal with the smallest xelastec tips without pushing them all the way in making them comfortable enough to use.

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Toronto-Will t1_jef08bt wrote

Reply to What is the actual difference ? by ultima-train

"Sounds different" is the answer you're going to get from headphone users (this sub), if you really want to know why they sound different, you need to ask a headphone designer / engineer.

And I don't think that's a huge population of people, so you'd be quite fortunate to find one on this sub who knows the answer and is going to take the time to write an answer you find satisfactory.

My impression, as someone who is not a headphone engineer, is that there are an insane number of variables that go into how sound is perceived through a headphone ("psychoacoustics"), and the way that different headphones design around those variables is complicated. There's certainly more to it than the size of the driver. Like one of the interesting things about the Focal Elegia closed back is that they have sound baffling inside the earcup that dissipates low frequencies, to reduce resonance, and it seems to make them sound more like an open-back headphone. I think another variable is how consistent the left and right ears are in their frequency response, as inconsistency can muddy up the directional imaging. And that's something that depends on really tight controls in the manufacturing process with all the different components, and the way in which they're assembled.

That's just a flavour I've what I've been able to deduce from being around the hobby, I don't really know the answer. I just try out different headphones, and some of them sound better to me than others (in ways that aren't totally captured by frequency response, since I typically EQ all my headphones to the Harman curve)

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AntOk463 t1_jeezwdj wrote

Reply to What is the actual difference ? by ultima-train

There have been minor improvements to driver technology over the last decades, but it hasn't been much. I asked basically this same question a while back and people said the driver itself doesn't make that much of a difference, everything else makes the difference. The biggest thing that impacts sound is the housing design, the shape of it is normaly determined by trying out lots of shapes and seeing what works best. This is also how headphones are tuned to get their unique sound.

The driver still makes a difference. A good driver is going to perform better than a cheaper, smaller driver. The material also matters, lighter materials are able to move faster and distort less at high volumes. The magnets make a difference too. The difference is tuning, even if 2 headphones have the same driver, companies can modify the magnet type, housing, angle, and material to get drastically different sounds.

Some people have also experimented with driver shape. Focal headphones have a M shaped driver, and the Sony Linkbuds had a ring driver. But those are expected to sound different.

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