Issues with Blind-Testing Headphones and Speakers
Reply #29 – 2014-08-19 21:31:04
Not just weight. Headphone comfort, cushion size, shape [some contenders are circular and others are ovals of differing shapes and sizes], air seal, headband size, foam thickness, width, configuration [for example rigid/soft/cloth strap/contact area and shape], head clamp pressure, But the LCD is not the most comfortable headphone out of the bunch ... not by far. For me personally, the weight alone would be reason enough not to buy it. Have you even looked at the research? Because there is a comfort ranking and the LCD is the worst out of the bunch. @krabapple: Bose > K550 > K701 > Crossfade > Beats > LCD2 (least comfortable). I don't see a correlation.room noise attenuation curve If we compare the LCD to the K701 they are not that different, but the K701 is brighter, has a bit of bass roll-off, higher distortion ... and therefore was ranked lower. The Bose has extreme isolation but was ranked in the upper half, so I don't see a correlation here either.and in some instances noise canceling electronic's background hiss [which Olive acknowledges was a problem which needed to be overcome and implies he was confident he successfully did]. Yes, the NC circuitry in the Bose. I was surprised that they even used a NC headphone in the test. It doesn't seem to be an outlier in terms of sound preference, but you can simply remove that headphone and you will still have 5 passive ones that don't produce noise.In some headphone measurements the inward clamping pressure or contact pressure isn't even accomplished with the headband at all, which will of course vary due to the size setting selected and the user's head size, so instead it is completely bypassed and achieved by a more repeatedly uniform means set to a specific value often expressed in N, newtons: Doesn't matter, since they also did ear-canal measurements across several subjects. Also, for the different EQ-curves preference test they only used one headphone at a time, so all the differences between headphones are irrelevant. It's all in the papers.There seems to be much less focus on how this variable pressure alters the sound these days, compared to the headphone research before the 90's. It's kinda in their research since they looked into bass response consistency ... and critiqued one of their "own" headphones for it. In fact, they did not shy away from criticizing AKG headphones at all.Exaggerated contact pressure usually ensures a better seal, true, but also increases level and bass response which is why images of people adding addition force, by hand, is not uncommon in this random collection them wearing headphones That's a photo thing, because nobody is listening like that afaik. Also, in most photos they don't even apply force. edit: Maybe an op should move this into the thread linked by mzil a few posts ago.