
No correlation between headphone frequency response and retail price - robmiller
http://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/1.4984044
======
beat
"Log sine sweeps rather than linear sine sweeps were employed to allow
verification that non-linear distortion components were virtually absent."

And with that, this study is _bullshit_.

Human beings don't listen to linear sine sweeps. We listen to _music_.
Recorded music has 8+ octaves of frequency range (the bottom octave plus a
little extra is almost always rolled off in real-world recordings, to ease
stress on downstream components that can't reproduce such low frequencies
anyway), and 20-50db of useable dynamic range.

Sine wave measurements of audio gear ignore impulse response, intermodulation
distortion, phase shift, and a host of other real-world physical device
responses to real-world musical signals. Scientific, reductionist thinking is
inadequate to get an accurate picture of the factors that matter to human
listeners.

Frequency response and total harmonic distortion aren't measured in these
cases because they're _useful_ or _relevant_. They're measured because they're
_easy to measure_. It's like looking in the wrong place, because the light is
better there. And the results? It's like measuring a car's performance by how
well it can drive in a straight line at 60mph. Acceleration, braking, and
turning are too hard to measure, so we ignore them...

I'm a musician and record producer. I've engineered and produced numerous
albums, and rely on multiple different types of headphones for different
purposes. The article's claim that one headphone can be easily morphed into
another through mere equalization is, frankly, bullshit. The two headphones I
rely on the most (Beyerdynamic DT880 and AKG K240) sound wildly different.
Neither is "accurate". Neither are the Tannoy System 12 DMT midfield studio
monitors I use for mixing, or the stock Subaru car speakers I use for
reference to check the mixes from the Tannoys.

Audio reproduction is incredibly complex and difficult stuff. Trying to
isolate one factor and saying "That explains everything!" is bad thinking.

~~~
Matthias247
The frequency response and the impulse response are correlated. You can just
get one from the other through fourier transformation. Therefore it's
perfectly fine to measure whatever is easier to measure, which is frequency
response through sine waves for audio equipment. Phase shift can also be
measured through this approach (and is required for calculating impulse
reponse).

Sure, nonlinear distortions are not covered and also sure that the
measurements won't cover everything which will influence the perceived sound.
But nevertheless frequency response measurements are a very solid tool which
allows objective comparions between various systems.

~~~
derstander
Came here to respond with something similar to the first paragraph. I was
wondering if perhaps audio engineers mean something different when they're
talking about impulse response, since my expertise is in signal processing for
electromagnetic signals (vs. audio).

~~~
beat
Yeah, I think we do. When audio engineers talk about impulse response, we're
really talking about how accurately components can reproduce sharp-attack
sounds. Snare drums, acoustic guitar strings, some synth sounds - these are
examples of fast impulse response.

Microphones really struggle with this. So do mic preamps, recording media,
amplifiers, and _especially_ speakers. Recorded instruments sound wildly
different from live-in-a-room instruments.

edit: I should add here that fast impulse response isn't necessarily what we
_want_. Consider the common use of the relatively sluggish Shure SM57 on snare
drums, rather than the much faster response of a small diaphragm condenser.
The condenser usually just sounds harsh. The SM57 smooths out the sound. This
is good, because nobody in their right mind actually sticks their ear one inch
from a snare drum.

~~~
dsr_
No, you're not talking about different things. You're talking about exactly
the same thing in two domains: a signal which is transduced from air pressure
to voltage in real time, and then later goes back in the other direction.
Audio engineers should know that, and many of them do.

"Recorded instruments sound wildly different from live-in-a-room instruments."
Yes, they do.

In the best case, you have two nearly perfectly accurate transducers located
inside the not-quite-ear-canals of a dummy head doing the recording, and you
play those two signals back to transducers located similarly in the head of
your listener. This is the best case for accurate reproduction of instruments.
You can get a recording that sounds nearly the same as being in the room where
it happened.

In the most common "purist" method, recording engineers are using two or three
mics arrayed in free space somewhere near where the audience would be, and
hoping to capture the sensation of being in the room. This is problematic
because the instruments are complex, moving three-dimensional shapes producing
sound in a field which interacts with all sorts of things before being sampled
by those 2-3 points. That throws away nearly all the available information.
Then playback emanates from two not-really-point sources in a completely
different room.

In the normal non-purist methods, engineers close-mike each of the
instruments, take direct input from some electronic instruments, and may or
may not try to capture some room ambience. Then they process everything to the
point where they are as much a performer as the recorded players, and work on
it over and over again until (hopefully) everyone is happy with it as a work
of art. There should be no pretense that this is going to get you an accurate
rendition of the feeling of being there, though.

~~~
beat
Good points. Purist recording methods are almost unused in popular music;
they're for classical or solo instruments only. There are few rational musical
situations where an acoustic guitar is as loud as a drum kit, but we hear it
all the time on records. Likewise, sounds aren't panned hard left or hard
right, we don't record in giant churches, etc. Not to mention multiple
overdubs by the same performer...

I don't really care if a recording is accurate. I care if it's enjoyable.

When I think of "the feeling of being there", I don't think of the feeling of
being in the room with the musicians. I think of the feeling of what you're
doing when you experience that music - where does it take you? I'll never be
able to separate Pink Floyd's _The Wall_ from making out with the girlfriend
who introduced me to Pink Floyd, for example. Music has strong sense-memory,
almost as strong as smell. That's what I want to engage - I want to make music
you _remember_.

------
mmaunder
I've spent some time on frequency correction for headphones and reference
monitors in my home studio. If you'd like awesome headphones that have a truly
flat frequency response, that you can then adjust with EQ to your taste, one
option is to get Sony MDR 7506's and run the audio output through a VST plugin
(Using soundflower, ableton, etc) which corrects the EQ. You can either buy
precalibrated headphones from sonarworks or use a generic but headphones
specific calibration profile for the plugin.

It's really cool hearing what they heard in the studio control room for the
final mix. And often surprising.

You can get a range of other precalibrated pro audio headphones or correction
profiles from sonarworks.

Consumer headphones are just silly IMHO. Artificially boosted frequencies with
prices up to $400. A set of precalibrated MDR7506's is around $220.

If you don't care about truly flat response with correction, you can get a set
of AKG K240's for $100 bucks and they're super comfy, amazing sound and loved
universally by audio pros.

~~~
rothbardrand
How would you compare these to the Audio-Technica M50x, a popular headphone,
that for me, after years of cheap devices was quite a revelation-- hugely
better audio quality.

Without going thru a lot of setup to shape the audio response, I'm not sure
flat frequency response is ideal- in my environment, using a VST plugin seems
problematic.

~~~
swift
The Audio-Technica M50x is an amazing headphone for the price. I'd highly
recommend it to anyone.

I use somewhat more expensive headphones now (the B&W P7 Wireless) but I
mainly upgraded because I wanted the optional Bluetooth support. The B&Ws cost
more than twice as much, and they do sound better than the Audio-Technicas to
my ear, but the difference isn't huge. For me, like you, upgrading from cheap
headphones to the Audio-Technicas was a revelation, and I suspect another
quantum leap in quality like that simply isn't possible.

~~~
snvzz
"was" would be more accurate. The price has gone up significantly due to its
popularity, and there are far better options at the pricing range where it
sits now.

They're also significantly colored headphones; The cheaper m40x are actually
more neutral.

~~~
eddieh
The M40fs headphones are great. The M40x headphones that replaced them are
terrible.

I love the M40fs headphones so much I bought 10 from eBay when I learned
they'd been discontinued. Should be a lifetime supply, I hope.

------
fizixer
Related:

\- Someone with online alias NwAvGuy put the whole AV industry (ok maybe not
the whole, but some big players) in a loop by showing in online forums that a
totally inexpensive DIY DAC (with a free design he/she shared) could be built
with quality rivaling elite products worth thousands of dollars. [1] (well a
hazy version of the story goes that he/she exposed various audiophile review
sites and forums as being full of sponsored reviews, and that eventually lead
to his/her ban from head-fi.org I think)

\- As for capsule mics (commonly known as condenser mic), market is flooded
with DIY designs and DIY kits which let you build/buy one for $200-$400 (the
dominant cost being that of the capsule itself) that will rival the quality of
multi-thousand dollar mics. They go by the names Neumann clones, etc. [2] (no
affiliation), [3].

In retrospect, and given the shady things AV sellers do, like trying to sell
you a USB or HDMI with gold-plated pins, claiming it to be superior, it should
come as no surprise.

Though, no offense, but audiophile consumer base is filled to the brim with
hipsters who judge the quality of a product by its price (and some of the
"experts" were busted after they failed blind tests; I think opus vs flac, I'm
mixing a lot of things now).

[1] [http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/nwavguy-the-
audi...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/geek-life/profiles/nwavguy-the-audio-genius-
who-vanished)

[2] [https://microphone-parts.com/](https://microphone-parts.com/)

[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtNH46jpwJo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtNH46jpwJo)

~~~
snvzz
>NwAvGuy head-fi ban

There's a recount of the story by some company NwAvGuy did shit on, for
contrast.

[https://www.head-fi.org/f/threads/schiit-happened-the-
story-...](https://www.head-fi.org/f/threads/schiit-happened-the-story-of-the-
worlds-most-improbable-start-up.701900/)

Chapter 12: Schiit Goes Evil?

~~~
Tyr42
Thanks for that link, the tale of Schiit is great.

------
stcredzero
Of course not! For one thing, as one's earning power increases, one's high
frequency hearing deteriorates. So market forces could well be emphasizing
features and capabilities other than frequency response. Fashion, build
quality, social signals...these are all very significant factors in something
you wear, the practical priorities of audiophiles and enthusiasts
notwithstanding. In fact, those are probably _stronger_ factors for that set
of people! (Of which, I am a member.)

Headphones also have a serious empiricism issue. You can probably pass off one
high end Sennheiser for another in an A/B test. But you couldn't pass off an
Audeze for one and have a valid A/B test. Also, you will often read or hear an
expert say, if the measurements say something is bad, but it sounds good, or
vice versa, then it means we're measuring the wrong things. I'm not saying
that the Harman response curve isn't valid. It's just not the whole story.

tl;dr -- Buy the cheapest headphones that you really like, and ignore whatever
your coworkers say. ( Hell, there are actually Beats that are good headphones!
[https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/time-rethink-beats-
sol...](https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/time-rethink-beats-
solo2-excellent) )

Things are going to change in significant ways in the future as the price of
signal processing, compensation, and active correction drops, however.
Combining those with advances in the cheaper manufacturing of better drivers
will result in the headphones of 10 years from now making the high end
headphones of today seem "meh" and today's typical headphones seem trashy.

~~~
mmgutz
I'm approaching 50. I can't honestly tell the difference in sound quality
between Senn HD598SE and HD650 even thought the HD650 is $200 more (actually
$500 more if I consider the external DAC and AMP to drive the higher ohms
HD650).

~~~
snvzz
If your HD650 is new, I'd suggest using only it for some month or two. Then
you'll hear the difference.

In my case, what I've got is HD598 vs HD600, and the HD598 do now sound
seriously bad to me.

------
arnaudsm
DSLRs got the same problem : just compare the Canon 70D ($900) with a Nikon
D3300 ($400) on DxOMark. The Nikon has better image quality despite its low
price and bad reviews.

We need objective benchmarks for everything. Especially when marketing is
growing bigger each year. Even "Tech websites" are biased and not objective
anymore.

~~~
londons_explore
It's pretty easy for camera makers to game dxomark.

They use those exact test images for tuning all their algorithms, and as a
result end up with a camera which is great for those exact things tested, but
might be lousy for the real world.

~~~
strgrd
[citation needed]

~~~
stinkytaco
I think DxO Mark's credibility is easy to call into question. First of all,
they offer services to "improve" manufacturers scores. Second of all, they
rate their own equipment. Finally, and probably most importantly, they are
just flat out wrong sometimes. Look at how highly they rated the Xperia Z5
camera, which was a horrible camera for actually taking pictures.

All this said, DxO might be a perfectly credible source, but it's still
doesn't reflect real world performance [1]. There are so many additional
factors to consider when actually taking pictures.

[1]: [https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11535102/smartphone-
mobil...](https://www.theverge.com/2016/4/29/11535102/smartphone-mobile-
benchmarks-dxomark-score-test)

------
AdmiralAsshat
It would be nice if we knew which headphones they tested. Since so much of a
headphone's reputation these days relies on largely anecdotal evidence from
self-professed audiophiles, some kind of objective rating on frequency
response for major brands or well-known cans would be highly welcomed in the
audio world.

It's very easy to say, "I can hear _so much more_ of the song out of my
ATH-M50's than I can a pair of Beats", and you may be right. But something
objective to back it up would be great, too.

~~~
josefresco
Consumer Reports? Granted it's premium content, but I would imagine their
reviews would include more than just frequency response.

[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/headphones.htm](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/headphones.htm)
[http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/headphones/buying-
guide](http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/headphones/buying-guide)

~~~
creepydata
Most libraries have copies of consumer reports magazine.

~~~
fencepost
If you have the cash, subscribe and support a great resource.

If you're ramen profitable and sharing an apartment with 8 other
entrepreneurs, keep in mind that many libraries have online access to
subscription resources that can include both CR (and other publications) and a
variety of online learning resources like Lynda.com.

------
calichoochoo
I predict a lot of wrong conclusions will be drawn from this. This paper does
not preclude the possibility that there exist high-priced headphones with
better-than-average or even spectacularly good frequency response. It only
says that if you bin together all of the high priced items, their aggregate
quality is no better than any other price bin.

~~~
aeturnum
It's also the case that people pay for features other than audio quality. Look
and feel, comfort, connectivity all influence price. This feels a little like
releasing a study saying, "No correlation between car top speed and retail
price."

~~~
thaumasiotes
This is noted at the beginning of the piece:

> Research suggests that factors influencing consumers' choice as to which
> model to purchase are mostly based on wireless functionality (Iyer and
> Jelisejeva, 2016) and attributes such as shape, design, and comfort (Jensen
> et al., 2016). Interestingly, sound quality does not seem to be a major
> attribute for purchase decisions.

~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
This isn't surprising: the base level sound quality is probably good enough
for the vast majority of users, so they don't care about minor differences
there.

I worked for an outfit that had a similar problem: we tried differentiating
ourselves on quality, only to find out that all customers expected that the
vendors in that space already had high quality as the price of entry into the
market (a fairly accurate assumption). As a result, they didn't care about
"we're better quality than those guys." They cared about "those guys make
equipment that's easier to use than yours."

------
skywhopper
"Interestingly, sound quality does not seem to be a major attribute for
purchase decisions."

This is a silly assumption, and easily explained.

1\. Most headphone purchases aren't and cannot be made by comparing sound
quality. Reviews of sound quality are so universally understood to be
subjective that most consumers probably ignore those details.

2\. There is no one subjective or objective standard that is meaningful for
all listening material. Podcasts, modern pop music, older pop music, classical
recordings, television shows, and movies all have wildly varying acoustic
profiles between and among each genre.

3\. The vast majority of headphones have Good Enough sound quality for the
vast majority of consumers. Sound quality is highly unlikely to be the primary
reason most consumers buy a set of headphones, and it's unlikely to be the
reason they are dissatisfied with certain headphones.

4\. Headphone design, form factor, build quality, fit, feature-set, and even
color are all much more important factors in terms of consumer satisfaction
with headphones. They are, after all, a highly noticeable part of your
ensemble. They are intimately in contact with your body. And you want them to
work without thinking about it too hard. In addition to being more important,
most of these factors are far easier for consumers to judge between headphones
than sound quality, so again it's no surprise that an arbitrary single
standard of sound quality would fail to correlate with perceived value.

In other words, this is silly for reasons that have nothing to do with
technical arguments about actual sound quality, whatever that means.

------
FfejL
Price has never been correlated with quality, for any product, ever.

Price is correlated with perceived value, which includes quality, brand
recognition, brand opinion, current style, and a long list of other factors.

(And, yes, this is a horrible use of the word 'correlated.' 'Derived from' or
'based on' would be much better.)

~~~
riskable
Gold and silver buyers would disagree.

Though I suppose "purity" is considerably more exact than, "quality".

~~~
FfejL
OK, fair enough, "no product ever" is probably too broad. But for consumer
products, I stand by what I said.

------
svantana
This makes for a cute soundbite, but it doesn't mean what it implies. You
could, for example, have a bunch of expensive headphones with frequency
response that varies randomly in the [-1,+1] dB range, and a bunch of cheap
headphones that are in the [-10,+10] dB range -- that would also show up as
uncorrelated.

Indeed, they did find a significant difference in magnitude response _error_,
although the effect was quite small.

------
flavio81
_Audio nerd here_

Study says:

"Nevertheless, assuming that the perceived audio quality is largely determined
by the spectral magnitude response of headphones..."

This is a very wrong assumption.

Audio component designers have more or less a hard time picking up which
measurements can correlate with audio quality. And frequency response
measurements using sine sweeps, like in the cited study, are almost of no
value for discriminating between two transducers (headphones, speakers) with
regarding to 'audio quality'.

Also, the fact that one headphone can extend beyond 20KHz or that it can go
below 20Hz will give zero guarantee of better audio quality.

Frequency response measurements using white/pink noise can give a slightly
better hint because they can take a look at resonant peaks that might be
annoying to the listener, but even this is not a law set in stone*

* Impulse measurements (and waterfall plots) can give you a clearer idea of how clear is the sound going to be; but then you can have a transducer with a fairly good impulse response but a slight resonant peak somewhere --- OR you can have sometimes a transducer which shows pretty flat frequency response but bad impulse response.

A good test for intermodulation distortion ( _the big white elephant in the
audio room_ ) will REALLY give you a hint of which headphone will be least
annoying to the ear when listening to loud complex music like classical music,
vocal music, etc.

It seems that the article has been written by experts in acoustics, but not
really in "audio".

TL;DR: Freq response measured with sine sweeps can't really tell you anything
helpful to discriminate headphones with regard to sound quality.

~~~
davidrhunt
> This is a very wrong assumption.

The citation provided further down in the article is [1]. Dr. Olive is
thorough in attempting to remove sources of bias and conducts a set of fully
double blind listening tests in order to come to the conclusion: "The results
provide evidence that trained listeners preferred the headphones perceived to
have the most neutral, spectral balance".

> A good test for intermodulation distortion (the big white elephant in the
> audio room) will REALLY give you a hint of which headphone will be least
> annoying to the ear when listening to loud complex music like classical
> music, vocal music, etc.

Where is this proven?

[1] [http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-relationship-
betwe...](http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-relationship-between-
perception-and.html)

~~~
flavio81
> Where is this proven?

It is common, generally-accepted knowledge in the audio industry.

There are many, many papers on this, since the early 1930s.

------
rb808
Many expensive headphones are overpriced, but there is a very obvious
difference in sound quality between very cheap headphones and medium priced
ones. Either they're measuring the wrong thing or their headphone sample isn't
what I'd expect.

~~~
09bjb
Yeah I'm not losing any sleep over the obvious subjective difference between
crap headphones and medium- to high-end ones. If the metric du jour isn't
picking up any difference then, sorry brother, probably not a good metric.

"New study shows no difference in speed of blue vs. red light!" We always
ascribe waaay to much importance to what we can measure easily.

------
jmileham
I wonder if there's any effect that in-ear headphones are cheaper to produce
but have advantages in accurate low frequency response?

Of course all this is confounded by the fact that music will tend to sound
best on speakers/headphones with a response curve most like the
speakers/headphones that the mastering engineer used (or more accurately, the
set of speakers/headphones that the engineer compromised among). You will
probably tend to have the best experience listening to music with the popular
devices within a given musical subculture, because mastering engineers will be
targeting those devices.

------
untangle
> The target function suggested by Olive and Welti (2015) is fairly similar to
> the average headphone response found in this study, with the exception of a
> deviation of up to about 5 dB for frequencies between 50 Hz and 2 kHz.

I find little fault with the arguments laid out supporting the paper's thesis.

For those commenters making the jump to "sound quality" (which is not the
topic of this paper), the quoted observation above conclusively proves that
these headphones have differing tonal qualities. Even a casual listener will
be able to hear a difference of 5dB in the critical freq range of human
speech.

------
dep_b
I always buy studio oriented gear for listening to music. If it's good enough
to mix the record on, then probably I'll hear enough detail as well. Speakers,
headphones, amps. Still there's a difference between regularly priced
headphones and the really expensive ones. They tend to be a bit too "honest"
for some people, more tiring to listen to. They also might hurt your fashion
senses.

------
pdkl95
I don't care about the accuracy of their response curve (I _know_ it isn't
flat) after I found Grado[1] headphones. They are the _only_ headphones I've
found that _don 't_ add a "headphone" quality to the sound. It's hard to
describe what I mean - it's that most headphones _don 't_ sound like a proper
set of (quality) speakers. I've speculated it's something to do with most
headphones not being able to move enough air. Grado uses very large drivers
(voice coil is about 4cm in diameter) in a supra-aural (open back) design,
which may move more air? Whatever the reason, Grado Labs has discovered a
design that I consider categorically better[2] than everything else.

[1] [http://www.gradolabs.com/headphones/prestige-
series/item/1-s...](http://www.gradolabs.com/headphones/prestige-
series/item/1-sr80e)

[2] In terms of music quality. Other use cases may prefer designs that focus
on other features.

~~~
falcolas
I wish Grados were more comfortable. The ear cups are too small and either
scrunch my ears up, or push on them with far too much pressure, causing me
pain to try and wear them for more than 5 minutes. I highly recommend trying
them on before spending money on them.

AKC's, Shure's, Sennheiser's, HiFiMan's, even IEMs are way more comfortable
for me.

~~~
smilekzs
There are alternative earpads made by 3rd parties. It's just a piece of sponge
after all.

~~~
falcolas
This is another case of "defaults matter". The sound of Grado headphones was
not good enough to justify additional purchases when similarly priced
headphones were more comfortable while still sounding good.

~~~
smilekzs
Agreed, having tried both RS1 and RS2 (with and without extra earpads). At
this price point you have comfy circumaural pads from all other open-back
models, while Grado is stuck with supra-aural.

------
mamon
What's funny is that people tend to buy headphones with insane top frequencies
(20-22 kHz), even if most humans cannot really hear sound of such frequency.
When you are a teenager and have right genetics then there's a chance that you
might hear 19kHz tone. If you are over 30 years old you are probably limited
to 17 kHz already. Of course it gets even worse with age.

~~~
jmileham
As long as there's recorded audio up there, you might as well reproduce it
well, and even standard CD-audio goes up beyond 20KHz.

Also there's plenty of individual variance in people's hearing. No need to fit
to the lowest common denominator even if the majority can't hear it. As a tall
person, I appreciate that airplane seats aren't pitched to cut your kneecaps
off after 6'0" (ok, maybe that's generous to the airline industry, but you get
the point).

------
fffernan
How about correlation between the amount of marketing dollars spent compared
to the price.

~~~
jdavis703
That probably looks more like a bathtub curve. It's mostly mid-tier headphones
I think that are advertised heavily. Everything else is either priced as a
race-to-the-bottom or so very high-end that mass market advertising doesn't
work too well.

------
anigbrowl
This shows the limits of quantitative studies. Just because you don't know how
best to measure doesn't mean it doesn't matter, and there are strong
preferences among people who are professionals in this area - of which I am
one. I have spent years of my life listening to dialog on film sets; I like my
favorite headphones because they have the least difference between how things
sound with and without wearing them.

I could quantify that, but why bother unless I'm getting paid a hell of a lot
to to do it? I don't see anyone here who's championing this naive approach
offering to pay for a study designed by an experienced professional, so don't
complain about a lack of scientific rigor if you're not prepared to pay for
it. I prefer the more concrete feedback of people telling me it's the best
soundtrack material they've ever received in post production.

You can talk about the scientific method all you like. I'm very fond of the
scientific method. But rigorous testing _costs money_. If you're not willing
to put your money where your mouth is, then accept the opinion of people who
do this kind of thing for a living.

------
swayvil
My first though when I buy headphones is, "will these fall apart after a
week?"

~~~
frou_dh
I got out of that game by starting to buy bluetooth earbuds in bulk from eBay.
They are less than $10 a pair (Bluedio N2) and surprisingly comfortable (YMMV.
I take off the 'struts')

One side stops working after ~5 months, they get chucked immediately and I
pull a new pair out of the box. Zero anxiety about babying expensive gear.

~~~
icebraining
What's the battery life like? I'm using some $15 no-brand phones and they have
quite a surprising capacity, but they're over-ears. I can't imagine those
things packing much of a battery.

~~~
frou_dh
Put it this way... plug them in at night at the same time as your smartphone
and you'll be fine for heavy usage.

------
kev009
It's annoying that they provide the mfg of the acoustic model and DAC, but not
the headphones which would be required to reproduce or filter the experiment.

Most consumer audio equipment is a scam. I'd be interested in the subset of
equipment from Shure, AKG, Sennheiser, Sony, Beyerdynamic where the design was
actually intended to produce a broad frequency range correctly.

------
kazinator
The mere frequency response _range_ doesn't correlate with how _flat_ is the
frequency response, or with other measures like sensitivity, distortion and
whatnot.

What's better: speakers that go to 40 kHz, but have a big dip at 4 kHz, versus
ones that go flat to 15 kHz and roll off after that?

~~~
codedokode
Frequence range is measured so that the response amplitude is within some
range (like 6, 3 or 1dB for example). Of course allowing large amplitude range
gives larger measured frequency range which can be used in marketing purposes.

------
goodroot
Nifty! A few years ago, a friend and I created an application that allowed
users to import their own MP3s. We scraped the frequency data from the mp3.
Once imported, you could then pick two different headphones; for each
headphone, we scraped frequency data from headphone.com.

The application allowed you to benchmark headphones in real-time, revealing
"how accurately" your music was being recreated; you'd pit two headphones
against one another: clash of cans!

Ultimately, yeah, there's the uber-uber high-end, the really clear low-end,
and a +-$900 muddle of everything else.

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dharma1
I own a bunch of headphones and generally the good headphones aren't cheap -
not because it's expensive to make headphones but mostly because of R&D. It's
not rocket science though, so you can also pick up very good headphones quite
cheaply.

I like my Sennheiser HD600's (and MDR-1000x for the office) which are $300
headphones, but equally happy to use Superlux HD-681 EVO or Soundmagic E-10
which cost around $30

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Johnny555
_It is however unclear whether this improved consistency with a higher retail
price is the result of better headphones or better repeatability of
measurements with more expensive models._

Isn't consistency an important characteristic of a headphone? Perhaps even
more important than some ideal frequency response. You want the same sound
every time you listen to a song, you don't want it to vary.

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mysterypie
Where's the data by brand and model? The objective measurements on 283
headphones and their prices would be great resource for everyone. The article
can make its point without giving the raw data, but I wonder what their
reasons are for excluding such useful and interesting data. Fear of silly
lawsuits from manufacturers?

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o_nate
I thought it was weird that they found that inner-ear had better bass response
than over-the-ear headphones, but they did mention that could be an anomaly
because the artificial head they use for testing forms a tighter seal with
inner-ear headphones than most people's real heads would do.

~~~
zeta0134
I've found this to be true in practice though. I almost exclusively carry a
decent set of sealing ear-buds for form factor reasons (they slip into my
pocket) and the sound quality is just fine. Something about the way the little
rubber inserts create a seal with my inner ear causes it to carry bass
surprisingly well. When that seal isn't working (or doesn't exist, on cheaper
hard plastic sets) the bass is nonexistant.

I suppose it's surprising because of the bud's small size, but then again, it
doesn't need to drive that bass very hard either. That may help.

~~~
o_nate
I guess I haven't tried enough earbuds to find ones that fit my ear canal
well. I don't like the feeling of them inside my ears, so I stick to over-the-
ear models.

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acd
The frequency response of the apple earpods are totally ok.
[https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AppleEarPods.pdf](https://www.innerfidelity.com/images/AppleEarPods.pdf)

What industry convinces you to buy things you do not need? Advertising

~~~
aoeusnth1
THD is terrible, though. You picked a stupid metric, and got a stupid result.

------
stuaxo
Audiophiles are probably experiencing the placebo effect. Placebos work
though, so even if these people are not hearing anything different, if it
makes them feel better every time they listen to music through their systems,
maybe it is money well invested?

------
sh87
Is there a good place or study explaining what accounts for "good" headphone
audio quality ? I mean how do you quantify good and bad audio quality ? I can
feel and get it, just not sure if there's a way to measure it.

------
eecc
The most cherished earphones I've ever had - a pair of relatively cheap
Audiotechnica - feel better than the triple price model I decided to treat
myself with some years later.

------
xupybd
It's missing the data on the best cheap models to buy :(

------
hullsean
Same science holds for price of wine. The more general truth is quality does
not correlate with cost. Google Rory Sutherlands TED talk

------
frostirosti
Is anyone surprised here? Clothes must have the same trend (or lack there of)

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low_key
I think the correlation is between advertising spend and retail price.

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jlnazario
Over 11 × 10^9 units sold per year? This number seems unreal to me.

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DanBC
Is there a correlation between weight and price?

I know some low end headphones add weights to increase "luxury feel". It'd be
interesting to see some research about when adding weights stops.

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ebbv
This is like saying that there's no correlation between displacement and
vehicle price. Of course there isn't because that is, while an important
criteria on an individual car, and it has SOME correlation to the cost to
produce a vehicle, it doesn't tell the full story. Nor does it tell the full
story of why someone might pay more for it.

------
ue_
I don't understand this. Sometimes people don't want a perfectly flat
frequency response. Sometimes other qualities matter more, especially things
like noise isolation.

The idea that a particular frequency response is the thing that separates good
headphones from bad is ridiculous.

------
logicallee
Didn't read the link, but could a mod please change this title, which is
obviously false?

No correlation would mean that if I bought a random headphone that cost $2
(they exist, you can go to ali express right now and put in a maximum of $2 in
a headphone search), and a random headphone that cost $500, then if you had to
make a bet about which one would come closer to reproducing the bass of a song
with a heavy bass, you would be betting even money. It would be a toss-up
whether the $2 or the $500 came closer to producing that bass. Because there
is no correlation.

Here is an example of correct usage of "no correlation": there is no
correlation between a headphone's price and the md5 checksum of its SKU.

EDIT:

I skimmed the paper. A better title (for HN) would be "No correlation between
frequency response and price quartile in 283 headphones".

~~~
navbaker
If you read the link, you'll find it's the exact title of the journal article.

~~~
logicallee
It is still obviously false. It is a sensational title and should be changed
so that it is true.

(It's like saying, "Scientists find location on Earth immune from the effects
of gravity." It doesn't matter what the article said, that obviously shouldn't
be our title here.)

~~~
zeta0134
I'd be okay with a very minor change for clarity. Prefixing the title with
"Study finds" would make it far less sensational, while staying otherwise
faithful to the original article's headline.

~~~
logicallee
I suggest "No correlation between frequency response and price quartile in 283
headphones".

(which fits HN's title limit of 80 characters.) As far as I can see they just
judged the quartiles.

