The "we all hear different" thread.

The great beauty of this hobby is we all hear differently

 

I'll respectfully disagree with this viewpoint. I am a classical musician and studio engineer by education. The ear training was pretty intense. That said, I know some other folks who have fantastic ears and we have very different opinions on some gear. We do tend to make similar observations, but whether we like or don't like them is another matter (personal preference, as you noted).That said, sometimes we disagree. Ears can be trained to a very high level, but everyone does have a different pair. I've also found that a lot of source material doesn't really push the limits of gear, and while I personally enjoy torture testing transducers, others may hear something quite different due to music selections. In any case, we may just have to agree to disagree.

 

Tuning a piano isn't at all like dips and rises in frequency response of audio gear. Tuning involves changing a frequency, not increasing or decreasing amplitude. We tune instruments so that they sound "in tune" which only means that the entire instrument will play all frequencies or pitches at the same increment relative to each other. This is equal temperament, (there's also just intonation, in which frequencies have perfect relations but the leftover means some intervals sound highly dissonant) the standard in the US is to use an A at 440hz to tune in whole or half steps which are roughly equivalent ratios (it's a ratio of like 1.05 approximately per half step)
If a piano were not in tune you would have many clashing or dissonant frequencies. Some music traditions use this, and many modern composers have created instruments that work off of frequency relationships directly, but 99% of all western music uses a consonant 12-note octave.

The ears predisposition to have a different "frequency response" is in my opinion more than just a sonic preference, because the effect is not simply a different ear drum response, but a different interaction of sound waves with the ear cavity. It means that tonal preferences are only part of the story. Conversely, it's quite easy for people with little in the way of musical tuning to tell when something is "out of tune" (assuming they grew up with western tonal music, which is pretty much everything western from Baroque/Late Rebaissance to today)

A person's sensitivity to a particular frequency is more related to tonal preferences in gear, while almost as humans (excepting the truly, medically tone-deaf) can discern pitch with a little training or long exposure.

Pitch =\= amplitude start frequency

Does that make sense? Sorry, I feel like maybe I'm not on the same page
: P

 

I guess the same thing you said about IEMs can also, to a lesser degree, be attributed to headphones. Headphones might interact differently with different ears compared to real life sounds and speakers.
I have some measurements of HD6X0 and HD800s measured at the ear canal of 4 different people (and could maybe measure a 5th person), but I sadly don't have measurements with speakers at the ear canal. Audeze showed how dummy heads with very similar diffuse field compensation curves show significant differences in FR for the same headphone. Those heads measure very similarly when measuring speakers. Maybe we do hear differently in that sense and people will never hear headphones in the same way that others do. The biggest variation in my measurements was around 6-7kHz btw (will try to get them out today).

Edit: This discussion doesn't belong here at all. Let's not derail this thread even further.

 

Child looks at a red square and says "green." Glad to be able to take part in the education of this young being, we explain that it it is red. Child kicks and screams, shouting, "green! It's Green!"

There. Proof that we hear things differently.

 

But how do you know what you see as "red" is what someone else sees as red? They could be seeing green but calling it red.

 

To be fair, I don't think that the differences are large. I think that the coupler measurements are still the best in an overall sense, but my IEM measurements capture minute differences in FR more accurately to my ears. I don't think that the compromises that have to be made with dummy head measurements are worth it, but you do have to keep in mind that the coupler measurements can never be completely accurate and comparable in the FR sense. The FR differences for two headphones can be quite significant if the interaction with the head/wavefront hitting the ears is very different. Again, I like to refer to this post, where I visualized the differences between my IEM and my coupler measurements for the HD600 and HD800. It's possible that once I finalize my coupler the region between 500Hz and 2kHz will look more similar, but the difference at 4kHz will most likely stay the same. In that sense the dip at 4kHz that you get with the HD800 on a coupler is mostly an artifact. Or in other words, if you try to EQ or mod two headphones to show flat on a coupler, there's a big chance that they won't sound the same.

 

Really the mechanics are what you are arguing over?
Among m limited close audio friends locally we have rather large differences on what we seek in music. Tone over transient correctness. Or smoothness over dynamics. So many compromises are possible.
We mostly agree on best speakers and hp-s though.
Not unlike how my friends like slightly different things in women. Or food. Or coffee.

 

There's a lot of mild hearing loss as well out there. This can also involve sensitivity to frequencies above and below the area of loss. Just another thing to consider.

 

Tuning an instrument can be subjective. On a piano, it's impossible to get the harmonics in tune perfectly with the fundamentals, so a balance must be struck between having the fundamental as in tune as possible while also remaining consonance with the harmonics. Temperament was already touched on, equal is not necessarily the most "in tune" method; in fact every note of an equal tempered instrument is slightly out of tune. Some crusty types dislike equal temperament because it robs different keys of their unique coloration.

With all that pedantry out of the way, I agree that human hearing is pretty consistent; it's perspective and preference that varies.

 

Tuning an instrument really doesn't have much to do with amplitude adjustment. When you strike a key harder or softer on a piano for example, that's when you get amplitude differences. It's about adjusting frequencies.

In relation to the second part, you're right, but I might have different sensitivities than another person at say 6khz. I might find it ear-piercing, while you would find it just fine or even dull at the same volume.
It's not just the shape of the ear, but number of ear hairs, any tinnitus or hearing loss, natural adjustment of fluid and pressure in the ears, shape and size of the ear drum, etc. that effects it. And more than just "this sound is too loud" for me compared to others, it can effect our perception of details and other aspects of sound.
Even With speakers, it's still sound waves hitting your ear, and the shape and size of your ear canal and drum still have an effect on how you perceive them. If anything IEMs take more of that out of the equation than any other type of transducer implementation.