Focal Elear and Utopia

mmmm... Sounds like a recall

mmmm...

mmmm...

 

Was no need to continue. Simple as that. Common sense tells oneself if something measures the same it'll sound the same no matter materials used. That what question was about. Only emotions and visual stimulus prejudice makes it sound different by manipulating the subconscious otherwise.

 

"Common sense"? We've had this reductionist line of reasoning broken down countless times on Chang/SBAF. The bottom line is that certain materials/devices/components/topologies/magnetics/etc. tend to have a certain consistent "sound" outside of the simple measurable metrics that we usually rely upon. The fact that it doesn't show up on a given measurement doesn't preclude its existence.

And let's not even get started on the "it's all placebo" line jeez. Did we just teleport back to 2013 Changstar?

 

Actually I would like to know if different materials can really produce the same measurements across the board? Thats a legitimate question.

 

not denying that but, doesn't make it fact either. i was just answering previous question i was stating. how hard is that to understand without belittling someone?

 

Even in the "everything else being equal" case (that does not exist in practicality with any engineered design), you would expect the measured results to be different for different materials. Because the materials actually do have different acoustic/mechanic/electrical characteristics, the rest of the design variables would be tweaked accordingly. So "all else being equal" is never quite equal. In short, the raw characteristics of our two tested variables are going to be different and after you make design choices (i.e. add more variables to the equation) the whole notion is certainly going to go out the window.

That aside, if you subscribe to the notion that audible differences in materials only exist because the end result FR plot looks different, then it should be easy to control for that and make our two materials "sound the same". Use exhaustive PEQ in order to get the two variables to produce the same FR results and listen. I actually think more people should try this. It can actually make the inherent differences in texture (as I like to call it) even more obvious once the differences in tone are controlled for. Again, for those of us who have tried these sorts of exercises the inherent transducer/material/whatever "sound" remains.

Of course, the next step in the process is to realize that the FR is not the only difference and that all the PEQ in the world won't control for the other variables in performance. For speakers I suspect off-axis response, time and phase performance, and distortion are going to play big roles. For headphones I suspect distortion, polar pattern on the head and enclosure coloration will be huge contributors to the resulting sound. Again, this sheds a lot of doubt on things. Does the aluminum woofer sound different than the paper woofer because of the difference in material or just because it's projecting sound off-axis in a different pattern? Knowing that these variables that cannot be controlled for with EQ, and that these performance variables do result in differences for our "measly" human ear, where is our "everything else being equal" now? How can one make the claim that the resultant sound will be identical when we have all of these other MEANINGFUL variables uncontrolled for?

So anyway, as a layman end-user in this chain of confusion, the only thing we can really judge is the resulting sound. And empirically, a lot of us do seem do agree that dynamics/estats/orthos have certain characteristics that are consistent. If someone wants to make the claim that these differences in technology only exist because of measured FR deviations, then I would hope that they have already done exhaustive listening tests with highly capable headphones (of course this still doesn't control for all that other stuff). Say an SR009, an HD800, and an HE1000 all EQ'd to the same target response at least as baseline. While I have not done such a test myself, my experience with similar exercises makes me confident that the differences in each driver technology would be easily heard.

 

i know this. i wasn't stating ''fr'' in general if something measured the same. heck anybody can correct a fr anomaly even by ear with a little ear training and if still have good hf hearing that haven't been damaged yet by those real rough nights out at those moat loaf tours. all i was saying if they were all very clean in no resonance and, if it has resonance, it'll be way above or below human hearing and low enough harmonic distortions where completely inaudible ''it'' should sound about the same. was just saying amps(specifically power amps) as good example since they been through the weirdest material usage besides speakers are good example of this.

i also never claimed to be right either. just stating ''it should''. i never claim any of what i say as an absolute truth. never at all cause, i have no shame in being corrected and proven wrong at all. just seem you came off very offensive on the matter for some reason(and from previous couple threads before but, it's cool. sometimes i like hard to get butt buddies). i guess i just have a tendency to just piss people off for no reason i guess. no big deal really. was just stating everything as a whole(fr,free/inaudible range of resonance, very low to no harmonic distortion) will sound about or should most likely the same. that's all. but, i understand headphones are bit different and have more limitations to other things and other things like hrtf and so forth. i know. i think i just got taken wrong cause i was talking bout something else and, it being in a headphone forum too can be the other form confusion as well . that's why i wanted the subject of the headphone chat continue and end convo previously. the headphone on the subject is very interesting though.

 

come on Focal, send Marv a pair of Utopias. We're all waiting for the comment of these best dynamics headphones in the world (of HF).

 

It's easy to say "if it measures the same, it should sound the same".
It's easy as well to say that there are audible differences that can not be measured by our traditional methods. (I've said this a few times)

The difficult task is to prove or refute these hypothesis on an objective basis.
If our ears can notice a difference, then an experiment to detect the difference is surely possible.
But first we need to understand what we are dealing with in order to target the experiment.

 

The Messiah and I visited Source A/V today. More later. We might branch off threads.

 

Holy balls. If the elear actually are 'everything you love about a well-driven HD 650' then I'm going to have to find some money...

 

Interesting...

 

@gbeast

Head over to the separate thread for Marv's and OJneg's impressions.

 

Oh no....he called the Andromeda awesome sauce, I ordered it.... Marv, whatever happened to sticking to vinyl only

 

The hype is alive again.