Comments on Profile Post by E_Schaaf

It's easy to assume that 'metal gives metallic sound', 'soft diaphragm gives soft sound', but this is not always the case. When all else is identical, the differences are there, but less than a swap of pads usually can be. The same zingy driver in one enclosure can be soft and rounded in another, or vice versa. It's been a unique opportunity to be able to A/B these variables in isolation.

A lot of misconceptions about this probably stem from the fact that enclosure info is almost never really explored in spec sheets or marketing copy outside of 'more open', 'more closed', etc. It's easy to assume most differences heard between two different headphones are due to the drivers, but in reality drivers are just a small part of the bigger picture and there are dozens of confounding variables.

Have measured and heard earpads that make 15dB differences in FR and distortion with the same enclosure and driver as well as reduce or increase ringing by several ms. As an analogy, imagine listening to two sets of different speakers in a well treated room, and then comparing again inside a solid concrete box for a room. Room differences will be more dramatic than speaker differences.

Our audio world suffers from a bad mixture of materials bias, eg plastic is bad, whatever, regardless of actual properties and engineering, and anthropomorphism eg silver sounds bright.