The "we all hear different" thread.

I think that's throwing another monkey wrench. I'm not a mastering or recording engineer. But recording in stereo can probably give you very good results. Not necessarily flawless. But again, fairly good and fairly independent of individual HRTF.

Binaural recordings do very well, but fail quite horribly against speakers IME.

The problem IMO and to some degree, IME, is that headphones follow the movement of ones head, and it seems one needs to move ones head and actually use the many position dependent HRTFs (not just one) to get good localization. This is a receiver problem, not a source problem. From what I gathered there are too many ambiguities that the brain needs to resolve.

The Smyth Realiser does a bit more than binaural stuff. It adds head movement dependence to the localization solution. I tried it at a meet. It works. Don't think they beat well designed and located speakers at soundstage though. HRTF is continuous and there is only so much the Realiser an do.

Again, the Realiser is the only headphone specific system that had me all confused and astonished at feeling sound was coming from behind a wall in front of me. But it took me to move my head around a bit to get this effect. Well placed, compensated, treated and designed speakers do this well IME.

 

Disagree. Speakers IMO do better than binaurals through headphones at spatial stuff and soundstage whatevers.

It is not only the difference in dB but over how much of the frequency range. And no, I don't think we should hear a perfect full size headphone that different.

 

BTW, here is why a person can resolve sound localization using speakers better than with headphones (even with binaural recordings) - (this was pointed by LFF some time ago @ CS):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound_localization#The_cone_of_confusion

 

Yup. I also feel headphones and speakers complement each other. Certainly no crazy room interactions with headphones.

Agree. Imaging and all that kind of stuff is not only dependent on the reproduction rig, but also on the recording quality. I have had some success in performer sound localization with speakers, when such information is available in the recording in the first place.

Lol! I think differences between the HD800s and HD600s do exceed 5 dB in some ranges. They seem to have different tonal tilt also. But that's another story. Again, I don't think you should be that concerned about HRTF with these two cans. You are bypassing the head, but not the ears. Position does affect sound, but with most headphones I don't think I have that much of a problem with that. I have more an "inside my head sound" problem.

 

Sorry. I think I get what you are saying. I think it's hard to make such a comparison because small changes in the coupling may yield different results.

I dunno. I'm also tired.

 

If we can agree that various heads and ears will slightly shape the response, and I do mean slightly and in a similar curve, we're left with how much the brain compensates and "equalizes" for this, ignoring factors like age and hearing damage (which would not be the brain, of course, but you know what I mean). Are there any really good studies that investigate it from that standpoint? That would be the best way to see how closely we hear regardless of individual "hardware," but it would also be harder to test for accurately.

I'll be honest, I skimmed through the rest of the thread, so please slap me if I missed something covering this already.

I also forgot to mention listening levels earlier. Some listen quietly, some not. That will play a role for a variety of reason, whether it be performance characteristics of drivers at varying levels or the Fletcher-Munson curve. This is not something always discussed online, nor is it easy for someone to quantify what level they usually listen at without the right gear and methods.

 

I'm not an audiologist. But there are many studies about brain and auditory system relationships. Here is some random stuff that I found related to brain auditory spatial signal processing using awesome Google and all-mighty Wikipedia about related stuff:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spatial_hearing_loss

I'm sure there is a lot of research on how the brain compensates for audio disabilities. And some of that research may apply to how the brain compensates or equalizes or whatever for ones ears.

Note the only thing the brain needs to do is to equalize or signal process so that signals sound correctly based on its own reference frame, not other folks reference frame. It can't compensate for something it's got no idea about. What we all have in common, is a common source of sound.

For the most part, I think a well tuned (and/or equalized) guitar, piano or whatever, tuned well should sound well to most folks.

 

1. As human beings, we will all gravitate towards an average or mean as shown by @james444's sciency data. Note that the differences aren't huge compared to how badly headphone measurements can vary. I think we can assume from the data that differences appear to be distributed in a bell curve.
2. I am quite sure that our brains perform additional processing. My hearing is not as good as it was 25+ years ago when I first started on speaker projects. However the speaker tunings that I've gone for haven't changed (verified by measurements). Ultimately, the speakers I build are tuned by ear (after initial measurements).
3. This of course leads to consciousness phenomena and related existence, spiritual, god voodoo. Whether human beings are said to observe the same way or not the same way is a matter of semantics. We know that unless a person is defective, people will largely hear the same way. We also know that the brain is a tricky thing and can compensate for deficiencies by filling in the blanks.

Which leads to this: There is a certain beauty in the hobby that we all hear differently or we all have different preferences (again, really a matter of semantics).

But let's just cut down to the chase: This is no beauty in the hobby where most headphones have very serious problems to people with trained ears (who also happen to have different preferences or hear differently or whatever).

Finally, I would like to say that I used to be a credited musician and a paid professional sound engineer at live events. I have also been measuring shit (speakers) since the late 1990s. Before that, built speakers, but without expensive measurement tools. In fact, all other members of this site also have equal or even superior audio credentials like PhDs in sciencology. This also includes their sisters, grandmothers, and great-grandfathers, and great-uncle in-laws.