Wow! A Lunar Eclipse 2024! After two years! What a wonderful review! Thank you! Also, that last page is fantastic. I mean, the things you connect and explain what influences what is really superb. And I love what you said about what masquerades as 'warmth'… and many other things. Aleksandar Radisavljevic, Raal 1995
My pleasure. Very much deserved. True, faux warmth seems endemic in audio in general. But some people do have a real/medical HF sensitivity that demands special tuning like Simone pursues with his LampizatOr/Riviera combination. The great thing with super-transparent transducers like yours is that they really do pass on whatever happens upstream. Anyone can build in whatever sonic course correction they require or desire. Srajan
I guess Simone is a rare case; pretty extreme but he still didn't go after a classic 300B SET to satisfy his needs. I wrote him about two moons ago, discussing what he likes about Valkyria and their different approach to replay.
The main problem with headphones is their missing room reverb and the tactile feeling of the lower frequencies on skin and body. Room reverb will add about 10dB of 'power' below 1.5kHz. The feeling of body vibrations doesn't exist. The main question is: do we stay true to the recording or the experience of listening without headphones? To me, headphones are headphones. They will never fully emulate what happens during in-room listening. So I stay true to the recording. To enjoy that, one must make peace with the limitations of the actual situation one is in which is, listening without our room and whole body participating. For me the best way of marrying both worlds are convolution filters that add to the recordings any room response we want (even speaker response if you will) plus a subwoofer or shaker seat so DSP + tactile feedback. If those actions are considered undesirable, then we must invariably tamper with the flat response.
I have a huge problem with tampering with the frequency response very much. Some little bass hump or shelving I'm okay with if that enhances the feeling of a 'natural' not constrained headphone sound but doing ridiculous things like +8dB shelving across three octaves and such isn't for me. These days too many brands sell 'flavors' and some are particularly greasy and high in calories without much of any nutritional value. I'm pretty sick of those fads. On my journey to Magna and Immanis, I finally arrived at the point where the preceding electronics allow the customer to season to taste or successfully precondition their signal in 90% of the cases. For me this was the perfect escape route. It allows me to stay true to my beliefs whilst giving my clients other ways to pursue the bliss they seek. Alex
Salt, fat and sugar. Junk food. Audio has its own versions. I'm in total agreement that speaker and headphone listening are two very different experiences or perspectives, each with its own merits and compromises. I see no need to shoehorn one experience into the other or make them more similar so have never gotten on with crossfeed circuits for headfi; or crossfeed cancellation DSP for speakers. Of course playback at home is a purely hedonistic pursuit. From the client's perspective, anything goes if he/she is happy. That I might prefer another sound isn't the point. It's their ears they must please, not mine. Srajan
