I think the confusion is between wavelength distance at the speed of sound as you discuss, and a driver being able to move linearly in one direction for a give period of time. If the headphone driver can move back and forth linearly between it's extremes slowly enough that each direction lasts 1/20th of a second, it can reproduce 10Hz. It just won't have moved very far during that elapsed time. It just won't have moved much air. But those low of frequencies are not picked up in the ear drum anyways. Real bass is picked up by bone conduction in bones outside the ear canal. Vibration of those bones is required for us to "hear" bass. In a tour of his facilities, Gene Czerwinski explained to me that part of his extreme sensitivity design of his Cerwin-Vega speakers, especially large ported woofers, was his daughter was born deaf but liked the beat of the music. So he made speakers that did that.
It’s simple. Lower frequency sound waves are less directional and thus more dispersed and lossy when being radiated. It’s sort of how a light bulb (think of it as woofer) vs a laser (think of it as tweeter) can be with different intensity of light at the same wattage. Therefore to compensate for this dispersion energy loss you need a bigger diameter driver in open space or a direct coupling with your eardrums to avoid leakage in an earbud or headphone. My Etymotic earbuds can make great bass this way.
@@carlosoliveira-rc2xt Not exactly but from an energy loss perspective, close enough. One Watt of power from your amplifier is one Joule of energy per second and only a tiny fraction of that energy moves your eardrums and that ratio is what determines how loud the sound wave gets. More loss due to dispersion means less energy for your eardrums. Same with light energy hitting your eyes. A one Watt laser can fry your eyes while a one Watt light bulb is quite dim.
Paul's comment about distance and sealing of the ear are spot on. Just do a small experiment while listening through h/phones. Lift the caps an inch or so away from the ears. You will discover all bass notes gone! As the air compression is not there any more, so all bass extention also disappears.
The wave produced by a speaker isn't being made Across the cone, but rather by the cone Moving out and in. The frequency is the Rate at which the cone moves. Headphones can do it because they don't have to move a roomful of air.
3:25 good explanation. It's a compression wave, not an up down wave like the ocean. Waves in the ocean can be a great analogy. Amplitude is the height of the wave and frequency wavelength is the speed at which the waves crash on the beach.
It is an evanescent wave that you listen to in its near field. Also, a driver playing into free field will create a low pressure when moving out, not high (steady-state), as acceleration dictates the pressure. When playing into a small enclosure, displacement dictates the pressure. René, PhD Acoustics.
Basically when you have head phones or in-ear head phones on your ear drums are coupled to the driver via the air mass in your ear canal, so not much energy is needed to reproduce any frequency.
My AKG K141s from the '80s use 6 passive radiators (each less than 1") around the active driver to reinforce low frequencies. This works very well, even many years later they sound great.
1) 50 feet is just the distance the peak of the sound wave is from the speaker by the time the speaker is at another peak. It has little to do with the size of the speaker. 2) Headphones can be thought of as moving your ear drum directly by preasurizing and depressurizing the air between your ear drum and the driver. It's more pneumatic than acoustic. Think of it like a stick moving your ear drum directly, only made of air not wood. 3) A 3 inch speaker can make 10hz. However, given it's size it just won't be very loud. You need big subs for deep base because you need to move a lot of air to make a low frequencies loud enough to hear. Low frequencies don't have much energy, and our ear isn't very sensitive to them, so you need VERY loud ones to be effective.
One way I like to think about things. It’s A relationship between driver air displacement and the volume of air being excited. This influences efficiency especially in regards to low frequency. The volume of air in your ear canal is not big, and so you don’t need a big driver to excite it.
Paul; One point you missed in an otherwise good discussion. the ear is sensitive to sound pressure. A loudspeaker creates that pressure in open space and is limited as to how much pressure it can deliver by factors such as displacement, frequency, distance, etc. An earphone sealed into or over the ear compressed the air in the cavity directly and are not limited by those factors. With a good seal and a transducer designed for low frequency operation you could indeed extend the response to DC ie a constant pressure. You wouldn't hear it but you could feel it.
Another way to think of it is that your ear does not need to register a full wave cycle to interpet a tone; rather, it only needs to detect the speed of the sound wave as it is coming in. If it were not so, we'd hear various frequencies of a single sound source progressively delayed... as well as quantized to the wave cycle... and that would be really weird.
I think what you're trying to describe is the difference between the speed of a medium vs the speed of information that is carried by that medium. There is a ton of reading that can be done on that subject.
I have no idea why Paul chose to go down that path. Distance and medium density affects arrival time, speed, and phase shifts, and is irrelevant to the pressure of air change frequency in a headphone. I was a sonar technician in the military.
@@zulumax1 I just go on the over simplified concept that if you have a wire that has electrons and you add one at one end the other end will deposit one...right now. We could talk about impulse propagation vs wave propagation but I suck at math so...
In reality speakers are more or less constant acceleration devices. This means that at low frequencies, there will be larger excursions, and more air moved. It’s the displaced air at low frequencies that you hear as sound in the form of SPLs. This also means that the speakers are omnidirectional at low frequencies since the pressure waves wrap around the cabinet. As the frequency increases, the displacement decreases since the motor force from the voice coil doesn’t change dramatically. At a certain point, the wavelength matches the speakers dimensions and it then begins to radiate sound in a beam like you would think. With headphones, and esp. IEMs the space is your ear canal, so the volume of air that needs to be moved is very small. Basically all it’s doing is pushing your eardrum in and out via the small volume of trapped air, which is why a good seal is needed. Escaping air = no bass.
The simple truth is that to keep the volume or SPL the same, as you reduce the drivers diameter you must increase the drivers excursion such that the amount of displaced air is the same. A 10" (area) driver moving 1" vs a 2"(area) moving 5" IEM and OTE headphones cheat a bit by having small volumes of trapped air that couple directly with our eardrums, they don't have to pressurize the room you're in, only the tiny amount of trapped air.
Think of it as a pressure front ... there is near field or close coupled ( where LF sound is in an exclusive pressure domain) and there is free field .. where sound is allowed to propagate naturally and conforms to all the acoustic laws of physics ...
After watch many your vids especially the hifi system with a subwoofer added...recently add mine, the two speakers are elac vela bs403 and a klipsch subwoofer was added...superb experience, many songs ang music pieces then have a solid bottom..many thx
Let's see if i can explain this.. 20 Hz is 20 Hz. regardless if the driver is 12" or 1/2". the frequency remains 20 Hz. which means the driver moves in/out 20 times per second that's a constant. The amount of air it needs to produce the sound wave of 20 Hz. depends on the size of the room. Bigger room more air bigger drivers. a headphone moves only a minuet amount of air so it needs only a mini size driver to produce a 20 hz. sound wave. Less air= Less driver.
In a good set of headphones you're talking about a very small mass of air being moved that's fairly well impedance matched at that. Heck, just even the shapes, you outer ear down to your tympanic membrane is much just the "mirror" of the headphone cone down to its driver. But beyond that, imagine your headphones had no cone or membrane at all nor your ear had an ear drum. If there was just a tiny rod connecting the voice coil(like a mini-solenoid) of the headphone driver directly to your "hammer" ear bone(what normally connects to your ear drum), you wouldn't need the "membranes" at all, and "bass" sound would just be a mechanical signal sent over the rod from voice coil to your cochlea! But beyond those, behind the voice coil in your headphones and past your inner ear, what's being transmitted isn't sound, but sound represented as electrical signal, whether over headphone wires or your body's nerves to your brain! Which scientists are making some headway in dealing with neural type hearing loss(as opposed to "conductive") that the "hearing aid" won't produce any sound at all, it'll be akin to a nerve signal.
i think of it more like this way: low frequencies are pressuring the air, inside a subwoofer box lets say, when the woofer moves it pressurizes the box, no waves can fit in there.
The reason you need to use a box for low frequency bass is that low frequencies are dispersed more widely and that causes the front push/pull and the rear pull/push to negate each other if you don't isolate the rear sound waves in a box. The fact that lower frequencies and especially bass is dispersed more widely causing energy loss is also the reason why you lose bass when your headphones are loosely coupled to your ears.
@@ThinkingBetter of course you are right, but keep it on topic of explaining how headphones make bass. my example of a small box is that inside that box that is still reproduced 10hz with a wave in its full length cant fit 10% of it.
Always a joy to hear from you Paul, just got to hear a B&W 804 D4 in a home environment which was a great experiece surpassing the Dynaudio Special Forty by a lot. They aren't as unforgving as I thought they would be. Hope to one day have one Direct Stream Dac. For now Roon DSD512 upsampling will have to do. Sometimes it wounds the same as native sometimes it's better not as sharp on bad recordings. I belive it's the filters rather than the dac chip operating mode since it's an ESS Sabre 9038 Pro Delta Sigma dac with 4 bits or something like that.
What I find equally fascinating, is that our eardrums are only about 8-10mm, 0.3-0.4" diameter and are the 'receiver' of the soundwaves, before being converted into an electrical signal for our brain to interpret as sound. Imagine having 8" eardrums!
The low frequencies in 50mm over ear or 10 - 15mm IEM's I can understand but how they do that and produce crystal clear mids and highs is baffling. I guess that's why the top end over ear's are planar/electrostatic and the best IEM's have a driver for bass and balanced armatures for mids and highs.
The time it takes the speaker to move one complete cycle, in and out, at 20hz (0.05 sec or 1/20) is the time it takes, at the speed of sound, for the pressure wave to travel 55 feet(1100ft/sec / 0.05=55ft).
The driver needs to move further in the same amount of time. IE, it has to have the ability to move at greater deflection. Size of the cone (-more power to the coil) equates to greater distance that the wave can travel.
I got my first couple of openback set of headphones recently, and i learned that when i covered the back of the headphones the bass is gone completely. What's up with that?
WIth certain recordings, I find headphones the superior method of listening. As long as theyre quality over ear style headphones that is. Loves my $60 JVC harx900's, but I do wanna give some Grados or the Phillips Fidelios a try.
You don't need atrociously expensive cans to get high quality sound reproduction. Go do a listening test with some music that you know in and out and I bet the ones that will sound the flattest will be most likely the cheaper set. Not knocking grado or any of the other high end brands. I have had cheap sony's sound on par to a pair of audio technica's. Just steer clear of skull candy and beats by dr dre (apple) those are geared more towards premium look rather than premium sound.
I think people are confusing feeling low frequency sound and hearing low frequency sound. In a headphone the environment is set with no interaction with different rooms.
Thank you for the great videos. My question may not be relevant to the topic, but hope you can help. I am currently working in Hong Kong (220v) and thinking about buying a good amp to upgrade my system. I will be moving back to Canada in 2 years, where voltage is 120v. Would it be ok to use a step down transformer (plus power stabilizer/conditioner)? Or should I wait and just buy 100v amp later?
Thanks for the quick reply. But it is the other way around. I am buying 220v amp here in Hong Kong and will be using step-up transformer when I move back to Canada. Shouldn’t it have any bad impact on audio (and sound quality)?
I think it's simpler explained by saying our ears do not integrate complete oscillations of the sound waves to sense each frequency. The same way you may feel a wave in the ocean even if the wavelength is many hundred feet.
I used my Grado SR125s at work. And I got complaints because they are open and they leak a lot. I'm looking for headphones that are good, don't cost too much and don't leak much.
Υes, of course! I never got why people get confused with wavelengths. Thinking about frequency is enough: if the piston moves back and forth 20 times a second, it can produce 20 Hz. Who cares how long the wavelength is?...
It makes me a little bit crazy to hear someone talk about inches, miles per hour, and cycles per second (Hz). Surely it would make more sense to use compatible measures like feet per second for sound speed? As an approximation, 330m per second can be used for the speed of sound, which makes the calculation simple: speed of sound divided by frequency gives you wavelength in metres. As every US citizen knows, the inch is defined as 2.54cm (there are 100cm in one metre)
Every US citizen knows that an inch is defined as 2.54 cms, but does every US citizen know that is an approximate measurement for an inch. The real number is more like 2.5399999?
Uhhhit’s a speaker it’s not an antenna. The physical length of the waveform has nothing to do with the driver. The driver merely needs to oscillate at that speed. And they produce shitty bass. If you can’t feel it in your chest it’s not good bass lol.
They don't produce any bass; Provided all the overtones are present your brain supplies the fundamental There are very few Loudspeakers in existence that can actually produce bass notes. Human perception depends solely on the harmonic spectrum associated with each note, If our Ears hear the upper harmonics our brain imagines the note to which that spectra belongs Also there is no linear relationship between subjective quantity Pitch ( which we perceive) and the the objective quantity Frequency
If your talking Focal's they have no bass. I recently bought some Elegia's based on the reviews and I have to say they are a major disappointment. My Sony XM3's are far better bass wise, vocal clarity wise.. Just a lot better sounding and cost half the money.
I own 2 pairs of Focals and have plenty of bass, quality tight bass so maybe your used to flabby soft bass as can’t understand why you would say Focal HP have no bass.
@@brianellis1257 The Sony's sound a hell of a lot better to me. The bass is not flappy? I listen to rock music and it sounds spot on. The Focal's are being sold! If I had spent £900 on the Celeste I'd have been sick..
@@brianellis1257 Some people just like their bass in the time domain really thicc and flabby, just look at all the ier-z1r worshipers. Nothing really wrong with that. Also Elegia isnt significantly bass boosted and with the speed of the decay and mids bump I can understand why people can say it has no bass since the mild W shape can be perceved that way for people used to strong V shape sigs
Don't sell your Elegia's just yet! I can confirm they have massive potential. You just have to replace their cruddy stock earpads. How much bass do want? Any other sound characteristics you'd like... or like to avoid? I've got a pair of Elegia's and a bunch of models of earpads, so I can test for you. Also, what DAC and amplifier are you using?
Remember also that a microphone with a 1/2 inch diaphragm can pick the full spectrum of sound including deep bass
I think the confusion is between wavelength distance at the speed of sound as you discuss, and a driver being able to move linearly in one direction for a give period of time. If the headphone driver can move back and forth linearly between it's extremes slowly enough that each direction lasts 1/20th of a second, it can reproduce 10Hz. It just won't have moved very far during that elapsed time. It just won't have moved much air.
But those low of frequencies are not picked up in the ear drum anyways. Real bass is picked up by bone conduction in bones outside the ear canal. Vibration of those bones is required for us to "hear" bass.
In a tour of his facilities, Gene Czerwinski explained to me that part of his extreme sensitivity design of his Cerwin-Vega speakers, especially large ported woofers, was his daughter was born deaf but liked the beat of the music. So he made speakers that did that.
I love that every thumbnail is Paul waving his arms.
Nice catch on that one! It really is great now that I know it 😂
It’s simple. Lower frequency sound waves are less directional and thus more dispersed and lossy when being radiated. It’s sort of how a light bulb (think of it as woofer) vs a laser (think of it as tweeter) can be with different intensity of light at the same wattage. Therefore to compensate for this dispersion energy loss you need a bigger diameter driver in open space or a direct coupling with your eardrums to avoid leakage in an earbud or headphone. My Etymotic earbuds can make great bass this way.
Wow. That example impressed 👍
Not exactly.
@@carlosoliveira-rc2xt Not exactly but from an energy loss perspective, close enough. One Watt of power from your amplifier is one Joule of energy per second and only a tiny fraction of that energy moves your eardrums and that ratio is what determines how loud the sound wave gets. More loss due to dispersion means less energy for your eardrums. Same with light energy hitting your eyes. A one Watt laser can fry your eyes while a one Watt light bulb is quite dim.
Paul's comment about distance and sealing of the ear are spot on.
Just do a small experiment while listening through h/phones.
Lift the caps an inch or so away from the ears. You will discover all bass notes gone!
As the air compression is not there any more, so all bass extention also disappears.
The wave produced by a speaker isn't being made Across the cone, but rather by the cone Moving out and in.
The frequency is the Rate at which the cone moves.
Headphones can do it because they don't have to move a roomful of air.
3:25 good explanation. It's a compression wave, not an up down wave like the ocean.
Waves in the ocean can be a great analogy. Amplitude is the height of the wave and frequency wavelength is the speed at which the waves crash on the beach.
wavelength is wavelength not speed
It is an evanescent wave that you listen to in its near field. Also, a driver playing into free field will create a low pressure when moving out, not high (steady-state), as acceleration dictates the pressure. When playing into a small enclosure, displacement dictates the pressure. René, PhD Acoustics.
You deserve the degree. I’ve never thought of that .
Basically when you have head phones or in-ear head phones on your ear drums are coupled to the driver via the air mass in your ear canal, so not much energy is needed to reproduce any frequency.
My AKG K141s from the '80s use 6 passive radiators (each less than 1") around the active driver to reinforce low frequencies. This works very well, even many years later they sound great.
1) 50 feet is just the distance the peak of the sound wave is from the speaker by the time the speaker is at another peak. It has little to do with the size of the speaker.
2) Headphones can be thought of as moving your ear drum directly by preasurizing and depressurizing the air between your ear drum and the driver. It's more pneumatic than acoustic. Think of it like a stick moving your ear drum directly, only made of air not wood.
3) A 3 inch speaker can make 10hz. However, given it's size it just won't be very loud. You need big subs for deep base because you need to move a lot of air to make a low frequencies loud enough to hear. Low frequencies don't have much energy, and our ear isn't very sensitive to them, so you need VERY loud ones to be effective.
That’s an awesome explanation of something that has always confounded me. Thanks Paul.
One way I like to think about things. It’s A relationship between driver air displacement and the volume of air being excited. This influences efficiency especially in regards to low frequency.
The volume of air in your ear canal is not big, and so you don’t need a big driver to excite it.
I got a nice pair of open back headphones, it's nice, but nothing like a nice 2.1 speaker setup, with the bass hitting you on the chest.
Paul; One point you missed in an otherwise good discussion. the ear is sensitive to sound pressure. A loudspeaker creates that pressure in open space and is limited as to how much pressure it can deliver by factors such as displacement, frequency, distance, etc. An earphone sealed into or over the ear compressed the air in the cavity directly and are not limited by those factors. With a good seal and a transducer designed for low frequency operation you could indeed extend the response to DC ie a constant pressure. You wouldn't hear it but you could feel it.
Audio reproduction is always amazing. I had also wonder how a paper cone and a silk dome combine to produce a metallic ringing sound
Another way to think of it is that your ear does not need to register a full wave cycle to interpet a tone; rather, it only needs to detect the speed of the sound wave as it is coming in.
If it were not so, we'd hear various frequencies of a single sound source progressively delayed... as well as quantized to the wave cycle... and that would be really weird.
Great explanation 👍
Moved from big speakers ( Apogees) to bookshelf ( Klipsch) to headphones ( Sen’s)..now into IEM’s..so the ultimate in downsizing 🤣
I think what you're trying to describe is the difference between the speed of a medium vs the speed of information that is carried by that medium. There is a ton of reading that can be done on that subject.
I have no idea why Paul chose to go down that path.
Distance and medium density affects arrival time, speed, and phase shifts, and is irrelevant to the pressure of air change frequency in a headphone. I was a sonar technician in the military.
@@zulumax1 I just go on the over simplified concept that if you have a wire that has electrons and you add one at one end the other end will deposit one...right now. We could talk about impulse propagation vs wave propagation but I suck at math so...
In reality speakers are more or less constant acceleration devices. This means that at low frequencies, there will be larger excursions, and more air moved. It’s the displaced air at low frequencies that you hear as sound in the form of SPLs. This also means that the speakers are omnidirectional at low frequencies since the pressure waves wrap around the cabinet. As the frequency increases, the displacement decreases since the motor force from the voice coil doesn’t change dramatically. At a certain point, the wavelength matches the speakers dimensions and it then begins to radiate sound in a beam like you would think. With headphones, and esp. IEMs the space is your ear canal, so the volume of air that needs to be moved is very small. Basically all it’s doing is pushing your eardrum in and out via the small volume of trapped air, which is why a good seal is needed. Escaping air = no bass.
Fascinating answer. Thanks.
The simple truth is that to keep the volume or SPL the same, as you reduce the drivers diameter you must increase the drivers excursion such that the amount of displaced air is the same.
A 10" (area) driver moving 1" vs a 2"(area) moving 5"
IEM and OTE headphones cheat a bit by having small volumes of trapped air that couple directly with our eardrums, they don't have to pressurize the room you're in, only the tiny amount of trapped air.
Think of it as a pressure front ... there is near field or close coupled ( where LF sound is in an exclusive pressure domain) and there is free field .. where sound is allowed to propagate naturally and conforms to all the acoustic laws of physics ...
This is very good explanation in easy language.
After watch many your vids especially the hifi system with a subwoofer added...recently add mine, the two speakers are elac vela bs403 and a klipsch subwoofer was added...superb experience, many songs ang music pieces then have a solid bottom..many thx
Let's see if i can explain this.. 20 Hz is 20 Hz. regardless if the driver is 12" or 1/2". the frequency remains 20 Hz. which means the driver moves in/out 20 times per second that's a constant. The amount of air it needs to produce the sound wave of 20 Hz. depends on the size of the room. Bigger room more air bigger drivers. a headphone moves only a minuet amount of air so it needs only a mini size driver to produce a 20 hz. sound wave. Less air= Less driver.
The tiny dynamic woofers in my hybrid in-ear monitors put out far better bass than any headphone I've ever listened to.
In a good set of headphones you're talking about a very small mass of air being moved that's fairly well impedance matched at that. Heck, just even the shapes, you outer ear down to your tympanic membrane is much just the "mirror" of the headphone cone down to its driver. But beyond that, imagine your headphones had no cone or membrane at all nor your ear had an ear drum. If there was just a tiny rod connecting the voice coil(like a mini-solenoid) of the headphone driver directly to your "hammer" ear bone(what normally connects to your ear drum), you wouldn't need the "membranes" at all, and "bass" sound would just be a mechanical signal sent over the rod from voice coil to your cochlea! But beyond those, behind the voice coil in your headphones and past your inner ear, what's being transmitted isn't sound, but sound represented as electrical signal, whether over headphone wires or your body's nerves to your brain! Which scientists are making some headway in dealing with neural type hearing loss(as opposed to "conductive") that the "hearing aid" won't produce any sound at all, it'll be akin to a nerve signal.
i think of it more like this way: low frequencies are pressuring the air, inside a subwoofer box lets say, when the woofer moves it pressurizes the box, no waves can fit in there.
The reason you need to use a box for low frequency bass is that low frequencies are dispersed more widely and that causes the front push/pull and the rear pull/push to negate each other if you don't isolate the rear sound waves in a box. The fact that lower frequencies and especially bass is dispersed more widely causing energy loss is also the reason why you lose bass when your headphones are loosely coupled to your ears.
@@ThinkingBetter of course you are right, but keep it on topic of explaining how headphones make bass.
my example of a small box is that inside that box that is still reproduced 10hz with a wave in its full length cant fit 10% of it.
Always a joy to hear from you Paul, just got to hear a B&W 804 D4 in a home environment which was a great experiece surpassing the Dynaudio Special Forty by a lot. They aren't as unforgving as I thought they would be. Hope to one day have one Direct Stream Dac. For now Roon DSD512 upsampling will have to do. Sometimes it wounds the same as native sometimes it's better not as sharp on bad recordings. I belive it's the filters rather than the dac chip operating mode since it's an ESS Sabre 9038 Pro Delta Sigma dac with 4 bits or something like that.
Thank you for all the great knowledge and information! I always enjoy your videos!
What I find equally fascinating, is that our eardrums are only about 8-10mm, 0.3-0.4" diameter and are the 'receiver' of the soundwaves, before being converted into an electrical signal for our brain to interpret as sound. Imagine having 8" eardrums!
The low frequencies in 50mm over ear or 10 - 15mm IEM's I can understand but how they do that and produce crystal clear mids and highs is baffling. I guess that's why the top end over ear's are planar/electrostatic and the best IEM's have a driver for bass and balanced armatures for mids and highs.
Grwat topic and great explanation. Thank you.
Excellent question
The time it takes the speaker to move one complete cycle, in and out, at 20hz (0.05 sec or 1/20) is the time it takes, at the speed of sound, for the pressure wave to travel 55 feet(1100ft/sec / 0.05=55ft).
The driver needs to move further in the same amount of time. IE, it has to have the ability to move at greater deflection. Size of the cone (-more power to the coil) equates to greater distance that the wave can travel.
I got my first couple of openback set of headphones recently, and i learned that when i covered the back of the headphones the bass is gone completely. What's up with that?
Thanks Paul ;-))
WIth certain recordings, I find headphones the superior method of listening. As long as theyre quality over ear style headphones that is. Loves my $60 JVC harx900's, but I do wanna give some Grados or the Phillips Fidelios a try.
I got the Philips, if you can, stick to your stereo imo.
You don't need atrociously expensive cans to get high quality sound reproduction. Go do a listening test with some music that you know in and out and I bet the ones that will sound the flattest will be most likely the cheaper set. Not knocking grado or any of the other high end brands. I have had cheap sony's sound on par to a pair of audio technica's. Just steer clear of skull candy and beats by dr dre (apple) those are geared more towards premium look rather than premium sound.
Thanks...
Hi Paul, If it's not a secret, what model of headphones do you use? LCD-X?
I think people are confusing feeling low frequency sound and hearing low frequency sound. In a headphone the environment is set with no interaction with different rooms.
Thank you for the great videos.
My question may not be relevant to the topic, but hope you can help.
I am currently working in Hong Kong (220v) and thinking about buying a good amp to upgrade my system. I will be moving back to Canada in 2 years, where voltage is 120v. Would it be ok to use a step down transformer (plus power stabilizer/conditioner)? Or should I wait and just buy 100v amp later?
Yes, it would be ok to use a stepdown for now and then once in Canada, go "native" voltage.
Thanks for the quick reply.
But it is the other way around. I am buying 220v amp here in Hong Kong and will be using step-up transformer when I move back to Canada. Shouldn’t it have any bad impact on audio (and sound quality)?
@@naristv That is something I do not recommend. I would avoid step up transformers.
If you say so, I would rather wait and buy later. Many thanks!
@@naristv you would probably burn a step up tx out. stepping down would be better for a temporary solution.
A big problem with headphones - no 'gut thumping' bass, just punched out ear drums - if you try hard enough.
I think it's simpler explained by saying our ears do not integrate complete oscillations of the sound waves to sense each frequency.
The same way you may feel a wave in the ocean even if the wavelength is many hundred feet.
I used my Grado SR125s at work. And I got complaints because they are open and they leak a lot. I'm looking for headphones that are good, don't cost too much and don't leak much.
beyerdynamic DT 770 PRO.
Υes, of course! I never got why people get confused with wavelengths. Thinking about frequency is enough: if the piston moves back and forth 20 times a second, it can produce 20 Hz. Who cares how long the wavelength is?...
It did
Thank you
you got there paul..lol
It makes me a little bit crazy to hear someone talk about inches, miles per hour, and cycles per second (Hz). Surely it would make more sense to use compatible measures like feet per second for sound speed? As an approximation, 330m per second can be used for the speed of sound, which makes the calculation simple: speed of sound divided by frequency gives you wavelength in metres. As every US citizen knows, the inch is defined as 2.54cm (there are 100cm in one metre)
Every US citizen knows that an inch is defined as 2.54 cms, but does every US citizen know that is an approximate measurement for an inch. The real number is more like 2.5399999?
So, it is just the freq., not the piston's size 🤔
Speed of sound is 762 miles per second
“… speed of sound… we won’t get into that…”
Haha 👍
Audeze is pronounced Ah De Zee not Ah Deeze, Paul 😉
Speed of sound 330 m/sec ie 1100 feet/sec
16hz is my favorite
I have compared my JBL over the ear headphones to Beats and Bose with the same song and source. JBL's beat Beats ass, and punched Bose nose
Same cost range also
Uhhhit’s a speaker it’s not an antenna. The physical length of the waveform has nothing to do with the driver. The driver merely needs to oscillate at that speed.
And they produce shitty bass. If you can’t feel it in your chest it’s not good bass lol.
i think yes we can hear it but we can't Feel it
Dude... re-answer this one.. I'm more confused AFTER watching this.
They don't produce any bass; Provided all the overtones are present your brain supplies the fundamental
There are very few Loudspeakers in existence that can actually produce bass notes. Human perception depends solely on the harmonic spectrum associated with each note, If our Ears hear the upper harmonics our brain imagines the note to which that spectra belongs
Also there is no linear relationship between subjective quantity Pitch ( which we perceive) and the the objective quantity Frequency
I'm just a dumb piston
my headphones BROKE 😭😯😢😥😞🥺😔
My phone has a lot a good bass! (joke) ok throw me audiophile reply dunk...just for the fun. 🙂
If your talking Focal's they have no bass. I recently bought some Elegia's based on the reviews and I have to say they are a major disappointment. My Sony XM3's are far better bass wise, vocal clarity wise.. Just a lot better sounding and cost half the money.
I own 2 pairs of Focals and have plenty of bass, quality tight bass so maybe your used to flabby soft bass as can’t understand why you would say Focal HP have no bass.
I also own the Sony XM3’s and XM4’s so making a fair comparison
@@brianellis1257 The Sony's sound a hell of a lot better to me. The bass is not flappy? I listen to rock music and it sounds spot on. The Focal's are being sold! If I had spent £900 on the Celeste I'd have been sick..
@@brianellis1257 Some people just like their bass in the time domain really thicc and flabby, just look at all the ier-z1r worshipers. Nothing really wrong with that. Also Elegia isnt significantly bass boosted and with the speed of the decay and mids bump I can understand why people can say it has no bass since the mild W shape can be perceved that way for people used to strong V shape sigs
Don't sell your Elegia's just yet! I can confirm they have massive potential. You just have to replace their cruddy stock earpads. How much bass do want? Any other sound characteristics you'd like... or like to avoid? I've got a pair of Elegia's and a bunch of models of earpads, so I can test for you. Also, what DAC and amplifier are you using?