So how much do you think the placebo effect impacts our listening preferences?
My hypothesis is that for ~%97 of us, the more a headphone costs the more we will enjoy the headphone.
My secondary hypothesis is that the more I told consumers a headset cost, the more they would enjoy the phones. i.e. a $30 headphone < $300 headphone < $3,000 headphones <<< $30,000 headphones.
I’m willing to bet that if I put the kph 30i drivers in the focal utopia’s chassis and told participants in this fake study that the phones cost $4k.... Everyone except for the 3%ers would never guess something was up. The remaining 97% would have no clue and report that it was the best set they ever heard.
Then if I gave them the kph30i and explained it was $30. 97% of people would crap on them after hearing the same driver in a different chassis.
My ultimate hypothesis is that build quality and price are the two most important factors in determining if people will enjoy a set of headphones. This how I rationalize the HD8XX getting crap on when only 3 people have heard it and publicly provided their opinion lol. "It’s a cheaper 800s, of course it’s going to sound worse!"
@mahgister I just looked at your system.Dont kill my message with an underlining of superficial appearance... I can create a very powerful Helmholtz resonators grid with discarded toilet paper rolls...i did in fact... Acoustic dont need costly materials but knowledge and ratios and experiments...Same thing for mechanical vibrations controls....You can buy many thousands bucks products or create something equivalent almost at very low cost...I did it with cheap materials but no tin foil... I dont let myself to be fooled by advertising of costly products now... And keep your free mockery.... The last smile is for me.... My system cost is bananas my friend....And my Sound quality/price ratio exceed or rival yours probably at no cost then.... i will keep my tin foil....Keep your headphones... By the way i presented facts and arguments politely to you in my last posts, i never attack you.... I dont like to be answered by FREE mockery... « Sarcasm is sometimes a compensation for some dysfunctional physiological apparatus, the brain or some appendage, pick your choice»- Groucho Marx 🤓 |
@mahgister, "Headphones and speakers present sounds with different results for sure..." Finally something we can all agree on, I hope. For the past few years I’ve been trying to find a neutral pair of headphones exclusively for monitoring purposes and comparing various masterings. After reading around various sites (Head-Fi, Ken Rockwell etc) I eventually narrowed it down to around 5/6 candidates including the Sennheiser HD600s, Audio-Technica ATH50Xs, Beyer Dynamic DT880s, or the Sony MDR 7506s. Rather surprisingly, after a fair bit of reading, it became clear that none of these tried and tested designs had a ruler flat frequency response. In the end I decided upon the Sony’s as they seemed to be the closest to truly flat. Their minor aberration was claimed to be a slightly elevated mid treble response which is said to be of great help in detecting any potential issues in the all important presence band, I think. Perhaps there is a good reason after all for why they have remained a largely unchanged industry favourite for quite a few decades now. However, the surprises didn’t end there. I later read on Sound on Sound website that although most mastering engineers do use headphones for mixing or mastering, in practice they still prefer to use loudspeakers. I can’t remember the reason given, but I think it was claimed that loudspeakers gave a more predictable result. So, given the differences between headphones and even monitoring loudspeakers, it’s hardly a surprise that audio’s notorious circle of confusion as described by Toole, Olive etc continues to this day, is it? Without any commonly recognised worldwide industry references, it also looks like it might remain with us for some time yet. Yes, the truth might well be out there, but finding it seems to be quite another matter. https://www.soundonsound.com/mastering https://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/10/audios-circle-of-confusion.html?m=1 |
