Dynamic vs Estat Round 15

Guys, please warn me when you've caught and tried the witch. I love to see a good stake burning.

 

Not quite, this statement needs to be qualified with some important conditions. I don't listen to hyper compressed modern rock at this level, that'd just be crazy. With well mastered dynamic music I can usually set my levels so that -20dBFS correspond to ~80dBSPL. Many studios operate on this basis as well. This gives you dynamics peaks that can reach 100dBSPL. This is the only way to capture realistic levels as captured in a live scenario. I'll come back to this in a bit as it is an important consideration for why our friend is so confused.

This sort of static test would be basically useless. You're essentially proposing an amplitude linearity test. I'll tell you now that the transducer/amplifier/source will pass it, but it does not explain the different in resolution that is heard.

The more interesting way to try this would be to set up an electronic test to somehow discriminate between high level signals and low level signals. This is not easy to do because it's just not how FFTs work. The cool thing is humans have this crazy ability to really hear into a recording and not let high level signals completely mask the low level stuff. You can try it for yourself. Play some ambient noise at and then play a tone -20dB or so below it at the same time. You will be able to make out the tone although an FFT analysis will show no tone to be found. It's a evolutionary trait because our hearing mechanism doesn't work as a pure FFT that values all information equally, but rather pierces through the ambient to grab on the important/unique information. Your very test proposal shows you're ignorant to this fact or that your STAX has made you devolve to a less fit state of mouthbreather that would be easy tiger food.

I do not claim to have all the answers with regard to why certain components tend to render more detail/resolution/plankton. But you do not need to know the how to experience the results.

For the record, we know you listen to your music at 40-50dBSPL, and I say this generously. It's barely about the ambient level of a room where there are humans breathing in it. This is not an exaggeration folks. We've had this test done in person. Pick up a headphone after n3rdling is done listening to it at a meet and you'll see the level of delusion we're dealing with here. You can check with other folks to verify this statement.

Nonetheless you claim that the low-level resolution that we talk about is purely a function of THD at high SPLs. At first glance this would seem to fit nicely because it would explain why certain folks hear low level detail, while you seem to be immune to it. But then explain to us how headphones/amps with high levels of THD tend to sound universally worse and less resolving by our testimonial? If it truly does correlate as you claim, then we should be able to just crank up the THD and hear more low level detail! We would have all heard the Alpha Prime and called it an absolute midrange resolution monster! But of course this is absurd and honestly isn't worth going on and on about. It's really just a cheap attack to say that we prefer distortion, while knowing that we tend to find lower distortion (everything else being equal) to sound better as an almost universal rule of thumb. Very dishonest! Sad!

You are simply not qualified to speak to what real life music sounds like. When was the last time you heard live music? How were you able to stay in the hall without plugging 10cubic feet of cotton in your ears? You have no idea what real music sounds like! You do not listen at realistic levels! So your claim that stats are somehow closer to real life is laughable! Real life has grain, texture, lots of quirks and funny stuff going on. And given that the recording picks it up and it isn't all compressed and smoothed to hell, the playback system should reflect that realistic sound. Things sounding different is a sign of fidelity to the source, as opposed to a plastic sheen coloration implanted over everything is a sign (by definition) of coloration.

You'll have to excuse me as I was never familiar personally with a few of those guys, let alone their audio systems/preferences. I couldn't tell you what ship or MP's reference system was. Tode I know as a 009 kiddo but you're confused if you think he subscribed to the same delusions as you do. Tari is a wizard and I cannot hope to know the breadth of his knowledge. CT still has his HD800/EC as his main squeeze last time I checked. Regardless a good portion of the active team (Marv, Voldemike, Ultrabike, and myself) have all landed on the other side of the argument pretty firmly, while the others you claim have really not made their opinions known on the subject AFAIK. There are also a lot of OTHER new folks on Chang and now on SBAF who have pushed back against the estat superiority myths so you can take that FWIW. I guarantee you a lot of people in the audio world were already thinking what we think, but too afraid to speak out when the estat bullies controlled the narrative. To say it's just a few people who don't buy into your argument is seriously dishonest.

I could of course speak to the "appeal to popularity" fallacy of this statement like you would, but instead I'll just point out that this consensus is coming from known shills and other minions.

See above to where this is debunked. More distortion = more resolution? Absurd! Or is there some sweet spot threshold? Clarify yourself because your ideas simply aren't connecting. Outside of the lowbass distortion of the HD800, it simply does not have appreciably more distortion than estats! Where is all this midrange and treble distortion that's creating all this extra plankton? According to Tyll's datasheet (which correlates with Marv's and others FWIW) the distortion near 0.1% at 90dB, which is about 60dB down from there, at the threshold of the measurement rig's ambient noise floor (just like the 009). If you are going to make a direct objective claim, YOU should be the one to have the evidence on your side. Your hypothesis doesn't even get past the first steps of scrutiny.

You do not listen loud enough to excite the bass distortion of any dynamic headphone. I could easily prove this for you at the next meet if you like. What you're hearing might be true and might even correlate, but I guarantee it's not bass distortion you're hearing. It's more likely related to the playnar bass effect which does sound noticeably different and exists independent of THD. Again, if you prefer that coloration that's fine.

As a final signout, I will attach this gem from the testosterone filled chat session we had last night

 

Haven't heard an estat or DT48, but in other terms I disagree. Maybe grain has other meaning to me.
The electro-dynamic planars I have heard have this sudden stopping power that none of the dynamics have. Makes the dynamics sound 'fleshy' and loose in comparison. On the other hand acoustic instruments through planars sound like someone tried to re-create them with soft synth. Lacking in liveliness and depth.

Compared to best speakers I have heard (and ultimately real orchestra) I'd say decay and sustain is 5% too much (loose) from best dynamics, like HD800 and 10% lacking from planars, like HE-6 (too short, dry).

This time the arab makes more sense to me than zealot.

 

I made a similar statement last time this whole battle came up on Chang. Archive is down ATM. @Marvey get on fixing that so that we don't have to rehash these same ol sorry arguments.

 

LOL, i've been thinking about ways to illustrate this myself. Will get back in a bit with some ideas. Essentially where clarity becomes microdetail.

 

Can we agree that estats beat dynamics in the "sound seemingly emanates out of nowhere" / "disappearing act"?

 

With some of the recent advancements in Dynamic driver tech as seen in the Utopia, will the midi-chlorian factor start becoming a thing?

 

It depends on the planar/electrostat. The LCD-X was a lot better than STAX, the HE-560, and mostly cavernous and strangely boomy LCD-2 and 3 (fazors are grittier though) despite having weird upper mid and treble grit. The HE-6 is supposed to be the best one but I've only heard it amped out of this NuForce receiver. Magnepan speakers tend to be way better than planar headphones but still worse than dynamic cans and speakers.

Bass is naturally fleshier and looser than other frequencies. The "planars are better for EDM" argument is mostly horseshit as most electronica is mixed for big shitty cloud sound systems where the artists knows he will have to eq the bass and treble heavily on the fly which is how djs get away with "mixing" on studio headphones (usually HD 25s) with relatively clean mids without the recording sounding horrible in disgustingly shitty nightclub pas that are varying grades of terrible and most planars rob the bass of texture that serves as background for the other parts of the track. You can hear this with noise rock and grindcore too where the bass guitar is ridiculously distorted as a backdrop on which the guitars and vocals will paint the music and playnars and 'stats don't reproduce this at all.

Let's not even get into Dr Dre mixing and compressing so that it sounds like your driving around in an old car at home or Iggy Pop remixing Raw Power fairly well and then mastering his new mix so it sounds like a beat to shit record that's been abused to hell by some kid. Iggy's remastered Raw Power CD actually sounds like this cheap copy of Slayer's Reign in Blood I bought in a record store for five bucks or something where some kid in the 80s wrote his name and practiced drawing the slayer logo on the Def Jam inner sleeve. These feelings are gone on playnarz.

 

Totally off topic, but the midi-chlorians have got to be the worst thing the star wars prequels gave us (other than Jar Jar).

 

What about the script? The lines Natalie Portman and the whiny guy with the long hair who gets his legs chopped off makes Jar Jar's minstrel show sound intelligent.

What about the actual plot? Do these scenes have a point? Do episodes 1 and 2 have a plot or anything actually dramatic happening between the characters or is shit just happening like most marvel movies? Episode 3's plot was the whiny dude turns into a bitchy crazy person so the wooden british guy cuts his legs off and the schemer takes over as the protagonists are knuckleheads. Same plot as Casino, worse movie.

 

Here's my shitty attempt:

(Imagine this was a beatiful drawing of the sea with waves on top and plankton near the bottom. Add beautiful colors, sharks and whales. Bright blue at the top and dark blue at the bottom depending on how well a transducer resolves this.)
Clarity is essentially a function of how clearly audible macro detail is. Essentially how far to the left the curve is in the upper parts and its slope in that region.

 

I think people can get a little bent out of shape over this seriously subjective shit (love the TP drawing). Obviously some people love their dynamics better than their planars or stats; after having owned the Senn 650's, beyer t-90's, Momentums, LCD-2f's have settled on a used pair of LCD-3s. For me, both the 650s and LCD-2s didn't give me what i was looking for either in Bass retrieval or overall detail/plankton. The 3's do it for me. I was going between a pair of Elears and the Audezes, and overall I preferred the Audezes primarily for detail retrieval. The Elears are definitely more punchy and dynamic, but I prefer the timbre of the LCD-3. And these aren't a "hi-fi" sounding pair with the so-called "plasticky" sound. Cymbals sound like brass, guitars sound pure and voices sound real and present. And, subjectively speaking, there is more than enough sustain in the notes. I hear the separation in pinch harmonics, the secondary resonances of the drums apart from the intial strike on the head, and nothing is more abrupt than it should be.
Just my opinion, but overall, who gives a shit? Enjoy the listening.
And I hope these last. I've had a great ownership experience with Audeze...so far

 

I read this debate with interest, but still find the core "stats have no 'plankton'" argument difficult to understand. Let me summarize it in my own words.

1. A dynamic driver produces more low-level resolution (quiet subtle sounds, "plankton") than an electrostatic or planar magnetic driver.
2. This occurs because flat thin diaphragm drivers stop resonating too quickly in response to electrical impulses generated by data in the recording.
3. However, data in the recording is reproduced by any sufficiently high-quality driver without loss (since playing full-range signals causes the driver to make full-range sound regardless of level — @OJneg wrote that everything would pass @n3rdling's proposed sound measurements).
4. It follows that the driver resonance which corresponds to "plankton" is not present in the recording. If it were in the recording, it would have been played by any sufficiently good driver as per point 3.
5. Therefore, dynamic drivers like the HD800 add sounds not present in the recording. Otherwise, they would produce no more extra detail than other driver types.
6. If "plankton" presence is a good thing, then the HD800 either (a) makes pleasant changes to the recording, or (b) reproduces sounds originally present in the recording space but not captured by the microphones. Or (c) recordings contain data beyond encoded electrical impulses which only high-quality dynamic drivers such as the HD800 can reproduce due to their slower resonance cessation time.

Fair summary?