The Sony R10 - as good as its reputation?

Discussion in 'Headphones' started by Stuff Jones, Oct 16, 2017.

  1. Bill-P

    Bill-P Level 42 Mad Wizard

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    Oh, I was wondering why I was pinged.

    Yeah, from my brief encounter with the R10(s?) over the years, I think the cup reverb is audible. At least it is to me. It's not exactly a "quiet" headphone, and in some instances, I could hear it was doing something like a cavern effect at a certain frequency range in the upper midrange to lower treble. I think whatever I did to my coupler when I measured the R10 kind of showed some of that. The bass drop was real to my ears. The R10 practically had no bass.

    That plus the drivers literally sat on my ears... like it was a massive on-ear headphone rather than an actual full-size headphone so mids just blared full on. "Super Audio Technica" is how I'd describe it.

    Disregarding all of the physics stuffs, which I know I'm not up to snuff with, I think the R10 did have its own "special" sound that no other headphone I have heard has come close. The CD3K is more of an "all-rounder" that still does bass and is its own sound rather.

    Now that I think about it... a closed headphone with HD800 drivers that sit literally on top of my ears like that may just do the trick.
     
    Last edited: May 1, 2020
  2. bigant

    bigant Facebook Friend

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    Reverberant rooms used for acoustic testing have non parallel walls and tend to also have hanging angled panels to further reflect the sound pressure waves. Not sure that’s an ideal environment To have behind a lightweight driver. Given the volume of the ear cup the shaping is going to be working at pretty high frequencies (I get a quarter wavelength at 10Khz to be about 8.6mm but it’s a long time since I was studying this stuff)

    So is all the HF energy just bouncing around in there, or is it directed into something that will absorb it?

    As a student I was doing some practical work in a reverberant room so I took the opportunity to fart into a microphone connected to a spectrum analyser. I learned nothing from this, but even now 30 years later I’d do it again.
     
    Last edited: May 2, 2020
  3. Armaegis

    Armaegis Friend

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    For all the measurements we do on FR, THD, etc etc, has anyone ever measured the "knock" response of a headphone? As in, literally knock on the cup and measure what is heard at the ear. I'd be curious to see if any correlations can be made to the driver measurements. There may be variances depending on where you knock, but you gotta start somewhere.
     
  4. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Piggybacking, Keith Howard now of InnerFidelity did some research into importance of headband design in headphones. Curious what others might make of this:

    https://www.hifinews.com/content/ends-earth
     
  5. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    5ms or longer duration CSDs, top view.
     
  6. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    I don't get the results. How is the right channel FR tracking so closely with the left channel, but for a few extra wiggles, when the only the left channel is being played? Electrical crosstalk shouldn't result in that much signal bleeding from one channel to the other.
     
  7. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    Still trying to wrap my head around the results, really, which is why I posted them here. The hypothesis seems to be that it isn't so much electrical crosstalk as mechanical transmission of noise via headband? Could be misreading entirely but that's what I'm getting off this.
     
  8. purr1n

    purr1n Desire for betterer is endless.

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    Mechanical or acoustic transmission from the left to right channel on a dummy head isn't going to mimic the FR (-25db down but with extra squiggles) like that! I am wondering if he has crossed wires somewhere (pun intended). Who is this Ron Howard clown?
     
  9. Lyander

    Lyander Official SBAF Equitable Empathizer

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    He does measurements for some more established Hi-Fi Magazines and is the guy that's taking over measurements for InnerFidelity post-Tyll. He's been sitting on that for a while now; last I checked people were still bugging him in IF comments section about publishing measurements to accompany new content on the site. He's got three articles credited to him, latest one being the Harman curve update from June 2018:

    1. https://www.stereophile.com/features/808head/index.html (August 2008)
    2. https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/where-were-going-headphone-measurements (this one is the most recent update I could find; May 2018)
    3. https://www.innerfidelity.com/content/harman-tweaks-its-headphone-target-response (June 2018)

    He has squiggles of proper hi-fi gear out and they seem to hold water as far as I can tell, but I came across the headband article while looking for measurements of the KLH Ultimate One (https://superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/klh-ultimate-one.7982/) to complement Brent Butterworth's (https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/equipment/headphones/179-klh-ultimate-one-headphones) late last year after @Ainsworth (I think) brought them up somewhere here. The headband thing caused me to raise eyebrows a tad, but as far as I'm concerned it does make some logical sense for headband "noise" to influence the super-nearfield system headphones are if coupling to head doesn't completely dampen errant resonances or what-have-you.

    I was wondering what went on with K. Howard since there's been nothing on IF since then, but I follow HiFiNews's online thing for measurements and he's still turning out Lab Reports regularly. Most recent would be the Abyss 1266 Phi TC published 21 April this year.
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2020
  10. Serious

    Serious Inquisitive Frequency Response Plot

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    I wonder where the all the bass is coming from. Measuring the crosstalk of open headphones (HD600, HD800) I saw (in a normal room) a big elevation around 3-4kHz at maybe - 25 dB, rolling off towards both ends of the spectrum. Couldn't really tell headband resonances that way, but it's possible you'd really need an anechoic chamber (or do it outdoors). I'm also wondering if maybe he's just measuring dummy head resonances and interactions. They're generally hollow!

    There should be practically 0 bass, much like listening to the headphones without them being on your head.

    EDIT: Follow-up here: https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...sion-of-noise-via-headbands.9257/#post-299203
    Turns out I was somewhat wrong, there is more crosstalk in the bass than I was expecting and less in the upper midrange. Overall it's very low, though. On the order of -40 to -50 dB.
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2020

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