[William Sommerwerck]

"Mike Rivers" wrote in message ...

On 8/22/2014 2:39 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:

Most headphones alter (or remove) the effect of the pinna on
the sound entering the ear canal. So how is it that people tend
to agree on what a given pair of headphones "sound like"?

They do?

Of course.
[paragraph break should have been inserted here by YT]
Supra-aural phones sit /on/ the pinna, while circum-aural
phones /surround/ the pinna. Neither maintains the pinna's full effect
in modifying the sound.

"They do?" referred to the statement that people tend to agree on what
a given pair of headphones sounds like. Not about how the headphones
interaction with the pinnae affects the sound.

Which is the point -- this agreement /shouldn't/ occur.

There's a design for a standard headphone test fixture somewhere, and most
manufacturers use that when testing their own products (and the
competition). You can probably find it on the web if you look, and care.

Just because the coupler is a standard, doesn't mean it gives subjectively
useful results.

The issue of headphone response is further confused by the difference between
free-field and diffuse-field response. Shall we go into that? It's only 1PM,
and I'm running out of energy.