headphones
On Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:31:05 -0700, Ed Seedhouse wrote
(in article ):
On Oct 25, 3:37=A0am, Edmund wrote:
I am not interested in (d)equalizing or adjusting for my personal
hearing imperfections, I am interested in sound reproduction as
real as can be.
Then you shouldn't be interested in any headphones at all, since they
distort the sound field so that it appears between your ears with a
mono source being in the middle of your head between your ears.
There is nothing "realistic" about that and no headphone to date has
solved the problem.
The only way to get even close to "real" from headphones is via binaural
sources, which are few and far between. Even then, binaural sources have a
tough time dealing with sound sources BEHIND the surrogate head.
Now I use and enjoy various headphones and the musical experience can
be excellent, but never ever do they approach realism, even on a
binaural recording. There are just too many confounding variables
that no headphone can ever be expected to reproduce.
Occasionally I have heard sonic images well off to the left and right
of my head, but never any imaging out front or out back.
Front works OK, but sources behind the binaural head tend to be vague,
sometimes sounding completely amorphous and other times seemingly inside
one's head, but, in my experience, never from behind.
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