Re: A new headphone query from a new member (Samu Mielonen )

Subject: Re: A new headphone query from a new member
From:    Samu Mielonen  <samu(at)myrealbox.com>
Date:    Wed, 23 Oct 2002 17:28:29 +0300

Henrik Møller wrote:

> The question of a flat frequency response of a headphone is not as
> unequivocal as you might like.

Yes, I understand this (although only at very basic level). Thanks
for pointing it out, though.

> Do you want a flat frequency
> response from voltage at the terminals to pressure at the eardrum?

> Or do you want the response to the eardrum to be similar to the
> response from an ideal loudspeaker in a room? Maybe you would like

I'd prefer a set of headphones that do not take into account
and try to compensate for the following:

 - nonlinearities of the head (except the head & earphones reverbant
   chamber, which must be compensated for in order to mimic more
   natural listening situation)

 - nonlinearities caused by pinna(s)

 - nonlinearities caused by ear canal(s)

To be perfectly honest, based on the very rough literature
research I've done, I'm not sure if such headphones even exists.

However, I do think that such phones would help me to test some
hypothesis about the personal differences in head, pinna and
ear related transfer functions and their possible effects on the
subjective preference of certain type of test signals.

Please feel free to correct me if you feel that I've
misunderstood this area.

> to read our article about the issue in Journal of Audio
> Engineering Society (Henrik Møller, Clemen Boje Jensen, Dorte
> Hammershøi, Michael Friis Sørensen: "Design criteria for
> headphones", JAES Vol. 43, No. 4, April 1995, pp. 218-232).

Yes, that is on my "get" list. Unfortunately I need to travel to another
town to get access to the AES journal database in another university, so
I can't read it right away.

Thanks for the clarification and the article recommendation! I will
try and read that and your other HRTF papers as well.

Best regards,
     Samu Mielonen