Is the highest fi always the best fi?

By Steve Guttenberg • Posted: Jul 12, 2012

Sound quality is a big deal to me, and I've devoted a huge chunk of my life to the pursuit of great audio. My hi-fi costs as much as a nice car, but I'm no gear snob, and I love writing about great sounding budget gear. I've discovered a lot of new music over my Sirius Satellite Radio, music that would sound like crap over my hi-fi. That's why I play the tuner through my Tivoli PAL table radio. That little radio smoothes over the rough edges of Sirius' lousy, low bit rate sound. So even for a hard-core audiophile, lo-fi is sometimes the right fi. The best playback device isn't always the most accurate playback device, not by a long shot. What follows is a meditation on good sound, and why it's such a rare commodity.

I listen to a lot of music with my $89 Velodyne vPulse in-ear headphones when I'm on the NYC subway. The headphones' overly generous bass sounds reasonably well-balanced when I'm bombarded by the low frequency rumble generated by 82,500 pound subway cars rolling over 100 year old transit system tracks. Accuracy, schmaccuracy, sound quality goals, even for a veteran audiophile like myself are a moving target. A "perfect" headphone, one that aced every measurement test Tyll can dream of won't always sound best when confronted with the reality of highly imperfect recordings, the unpredictable variability of personal taste, and noisy listening environments.

In quieter settings the vPulse sounds hopelessly colored, and I'm likely to don my Grado RS-1, Hifiman HE-6 or Audeze LCD-3 headphones for serious listening sessions. Great sound and music soothes my soul, and there's nothing better than getting into the zone and enjoying my music collection.

For fleeting moments, like at a recent Chesky recording session the LCD-3s sounded so real I thought the guitar player was standing behind me, tuning up. At that moment the LCD 3's sound was indistinguishable from reality. Hi-fi never gets better than that, but I'm far from convinced about the merit of pursuing ultimate neutrality when most current rock, pop, hip-hop, world music, and jazz recordings have been heavily EQ-ed, processed, compressed, overdubbed, auto-tuned and subjected to a billion other studio tricks. Not that all of those things necessarily sound bad, I'm not saying that, just that the producer's first goal isn't accuracy, no, they want to make recordings people want to listen to. Today's record producers live in fear of a mix that's too quiet, and those fears are real. When a song is even just a wee bit quieter than the preceding tune in shuffle mode most listeners will skip over it. That's not just my opinion, the Loudness Wars that kicked into maximum dynamic range compression mode in the early 2000s were based on that reality.

Listening to processed music over hyper accurate headphones like the Sennheiser HD 800 will surely let you hear all of that processing more clearly. Probably more clearly than the producer ever heard it, or intended anyone to ever hear it. They know that the vast majority of listeners will hear the music over $10 computer speakers, free ear buds, Beats by Dre, in a car, or over a club PA system. That's what most mainstream music is designed for, and I'm sorry to say the HD 800 can't tame the giant 4-kHz EQ boost the mixer added to the drum sound to make it "cut" better. No, the HD 800 just reveals all the more accurately what the recording sounds like. Depending on the type of music you listen to, maybe a more forgiving, softer sounding headphone like a Denon AH D5000 might make that music more enjoyable. Which is, after all, the reason we listen to music in the first place. Sure, if you listen to music with less overt processing, like classical or acoustic jazz, a Sennheiser HD 800 would probably sound a lot better than the Denon.

I think about sound all the time, but most people couldn't care less. I recently witnessed a friend happily listening to a wretchedly distorted Bluetooth speaker. An Elvis Costello playlist provided an ambient soundtrack as he assembled his kid's new bike, and it wasn't just the distortion that irked me, the speaker's thick, one-note bass was giving me a headache. The reason non-audiophiles, even ones who really love music can happily listen to crappy sounding gear is really pretty simple: they're not thinking about sound. Something would have to be really out of whack for them to notice or care what their music sounds like. As long as the speaker or headphone plays loud enough, and has enough bass, they're happy. I don't care if the music lover is a janitor or head surgeon at a major hospital, the bar for acceptable sound is painfully low.

At the auto show in NYC a few months ago I auditioned high-end audio systems in a lot of cars, including Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and an awesome Porsche Panamera Turbo, and the sounds were truly appalling. I got the feeling that the clientele for ultra high-end cars prefers systems that sound like rolling boom boxes. Apparently, even the 1 percenters lucky enough to buy these rides don't care about sound quality.

What does good sound sound like?
Who knows more about what music is supposed to sound like than musicians, so why do most musicians have the lamest hi-fis? I've asked lots of them why and the answer is always the same: they don't need great gear. They know what real music sounds like, and they automatically fill-in the missing aspects of the sound. For me, when the sound and music really are great I get into the zone, and connect with music in a deeper way. It's no longer frozen music, it feels live, like it's happening right now, and that gets my juices flowing.

Now sure, obsessing about sound can go too far and lead to what I call the "audiophile disease," so the music starts to play second fiddle to the sound, and that's a truly pathetic situation. The audiophile is so distracted by sound quality, or neurotic concerns about the lack of sound quality, that he, audiophiles are almost always men, can't just listen to music for pleasure. The gear is there to serve the music, not the other way around.

Good sound is in the ear of the beholder, and that's impossible to quantify, possibly because our tastes evolve, music never stands still, and how and where we listen changes from year to year.

Comments

Mp3 Players

Submitted by Dr.Phil on July 12, 2012 - 10:27am.

Don't all mp3 players now come with the function that puts every song with the same volume ?

sound check

Submitted by TheWuss on July 12, 2012 - 11:21am.

i believe some of them do, Dr. Phil.
But, that hasn't stopped the mastering engineers from continuing the loudness war...

iPods

Submitted by Dr.Phil on July 12, 2012 - 12:21pm.

If I'm not mistaken the ipods have that function as default.

I agree that music enjoyment

Submitted by rhythmdevils on July 12, 2012 - 12:12pm.

I agree that music enjoyment doesn't need to depend on gear, and I think it's a good message and reminder.

But do you think recording engineers accounted for the HD800's massive 6khz elevation in their recordings? It goes both ways. Are recording engineers supposed to recess the entire treble region because audiophiles use headphones with massive treble peaks in their lust for clarity?

This treble emphasis in most headphones and the clarity obsession amongst audiophiles is more to blame for modern recordings sounding bad than anything recording engineers are doing.

Zippy HD 800s

Submitted by Steve Guttenberg on July 13, 2012 - 5:01am.

I think you misunderstood my line, "I'm sorry to say the HD 800 can't tame the giant 4-kHz EQ boost the mixer added to the drum sound to make it "cut" better." I wasn't referring to the HD 800's peak, no, I'm saying great headphones may not be the best way to listen to highly processed recordings. Recording engineers definitely aren't worrying about the .0001% of us with great gear when they mix, no way. They make records for folks with $10 computer speakers, free earbuds, and crap car audio systems. That's reality.

You should get out more

Submitted by Jazz Casual on July 13, 2012 - 7:55am.

You should get out more rhythmdevils. Producers and sound engineers would not be cognisant of the HD800 and its audiophile consumers, unless they were specifically producing recordings for that very small market. And thanks for the article Mr Guttenberg, which was refreshingly non-audiophile. ; )

funny

Submitted by purrin on July 14, 2012 - 9:11pm.

Funny because it appears that producers and sound engineers sure seem to be very cognizant of the high-end STAX offerings and its audiophile customers, which is even a smaller market than the HD800s.

In fact, I'm listening to Taylor Swift (a modern over-processed overproduced recording) right now on my STAX rig and she sounds wonderful, better than the iBuds I was using at the pool with my kids about an hour ago.

I think what the OP was trying to say is that some modern recordings sound like shit on the HD800s because the HD800s are NOT hyper accurate revealing headphones, but rather that they are hyper-revealing INACCURATE sounding weaponized face tweeters.

I'm not sure if you're trying

Submitted by Jazz Casual on July 20, 2012 - 11:23pm.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be humorous but you've succeeded in making a fantastic statement.

This is not my experience at all....

Submitted by itsastickup on July 12, 2012 - 12:21pm.

Listening to a half-decent pair of headphones permitted me to listen to music I wouldn't normally enjoy. Elvis Perkins' folk stuff through a normal system, for example, is just boring; but I love it on my system. It's true that some music has such a catchy tune that you can still enjoy it, but wow! are you missing a lot any way.

Having progressed to decent headphones I am exploring untuneful music; I couldn't have said that a few years ago. There is a lot of richness, texture and detail that the musicians mean you to hear. You can't really hear or experience it on a poorer system. That is true of much mainstream, tuneful music also, particularly alternative.

Sure, some musicians may use 'lame' hifis, but then what is a lame hifi? A lot of expensive amps these days are stuffed with complex and unnecessary designs. A well made, cheap, modern class D will perfectly reproduce the audio, in so far as measurements are concerned, and be cheap on power. I reckon the pros know to avoid the pricey nonsense that hifi nuts buy. Class A, Schmass A.

Half the reason I launched in to hifi was because one day someone with a half-decent system played me my favourite album: I was blown away. It was a 'beautiful' sound. Beautiful in it's own right. the other half was realising my subwoofer was boomy when I had heard a wonderful crunching bass on a friends speakers. My little bookshelves, for example, warble alarmingly through their bass, with 3 violent peaks causing boom.

Fidelity may not be everything but it's a lot.

The benefits of learning

Submitted by ultrabike on July 12, 2012 - 6:14pm.

In assessing headphone quality I put weight on FR behavior (magnitude and phase), and invertibility... and of course, my own ears to corroborate what I'm looking on paper. Some headphones have relatively transparent FR behavior over the audible frequency range(neural), and are invertible (can be fully equalized). Others are present severe "peaks and valleys" in the FR and are non-invertible (cant' be fully equalized - or compensated with synergy from a dac/amp)

We can notch and boost tremble frequencies of a neutral headphone to sound like a Grado. But we cannot bring back notched or severely rolled off frequencies from a substandard headphone (it is not invertible in many audible frequencies). What is gone is gone. Furthermore, a neutral and invertible headphone can be adjusted to compensate for poor recordings. A colored headphone cannot always do this.

One could make an argument about how a colored headphone can sound better than a neutral one, without compensation, if the source is colored or in certain listening conditions. One could have a headphone for the train, one for bed, one for the living room, one for the beach, one for rap, one for 60's rock, one for pop, one for jazz, one for heavy metal, one for dance music, one for classic... or one could get a few neutral headphones (for portability or stationary listening) that will sound great in less than appropriate listening environments and different music types (and recording objectives) when paired to a decent equalizer (if required at all).

For me, the key is to get off the couch and start educating myself as to how and when to best use compensation. To learn how to make the best of headphone measurements for an educated and well thought purchase. And try to obtain well recorded music that require the least amount compensation (and likely sound better) in the first place. The benefits of learning.

While equalization, crossfeeding, decompressing/compressing, and applying other effects over a neutral headphone will not fully make up for poorly recorded music, or less than optimal listening conditions, I feel colored substandard (and sometimes surprisingly overpriced) headphones will likely do much worse.

I would agree that a real hifi system is not always the most expensive one. There are inexpensive gems, and very expensive turds out there.

Music listening

Submitted by dalethorn on July 12, 2012 - 3:40pm.

On the one hand, probably the majority of audiophile listening - or more precisely audiophiles listening with reasonably decent hi-fi gear - is done as background to something else. Browsing the web, gaming, working on something. That especially helps to account for being able to tolerate excessive colorations in certain uses.

It's been said that full consciousness occurs only 3 or so percent of the time, since the brain is mostly on idle, even when really listening to a good system. I think it's going to be just as big a challenge to get audiophiles into the listening chair and off of their various distractions as it is to get the non-audiophiles to recognize the audio horrors that are feeding into their brains from their own environments.

perfect headphones?

Submitted by zobel on July 13, 2012 - 3:36am.

Steve, this is an excellent article, thanks.
I love 'just' listening to music, especially when it is well recorded. I like to hear what the artists are trying to covey in the least distorted, most detailed, and realistic way possible. You are absolutely right though, when you note that the environment you are in, and the quality of the recording (and what form it is stored on), and the playback system are all factors that determine what will work best to get the music through your ears and to you brain.
You wont see anyone running or working out with there Audeze LCD-3 on. And you will want as much isolation as you can get for that plane or train, when the noise level is high at home, or lawn mowing listening time. When its quieter you can dig that nice open airy sound and feel of open cans. You will want some efficient but somewhat forgiving cans that may be a bit rolled off in the highs for listening to your portable ipod iphone, or straight out of your laptop. I like Steve's use of his Tivoli Pal table radio to listen to his Sirius Satellite Radio. And of course it is hard to beat sharing music with others over the speakers of a great stereo, in a good room that is quiet and all you are doing is listening together to music that, as you say, "gets the juices flowing"!
Yes, its whatever you can do to get the music to come through! I remember my first "sound system". I was 7 or 8 and had an acoustic record player, you know, with an actual steel needle clamped into the diaphragm at the head of the tone arm. The only electrics involved was the motor that spun the turn table at 78 rpm. The sound went through the tone arm and down through the record player's base and came out the front of it. It was a toy, but I had a couple records that I really liked the music on, one with a string bass you could actually hear! I had an uncle who was into sound reproduction that gave me an old wire recorder of his after he bought a wollensack tape recorder. Then I was really hooked on this grand hobby. I would visit wrecked car lots to harvest speakers, and would salvage speakers from those big old TVs. I'd make boxes for these speakers, and power them with what ever old tube amp I could scrape up. I had a turn table with a ceramic cartridge that had a flip over stylus, one side for LPs and one side for 78s.
Sorry I'm wandering here, but the point I'm trying to make is that I really enjoyed the music through all those systems, and it progressed with ever better vinyl playing systems, and better home made loudspeakers, and on through the development of digital recording, better amplification, better components with better cables and interconnects, and finally better recordings, and much better headphones, and much better loudspeakers, home made or not! Yes there are still lots of great recordings being made today, many of which are better than any that came before them. Maybe we can ignore some of the backwards steps, with low bit rate lossy codecs, compressed and over-processed recordings that are engineered for puny playback systems. It is not the first time sound quality was sacrificed for the sake of convenience, portability, and marketability (witness the audio cassette). All in all, I have to say I love the variety of what is available out there now. Life is good! So is this website.

Bass

Submitted by Magick Man on July 14, 2012 - 2:05am.

Unfortunately, nasty, bloated bass is fast becoming the new "neutral", and it's quite annoying. I suppose I'm largely a treble-head, but I appreciate clean, punchy bass, it's sad that so few understand what balanced sound means. It seems nowadays people just want to feel their music.

So, I have a solution. Remember Bass Shakers? I used to have a couple sets, I lived in an apartment at the time so I used those in lieu of a large sub for home theater. Why can't the bass nuts just strap a couple of those to their heads? To hell with actual music, they can just jar their brains loose with those instead. Would take less time. ;^)

Bass shakers

Submitted by dalethorn on July 14, 2012 - 2:12pm.

Sony has made good progress with some of their 'XB' series. Maybe someone else can up the ante there, but gollee Batman, even Beats is going hifi these days!

Zenith Royal 645

Submitted by ElmerK on July 14, 2012 - 5:21am.

As I read this I am listening to the CBC AM morning radio show on my old Zenith Royal 645, that I picked up at a garage sale for $3. I especially love listening to 50's Rock and Roll on this. It gives me the sonic experience of my youth. I feel the old 45's were mixed to be heard on transistor radios of the period.

Like! Can't tell whether

Submitted by Tyll Hertsens on July 14, 2012 - 3:16pm.

Like! Can't tell whether you're funnin' us, or telling it like you see it, but I like it either way.

Pisses me off....

Submitted by LFF on July 14, 2012 - 8:58pm.

Great headphones ARE be the best way to listen to highly processed recordings. Why? Well...that way you can tell that your hard earned money is going to crap recordings and the people who promote them.

The average consumer isn't alone in this either! A lot of audiophiles use inferior headphones like the LCD-3 to make their listening experience more pleasurable because they mask a recordings flaws. If people were to use headphones that were neutral and actually heard the massive amounts of flaws in recordings and complained about them or refused to buy them, then we might see some progress.

Recording engineers know damn well what they should be doing but producers and the suits insist on boosting levels and doing other tweaks. Then, there are companies who have jumped on the consumer rape wagon and are releasing treble peaked monstrosities to compete at certain price points because audiophiles "like clarity". Then there are people who refuse to toss aside the age old motto of "you get what you pay for" and proceed to go into circle jerks in order to validate a piss poor product they just paid $1000 for (or more!).

What everyone needs is more education and independent thought. They need to stop relying solely on opinions of self-proclaimed experts and actually try reading a book.

The worst kind of blind person is the one who refuses to see.

That said...coming here to read Tyll's posts is a good start!

some modern recordings sound good too

Submitted by purrin on July 14, 2012 - 9:20pm.

I feel it's a gross over-generalization to state that modern "over-produced" and/or "over processed" recordings are meant for the lowest common denominator: iBuds, computer speakers, etc. If you've ever walked into any of the big studios, seen their facilities, and met some of the engineers, i.e. Capital Records, etc. you would know such a statement is nonsense.

There are a lot of great modern popular recordings out there. It comes down to how much the audio engineers care about their work and the wisdom of the producers and studio bosses.

I mean shit, the Grammys still give out technical achievement awards. And it doesn't get any more commercial than the Grammys.

Exactly, I want a headphone

Submitted by Dr.Phil on July 15, 2012 - 9:21am.

I would imagine a perfect flat headphone to be very boring.

I want a headphone to enjoy music not to dissect every nuance of the track.

Do what you can to try listen

Submitted by ultrabike on July 15, 2012 - 12:18pm.

Do what you can to try listen to one good neutral hp. You might end up preferring it. I know I prefer my HD558 over my DT990 (the HD558 is more neutral relative to the DT990). I don't find my HD558 boring at all, and way less fatiguing than my DT990.

Jh13

Submitted by Dr.Phil on July 15, 2012 - 3:04pm.

Had the jh13, although not totally flat its an monitor reference. In one word, boring.

Now with lcd'2 music is fun to listen to, and that's what's all about .

Heheh. I like this article

Submitted by timmyw on July 16, 2012 - 8:15am.

Heheh. I like this article quite a lot. I believe a lot of Audiophiles get lost in the gear, and completely forget why they bought that stuff to begin with. Endlessly searching for that Musical high that only comes with perfect amalgamation of gear and recording.
I own a lot of expensive gear and I have certainly had more than my fair share of moments where I have been listening to a recording and forgotten I was sitting at my desk, listening through headphones. I closed my eyes and was blissfully transported to where the music happened. More than once I have had to look around and make sure a violinist or guitarist wasn't sitting in my room playing. Magic.
I feel as though I personally am a very lucky man though. I love music, all kinds really. I have found that The music is the thing that really matters whether it's played through ibuds or through my much loved headphones. I still love it all.
I certainly will not be giving up my gear any time soon (well, never really) but I can appreciate music no matter where it comes from. I think that's the secret.
I guess what I am trying to say is if you are listening to music and find it boring, is listening through different gear really going to spice it up for you enough?
It's a weird trip in this audiophile world. I am very thankful I have learned so much from guys like Steve here and Tyll. Learned a lot about myself too.
Love the music guys , let it take you somewhere no matter what it's played through.

LFF x2

Submitted by NA BLur on July 16, 2012 - 4:24pm.

I agree with LFF's comment. It is all about education. If an uneducated person who has not experienced more than one headphone is writing a review by what basis are they making their judgments? A comparison is necessary to show due diligence. If science were to only run a single experiment once and make a conclusion based on that single event it would certainly be very biased and most likely completely wrong.

This is why descriptors such as best, better, and higher quality are rarely truly informative. I do understand what Steve is saying, but when it comes to the science there is no excuse for ignorance.

Make a hypothesis, state your assumptions, test the hypothesis, and conclude from the results. Repeat this method until the results can be graphed, recorded, discussed, and evaluated. Rigorously retest the results and form an unbiased conclusion i.e if the results show a failure do not bias the experiment into a success.

It would have been great to see Steve's opinion had he no sales experience at all.