audioen t1_iu2zy5j wrote on October 28, 2022 at 4:16 AM

Reply to comment by JustAu69 in Honest question, did we hit peak headphone a while back? by Yammy_Lyfe

My suspicion is that all of these changes -- while welcome -- actually amount to close to imperceptible marginal improvements. It is not like existing technology, even down to dynamic drivers from decades ago, couldn't to almost all of the same things, and almost as well. Hell, I bought my first pair of HD-600s 20 years ago and people still use them and think they sound fine.

Magnetoplanar technology is probably the point where I personally stop caring about sound quality improvements as far as the drivers go, because measurements of such a system indicate that they are already practically perfect, whereas dynamic drivers tend to struggle with distortion at low end if they were to play at flat level, let alone at the boosted Harman target level.

To me, it is a bit like in the 80s/90s when PC soundcards reached 44.1 kHz and 16 bits, and in practice reached a level which largely holds today, and to which only very slight improvement is possible in practice.

I think it is okay for technology to peak. It all reaches level of "good enough" sooner or later.

JustAu69 t1_iu4mex0 wrote on October 28, 2022 at 2:49 PM

Yes, I agree these are not particularly revolutionary. Different driver types do not guarantee a better sound, just different qualities.

The Acoustic Metamaterial Tuning System in my opinion is very clever. Although I am not qualified to explain it in detail, eliminating standing waves will certainly reduce interference and allow for a FR more compliant with the Harman Target. If you are not willing to EQ, this seems to be the solution to a near perfect frequency response. In fact, the legendary Axel Grell (he designed the HD600 HD800) had high praise for it.

In my opinion, we have hit a plateau in terms of improving subjective sound quality. There is nothing new that guarantees better sound.

If we want progress we must put research into what we perceive as good sound and try to find physical metrics that are correlated and fine tune the headphones. Personally I don't think the FR and THD tell the whole story, and neither do the manufacturers. I think what's going on right now is that people know what to do to make headphones sound nicer without understanding precisely how it works. If you took a pair of Hifiman Susvara and AKG K361 and measured them, you wouldn't be able to tell one sounds so much better than the other.