Objectively terrible headphones that sound... GOOD??

(Andrew Park)
So we of course love to get super into all the nerdy stuff to do with headphone measurements, but sometimes there are headphones that measure really weird, but sound good. And then there are other times when there are headphones that measure really good, but they sound less good. And today I've brought with me Griffin and Cameron, and that's what we're going to talk about.

(Griffin Silver)
Okay, so first I think we should establish what measures poorly. So the way we're going to be judging all of these based on if they measure well or not is kind of roughly if they're in line with something like the Harman Target. So, if they have an ear gain rise, if they have, you know, well-extended, maybe a little bit elevated bass, and if they have a reasonably smooth treble profile, I think we would all agree that measures well enough. And the things that kind of deviate from that kind of paradigm in large enough ways, I think, would be reasonable to say they measure weird. So, I guess with that aside, what would your pick for something that measures weird but sounds good be, Andrew?

(Andrew Park)
Yeah, so my number one pick for this is still going to be the Moondrop Cosmo. I talked about this in the review that I did for that headphone. That's one where it has Kind of a wonky frequency response, especially at first glance when you just sort of look at the data on that. It has a forward character at around like 1 . 5 kHz or 1 kHz, somewhere around there, like a really strong kind of forward presence. And then it has very relaxed or almost dark. treble presentation above that and this is also combined with a downward-sloping bass extension profile. This leads to a kind of leaner presentation overall. However, the reason it works is because of that darker treble. I think. If it didn't have the darker treble, this would come across a little bit too lean. And that's what happens with the less expensive one, the Para 2. Whereas on the Cosmo, this kind of works a bit. Now, I'm not going to say it works for all genres. This is, again, more of a specialist—whereas when it does work, it really works. And so this is the kind of thing for anything that has piano tones in it.

(Andrew Park)
It's just insane. Like that forward character around one kHz really brings forward a lot of the details in those piano strikes. I say strikes because that's what it sounds like. So for my piano jazz, certain types of vocal jazz, acoustic jazz, that kind of stuff, it's insane. But you know, you wouldn't know that necessarily just from looking at the graph. So that's why it's my number one pick for this. My honorable mention here is going to be the Stax L700. And that's mainly because it's not immediately obvious that this measure is kind of weird. But the L700 has, it rolls off in the bass, as I guess this sort of design tends to do. There is also a forward character around 1kHz, and so it does that same kind of thing that the Cosmo does for certain types of tones. Again, acoustic instruments, piano tones, that kind of thing. And then there are some treble zingies, some treble resonances that are definitely audible, and that's one of the things that I'm not thrilled about. Actually, there was an interesting post on our forum recently, maybe we can leave this link in the description, where people were talking about, you know, like, how can it be just frequency response at the eardrum that matters for this? you know here are some examples of headphones that you guys have liked where the frequency response is all kinds of weird right and it's because of the weirdness in the frequency response uh that uh that they sound that way and and in this in these cases both the cosmo and the l700 i think those are the kind those are the things that they create this sort of detail enhancement uh to the music right they create that kind of lens uh where certain things are pulled forward and made more salient in the mix and in the experience and so that that's why they sound so detailed um and uh yeah so i wouldn't say that they're like outright horrible for their for how they measure but definitely wonky and weird and that weirdness can be done in a way that for certain recordings and certain genres is very tasteful and pleasant to listen to 

(Griffin Silver)
I mean i definitely agree, i haven't heard the l700 but i definitely agree with the cosmo being a tastefully colored presentation that yeah i also quite Like, because of its dark treble balancing out the kind of lean, slightly honky presentation under two kHz or so, 

(Andrew Park)
the caveat with that is, like, if I'm listening to like certain types of uh more upbeat music or intense music, the whole thing kind of falls apart a little bit. For example, if I'm listening to like rock, or certain types of pop music, it's just like it's a no-go for certain recordings. So, it's a hit— it takes a hit to versatility. Right? And that's one of the things that having something that actually does measure better and has more kind of like an even tonal balance across the whole range. UM helps with is the versatility

(Cameron Oatley)
The L700's a bit of an interesting one as well, because obviously, estats have a reputation for being super detailed, and the L700 is one where I think it's somewhat clear from the frequency response why it sounds like that—because it's bass-light, which then makes you pay more attention to the treble stuff. It has an elevated upper treble, but it's not, like, peaky or harsh sounding. And so you get this very incisive and, yeah, detailed sounding presentation. But it also is one where there's quite clear reasoning within the frequency responses to why it sounds like that it's uh it's an interesting headphone

(Andrew Park)
i would say that it is a little bit peaky in a couple spots in the treble there it's just that they're done in a way where they're a little bit like hrtfe yeah it's like contrasty rather than harsh if that makes sense yeah yeah yeah and and the way i characterize this is there aren't it's not that there are tons of lower harmonics that are boosted over the rest of the trouble above that I think one of the things that helps certain headphones get away with more colorations is if there is a general tilt towards the high frequencies, because that can mask the imbalances lower down in frequency. I think that's what's going on with the L700. If you had a darker treble presentation there for the upper treble and just the treble in general, a lot of the rest of the stuff lower down, it would sound imbalanced. It would sound compressed. It would sound all kinds of weird and harsh and strident. But because it has that treble lift that kind of balances out some of those quirks 

(Cameron Oatley)
It shifts your focus in an interesting way what about you griff what are your uh your picks are some weird but good 

(Griffin Silver)
so both of my picks are closed back headphones and obviously that is where i think we start to see a little bit more weirdness pop up in a lot of headphones, especially at like the super cheap and the super expensive range, which is where both my picks end up. So my honorable mention is going to be the Tascam TH300X, which I'm sure nobody in this hobby has really heard of. I only know about it because I was working at Guitar Center when I first got my measurement rig and I measured everything we sold and I measured that headphone. Throw the measurement up on the screen here, and this is absurd. It is, indeed, as dark as it measures.

(Andrew Park)
This is, in fact, the perfect indication of the of the griffin sound preference.

(Griffin Silver)
So I think I did hear a little bit more ear gain than is shown on this measurement. But it is, like, broadly as dark as it looks. Interestingly, it doesn't come across as like a like a a bass fest because it's not really like a distinct bass shelf or anything like that. It's more so just like a really, really warm headphone. It was a unique presentation that I found had a very weird sense of imaging. So I would say this is more of a headphone that I could see the good in more than something I would like, you know, choose to listen to every day. But that's my honorable mention. I think my number one pick for this sort of looks weird on a measurement, but sounds really good to me would actually be the Audio-Technica ATH-W2022. Which is their I believe nine thousand dollar close back headphone. Which yeah looks weird. It has classic closed back traits like a kind of bulbous bass shelf with a quick dip into the low mid range, a recessed ear gain, and then a kind of rocky treble response. But this is this is probably my favorite closed back headphone I've ever heard. It hits so freaking hard. It doesn't really have any problematic resonances in the treble that I typically just get with headphones in general. But also the ear gain and kind of mids presentation in general is quite unique in that because there's a low mid dip and an upper mid dip. You get this kind of like center mid-range richness that yeah has this kind of like like hardness to it that just makes again drums and guitars and really anything with any sort of percussive element to it sound really really like concrete and kind of in your face. So yeah I love that headphone. Um I wish I had the money to own one because it's also just freaking beautiful. But yeah I heard it before I squigged it, and I'm glad I did because I would have probably thought uh it it just sounds weird, but I actually really enjoy the sound.

(Andrew Park)
I have a question for you on some of these just with the Tascam do you think that part of the reason why it sounded more okay to you than it measures is because of the higher acoustic impedance nature of that product and then also potentially if you are getting some sort of break in the seal yeah 

(Griffin Silver)
so I actually think both of those things are probably true to some extent um like I said I heard a little bit more upper mid-range than the measurement suggests but yeah also they are not a very well designed headphone so the ergonomics are poor um, so, uh, the, the likelihood of a seal break and a little bit of leak there was probably also, uh, very high Which again is kind of the difference between wearing a headphone on your head versus just putting it on a rig and inspecting the, the line that results from it, uh, is that, you know, there, there are bound to be differences like this.

(Andrew Park)
Um, and so when you do that, you could, you could imagine a scenario where the, like a new measurement of it, where there is a seal break would shift that entire ear gain profile upwards in, in terms of magnitude.

(Griffin Silver)
I'm not sure it's the seal break that's doing it. I think the seal break would kind of do what we expect where it just kind of makes the bass roll off. I think the difference between my ear and the rig is what might be producing a bit of an ear gain difference.

(Andrew Park)
Because that looks like a compensated graph.

(Griffin Silver)
Yeah, no, it's a raw graph that looks like a compensated graph, which is like peak, peak, ugly, ugly measurement. But yeah, I didn't hear it exactly like it's shown on the measurement there. But the treble, I think, is the one area where I think the measurement is accurate. It's very dark.

(Andrew Park)
 Yeah. And actually, with the other one that you picked there, the Audio-Technica, I think, Cameron, you and I both had the opportunity to actually listen to that headphone without having any sense of how it measured. And I think that we would kind of at least—I did— my sense of it was that it was just warm, like the rest of the balance sounded pretty good.

(Cameron Oatley)
I thought yeah, I I kind of had mixed feelings on it. I mean, given the price, it's not something I would pay anyone that much for. For me, it's that mid-bassiness of it that i that just kind of kicks me out of it a little bit. I'm not so much a fan of headphones which have that more mid-bass focused signature rather than a more sub-bass or flatter bass focused signature. And so that was actually the disqualifying factor for me. The rest of it's fine. Yeah, it's just very warm. But it's not bad. It's just not my cup of tea. 

(Andrew Park)
All right, Cameron, what were your picks? 

(Cameron Oatley)
Well, continuing on Griff's note on poor ergonomics, that applies to both of my picks. The honorable mention for me has got to be the RAAL SR1A. This is a free-field, ribbon-based headphone. Well, the poor ergonomics and positional variation come in because not only can you sort of adjust the angle of the flaps itself, but also how it sits on your head is a little confusing and you can change the sound quite significantly by shifting it around a fair bit. Being free field's weird, but it doesn't measure all that bad. In fact, above about 200 Hz or so, it's actually pretty good. Uh, there's a measurement on screen now, and the general areas where it doesn't measure so well in the ear gain are more dips than they are peaks, which for me makes them a lot less objectionable. The main bit was actually where the sort of two kHz region has a lift up, rather than what you might be used to seeing with a lot of headphones, which is a dip. Interestingly though, these headphones still for me stage a huge, which is one of the reasons why I like them so much. Um, They are free-field. I don't know how much of that is effectively just expectation, because it's completely open, so you're expecting a bigger soundstage. Who knows? It's not doing any of the typical soundstage FR things, and yet it does sound big. But overall, it's tuned remarkably well. That sort of free-field nature of it just, for me, and again, I don't know how much of this is just expectation bias, but for me, I got a surprisingly excellent sense of just timbre. on it like vocals i really really like the sound of it they're more contrasty than they should be because of that sort of one to two kHz lift that does color things a bit but beyond that i just really enjoyed the sound of the headphone except for the fact that they have absolutely no bass not only do they have no bass you can't eq up the bass because they will just distort and potentially even break so actually continuing on from the ergonomics i actually ran them with a subwoofer those headphones with a subwoofer or stereo subs if you want is genuinely one of the most fun headphone experiences I've had, period. And I was pretty tempted to buy a set for myself just for that. I really, really liked them when you run them with a separate subwoofer, and I actually did a full-on digital crossover to high-pass the headphones, low-pass the subwoofers, and just integrate things as if it was a speaker setup. Stupid setup, massive giggle factor. Giggle factor is also what applies to my main pick, which is the Abyss 1266. These, in so many ways, should be terrible. They are very uncomfortable. They are very heavy. The positional variation isn't so much the issue as the fit itself, because you can adjust and change not only how they sit on your head, but how much of a seal you get. And so you can tune the bass quite a bit, and you're sort of supposed to leave a bit of an air gap, which then means you lose all of your sub-bass, below 40Hz or so, and you get a massive mid-bass peak, which directly contrasts with what I was saying earlier about not liking mid-bass focused headphones. The difference here is that it's a really narrow and sharp peak, sitting right at the fundamental of where a lot of drums and stuff are, and when you're listening to these with electronic music specifically, where you don't really need to worry about the accuracy of synths and whatever else is going on at higher frequencies, these are just stupid good fun. These make your ears kind of shake in a way that no other headphone really does, and they just I can't not smile when I'm listening to the right kind of music on these. Anything with vocals, anything with real instruments, I do not like on these headphones at all. But I do like listening to electronic music quite a bit. And for those genres specifically, these just give you a sort of ridiculous, over-the-top, massively contrasty energy that is in every way measurable and that could be defined dumb, stupid, silly, but just has that massive giggle factor. And I really like them for that reason.

(Andrew Park)
massive giggle factor should be quantifiable 

(Cameron Oatley)
massive giggle factor is something we need to work on developing a metric for yeah 

(Griffin Silver)
I actually do want to comment on the sr1a really quickly i actually do really like that headphone um ergonomics and silliness aside and the fact that it doesn't have a bass shelf aside i actually really enjoyed its timbre too um when i got to test it um so that i think is actually a great choice um for something that looks kind of wonky on a measurement especially because it has that two kHz resonance that i think looks like it would bother people a lot but for me it wasn't really a bother at all.

(Andrew Park)
 All right now let's move on to headphones that measure well that don't do it for us subjectively. So I'm going to start off with this one with the DCA Expanse. I actually didn't end up doing the review for this one but I have spent quite a bit of time with it. It's an open back headphone that measures what should be or what looks like very close to the Harman Target but I have two problems with it. One is that the upper treble and just the treble in general has a sloping roll-off. That's sort of the only way I could describe it. And this coupled with the focus more towards the low frequencies causes a kind of incomplete or almost muffled presentation overall, where it just doesn't sound quite like it has the right amount of extension. And it sounds, yeah, just a little bit on the cloying and stifled side of things. But the other problem is that for whatever reason with that headphone, maybe it's also in part because of the ergonomic design or how it sits on my head. The acoustic metamaterial tuning system that they're using there in front of the driver, for whatever reason, doesn't seem to work for my ear. And it causes a whole bunch of really harsh resonances throughout the treble for me, such that like to me, that's a headphone that actually sounds considerably worse than like headphones that cost, you know, like $100, right? Like the AG400SE sounds better to me, even though. The expanse measures objectively quite a bit better. I think if you're the kind of person where the AMTS does work, this is likely to be a lot more palatable than it was for me. But what about you guys?

(Cameron Oatley)
So for me, I could probably pick a number of the older sort of harmon tuned IMs because I consistently, even if they look great on a graph, just get too much three kHz. That particular area was always just a little bit higher on my ear for IEMs specifically. And a lot of the time it just kind of ruined the sound, made it a little bit shouty and just. hard to listen through. It was always something I had to EQ down. This applies to a number of models, but if I had to pick one that looks pretty decent on a graph but in reality was weirder than most because it's got some pretty unusual behavior, this has not happened in most headphones, the Moondrop Variations, because those are an acoustic expander, meaning the frequency response actually changes depending on the volume level that they're outputting. So, not just the level that you're listening at, but how loud the song is, or how loud different bits of the song are, or different things at different frequencies compared to each other. It's a weird one. And I'm calling it out because that behavior is unusual. Please don't think that this is something which happens in all headphones. It absolutely does not. It just means that the line doesn't tell the full story for that particular IEM. And again, I just got the 3kHz issue. So that's one that looks pretty good on a graph, but for me, I just couldn't get along with.

(Griffin Silver)
I would actually agree with both of your picks. The expanse definitely had a weird treble thing for me but most of Dan's headphones also have too much bass for me so I think what looks good on a traditional measurement for me would just look a little different frankly. And then for the variations yeah the the ear gain is is a little too hot for me relative to the low mids and there's also a little bit too much 10k so it's got the bass shelf it's got ear gain it's got like a gentle treble roll off like it looks Like a reasonable headphone, no matter how you slice it, I think. But yeah, it just doesn't sound quite that good in my ear. So my pick for this would actually be one of the first headphones I bought when I got back into audio around 2020, which was the Philips Fidelio XHR. So this is a headphone I bought because people like Zeos or sites like RTINGS either said it was really good or showed it against a target line and it looked really good. But on my head it does not sound good and a closer inspection of the frequency response can actually reveal why. For me at least, there's a resonance around 1.8 kHz or so that really did bother me, but also the treble is like a nightmare for me. There's a very large resonance around like five and a half kHz that bothers me a lot. It sounds bigger than I've seen it on any measurement and then yes, there's a resonance around, I want to say, like 9, 10, 11 kHz somewhere that just makes it sound unbelievably grainy and harsh. I bought that headphone thinking I was going to be, you know, hearing the sound of the Harman Target or, you know, getting this incredibly spacious, high fidelity presentation, but it's a grain silo. It's a really, it's a really rough headphone. 

(Cameron Oatley)
A grain silo is quite a good way to describe that headphone. 

(Griffin Silver)
Yeah, it's rough, man. So yeah, that's probably the best example I have of something that measures great but just doesn't sound anywhere near as great for me 

(Cameron Oatley)
that's a good pick i agree with that one i had a pretty similar experience unfortunately uh grain silo is an apt term yeah

(Andrew Park)
 i think what's interesting to me about that pick it's a good indication of like the wide band sense of you know bass mids and treble is it's not necessarily enough right like it's not enough to have a sense of when if there's going to be issues that are going to be particularly problematic especially for individual listeners where those problems might be exacerbated because of you know the ear profile or whatever right um you know how it is at their eardrum and uh so you know you might have something that does well at you know one third octave smoothing but as soon as you start looking at the more fine-grained features um you can start to find explanations for why you might hear it as being a grain silo right or strident or harsh or whatever and another part of this is that it shows that the that sort of like traditional uh analysis or view of frequency response measurements it's not enough and uh this is one of the reasons why i think it's so useful to understand headphone performance in terms of a range and not just sort of the the single line against the traditional target kind of methodology with that that's going to do it for this video let us know down below if there are any headphones that you've heard that your experience doesn't line up with the graph you love something that measures weird or you hate something that measures great let us know what examples that come to mind for you guys on that and we'll also Be opening up a forum thread to discuss this topic and we'll leave that link in the description as well as always these videos are brought to you by Headphones.com. They are the sponsor of this channel and they make it possible for us to speak our minds about these products. Headphones.com is a great place to learn about and buy headphones. They have a 365-day return policy, so you can be sure that whatever you bought ends up being the right thing for you. And if it's not, you have quite a long time to return it. And you can chat with experts there who are just as into this stuff as we are. It's the best place to buy weird headphones. If you're unsure if the measurements are going to predict your experience, this is a great place to buy headphones where you can actually experience things for yourself.

(Andrew Park)
And not have to worry about that. So, if any of this sounds good to you, or if you want to support what we're doing here on this channel, please keep headphones. com in mind the next time you're looking for a new audio product. And as always, if you guys want to chat with me, Griffin, or Cameron, you can do so in a Discord, also linked below. And until next time, we'll see you guys later. Bye for now.

(Griffin Silver)
 Bye!