[Don Pearce]

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Don Pearce" wrote in message
et...
William Sommerwerck wrote:

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...

The FR of headphones is affected by the shape of your pinnae (or
auricles
or outer ears). Since everybody's pinnae are different, a given set of
headphones won't deliver the same acoustic signal to their ear canals.

There are similar effects with IEMs, only they involve differences in
individual ear canals instead.

But doesn't that depend on how the headphones' output interacts with the
pinnae?

Yes.

If what you say were absolutely true (rather than generally true), then
there would be little agreement on headphone quality (with respect to
FR).
But there is very strong agreement.

The agreement is to be expected.

It's the usual question about what is the weakest link, and what determines
what the listener hears.

Some headphones are so bad that nobody's pinnae can help them. Others are
really good.

Other headphones manage the pinnae problem better than others.

Take a headphone with a good flat, smooth driver, position and surround that
driver in such a way that it interfaces well with most people's pinnae, and
reliably create a sound that meets or exceeds market expectations. Lots of
people are going to line up, money in hand.


This would be particularly true for ear-bud types, which don't interact
with the pinna at all.

No, but they do interact with the ear canal.

In my travels I found a text that was written for people who fit hearing
aids. It describes the inside-the-ear acoustic effects that various kinds of
ear canals, and how to modify IEMs to optimize them for these conditions.

All the individual sound everyone is used to from their own ear shape is
absent.

Only part of the story.

What we hear is affected by:

(1) The shape of our head, which is individual.

(2) The shape of our pinnae, which is individual

(3) The shape of our ear canal, which is individual

(4-...) The shape and construction of our ear drum, inner ear, the little
bones, the basilar membrane, the whole 9 yards. Everybody's is different.

And then it all gets dumped into that wet sponge we call our brain. ;-)

So there is no marvel to the fact that going from speakers to headphones to
IEMs are three different experiences.

Some day we will be able to stimulate the hearing parts of our brain
directly, but non-invasively. That will be yet another *sound*. I think a
little of this is already happening.





All true, but my point was that for ear buds the pinna is bypassed and
can play no part in the shaping of the sound.

d