Headphone (and speaker) bass test

[JxK]

You Tube

You Tube

I tried it with both my m50 and sr60. The m50 can go down to 30Hz, though there's some distortion. It can play and hold multiple distinct notes so long as they are above 30Hz -- though again, notes sound better at 40Hz.

My sr60...ugh. I can hear something with them at 80Hz, but even then it's distorted quite badly. They don't start to play decent undistorted bass until ~95Hz in my opinion. Which is why after getting my m50, they just don't sound as good as they used to. There's alot of information in the low bass in a variety of music, even songs where you wouldn't expect to find low bass in the first place.

Who else wants to test their system?
Incidentally, I also did a high frequency test, and found that I can still hear up to 17kHz, though not well - I had to turn up the volume to hear.

[CrowdAds]

[dfkt]

That's what I use for frequency response tests: http://www.tucows.com/preview/502787

[Satellite_6]

There is something called SineGen.exe which is probably a better method.

I know people talk about how low a headphone can go a lot but I think all the headphones I've tried go all the way down to 20 Hz. For me, anything lower than 30 Hz is really hard to hear though because it is so low.

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by Satellite_6

There is something called SineGen.exe which is probably a better method.

[Syndrome]

With my Westone ES3X I could hear down to 15hz with SineGen, but with my Panasonic HJE900's then I could hear 23hz for sure, and faintly faintly hear 20hz. This is at normal listening volumes through my Motu MicroBook.

[JxK]

To be fair, when listening to real music as opposed to tones, very few pieces ever go below 40Hz. The only stuff I can think of that goes below 40Hz are some electronic pieces, as well as certain classical compositions - such as Bach's works involving the 32 pedal pipe organ. Now, the 32 pedal pipe is something to hear. Its fundamental is something like 16Hz, which almost no headphone - save for the super expensive type perhaps - can reproduce. For those recording, perhaps speakers are the only way to get experience the recording as it was meant to sound.

[jupitreas]

Actually, a fair amount of studio headphones can easily achieve those low frequencies... My Sony MDR-7506 (a below $100 set of cans) has a frequency response of 10–20,000 Hz and using SineGen, I can "hear" down to about 16Hz. I'm using the quotation marks here because what is actually happening is I'm probably feeling the vibration of the drivers rather than hearing actual sound, since 16 Hz is below the range of human hearing.