Should you tune room to headphones


I have Grado PS500 headphones and a Project SE headphone amp and Ohm 5000's run with a 600 watt bryston. I hadn't listened to my headphones for a long time and when I did there was an absence of bass. Every thing else was better tonal wise. Smoother and clearer . My speakers are about 18 inches from back wall about 7 feet apart in a 20 ft long 12 feet wide and 8 feet high. I have 3 bass traps and 4 24X48 acoustic panels with 4 acoustic blankets covering windows and doors. I have placed them up to 4 ft from walls but high frequencies seem a little harsh so I moved them closes in. My girlfriend likes them closer to walls as she likes the dance club sound. Do I need more acoustic treatment?
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Showing 2 responses by plato

I have HiFiMAN HE-400 headphones and their EF-5 tube headphone amp and also the KingSound H3 Electrostatic headphones and their M20 OTL tube headphone amp. Both of these setups give great headphone sound.

That said, the headphones. do not compare to the holographic and precise soundstage I get from my Wavetouch Audio Grand Teton speakers driven by a pair of modified Dignity Audio 8-watt 300B amps. The soundstage this develops is mindblowing and very expansive and layered. It's one of those things that you have to hear to believe. The bass is quite impressive too, but if you want "Dance Hall" bass to shake the walls you will probably need to add subwoofers.

I do have acoustic dampening panels in the room as well as a few homemade Helmholz acoustic diffusers (plus a single Michael Green Room tune).

In your particular room, especially if you have the Ohms on the short wall I would guess you'd have all kinds of problems with room reflections because the Ohms dispersion pattern is very wide. And the closer you'd move them to the rear and side walls the worse the imaging would likely be.

To get to a more headphone-like presentation you would need speakers that are more directional... like the Wavetouch, so that the sound is not echoing off of every inch of wall nook and cranny. All that totally messes up the stereo image if it's not well controlled. With the Ohms you might be able to put some sound absorbing materian inside the grills to the outsides and rear of the drivers. That could help a lot.

But if it was me, I'd do what I already did (above) because I know it works like magic.

Good luck to you!
Also, in my large room 14'x30' with high cathedral ceiling (the small room I mentioned above is 11' x 14'), I have the large VMPS RM40 ribbon hybrid monitors powered by a Rogue Audio Medusa amp.

In that room I have a single room-tune in the right corner behind the speaker. The windows have curtains and there are a few sofas around the room. I get very good imagery in this room too with the speakers angled in toward the listening position and using Lyngdorf's RoomPerfect room correction system. The RM40's are somewhat directional too, which helps.

As I said, the imaging is very good in the large room but I think it is actually more enveloping (like headphones) in the smaller room I talked about in my previous post.