Sean Olive
@seanolive
i am a former Senior Fellow at Harman doing research in perception and measurement of sound quality including loudspeakers and headphones. Interests include music, hockey, wine, cycling, politics, science and technology. A Canadian who is also American.
Congratulations to Dan Clark for winning best Mid-Price Headphone at the CanJam Landon show. This headphone keeps coming up in my Google Feed because it mentions I helped with the research behind it. www.ecoustics.com/articles/bes...
Below is the title and abstract of a talk I will be giving at the upcoming SoCal CanJam show. canjamglobal.com/shows/socal2...?
That’s not a modern Ford Lincoln tuned by Beats but a JBL premium sound system 40 years ago. Bass has suffered from inflation like everything and that may be a good thing
I had never plotted this before and wondered how it compared to your preference bounds. Here is the same data with shading. Here are are the values.
I revisiting some data from this 2015 study to analysis and plot the mean preferred bass and treble settings for 256 listeners. Olive, Sean; Welti, Todd; 2015; Factors That Influence Listeners’ Preferred Bass and Treble Levels in Headphones Paper 9382; Available from: aes.org/publications...
The graph is the average of left+ right channels based on the average of 5 reseats. I don't know what the consensus is for these but to me -- they sound very muffled in vocals with muddy bass.
This shows the variation in FR of a sample with 5 reseats on the fixture (graph 1), the mean left and right response (graph 2) and the standard deviation of left and right as a function of frequency (Graph 3).
Been looking for a cheap open back headphone for psychoacoustic experiments that is consistent across samples and can be easily equalized to a target. Harder to find. Here are 6 samples of a $150 Sennheiser HD560 S that I think meet that criteria. Measured on a GRAS 45CA-10 with an AP517x
I just received the Final Tonalite TWS that has technology to personalize the timbre to match your DF HRTF and taste. Several AES papers have been presented on the research behind these including one at 160th Copenhagen
I am pleased to announce I will be giving one of the Keynote talks at the upcoming Audio Engineering Society 2026 6th International Conference on Automotive Audio. More details about the conference are here: auto.aes.org
DR. PK Suban giving a lecture on why the Habs are beating the Sabres 4-2. @habsonreddit.bsky.social
Montreal dominated face offs in game 5. Tampa Bay took notice and reversed this after 20 minutes in Game 6
Some good discussions at last evening’s presentation on our research on Headphone Distortion st @rtings.com.web.brid.gy at the San Francisco AES meeting in Cupertino. There were audio /headphone engineers from Apple, Meta, Google in the audience because they work nearby.
Heading to AXPONA tomorrow to give one of the Keynotes on Saturday. More info here: axpona.com/schedule/?uw...
A comprehensive review of Toole et al.'s Sound Reproduction 4th Edition is available in April 2026's Audio Express here: simplecirc.com/view_issue/7...
For comparison here are the measurements of the JBL Endurance Run 2 ($20) plotted with the Harman IE target curve measured on a GRAS 45 CA-10 test fixture.
The frequency response of my Delta AirPods last evening. To be fair, I've measured much worse airline earbuds.
Apparently the frequency response of a headphone changes a lot from person to person so don’t trust the opinion from anyone about it’s sound unless they are your identical twin.
Xiaomi Buds 5 Pro on the test bench. My first measurement on the new APx517
1-1 after 20 minutes. The Habs are making errors and giveaways in their own end.
How to Listen included as one of the 12 best free audio tools. www.headphonesty.com/2026/02/free...?
Watching the Canada vs USA Gold Medal game @ Mistys in Hong Kong. Let’s go Canada
I will be participating in two seminars at the upcoming CanJAM NYC 2026 March 7-8, each one based on headphone research conducted with @rtings.com.web.brid.gy and Dan Clark Audio. More information in the graphic and here www.head-fi.org/threads/canj...
A visit today to Sony Picture Studios where I got a private demo of their Sony 360 Virtual Mixing Environment that provides accurate reproduction of your multichannel control room system including acoustics over headphones using personalized BRIRs. Quite impressive!!
This photo pretty much sums up Montreal’s lack of defensive structure and goalie situation in their 6-1 pathetic loss tonight against Tampa @habsonreddit.bsky.social
Great views when cycling in Marin County. This one is at the Sausalito waterfront
This is the web-based ABX software app I wrote to run headphone distortion listening tests for our headphone distortion research project with @rtings.com.web.brid.gy. Binaural recordings of different headphones playing music files were made SPL from 85 to 134 dB.