I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

A while ago (OK a few decades ago) I have recollections of a pair of
Jecklin Float electrostatic headphones not inflicting the same level of
in-headness. Does anyone have positive experiences to report with
current weird looking headphones which move the transducers away from
the ears?

Hi Andy,

A few years ago, I built a headphone amp from a design which was published
in hifi world magazine, and that has a phase reversal switch which gets rid
of the "in-head" feeling. Perhaps a search on the web may produce somthing
similar.

Regards

Alan


"andy" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

A while ago (OK a few decades ago) I have recollections of a pair of
Jecklin Float electrostatic headphones not inflicting the same level of
in-headness. Does anyone have positive experiences to report with
current weird looking headphones which move the transducers away from
the ears?

In article . com,
andy wrote:
I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

They will do since most stuff is recorded to sound correct on speakers.
Dummy head recordings which are designed to be listened to on headphones
sound very much better.

--
*Money isn‘t everything, but it sure keeps the kids in touch

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"andy" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

A while ago (OK a few decades ago) I have recollections of a pair of
Jecklin Float electrostatic headphones not inflicting the same level of
in-headness. Does anyone have positive experiences to report with
current weird looking headphones which move the transducers away from
the ears?

Could try crossfeed feature, or look for binural recordings.

On Fri, 03 Jun 2005 16:40:06 -0700, andy wrote:

I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

A while ago (OK a few decades ago) I have recollections of a pair of
Jecklin Float electrostatic headphones not inflicting the same level of
in-headness. Does anyone have positive experiences to report with
current weird looking headphones which move the transducers away from
the ears?


All sorts of stuff on headphone amps he http://headwize.com/index.htm
In particular, this paper: http://headwize.com/tech/sshd_tech.htm may
have some relevence.

--
Mick
(no M$ software on here... :-) )
Web: http://www.nascom.info
Web: http://projectedsound.tk

"andy" wrote in message
ups.com...
I am currently forced to use headphones a lot more than I would like
(i.e. never) and this is going to continue in the near future. My
biggest problem with headphones is the in head effect which I find a
continual source of mild irritation. A glass of wine helps but not
enough.

I think Dolby's had a go at sorting that problem out...

http://www.dolby.com/consumer/technology/headphone.html

Try the demos!

Thanks for the suggestions. I have followed the links and browsed
further.

It would appear that making recordings to be played back on headphones
can eliminate the mildly unpleasant, "in head" sensation. The most
striking example comes from following Rich's link to the Dolby pages
and listening to the racing car example (it used to be trains with
stereo if I recall correctly). However, this is a promotional example
and may not be representative of listening to music. For example, the
source of the sound is constantly moving around rather than remaining
fixed and this may encourage the brain to place the source at a
distance. In addition, if the musical source is fixed and the head is
moved slightly this will move the source in a way that is strange. Will
this pull the sound back into the head?

Unfortunately, I have a mixture stereo and mono music with no
recordings especially for headphones. I did find a couple of files of
raw versus "crossfeed" processed. The in head sensation was marginally
reduced with the processing but probably not enough to be worth while.
There was a loss of clarity as one would expect but no sense of a real
room. In truth part of the processing sounded odd and unnatural. On
balance I preferred the unprocessed files. The combination of effects
used in the files was not known and it may be possible to do better.
However, I suspect that there is no standard set of processing
parameters that is going to work well for all music because of
different microphone arrangements leading to summing left and right
differently and, probably, in a frequency dependent manner if phase
varies with frequency. Can anyone confirm significant positive results
using crossfeed processing?

Thanks again for the suggestions but I think I would still like to hear
from anyone who has experience of the in-headness of headphones like
the AKG K1000, the box-like Stax headphones and the Jecklin/Ergo
headphones which still seem to be around although not with
electrostatic transducers.