Top-rated headphone responses cluster tightly around a shared mean curve.

Evidence

The five top-rated headphones fall within the narrow dark shaded area with the mean response of the group indicated by the black curve. The remaining 27 curves fall within the light shaded area. The dotted curve is the original Harman 2018 target provided by a third party. It doesn’t appear to have been translated from a Type 3.3 to a Type 4.3 fixture used in this study. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1849

Categorization

• QUESTION: A methodological detail: a third-party Harman target wasn’t fixture-translated, yet top rated headphones still clustered near it — is the translation requirement smaller than thought?