If your definition of reference is that of a functioning network music player then no it can’t get any better.
An indicator for what 65% of a group of mostly Harman employees prefer with recordings chosen by Harman developers on one and the same pair of headphones manufactured by Harman. My guess would be: alter one of these parameters and the results will most probably look completely different, even with you claiming to be in the group of average perceiving listeners.
Do not get me wrong. We should be grateful that Dr. Olive is publishing details on the enormous effort his company is undertaking for internal measures of product management, R&D and marketing. Competitors tend not to publish this, and both ways are legitimate.
Bass or treble balance is just an indicator for people having very different perception and taste when it comes to headphones and in this case things can easily be adjusted with standard in-app EQ or tone control. My experience is that with frequency bands the human ear is more sensitive to (1-6K in particular) verdicts on what sounds ´natural´ or ´neutral´ tend even more to deviate and slight alterations in both level and filter Q can make a huge difference.
Not the idea of generating averaged curves for product development is a flawed idea, but the idea that the resulting curve of one such process can be applied as an industry standard on products by other manufacturers which should be judged according to how precisely they hit the curve.
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Agree - recently purchased HD 620s illustrate this - nightime listening and the HD 820s leak too much (occasionally disturbing my partner at stupid o’clock). Took me an age to decide based on so many lukewarm reviews, which were predominantly based around the Harman target. Anyway, I’ve tried some of the HD620 curves in Roon’s new headphone section and the results were startlingly brilliant to begin with then annoyingly hollowed out as I wondered were artist voice timbre had gone. Not the adjustment curve’s fault, just as you say, horses for courses (and in my case, some VERY wonky hearing with an increasing amount of tinnitus 
).
Back to the original post - agree to an extent as headphones are not all equal and headphone amps are certainly not. Then again you can get to ‘Good enough’ with surprisingly little (relatively speaking!) money these days. I’ve given up on worrying about speakers - I will never have enough money!
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you can take the harman curve or leave it be - but the tone here comes across as arrogant and rude. in case you weren’t aware.
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or enough hd-space
And more than a little troll like. As a rule I try not to feed the trolls.
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“Best” or “Perfect” are subjective, no matter how little or how much something costs - even when coming from so called ‘objective camp’ users. Yes, there are massive diminishing returns in most modern hifi, but one can only say what sounds ‘best’ personal to them. That goes for just about anything in life.
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I just bought a pair of speakers (for $5K, half the new MSRP) from a guy who is getting new $30,000 speakers. The rest of his system is probably $40K. He ONLY listens to live concert recordings of Phish and Grateful Dead. He says he has 130,000 tracks, I recall. He’s a very nice guy, but it blew my mind! His system is so good that it would reproduce the most well-recorded reference tracks (you know, the ones some audiophiles obsess over) with startling realism. I don’t think live Dead and Phish recordings fall into that category, but correct me if I am wrong! Different strokes…
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I would not think so either…at least not the ones I’ve heard so far. My guess is that the human hearing mechanism, which is a complex interworking of biomechanical componentry and less than completely understood processing by the brain, contributes to the widely varying preferences in music and sound reproduction. It would be fascinating to be able to pop into your friend’s head and experience the music the way they do!
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You are doing the right thing buying the physical media. This is the only way to guarantee you will or being able to reproduce the version of an album you want. By version I mean the things that can change track listings, remix, re-release, etc. Some albums have an incredible number of versions ranging from perfection to crap depending on your sound preferences though some releases are known to be crap.
Peruse the Pink Floyd catalog for examples. You can have the version of the Wall that sounds best to you and your streamer can swap it for an alternative or the label can release a remix and push it off on the streaming companies. It is also likely different streamers have different versions of the same album. The worse thing that can happen is if an album is pulled from streaming and this can be done by label and others who own portions of the album (writing, publishing and mixing). In that case you nothing. Your rig is only as good as the music source you send through it.
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Many audiophiles might still perceive this as a goal as it was pretty popular for decades to demo systems with such reference tracks. My impression is that most of music lovers today have moved away from this idea although it might be fascinating for 15 minutes.
They seemingly do not want the hi-fi dealership´s favorite ´audiophile demo tracks´ with acoustic guitar and female jazz singer to sound impressing but they want their own personal favorites and associated music like Spotify radio to sound as good as possible.
Notice a lot of people who are willing to pay way more than 10 grand for a system and asking to check it with AC/DC, early Genesis, Madonna or Kraftwerk to name a few.
Cannot speak for the zillion of bootlegs and live recordings but I would say the studio albums which are known to me fall into that category. “American Beauty” by The Grateful Dead was actually one of the first rock/folk albums being produced in impeccable way and having all the ingredients for an audiophile recording - in 1970, years before DSOTM or Rumors. Can easily imagine others to sound fascinating from audiophile point of view and give a ton of enjoyment on a really good system.
If you have ever listened to such a transparent-forgiving-yet-dynamic high end system, you start seeing rock, pop and electronic recordings with a different eye. A lot of mainstream stuff is actually pretty good and absolutely capable of producing that fascination.
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Listening to music (and the choice of what you listen to) is a subjective activity. Therefore, it depends on the individual. Almost 50 years ago I bought a record deck, a Linn Sondek LP12 which I still have and use. In those days a good hifi shop proposed that you listen to various bits of equipment and then choose the one that sounded best to you and was within (or sometimes just beyond) your budget. This still applies today, as does the principle that if you can’t hear and appreciate the difference it is not worth wasting your money. Fortunately there are hifi companies who have embraced the digital and now streaming music revolutions and continue to invest in making the listening experience better and better at various price points. All I can say, David, is that I am delighted that you are satisfied with your listening experience. It’s a shame that you can’t or don’t wish to experience something better. Your ear and personal taste is the only way to decide. But, the sky is the limit!
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Re “If you have ever listened to such a transparent-forgiving-yet-dynamic high end system…”
I have, many times! Some systems are more forgiving of bad recordings than others, but in my experience no great system can make a crappy recording sound really good. GIGO = garbage in, garbage out. Some high-end systems are so revealing that bad recordings are painful.
He listens mostly to live recordings from Dead and Phish, if not exclusively. I listen to the Grateful Dead quite a bit, but mostly studio recordings. I like those.
It’s not for me to judge what he likes or anybody else does. I listen to a wide variety of music, and seek out the best recordings of those artists and performances that I can get. Why not? But I’m not one of those audiophiles who has a couple of dozen reference / audition tracks and listens to them over and over again. That’s boring! IMO
I’ve always hoped that high-end audio would stimulate record producers to keep making really well recorded and produced music that has all the elements that we audiophiles look for, including soundstage width and depth and separation of instruments and that holographic image, and recreation of a live performance. But the reality is that too many young people don’t care about expensive two channel systems, and mostly listen through Beats headphones or earbuds. Makes me crazy. Every time I’ve sat somebody down in front of my system, which is by no means extravagant but (maybe $18k retail), they’re shocked at how good well recorded music sounds. Sometimes jaw-droppingly so.
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According to my experience with multiple systems it is a fine line between the two extremes. You have some ´forgiving´ and ´mildening´ systems which as a downside sound dull, lame or lack dynamics and a certain attack.
On the other hand, many of the loudspeakers being praised for impulsive qualities, resolution or detail tend to sound unforgiving, harsh or annoying with many recordings which are actually not annoying but just a bit treble-laden or dense in the mix.
There are some combinations of room and loudspeaker getting both aspects right and this is what I consider to be ideal. Particularly as it is increasing the number of recordings of a given genre which sound really great, even those which might be containing compromises in the mix and sounding annoying on other systems. If you have an example of a GD or Phish live recordings, would be interested to know it.
A recording which sounds crappy on every single system - for sure not! But according to my experience the number of really crappy or technically flawed recordings is surprisingly low even with mainstream genres, amateur productions or older recordings.
If a recording sounds ´painful´ or annoying on just some loudspeakers it might be a problem of this particular one being critical with certain frequency bands, in many cases lacking midrange/upper midrange smoothness and transparency. A bad room or unfortunate combination of loudspeaker and room can contribute massively to this problem and is pretty common.
This is what vastly happened with recording engineers being into recording acoustic performances and having access to good studio monitors and digital mixing technology alike. The percentage of classical, jazz and folk recordings offering such audiophile imaging qualities is astonishingly high.
For pop, rock and electronic music it is not really the intension of the musicians and recording engineers in most of cases so I would not expect that to happen. Other aspects with such recordings might be offering listening enjoyment with a different focus.
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I concur mostly with your post, and very much applaud that you’re not mentioning associated electronics in this context, since rooms/speakers massively determine a system’s sound, typically swamping any reasonable electronics’ contributions.
I’d only deviate from your assessment by suggesting to also aim at the most neutral combination of speaker-room setup, and to add seasoning to different masterings’ balancing via DSP instead.
Take note, that I’m not just eyeballing frequency response alone, but also include distortion profile and time domain behavior in my assessment.
I’d never classify any speakers as being a fit for a certain genre, they’re either neutral or not, and I’d also not accept severely band limited shoeboxes anytime.
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Thanks. 
No need to feel bad for me, though. I’m a few months away from having my better systems and rooms set up in this new house (we just moved a few weeks ago, so other tasks must take priority). For now, I’m making the best of what I have available. That I found such modest setups with less than ideal acoustics so enjoyable inspired me to start this thread.
This past weekend, I replaced the 7-inch 2-ways (just there temporarily) with GoldenEar SuperSat60 on-wall speakers and a SVS 3000 Micro sub. I completed a Dirac Live calibration using a Denon AVR-X4800H A/V receiver and miniDSP UMIK-2 mic with custom calibration file from Cross Spectrum Labs. Creating a good calibration in a reverberant room is as much art as science, but I ended up with something that sounds pleasing and reasonably correct after three tries. I had an audiophile friend over yesterday to get his thoughts, and he said it’s the best sounding surround system he’s ever heard and reiterated his assessment via email the next day. I’m looking forward to having him back after I add treatments!
But again, my intended use for this room is casual background music and watching news plus the occasional Hallmark movie with my wife. No one is going to hear deep into the mix or perceive the finest details from audiophile recordings here. And that’s perfectly fine.
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This is exactly what I was trying to point out - a combination of loudspeaker and room which leads to a maximum of neutrality, i.e. tonally balanced direct sound, tonally balanced indirect sound, a reasonable balance between the two and absence of audible resonances or discrete reflections. If you achieve this and make sure some subjective parameters (such as localization stability, ambience and character of bass impulses) are alright, you most likely end up with the listening conditions I was describing as balanced between ´forgiving´ and ´resolving´. Unfortunately that seems to be a very unpopular thing as it requires attention to proper room treatment, constant directivity speakers and awareness for a proper balance of directivity index and RT60.
It is good that you suggest tonally neutral listening conditions and therefore dismiss the Harman curve for loudspeaker/room combinations which is a drastic example of the dull, lame, forgiving setup I was describing. Seemingly the majority of self-proclaimed ´hi-fi objectivists´ does the opposite. That might explain my slight frustration with those.
If you have a neutral setup both in terms of direct and indirect sound, you would not need any seasoning even if masterings are very different. If you have a situation with some recordings require cranking up either bass or treble while others subjectively call for reducing it, it is highly likely an outcome of massive flaws caused by improper combination of loudspeaker and room (bass problems might indicate resonances or narrow-banded dips while treble problems often result from imbalanced or overly low speaker directivity).
Distortion profile is useful if you want to rule out audible distortion. It does now allow any prediction on how audible distortion might sound.
Time domain is an interesting field which I also take into account but heavily rely on extended series of subjective listening tests as there is no proper objective method of analyzing the resonance behavior of loudspeakers in a room at different SPL, frequencies and impulse Q combined.
I agree, but ´neutral´ should be defined as subjectively neutral timbre and not be mixed up with linear frequency response on axis under anechoic conditions.
In my understanding the single most important objective parameter for a loudspeaker is the directivity index/polar pattern, particularly how constant it is in the frequency band 300-8000Hz. Unfortunately most speakers on the market miserably fail to meet required specs for home listening in this regard, particularly those leading to a ´Harman curve situation´ in a room.
Can things (sound) get better?
Yes, you are at the start of your audiophile journey.
I’m pretty sure that I qualify:
noun. au·dio·phile ˈȯ-dē-ō-ˌfī(-ə)l. : a person who is enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction.
Nothing in there about spending a certain minimum amount. And it’s not necessary to spend huge sums to achieve accurate (high-fidelity) sound here in 2025 for the reasons I mentioned at the top of this thread.
I’m not putting down anyone who has elected build systems with eye-watering pricetags. Nothing wrong with having what you want if you can afford it.
[Moderated]
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Well that all depends on what they are spending money on, now doesn’t it?
Money for room treatment and room correction can be money well spent. Money for audiophile Ethernet cable and switches many would consider money poorly spent. And so on…
The main point about today’s entry level audio equipment is that it is vastly superior to entry level audio equipment from 30 years ago. And for many, if not most, people that will be their starting and ending point. Audio is similar to many other enthusiast hobbies where the vast majority of people never get past the entry level while the hard core enthusiasts are never satisfied.
For example in the area of home theater the leading edge users have upwards of 11 audio channels plus a few subwoofers while most people are happy with a soundbar and maybe a single subwoofer.
Thank goodness for those hard core enthusiasts since they are ones driving their hobbies to produce better equipment.
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