Final’s flagship model realizes transparent sound for the uplift that can be gained by listening to music
Development of the A8000 began with reconstruction of physical measurement and subjective evaluation methodologies. Under the subjective evaluation methodology established at the time of D8000's development, the E Series achieved sound quality highly evaluated by many people and became a best seller. With the A8000, a new evaluation index has been incorporated into that subjective evaluation methodology. Among factors that determine sound quality for earphones and headphones, amplitude frequency response is predominant, but there are some sound impression cannot be explained by it. For example, the most critically evaluated aspect of classical music recordings is called transparent sound, a sound impression by which sound is very clear even it is localized at a distant location. We have been considering the realization of this sound impression to be extremely important for becoming uplifted by listening to music. We believe that the high evaluation of our D8000 headphones owes to the realization of such transparent sound. Until now, we have employed modification of the amplitude frequency response, known as tuning, to modify the sound of our earphones, but because it cannot make a great change to time response, it became difficult to achieve transparent sound through tuning. This time, with the aim of achieving transparent sound for earphones, final has developed its own proprietary Perceptual Transparency Measurement (PTM) evaluation methodology. As a result of evaluation and improvement of interrelations between principal components analyized by the results of subjective evaluation and data analysis of impulse response that could not be gleaned from frequency response in the past, an ideal diaphragm material that is extremely light and possessing high sound speed comprised of ultra-thin Beryllium foil (Truly Pure Beryllium Diaphragm) has been adopted for the A8000.