Harman International does a lot of scientific research in audio, and publishes papers on it. Their most recent study had to do with headphones and listening preferences of a wide variety of listeners. Those of us who've been around here a while will not be surprised by the paper's conclusions.
http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2014/10/at-recent-137th-convention-of-audio.htmlAbstract:
Double-blind headphone listening tests conducted in four different countries (Canada, USA, China and Germany) involving 238 listeners of different ages, gender and listening experiences. Listeners gave comparative preference ratings for three popular headphones and a new reference headphone that were virtually presented through a common replicator headphone equalized to match their measured frequency responses. In this way, biases related to headphone brand, price, visual appearance and comfort were removed from listeners’ judgment of sound quality.
On average, listeners preferred the reference headphone that was based on the in-room frequency response of an accurate loudspeaker calibrated in a reference listening room. This was generally true regardless of the listener’s experience, age, gender and culture. This new evidence suggests a headphone standard based on this new target response would satisfy the tastes of most listeners.
