Preference Bound

The Preference Bound draws a shaded band on the graph showing the range of frequency responses most listeners prefer, based on listening-preference research. It answers “how far from the middle of the road is this tuning” rather than “does it match one exact line”.

Visitors toggle it from the graph toolbar. For how to read it, see Targets and preferences.

How the band is aligned

The band follows the graph’s alignment setting (Hz or Avg), smoothing and baseline, like every other curve. It is aligned by its center — the midpoint of the upper and lower bounds — not by the diffuse field target it is defined against. This matters because the DF target does not sit inside the band everywhere: in the bass, the preferred range lies several dB above it.

Aligning the band the way you align a measurement means a headphone in the middle of the preference range lands in the middle of the band, whichever frequency you align at. At the default 500 Hz alignment the band’s center and the DF target nearly coincide, so the band looks the same as it would if it were anchored to the DF.

If you display the base DF target and align at a low frequency such as 50 Hz, the band will not sit where the DF-relative bound values would put it — the band keeps its alignment to the curves you’re comparing, not to the DF.

Tip

The band is widest in the bass (about 6 dB at 50 Hz versus 2 dB at 500 Hz). Aligning in the midrange gives the most reliable read of whether a measurement falls inside the preference range.

Setting it up

The toolbar button only appears once the operator has shipped the data and configured it under PREFERENCE_BOUND.

It needs three files:

• Bounds U.txt and Bounds D.txt — the upper and lower bounds, as offsets in dB from the base target. They sit directly in data/, alongside phones/ and target/:

  20.0  2.5
  25.0  2.8
  31.5  3.1
  ...

• The base diffuse field target, named by BASE_DF_TARGET_FILE without its .txt extension. It is read from your regular target folder (PATH.TARGET_MEASUREMENT, ./data/target/ by default), so don’t copy it anywhere else. "KEMAR DF (KB006x) Target" loads ./data/target/KEMAR DF (KB006x) Target.txt.