AKG K702: a valid alternative EQ to Harman Curve for you to try

[roladyzator]

I have a 7000 Hz peak on my K702. I reduce it with a filter with Q=5 and gain of -4.

Starting with Oratory1990's PDF, I don't use the 50 Hz filter and leave a little more upper bass (the 210 Hz filter). Less negative gain for 2.3 kHz and 5.5 kHz. I don't activate the 3.5 kHz - it makes them somewhat more fatiguing for me.

Compared to Oratory1990 equalized Sennheiser HD700, they sound similar but somehow more laid back yet more fatiguing with certain sounds. I probably can't get the upper mids and treble right.

They're made in China and IIRC the serial number was starting with 217.

If they were more consistent they would be such an obvious recommendation. In Poland you can buy almost two of these for the price of HD600, Sundara and the like.

 

[Robbo99999]

I have a 7000 Hz peak on my K702. I reduce it with a filter with Q=5 and gain of -4.

Starting with Oratory1990's PDF, I don't use the 50 Hz filter and leave a little more upper bass (the 210 Hz filter). Less negative gain for 2.3 kHz and 5.5 kHz. I don't activate the 3.5 kHz - it makes them somewhat more fatiguing for me.

Compared to Oratory1990 equalized Sennheiser HD700, they sound similar but somehow more laid back yet more fatiguing with certain sounds. I probably can't get the upper mids and treble right.

They're made in China and IIRC the serial number was starting with 217.

If they were more consistent they would be such an obvious recommendation. In Poland you can buy almost two of these for the price of HD600, Sundara and the like.

That's pretty interesting that you have a peak at 7000Hz too, which doesn't appear in my measurements, nor Oratory's, nor Crinacle's.....and therefore I had thought that my 7000Hz peak would therefore just be a quirk of the headphone on my own head, but you have a peak there too, interesting. I haven't checked my other units though, in terms of hearing a 7000Hz peak, I've just checked my 4th unit, I could potentially check my other 3 units. I had also wondered if it might just be down to headphone placement, and perhaps it would change if I removed and then reseated the headphone, but I didn't check that. I haven't experimented yet with what EQ filter would be required to remove the 7000Hz peak.

Your headphone starting at 217 for the production number (probably 217000), means that would place yours between my 3rd & 4th unit in terms of age. Both of those purchased through Amazon UK, 3rd unit purchased beginning of last year and 4th unit purchased beginning of this year (if I remember rightly for both of them).

EDIT: checked on my 3rd unit of K702 by listening to sine tones, it also has the peak at 5000Hz albeit to a lesser extent than my 4th unit of K702, which is reflected in my measurements between them too. 3rd unit also has the peak at 7000Hz that does not appear in measurements, but again to a lesser extent than unit #4. My third unit has new aftermarket pads that mimic the same design as the originals, I've proven in past measurements that they only differ slightly than stock pads (potentially imperceptibly). The 4th unit is using new stock pads (recently bought headphone).

So I'm totally confident that Crinacle's measurement is not representative of my 4 units of K702 - they all have noticeable peaks at 5000Hz whereas Crinacle's measurement is showing no peak at 5000Hz.

 

[roladyzator]

I did some casual listening today with my K702 S/N: 214079 (I said it was 217XXX previously, that was an error on my side).

Current Oratory1990's preset taken at face value results in a bright K702 for me. Clearing up the shouty mids alone makes them more listenable and the bass boost is a welcome addition. However, I don't like the ~210 Hz reduction of -3.6 dB, it makes the bass kind of disappear behind the rest of the music. Increasing the bass shelf more does not compensate for this. I don't think I need the 3.5 kHz filter as well.

Robbo's EQ: I welcome the additional warmth and not reducing that much in the 200 Hz region. Bass sounds nice and full. Treble level is reduced in general. Besides sounding a little too warm and "bloomy" at times, this is a good way to listen to my K702.

My personal favorite is a bass shelf and -4 dB filter at 2.3 kHz from Oratory1990's PDF. While the shoutiness in the mids is not completely gone, it's not terrible and it's balanced out by the extra bass.

My K702 have a treble peak at 7 kHz and reducing it with a narrow peak filter does clean up the sound a little, but I'm not 100% sold on it. Sometimes leaving the stock sound in the upper treble just sounds better to me in tracks with less sibilance.

There was also Sonarworks correction but I haven't listened to that in a while. From memory, it sounded too dark, but certainly fine after some adjustment time. Just a little unexciting.
I did capture the FR of that correction so I may paste it here for reference.

 

[Robbo99999]

I did some casual listening today with my K702 S/N: 214079 (I said it was 217XXX previously, that was an error on my side).

Current Oratory1990's preset taken at face value results in a bright K702 for me. Clearing up the shouty mids alone makes them more listenable and the bass boost is a welcome addition. However, I don't like the ~210 Hz reduction of -3.6 dB, it makes the bass kind of disappear behind the rest of the music. Increasing the bass shelf more does not compensate for this. I don't think I need the 3.5 kHz filter as well.

Robbo's EQ: I welcome the additional warmth and not reducing that much in the 200 Hz region. Bass sounds nice and full. Treble level is reduced in general. Besides sounding a little too warm and "bloomy" at times, this is a good way to listen to my K702.

My personal favorite is a bass shelf and -4 dB filter at 2.3 kHz from Oratory1990's PDF. While the shoutiness in the mids is not completely gone, it's not terrible and it's balanced out by the extra bass.

My K702 have a treble peak at 7 kHz and reducing it with a narrow peak filter does clean up the sound a little, but I'm not 100% sold on it. Sometimes leaving the stock sound in the upper treble just sounds better to me in tracks with less sibilance.

There was also Sonarworks correction but I haven't listened to that in a while. From memory, it sounded too dark, but certainly fine after some adjustment time. Just a little unexciting.
I did capture the FR of that correction so I may paste it here for reference.

Oratory's latest EQ's for K702 sound too bright for me too, so we've got that in common. They'll always be some unit to unit variation combined with personal taste. Appreciate the feedback on my EQ - again unit to unit variation & personal taste, but seems like you notice an improvement.

EDIT: I run my HD560s headphones on a slightly darker EQ than Oratory's too. But for my HE4XX and NAD HP50 I would run an Oratory EQ unaltered, so it's not the same for each headphone.

 

[roladyzator]

I've loaded yours, Oratory1990's and Sonarworks EQ curves into REW.

I used 1 kHz as the alignment point (not great but had to go with something).

 

[Robbo99999]

I've loaded yours, Oratory1990's and Sonarworks EQ curves into REW.

I used 1 kHz as the alignment point (not great but had to go with something).

View attachment 284217

Interesting. I can't vouch for the accuracy of your graph (as I'm not gonna check it), but I'll assume it's valid & accurate - certainly it's showing my EQ is darker than Oratory's which is what I already knew & have mentioned. There's general similarities between all of them in terms of dips & peaks, and certainly between my own & Oratory's EQ (which is to be expected), just different slants mainly.

 

[Dazerdoreal]

Ok then, as long as you're aware of the difficulties/pitfalls re listening to sine sweeps/tones. What do you mean re Solderdude's measurement? It certainly looks different because it's done on a flat plate, or do you mean something else?

I made some tests and now I am quite sure it all depends on how I wear them. Depending on how the pads are angled towards my ear the focus shifts from 5,5k to 7k.

So, I found a position where your EQ probably would sound about "right", it is just not my standard way. I would have to wear them in front of my head and the headphone tilted backwards. Then I can hear the 5,5k peak clearly. If I do it the other way round I hear the peak at 7k.

 

[Robbo99999]

I made some tests and now I am quite sure it all depends on how I wear them. Depending on how the pads are angled towards my ear the focus shifts from 5,5k to 7k.

So, I found a position where your EQ probably would sound about "right", it is just not my standard way. I would have to wear them in front of my head and the headphone tilted backwards. Then I can hear the 5,5k peak clearly. If I do it the other way round I hear the peak at 7k.

Interesting. K702 is the one headphone of mine that I've done extreme placement measuring on my miniDSP EARS (not for this particular EQ project), and it didn't vary much which led me to revise my headphone measuring procedure to be roughly central through multiple reseats. Perhaps it can have those larger variances though with placement on real heads vs a flat cheek fixture. Oratory's K702 measurements show the 5.5kHz peak, but not the 7kHz peak (so my measurements also show the same trend, as it's based off his initial measurement of one of my units). K701 (and by extension K702) doesn't have large variation on real human heads though (blocked ear canal measurements) from some data I've seen, can't find the graph now, might have even been Harman research (can't remember). Found the post where I found the graph, but unsure it's source (& in that thread where this was posted MayaTlab user said he thought these graphs stop at 2kHz, so it wouldn't cover the 5.5kHz to 7kHz are that you're talking about):

I wear my own K702 just in a way that creates the least number of feelable contact points on my ear, I can just about see the front of each earcup out of the corner of my eye when I look left & right (but that will vary on how big your face is, lol). A lot of the times with my various headphones I'll try to wear them as far forward as I can, ie just to the point that the rear of my ear is no longer touching the back of the inside earcup pad. Generally there's not masses of space in headphone earcups so my method of wearing them is probably reasonably central.

 

[roladyzator]

Testing with pink noise, moving K702 on my head results in changes in the brightness.
The sound is the brightest when I imagine me year is in the center or the front part of the earcup (that is, the front of my ear is closer to the front side of the earcup).
When I move the earcups so that the rear of my ears start touching the rear side of the cups, I get noticeably darker sound.
It gets even darker when I continue to move the earcup until it starts deforming my ears.

 

[roladyzator]

I created a 10 filter EQ approximation of SoundID equalization using AutoEQ and minor custom adjustments.
Feel free to try that as an alternative.

 

[markanini]

Testing with pink noise, moving K702 on my head results in changes in the brightness.
The sound is the brightest when I imagine me year is in the center or the front part of the earcup (that is, the front of my ear is closer to the front side of the earcup).
When I move the earcups so that the rear of my ears start touching the rear side of the cups, I get noticeably darker sound.
It gets even darker when I continue to move the earcup until it starts deforming my ears.

I noticed something similar on AKG K612, which shares some internal design aspects.

BTW a popular tweak on Harman correction EQ is boosting upper-bass and reducing upper-mids lightly, Oratory1990 personally uses something like this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/ii25sl/_/g38a7ri

 

[Deckard01]

Hello and thank you for the EQ Robbo99999.

As I am had never before paid attention to EQ. Can please someone tell me as I used to hear my K701 as it is, how to import EQ for the cans?

Can be imported somehow? Will it have effect when I listen Qobuz or any other streaming or listening my local audio files through Foobar?

Moreover EQ do you believe is beneficial for K701/K702?

I use Windows 10 and Macbook pro for my audio.

Thank you all

 

[roladyzator]

@Deckard01 It is very beneficial for me with my K702.

At the very least, you may simply like increasing the bass below about 100 Hz. According to Harman research, 2/3 of the listeners (research included about 200) prefer a bass boost of about 5.5 dB. I am in that group.

Then, the second issue with K702 (and K701 I presume) is to decrease the ~2 kHz peak.

Adjusting those 2 areas to personal taste may be enough to improve your experience, but feel free to experiment and play with other filters.

Apparently K701 is not the same as K702, but Oratory1990's has measured those too. Find them in his subreddit.

index/list_of_presets - oratory1990

r/oratory1990: Mostly covering topics like headphones, in-ear headphones, acoustics, electroacoustics, acoustic tuning, headphone design …

www.reddit.com

From the software side, on Windows, the best combo is EqualizerAPO (the EQ "engine") and Peace (the UI for entering EQ settings more easily).
The advantage of using this is that it will manipulate sound for all applications which use the DirectSound output.

 

[roladyzator]

BTW a popular tweak on Harman correction EQ is boosting upper-bass and reducing upper-mids lightly, Oratory1990 personally uses something like this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/oratory1990/comments/ii25sl/_/g38a7ri

I'm recently discovering that I also like a bit of 200 Hz "bloom" for lack of a better word. If I lower it too much, like the presets suggest, the low bass seems disconnected from the rest of the music.
For example, I don't touch the 200 Hz range in my K702, but instead use a strong bass boost at lower frequency (low shelf, 8 dB, f=70 Hz, which gives you 4 dB).

 

[jtavy]

There is a free EQ plug-in from NCH called DeskFX. You can choose as many bands as you want, but there is no EQ display for you to see, but it works fine.

 

[Deckard01]

@Deckard01 It is very beneficial for me with my K702.

At the very least, you may simply like increasing the bass below about 100 Hz. According to Harman research, 2/3 of the listeners (research included about 200) prefer a bass boost of about 5.5 dB. I am in that group.

Then, the second issue with K702 (and K701 I presume) is to decrease the ~2 kHz peak.

Adjusting those 2 areas to personal taste may be enough to improve your experience, but feel free to experiment and play with other filters.

Apparently K701 is not the same as K702, but Oratory1990's has measured those too. Find them in his subreddit.

index/list_of_presets - oratory1990

r/oratory1990: Mostly covering topics like headphones, in-ear headphones, acoustics, electroacoustics, acoustic tuning, headphone design …

www.reddit.com

From the software side, on Windows, the best combo is EqualizerAPO (the EQ "engine") and Peace (the UI for entering EQ settings more easily).
The advantage of using this is that it will manipulate sound for all applications which use the DirectSound output.

Thank you roladyzator for your answer!

If you know any app for Mac too I would be thankfull.

Moreover this is going to work when using an external Dac? Because as you said it will manipualte for all the apps which use DirectSound output and in my case the sound output is the Dac.

Thank you

 

[roladyzator]

If you know any app for Mac too I would be thankfull.

I have no experience with Mac, but maybe the older version of AutoEQ's readme could help:

GitHub - jaakkopasanen/AutoEq at 64c4bbbc6485c6f91594b98b55d2f7c614f092d7

Automatic headphone equalization from frequency responses - GitHub - jaakkopasanen/AutoEq at 64c4bbbc6485c6f91594b98b55d2f7c614f092d7

github.com

is this going to work when using an external Dac?

Yes - DirectSound is the name of the primary software interface, a "manager" of sorts, which connects all applications and the OS to your audio devices.
Other interfaces are WASAPI (Exclusive mode in particular) and ASIO, which offer lower latencies (for studio work etc.) and exclusive access to an audio device for a single application.
The latter have to be configured on purpose in your apps (because DirectSound is the default option) and does not allow EqualizerAPO and other OS-wide effects.

 

[roladyzator]

@jtavy Does that plugin have a Mac version?

 

[Robbo99999]

Hello and thank you for the EQ Robbo99999.

As I am had never before paid attention to EQ. Can please someone tell me as I used to hear my K701 as it is, how to import EQ for the cans?

Can be imported somehow? Will it have effect when I listen Qobuz or any other streaming or listening my local audio files through Foobar?

Moreover EQ do you believe is beneficial for K701/K702?

I use Windows 10 and Macbook pro for my audio.

Thank you all

Hi, roly has responded to you already, but here's a useful list of software:

EQ Software for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS/iPadOS and Android.

Any suggestions are welcome. Post suggestions here. I will gather the details and add them. Thanks. :D This will be organized as results come in. @sweetchaos made a guide for PEQ filter data input and operation. For crossover software go here. Windows: Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Yes, EQ is very beneficial for K702 (& by extension K701 because they're similar headphones in their frequency response albeit not identical) - so both can sound a load better with EQ. I wouldn't really use my EQ on your K701 because my EQ is for the K702 and in my view they're not similar enough to warrant using my EQ on the K701, but if you had the K702 then I'd recommend my own EQ over others (I'm biased in my opinion, but there is a bit more to it than that, but I covered off the reasons in earlier posts in this thread).

 

[Deckard01]

Hi, roly has responded to you already, but here's a useful list of software:

EQ Software for Windows, Linux, macOS, iOS/iPadOS and Android.

Any suggestions are welcome. Post suggestions here. I will gather the details and add them. Thanks. :D This will be organized as results come in. @sweetchaos made a guide for PEQ filter data input and operation. For crossover software go here. Windows: Equalizer APO is a parametric / graphic...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Yes, EQ is very beneficial for K702 (& by extension K701 because they're similar headphones in their frequency response albeit not identical) - so both can sound a load better with EQ. I wouldn't really use my EQ on your K701 because my EQ is for the K702 and in my view they're not similar enough to warrant using my EQ on the K701, but if you had the K702 then I'd recommend my own EQ over others (I'm biased in my opinion, but there is a bit more to it than that, but I covered off the reasons in earlier posts in this thread).

Hello Robbo99999 and thank you for the response.

Now I only have K701, so if you have any good working eq for these cans without loosing their soundstage would be perfect.

Yes Roly answered perfectly. I am just a bit acknowledged how to use eq. I thought it was an import something so as to test eq and keep the default if you do not like a specific eq setting.

As Qobuz give as output the Wasapi exclusive to my Dac which as I read is the most preferable because does not conflict to any other sounds of pc or external audio.
And I was thinking how will the eq will work as choosing this output through my Qobuz.

Anyway I guess I have not understand something correctly!

Thank you all for your responses. Really appreciate your help!