Apple Music EQ Presets, What are they doing?

[yourmom210]

@abdo123 old thread, but any word on how you got these measurements? Some of them look different than their counterparts in the macOS Apple Music 10-band EQ presets. Appreciate the original post, btw!

 

[yourmom210]

I got this page bookmarked and am always referring back this, so super helpful. On my Sennheiser HD 58X I tend to use the Latin EQ to bring up the bass and treble since the 100-3000 range is already excellent, on my iPhone or iPad w an Apple dongle or FiiO KA11

 

[abdo123]

@abdo123 old thread, but any word on how you got these measurements? Some of them look different than their counterparts in the macOS Apple Music 10-band EQ presets. Appreciate the original post, btw!

It’s made from an iPhone, as people on computers have much more options for EQ that it doesn’t make sense for me to measure it on a computer.

 

[PeakDodger]

I will check but I think Apple would have made so that the presets are identical between Apple Music on iOS and macOS. It's interesting because comparing it to macOS you can see what the sliders are set to, but your graph shows the real effect

 

[Sn2w]

There has been interest in this thread over what the Apple music EQ presets (on iPhone / iOS) are actually doing, in an effort to use them to correct headphone responses without much inconvenience.

To access these settings on your iPhone, you simply go to Settings -> Music -> EQ.

The EQ is only active inside the Apple music app though, something to keep in mind.

Now here are the results

View attachment 145980

Spoiler: Accoustic

View attachment 145981

Spoiler: Bass Booster

View attachment 145982

Spoiler: Bass Reducer

View attachment 145983

Spoiler: Classical

View attachment 145984

Spoiler: Dance

View attachment 145985

Spoiler: Deep

View attachment 145986

Spoiler: Electronic

View attachment 145987

Spoiler: Flat

View attachment 145988

Spoiler: Hip-Hop

View attachment 145989

Spoiler: Jazz

View attachment 145990

Spoiler: Late Night

View attachment 145991

Spoiler: Latin

View attachment 145992

Spoiler: Loudness

View attachment 145993

Spoiler: Lounge

View attachment 145994

Spoiler: Piano

View attachment 145995

Spoiler: Pop

View attachment 145996

Spoiler: R&B

View attachment 145997

Spoiler: Rock

View attachment 145998

Spoiler: Small Speakers

View attachment 145999

Spoiler: Spoken Word

View attachment 146000

Spoiler: Treble Booster

View attachment 146001

Spoiler: Treble Reducer

View attachment 146002

Spoiler: Vocal Booster

View attachment 146003

To Download the measurements, Click HERE.

Tagging interested members from the other thread @Oddeeo @Yorkshire Mouth @Bimbleton @Taddpole @Χ Ξ Σ

What confuses me is the „Late Night“ Preset… it seems to be the ONLY one to not only be a subtractive EQ but also boost the Bass region… what is this about? I going back and forth with my DT1770 and now I’m starting to test other headphones for this… I can hear some change in the mids to highs but I’m not sure if the „boosted“ area is actually boosted? Can someone shine some light on this for me?

 

[aoremusic]

Frequency response curve/graph depends on speaker drivers and crossovers. ...So the crossover is like EQ,, or the EQ is used to get a flatter frequency response.
So EQ OFF might result in a very non-flat response, iow not "un-coloured", not "unflavoured".
So it's better to label it FLAT when it is never off, there is always some EQ. - the EQ to make it flat/neutral.

That is not correct.
When EQ is applied, it is summed with the frequency response of the device playing the music. Using the Flat EQ results with no changes across the frequency spectrum.
The Flat EQ had its use when iPods were synced to iTunes and you could choose an EQ preset for each song in their metadata. Setting a song to Flat EQ would override any other preset EQ in a song's metadata on the iPod. There might be another use where no metadata EQ preset was being applied when equalizer was set to OFF, so setting it to Flat would allow to get no equalization and still trigger EQ preset for songs that had them in their metadata.

 

[aoremusic]

What confuses me is the „Late Night“ Preset… it seems to be the ONLY one to not only be a subtractive EQ but also boost the Bass region… what is this about? I going back and forth with my DT1770 and now I’m starting to test other headphones for this… I can hear some change in the mids to highs but I’m not sure if the „boosted“ area is actually boosted? Can someone shine some light on this for me?

The Late Night preset triggers Apple's internal compression algorithm, reducing the dynamic range of the audio to increase perceived loudness. Based on the frequency response graph, I would assume that compression is applied unevenly through the frequency range. Or maybe there is also an EQ setting being applied on top. What is surprising is that that preset sounds to me like it has less bass than when the EQ is off despite what I see on the graph.

 

[abdo123]

The Late Night preset triggers Apple's internal compression algorithm, reducing the dynamic range of the audio to increase perceived loudness. Based on the frequency response graph, I would assume that compression is applied unevenly through the frequency range. Or maybe there is also an EQ setting being applied on top. What is surprising is that that preset sounds to me like it has less bass than when the EQ is off despite what I see on the graph.

You have any data to back this up?

 

[aoremusic]

You have any data to back this up?

Enabling Late Night audio mode

If you often listen to your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch in very noisy or very quiet environments, you may be happy to know that iOS 6 now includes a ...

www.ilounge.com

The frequency response graph might be wrong too because compression is a non linear process