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Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro Review (headphone)

It is possible to EQ it on my pc but i have no EQ via Turntable to headamp. I am not listening to loud via headphone. Any production of Vinyl has its own issues. Selling England by the Pound is nicely done and sounds very good. Led Zeppelin IV (Remaster) Vinyl sound almost terrible on the same gear. I tried three different headphone from 24 Ohm in-ear over 80 Ohm Beyerdynamic DT770 to the DT990 it doesnt change the productio n. I am happy with the DT990. Thx for your answer.
 
This is a review and detailed measurements of the Beyerdynamic DT990 (250 ohm) open back headphone. A member was kind enough to purchase one new and drop ship it to me due to request from membership! The DT990 costs about $160 and has been around for many years.

I like the look of the DT 990:

View attachment 109718

The pads felt hard at first but after just a couple of hours of use, they became more comfortable. Combined with light weight of the unit, they are nice to wear.

I did not care as much for the plastic cups, nor the sharp edges of meta pieces:
View attachment 109719

The cups are round and large making for easy fit not only around your ears but also the measurement gear. I have never had a headphone so easy to mount on my fixture to measure.

Note: The measurements you are about to see are preformed using standardized GRAS 45CA headphone measurement fixture. Headphone measurements require more interpretation than speaker tests and have more of a requirement for subjective testing as a result. In addition, comparison of measurements between different people performing it using different configurations requires fair bit of skill. So don't look for matching results. Focus on high level picture. Listening tests are performed using RME ADI-2 DAC and its headphone output.

Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro Measurements
Let's start with frequency response of DT 990 and comparison to our preference target:
View attachment 109720

We have some serious issues here. The headphone is tuned to produce its max bass output at around 150 Hz below which it drops rapidly. Inverse is in play above 2 kHz where we way overshoot. Predicted response then would be a bit boomy and very sharp and bright. Here is the same as relative measure:
View attachment 109721

Bad news doesn't stop there. Distortion is quite high:
View attachment 109722

View attachment 109723

The DT990 is also extremely insensitive:
View attachment 109724


You better have a very high performance headphone amplifier that can drive its high impedance and provide the required power:

View attachment 109725

Notice how 250 ohm is the minimum impedance. Close to tuning frequency of the headphone, it shoots up to 350 ohm so your headphone amp needs to also have a very low output impedance as to not impact the frequency response of this headphone. Heaven knows you don't want to mess up the response of this headphone any more than it already is!

Group delay response shows some areas you don't want to eq as usual (shown as dip in frequency response) and some fuzziness that I rather not see:
View attachment 109726

Beyerdynamic DT 990 Pro Headphone Listening Tests and EQ
It took all of a few seconds to want to rip the DT 990 off my head as I always start with female vocals and this headphone shred the vocals to pieces. And proceeded to drill into your head with those shards! This thing is so bright that it brought high frequencies resonances that I did not even think were in the music! This stood out even more because there is little sub-bass energy. The peaking around 150 Hz provides a bit of help there but also can sound a bit boomy on some content.

Distortion was a serious problem. At moderately high level it would add this warbling sound to many tones from vocals and some lower notes. At higher levels bass notes would start to create ticking sounds. You wouldn't normally listen that this level though so it is an engineering failure more than audible one (without EQ).

I am always hopeful that I can fix headphones with EQ but my first two tries last night were met with failure. This headphone's main saving grace is its rather good spatial qualities. Alas, fixing the high frequency peaks and levels by eye killed that aspect and still left the nastiness that was in there at times. Any attempt to boost the bass frequencies resulted in nasty bass distortion and worse warbling sound per above.

Right when I was going to give up, I decided to use an assisted method to develop the EQ. I swept the headphone and manually dialed in EQ settings and iterated to get rid of the peaking in three high frequency bands. This was the result:
View attachment 109727

Focusing on the left, I had dialed in some 6 dB yet the effect was minimal in response. I pushed that up to eve 10 dB and the graph simply did not change indicating the driver is out of gas. Audible effect of that bass boost was horrible with distortion galore. So I took that out. I then found the sound to be rather dull and spatial effects compromised. So I dialed in a shelving filter that boosted the entire range. This was the final result:
View attachment 109728

You can mess with that shelfing filter (Band 5) to your taste. On some content I wanted it higher, on some others, less. The latter is what I am showing here.

I must say, I was surprised how this finally salvaged the headphone sound. I am listening to it as I type this and it almost sounds "normal" in a good way! :) Mind you, if you turn up the level too much, the warbling sound comes to haunt you but that is likely not your everyday level.

Conclusions
While the DT 990 Pro is a comfortable headphone to wear, it has a seriously flawed design with poor frequency response which exaggerates the heck out of highs and dumps a bunch of distortion in there for good measure. It also lacks deep bass reproduction. Careful equalization did manage to salvage it at the end but took a lot of doing.

I am not going to recommend the Beyerdynamic DT990 Pro. It is just too broken. Even though EQ helped a lot, it is still an inefficient headphone with high distortion. If you have one, use my EQ and comment on how you like it. Otherwise it is a pass with or without EQ. Let's hope we can find a headphone as comfortable as this but with much better engineering.

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/

Amir’s comments seek to negate certain issues with 5 bands of PEQ.

The WiiM streamers only have 4 bands.

Would anyone care to translate Amir’s 5 band solution into 4?

Many thanks.
 
Amir’s comments seek to negate certain issues with 5 bands of PEQ.

The WiiM streamers only have 4 bands.

Would anyone care to translate Amir’s 5 band solution into 4?

Many thanks.
You can use https://autoeq.app/ to calculate the ideal 4-band EQ.

Simply select the DT990, then choose Custom Parametric EQ and enter the WiiM's PEQ constraints.

AutoEQ won't calculate the ideal combination of filter types, so best to experiment with this yourself to find the combination with optimal results.
 
You can use https://autoeq.app/ to calculate the ideal 4-band EQ.

Simply select the DT990, then choose Custom Parametric EQ and enter the WiiM's PEQ constraints.

AutoEQ won't calculate the ideal combination of filter types, so best to experiment with this yourself to find the combination with optimal results.
Can you explain that for a noob like me? How do i enter the WIIM PEQ constraints and what are those constraints? I never did that and i have the 990 and the 1990 as well. I only complain a bit about the sharp heights.
 
Can you explain that for a noob like me? How do i enter the WIIM PEQ constraints and what are those constraints? I never did that and i have the 990 and the 1990 as well. I only complain a bit about the sharp heights.
Once you select Custom Parametric Eq, you can scroll down and type in the minimum and maximum frequency, gain, and Q value for each filter band, as well as the type and number of available bands:
Screenshot_20240130-160955_Chrome.png

To find out the constraints, simply open the WiiM App and experiment with the PEQ menu to find the lowest and highest values that it allows you to enter.
 
I would be careful blindly following EQ recommendations. In general, I'd say you're okay up to around 5k. Above that, your HRTF will move those peaks around, so it's best to run sweeps yourself.
 
The Beyers are what a magnifying glass is for the eyes, but for the ears. It's a specific tool used to spot problems in a track (coughing, sneezing, chair creaking, etc). People see these in stores or at Amazon and see 'studio' and therefore think they must be amazing for everyday listening. Everyone I know who uses these in a studio environment will use them for a few minutes to look for problems. Once corrected, they will put on another pair of headphones - or use main monitors - and start mixing.
 
The Beyers are what a magnifying glass is for the eyes, but for the ears. It's a specific tool used to spot problems in a track (coughing, sneezing, chair creaking, etc). People see these in stores or at Amazon and see 'studio' and therefore think they must be amazing for everyday listening. Everyone I know who uses these in a studio environment will use them for a few minutes to look for problems. Once corrected, they will put on another pair of headphones - or use main monitors - and start mixing.
I agree only about the DT990. DT880, DT250, DT770, DT231 are warm tuned Beyers that I've personally heard.
 
The Beyers are what a magnifying glass is for the eyes, but for the ears. It's a specific tool used to spot problems in a track (coughing, sneezing, chair creaking, etc).
The DT990's treble emphasis will create issues where there aren't any in the recording.
What sounds perfectly neutral on good monitors, will suddenly be peaky and sibilant played back through the DT990.

Instead, just get a neutral headphone and do the magnification inside your DAW using bandpass filters.
Infinitely more versatile than any baked-in house curve.
 
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The Beyers are what a magnifying glass is for the eyes, but for the ears. It's a specific tool used to spot problems in a track (coughing, sneezing, chair creaking, etc). People see these in stores or at Amazon and see 'studio' and therefore think they must be amazing for everyday listening. Everyone I know who uses these in a studio environment will use them for a few minutes to look for problems. Once corrected, they will put on another pair of headphones - or use main monitors - and start mixing.
Actually quite the opposite, as @staticV3 explained they create problems where there is none.

You are ocurring on the bias that "bass is what the uneducated masses enjoy, treble is for refined smart folks".

The same way excessive bass make the record sound bloated and muddy, excessive treble also cause problems. It is like a fish eye lens distorting people faces and you think "aha, they are actually ugly"
 
I got one of these years ago when I knew absolutely nothing about the Harman curve, what can I do with it now?
 
You guys are missing @Mr Vinyl 's point. He's saying they aren't for everyone or for general listening.
Harman is already quite generous with the gain. What the 990 does is well beyond reasonable, it a borderline case of compesating for high frequency deafness.

But yeah, as we say here "for everything weird there is a crazy person to enjoy it"
 
The Harman 2018 curves purpose is to "benchmark" the sound of headphones by statistically calculating a score up to 100 which predicts listener preference, the higher the better. There's no requirement to EQ all your headphones to comply with it. That would be kind of a lost cause since there's unit variation, and individual anatomical variation affecting the FR. Also, many times headphones measure divergently from Harman 2019 and are still enjoyable to many.

Caveats aside, the EQ preset provided by Oratory1990 can be good a starting point if you wish to dabble with EQ correction, only if you move on to personalizing the EQ in a following step.
 
I think a lot of the comments above fall between two stools.

Headphones ‘more sensitive’ to higher frequencies will indeed reveal certain issues the listener might not hear immediately, using other headphones.

Please remember, the ‘circle of confusion’ only exists in a tiny number of cases; those of us who look for that level of accuracy.

It’s okay sticking a bunch of laypeople in a testing room and asking what they prefer, it’s quite something else asking them what they’re more than happy to listen to.

I love the research which shows the tonality people prefer. But I’d caution against it being a benchmark from which, if deviated, everyone hates.

They’re not the same thing.
 
Actually quite the opposite, as @staticV3 explained they create problems where there is none.

You are ocurring on the bias that "bass is what the uneducated masses enjoy, treble is for refined smart folks".

The same way excessive bass make the record sound bloated and muddy, excessive treble also cause problems. It is like a fish eye lens distorting people faces and you think "aha, they are actually ugly"
I'll add my response to this circle of confusion because I think we need to address the audience for the DT990 Pro and similar products. In the context of ASR's readers where people are buying as the end consumer listening to music that's as pleasant as possible (whatever reference curve that happens to be for consumer listening preferences), this review is spot on - it's not for your listening pleasure just like a track specific Mazda Miata with lowered suspension is not comfortable driving around town. @Mr Vinyl is on point with the use of this product as a "magnifying glass" for audio post production.

I personally use the DT1770 Pro (closed version that's more comfortable for longer editing sessions) which have similarly hot treble; the reason I need this magnifying glass is because I have to eliminate dialogue vocal hiss/clicks/noise that would otherwise be missed on a "normal" headphone unless I increase the volume - I want to catch these unwanted noises at lower listening volumes to avoid fatigue! For this purpose, these sort of headphones are ideal and maybe that's what "Pro" means? I don't know but it would be great if headphone companies clearly stated something like: "Frequency curve optimized for treble clarity above 2kHz," and provide the curve with a longer explanation about its intended use cases. It took me a few weeks of reading reviews before I found headphones with this characteristic that are comfortable enough for 3 hour editing sessions.

But these headphones are not my only tools - after that first task is done, I then master on Neumann KH120 II in nearfield to get a feel for how everything sounds on perfectly balanced speakers. Different horses for different courses my friends!
 
Already doing this but the high distortion in the bass makes everything sound funky
It's possible you got the wrong headphones for "easy listening" plug-n-play. Bring your headphones to a retailer that will allow you to A/B test your headphones with a more balanced model from Sennheiser and see if you prefer the more crowd pleasing reference curve - who knows, you may prefer the DT990 Pro at the end of it all!
 
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