Dan Clark Expanse Headphone Review

[etc6849]

Yep. I will be using measurements from Oratory1990 and others for EQ (my post said that... ), and only using the MiniDSP for checking the distortion after applying EQ. This seems like a good idea as I want to be sure I'm not over stressing the drivers by applying EQ.

I may try level match drivers too, but just moving the ear cups a little can change the MiniDSP measurements a lot. It seems more likely I'll mess things up attempting this.

I would be a little bit careful though in assuming you'll get the sound if you EQ all your headphones to the Expanse frequency response that you measure - this is particularly true for miniDSP EARS that doesn't have an acoustic impedance that accurately mimic real human ears - if you were to do the same process on GRAS which is more accurate to human anatomy then it's a bit more valid to EQ all your headphones to the Expanse frequency response and if you had a GRAS then you could expect them to sound quite similar, but using miniDSP EARS for the same process you're likely to hear bigger differences in sound between them once all EQ'd to Expanse. miniDSP EARS definitely excellent to be used for channel matching EQ though.

 

[Robbo99999]

Yep. I will be using measurements from Oratory1990 and others for EQ (my post said that... ), and only using the MiniDSP for checking the distortion after applying EQ. This seems like a good idea as I want to be sure I'm not over stressing the drivers by applying EQ.

I may try level match drivers too, but just moving the ear cups a little can change the MiniDSP measurements a lot. It seems more likely I'll mess things up attempting this.

Right, good. I didn't notice much change in the measurements when I moved my headphones around on the miniDSP EARS, I did move them around "to the different poles" when I measured my K702 so that it was in different positions but still allowing the ear to sit comfortably within the earcup (so not silly placement so that the pads are resting on part of the ear or something). Since that initial experiment I just measure all my headphones fairly roughly centrally, then replace & remeasure 10 different times, then take an average - I just don't see much variance and the averaging removes the variance to something sensible. Obviously if you get an extreme measurement that is way off, then you'd probably try to work out why and discount it and then just reseat it and measure again. I think it's perfectly fine for channel balancing work. (The most variance I've seen is above 10kHz, and still it's not crazy variance).
Following is an example of HE400SE measured 10 times each channel, reseated 10 times roughly centrally & measured, to give an idea of variance that I see: