I'm not active on this forum, so I apologize if this is old news, but I wanted to share an easy method to provide some EQ insight using the measurement data from ASR in VituixCAD.
I started down this path having a few pairs of headphones that have been reviewed here or at least very similar to headphones that have been reviewed here. I have Sennheiser HD580, or the poor mans 650, which really doesn't need any EQ apart from some low end lift. I also have Philips Fidelio X2 and recently acquired Hifiman HE-4XX which is rather similar to the HE-400i. Both of these need some EQ to perform at their best. One of my attempts to find the right EQ settings was to try the EQ suggestion in the review, which I did not prefer over my own efforts. The X2 EQ I felt sucked the life right out of them, and the HE-400i EQ wasn't too bad, but the top end was lacking for me making them sound a a bit dull / muddy. Inspection of the EQ bands used in the review, I have to think that they were simply eyeballed basic tweaks. Surely we can do better.
Luckily the reviews include some very useful data for EQ purpose, which is the normalized deviation plot.
Step 1. Trace it to generate a frequency response for the headphone that we can then EQ to flat to match the reference curve.
Step 2. Next, we load in the traced frequency response as driver data. Connect the source to the driver, then right click on the frequency response and select "save selected as overlay". This will provide a static reference of the original response, making it easy to visualize the EQ change we are making.
Step 3. Go to the options, and make sure that the DSP system is set to "generic" instead of "analog" as the EQ will be applied in digital domain by the PC. Now, delete the trace connecting the source to the driver, and add in the parametric EQ blocks and have some EQ fun. Below is the proposed EQ in the review of the HE-400i:
With only a few minutes of adjustment, I arrived at the following EQ. The 7500Hz band here is shorted, it was decided that I did not prefer dropping that range of the treble, it lost too much of the top end. Of course, your preference may vary, flat may not be what sounds right to you, but it is a good reference to know where you started and where you are headed.
Hope you enjoyed this little walk down visually applying EQ with the aid of VituixCAD. You can now copy these parameters to your favourite parametric EQ and give it a listen. Have fun!
I started down this path having a few pairs of headphones that have been reviewed here or at least very similar to headphones that have been reviewed here. I have Sennheiser HD580, or the poor mans 650, which really doesn't need any EQ apart from some low end lift. I also have Philips Fidelio X2 and recently acquired Hifiman HE-4XX which is rather similar to the HE-400i. Both of these need some EQ to perform at their best. One of my attempts to find the right EQ settings was to try the EQ suggestion in the review, which I did not prefer over my own efforts. The X2 EQ I felt sucked the life right out of them, and the HE-400i EQ wasn't too bad, but the top end was lacking for me making them sound a a bit dull / muddy. Inspection of the EQ bands used in the review, I have to think that they were simply eyeballed basic tweaks. Surely we can do better.
Luckily the reviews include some very useful data for EQ purpose, which is the normalized deviation plot.
Step 1. Trace it to generate a frequency response for the headphone that we can then EQ to flat to match the reference curve.
Step 2. Next, we load in the traced frequency response as driver data. Connect the source to the driver, then right click on the frequency response and select "save selected as overlay". This will provide a static reference of the original response, making it easy to visualize the EQ change we are making.
Step 3. Go to the options, and make sure that the DSP system is set to "generic" instead of "analog" as the EQ will be applied in digital domain by the PC. Now, delete the trace connecting the source to the driver, and add in the parametric EQ blocks and have some EQ fun. Below is the proposed EQ in the review of the HE-400i:
With only a few minutes of adjustment, I arrived at the following EQ. The 7500Hz band here is shorted, it was decided that I did not prefer dropping that range of the treble, it lost too much of the top end. Of course, your preference may vary, flat may not be what sounds right to you, but it is a good reference to know where you started and where you are headed.
Hope you enjoyed this little walk down visually applying EQ with the aid of VituixCAD. You can now copy these parameters to your favourite parametric EQ and give it a listen. Have fun!