EQ headphones, why?

[Jimbob54]

a true, exacting standard (like the harman curve) is more of a suggestion than a final target.

 

[kemmler3D]

well, to @GaryH's point, individual loudness contours and HRTFs vary like crazy. The harman curve is meant to approximately compensate for the difference between a headphone's sound and an idealized speaker's sound in-room. But it's not possible that a standard curve will fully achieve this goal for every ear. It can compensate for the physical and audiological / psychoacoustic things we all share in common. But unfortunately those commonalities don't get everyone the sound they want.

In fact, I spoke to an engineer at a very well-known IEM brand (you've heard of them, maybe even your mom's heard of them) and they told me they had tried to categorize the pinnae of real people. The idea was to measure enough of them to come up with groupings / types of ear shape so that they could in theory customize sound according to your "ear type", something along those lines.

They gave up on this effort after finding no pattern in ear shapes after dozens of measurements.

At the end of the day, the harman curve is a good starting point, but adjusting EQ by ear (NOT via tones, obviously, that's only for arrogant fools) seems to be the only option for a final finishing step between "good" and "perfect", if any such thing can be said to exist in headphones.

 

[markanini]

well, to @GaryH's point, individual loudness contours and HRTFs vary like crazy. The harman curve is meant to approximately compensate for the difference between a headphone's sound and an idealized speaker's sound in-room. But it's not possible that a standard curve will fully achieve this goal for every ear.

That doesn't make sweeping sinewaves a good tool for EQ when you intend to listen to music. If you think Harmans goal was to solve varying HRTFs you are giving them too much credit, evolution did that job for our species.

 

[RoA]

Imho EVERY Headphone benefits from EQ to a larger or smaller degree. It's like photos. I never ever publish a photo that has not gone through some editing.

 

[GaryH]

It's more like TV calibration.

 

[Berwhale]

The harman curve is meant to approximately compensate for the difference between a headphone's sound and an idealized speaker's sound in-room.

I think the Harman curves are 'meant' to support the design and tuning of headphones that will sell more units by maximizing their market (the clue is in the name).

 

[GaryH]

 

[Peterinvan]

I want to point out that headphone reviews rarely address the needs of us older folks. I have not seen any stats on the age group that the manufacturers are tuning for. While I suspect that the market for TOTL headphones is mostly Boomers with that kind of disposable income.
I am 75 this year and my audiologists reports show a slow decline in upper frequency regions (above 8Khz). Consequently, the high frequency emphasis on the 109Pro is a good match for my ears. Very happy with my 109s as well as my new HiFiMAN EF400 amp/DAC. I have ordered the iFi ieMatch4.4 to address the excessive gain on the EF400.

 

[Phoney]

I want to point out that headphone reviews rarely address the needs of us older folks. I have not seen any stats on the age group that the manufacturers are tuning for. While I suspect that the market for TOTL headphones is mostly Boomers with that kind of disposable income.
I am 75 this year and my audiologists reports show a slow decline in upper frequency regions (above 8Khz). Consequently, the high frequency emphasis on the 109Pro is a good match for my ears. Very happy with my 109s as well as my new HiFiMAN EF400 amp/DAC. I have ordered the iFi ieMatch4.4 to address the excessive gain on the EF400.

I'm 26 and I allways have to dial down post 10khz. Usually everything post 8khz. To me it seems like they usually are trying to compensate for hearing loss, as EQ is more popular amongst the younger generation anyways. I have yet to experience a headphone where I've had to boost above 10khz (except Arya v2 with a +0,5db HS), and I think I've had to reduce that area in about 95% of the headphone I've owned.

 

[TrevC]

Do you think it's right or wrong to use the equalizer with headphones?

I use the loudness button on the amp for my AKG 550.

 

[Bernard23]

I want to point out that headphone reviews rarely address the needs of us older folks. I have not seen any stats on the age group that the manufacturers are tuning for. While I suspect that the market for TOTL headphones is mostly Boomers with that kind of disposable income.
I am 75 this year and my audiologists reports show a slow decline in upper frequency regions (above 8Khz). Consequently, the high frequency emphasis on the 109Pro is a good match for my ears. Very happy with my 109s as well as my new HiFiMAN EF400 amp/DAC. I have ordered the iFi ieMatch4.4 to address the excessive gain on the EF400.

I'm in a similar position to you, I EQ nearly all of my phones, both full size and iem to a JM1 based target as close as I can and generally I get some great performances. I recently installed EQ APO and Peace onto my PC and put of curiosity tried the built in hearing test, which shows a massive dip from 11kHz onwards. You can use this test to make a correction profile which is the interesting part. It's a bit crude and frankly not a very satisfactory, solution as it is, but what it does is give you a target for the treble region that you can overlay on an AutoEQ profile and that makes a positive difference.

 

[Peterinvan]

I'm in a similar position to you, I EQ nearly all of my phones, both full size and iem to a JM1 based target as close as I can and generally I get some great performances. I recently installed EQ APO and Peace onto my PC and put of curiosity tried the built in hearing test, which shows a massive dip from 11kHz onwards. You can use this test to make a correction profile which is the interesting part. It's a bit crude and frankly not a very satisfactory, solution as it is, but what it does is give you a target for the treble region that you can overlay on an AutoEQ profile and that makes a positive difference.

Older Ears...

In my case I now find the Loki+ analogue tone control to be the best solution because I can quickly adjust the tone for an album or even an individual track.
I don't feel that EQ is a set-and-leave-it solution.

 

[LuckyNat]

The original question can be flipped around..

Why don't people use EQ with speakers so that it is the norm and hence the expected way to listen to *any* audio.

The answer:

EQ *IS* used with speakers .. with practically every speaker out there!

But it is hidden. It is in the passive crossover, or the active crossover or within the DSP crossover, or it is a physical scheme using resonances of ports, cabinets or horns to 'EQ' the driver .

So ... when one consciously realises that headphones lack the possibility of much of those techniques to apply EQ to the driver, due to the fact they sit on your head, are placed in your ears, are much much smaller compared to the wavelengths of audio they are reproducing and are coupled directly to a variable (your ear canal cavities, head size etc ) ...

... the idea that a headphone can be perfect without EQ, becomes less rational.

Those that do manage to comply with Harmon etc the best, require a large amount of R&D time to develop .. and even then, they've found solutions that were not really practical before 3D printing allowed rapid prototyping and assessment.. it makes for an expensive product !

Even then, the target they can spend all that time aiming for, may not be what enough people want (isn't it something like 60% would chose Harmon as a preference, the other 40 wanting a variation?) .. and differences in culture, age, gender, music taste, even body shape (shoulder size and head size for example change people's experience of everyday audio) ... can all determine preference too.

So then what are the chances of making sales at the price bracket needed to recoup, for the percentage preference of the percentage brand image of the percentage price range .. blah blah.

It becomes a bit of a massive market risk to go there .. and yet there are many many many headphone companies doing absolutely fine, selling millions of headphones which can be shown to have massive FR and distortion flaws .. making good profits, being sold to the masses and everyone happy.

The question should not be "why should a headphone need EQ?" . it should be "why would I want to apply EQ". Given knowledge as to why a headphone may not be perfect for your absolute enjoyment - unless you happen to find a manufacturer who has spent $$$ hitting a sound profile target that suits you too - then the answer to that will be "to make this cheaper and less specialised headphone sound amazing" .

 

[LuckyNat]

Older Ears...

In my case I now find the Loki+ analogue tone control to be the best solution because I can quickly adjust the tone for an album or even an individual track.
I don't feel that EQ is a set-and-leave-it solution.

This is a different thing to what people are normally discussing with regard to EQing headphones.

Part of my enjoyment of music is also the production .. including how they've chosen to make it sound. So I don't want to change it .

 

[pablolie]

This is a different thing to what people are normally discussing with regard to EQing headphones.

Part of my enjoyment of music is also the production .. including how they've chosen to make it sound. So I don't want to change it .

But... since they can't guess what you're using to listen to the music they produced, they couldn't possibly tailor the sound to your particular needs... and vice versa, you can't guess what they truly intended you to hear.

I fully understand what you mean, though. I have always (1) bought equipment that caters to *my* personal preference in sound, and (2) end up ever so slightly tuning things further to my preference with EQ/PEQ.

That said, I also think there is such a thing as "too much" when people apply +/-6dB over the PEQ band, it's rather easy to push equipment into distortion when enforcing stuff it wasn't designed to do. If one needs that much correction, probably they bought the wrong gear given their preferences. It's also pretty much impossible to try to evaluate differences fairly when compensating so much, because it does represent a major volume change and things *will* sound much louder (or quiet) with such changes.

 

[usern]

I've used more than 6dB low shelf boost with all of my headphones.

 

[pablolie]

I've used more than 6dB low shelf boost with all of my headphones.

In certain bands it may change things in a good way, but there's no way ever you can boost 20Hz by 6dB and magically get 20Hz if the equipment wasn't designed to deliver on it to begin with. Several limitations will never be overturned by any EQ.

 

[Bernard23]

That said, I also think there is such a thing as "too much" when people apply +/-6dB over the PEQ band, it's rather easy to push equipment into distortion when enforcing stuff it wasn't designed to do. If one needs that much correction, probably they bought the wrong gear given their preferences. It's also pretty much impossible to try to evaluate differences fairly when compensating so much, because it does represent a major volume change and things *will* sound much louder (or quiet) with such changes.

Which is why the distortion measurements are so important. Take the audeze LCD-X, pretty average without EQ, but give it some sub bass lift and it's an altogether sublime experience, mostly because it has low distortion. Like others, I have peaks >6dB for some of my devices, though that's partly because my hearing above 11k drops 9ff rapidly (one of the features of Peace is you can conduct a basic hearing test which will generate an EQ profile for EAPO)

 

[pablolie]

Which is why the distortion measurements are so important.

That is exactly the reason I mistrust big EQ corrections, because the entire suite of distortion tests at different SPL is seldom retested after the EQ is activated.

 

[Bernard23]

That is exactly the reason I mistrust big EQ corrections, because the entire suite of distortion tests at different SPL is seldom retested after the EQ is activated.

Have you tried taking the Klipsch distortion test though? I'd be surprised if you could hear the effect. Ultimately one data set from a consistent source (ie Amir) is going to give you a semi quantitative basis at worst.