Hot Take (or not), if you EQ your headphones to your ears, you can easily beat ANY unEQ'd headphone.

[pfsoft]

Only thing I will never get on headphones is the bass, will never extend as low

That's not true. Many headphones have a more extended frequency response toward low frequencies and are more linear than traditional speakers.
You can never compare the two systems (always at low frequencies) because you don't physically perceive low frequencies through headphones.

 

[JoelDollie]

That's not true. Many headphones have a more extended frequency response toward low frequencies and are more linear than traditional speakers.
You can never compare the two systems (always at low frequencies) because you don't physically perceive low frequencies through headphones.

Yeah that's true, well I meant that it doesn't feel quite the same, not physical, but planars can definitely produce super low frequencies, closed backs as well.

 

[StephanB]

Coming late to the party.

• I got nice results with David Griesinger's DGSonicFocus application.
• I am developing a simplified and more portable version of his application percep-head-eq, which runs in the browser. My version outputs a csv file that you can import into Room EQ Wizard (REW) to produce an EQ in the format of your choice.
• In both cases I use a convolution filter with an HRTF before EQ. The HRTF is in the public domain and produced with an artificial head, it's not tuned to my head, but I still find it effective.
• I am struggling to find a good bass response curve. I lack the knowledge in psychoacoustics. If someone is interested to collaborate on the app, please contact me.

 

[HissingFree]

Coming late to the party.

• I got nice results with David Griesinger's DGSonicFocus application.
• I am developing a simplified and more portable version of his application percep-head-eq, which runs in the browser. My version outputs a csv file that you can import into Room EQ Wizard (REW) to produce an EQ in the format of your choice.
• In both cases I use a convolution filter with an HRTF before EQ. The HRTF is in the public domain and produced with an artificial head, it's not tuned to my head, but I still find it effective.
• I am struggling to find a good bass response curve. I lack the knowledge in psychoacoustics. If someone is interested to collaborate on the app, please contact me.

So as I understand it, we would equalize by comparing a given frequency to a 500Hz reference tone instead of sine sweeping, right? so this instead of moving the frequency slider up and down to quickly try to detect a much higher or lower sounding frequency.

 

[StephanB]

So as I understand it, we would equalize by comparing a given frequency to a 500Hz reference tone instead of sine sweeping, right? so this instead of moving the frequency slider up and down to quickly try to detect a much higher or lower sounding frequency.

Yes, I believe Dr Griesinger has done the homework on this. He recommends to: 1. compare to a reference tone, 2. the duration should be around 1 sec per tone, 3. use 1/3 octave bandpass noise rather than pure tones.

Point 3 engages with the whole discussion on ERB (Equivalent Rectangular Bandwidth) in psychoacoustics. Should we use 1/3 octave across the whole spectrum, or vary the filter width with the frequency? Btw. you can listen to the filtered noise with my app in the browser, DGSonicFocus is a Windows app. You can also produce 1/3 octave filtered noise in REW, but it's slower.

The last question is: what reference curve do we EQ to? Dr Griesinger lets you determine the curve by listening to the tones on a loudspeaker first, so the reference is tailored to your hearing. I use a shortcut: I set the RMS of the filtered noise to 0dB, then I apply the ISO equal loudness contour at 80phons plus a room curve. I would love to have this reviewed by someone with better academic knowledge than me.

 

[IsaacOscar]

The last question is: what reference curve do we EQ to? Dr Griesinger lets you determine the curve by listening to the tones on a loudspeaker first, so the reference is tailored to your hearing. I use a shortcut: I set the RMS of the filtered noise to 0dB, then I apply the ISO equal loudness contour at 80phons plus a room curve. I would love to have this reviewed by someone with better academic knowledge than me.

This sounds similar to what Peace's hearing test feature does. I've been meaning to try it again (last time I tried it I gave it the minimum volume that I could hear each tone at, but that was too difficult; so next time I'm going to try it based on equal loudness to a 500 Hz tone)

 

[stalepie2]

This amp seems to offer something new? AI-assisted EQing:

Luxsin Audio X8 | Desktop DAC and Headphone Amp

Luxsin X8 features 8 CS43198 DACs, dual-mono parallel design, 4800mW output power, a proprietary Digital Audio Core, and the world’s first AI-assisted EQ.

bloomaudio.com

"Siri, drop the bass..."

 

[Granata]

QUESTION: there's a lot of talk about headphone EQ, and I'm wondering if anybody makes a stand-alone product that addresses it. i.e. a headphone amp that takes either analog or USB as input and has some internal configurable DSP EQ. Bonus points for something small and portable.

My home setup has my PC feeding six different pairs of speakers around the house, so applying EQ at that stage is a non-starter.

I recently got a Fiio KA15 to drive a pair of HD 580’s and am happy with it so far. I needed something with USB input that would give me consistent sound regardless of whether I was plugged into my laptop, phone or tablet. It does that and is so small and light that I just keep it attached to the headphones at all times. The shelf filter implementation has some issues to be aware of (see product thread here on ASR) but can be worked around. The other dongle DAC/AMP with PEQ and USB input that I am aware of are the Crinear Protocol Max. There may be others

 

[grmrslmr]

This sounds similar to what Peace's hearing test feature does. I've been meaning to try it again (last time I tried it I gave it the minimum volume that I could hear each tone at, but that was too difficult; so next time I'm going to try it based on equal loudness to a 500 Hz tone)

I'm pretty new to looking at audio in this way and recently picked up my first set of decent headphones (DT 900 Pro X). I've been playing around with Peace and have been reasonably happy with the Oratory preset. I tried adjusting the treble filters of that preset in 0.5db increments and ended up at the "default" setting for most of them. After reading about sine sweeps and using that for EQ, I tried out the Hearing Test feature in Peace. Interestingly, the generated EQ curve was reducing the same bands that the Oratory preset was adjusting (more or less), just less so. I don't have nice speakers or a treated room, so I don't have a good reference to compare to, like OP, but I've been pretty happy with the results. I did notice that there are several Phon curves that you can use to test against and I'm wondering if the correct method is to pick the one that corresponds most closely with your expected volume. Does anyone have experience with that or any thoughts?

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

I recently got a Fiio KA15 to drive a pair of HD 580’s and am happy with it so far. I needed something with USB input that would give me consistent sound regardless of whether I was plugged into my laptop, phone or tablet. It does that and is so small and light that I just keep it attached to the headphones at all times. The shelf filter implementation has some issues to be aware of (see product thread here on ASR) but can be worked around. The other dongle DAC/AMP with PEQ and USB input that I am aware of are the Crinear Protocol Max. There may be others

Thanks. Review of the Filo KA15 is here for those playing along at home.

 

[Sebby]

Anyway, yes, if you want S-tier headphones, EQ is the only way to go. With my Arya Stealth, I used a tone generator and realized I had two peaks and one dip, all narrow band (5200Hz -3db Q8, 7300Hz -4 db Q8, 8500Hz +5db Q7) . Once I fixed those, the highs and upper treble became smooth and I recovered a lot of detail. I added a 1.6 dB low pass at 120 Hz and now I have a wonderful pair of headphones. After going around various audio shows, I haven’t found a single pair of headphones that even comes close to my Arya with EQ, at any price.

 

[JoelDollie]

Anyway, yes, if you want S-tier headphones, EQ is the only way to go. With my Arya Stealth, I used a tone generator and realized I had two peaks and one dip, all narrow band (5200Hz -3db Q8, 7300Hz -4 db Q8, 8500Hz +5db Q7) . Once I fixed those, the highs and upper treble became smooth and I recovered a lot of detail. I added a 1.6 dB low pass at 120 Hz and now I have a wonderful pair of headphones. After going around various audio shows, I haven’t found a single pair of headphones that even comes close to my Arya with EQ, at any price.

There's no headphone that can tick all the boxes. Some are pretty good starting points for EQ that's it.

Gotta make sure they even produce the frequencies to begin with, with reasonable distortion then EQ.

Would be cool to just have a bunch of top engineers try to flatten the EQ to their system and then we average all the curves lol. That might make the godd-est tier headphones

 

[Johnkeizer]

I’m of the generation that considers anything in the signal path to be suspect. So no eq on headphones or main stereo.
I just buy gear that gives me the sound I like.

 

[Mr. Swordfish]

I’m of the generation that considers anything in the signal path to be suspect. So no eq on headphones or main stereo.
I just buy gear that gives me the sound I like.

You don't have a phono preamp with an RIAA eq curve? Or a crossover for your speakers?

 

[Johnkeizer]

ok, let me modify my comment.
I don’t equalise over what has been built in.
I know phono preamps have to reverse equalise the signal off the lp and speakers have crossovers.

 

[JoelDollie]

I’m of the generation that considers anything in the signal path to be suspect. So no eq on headphones or main stereo.
I just buy gear that gives me the sound I like.

Think about it this way - two or three way monitors are EQ, they divide the sound in an unnatural way and try to reconstruct a whole signal.
Any sound reproducing device is a patchwork of electronics and drivers that try to recreate the sound as faithfully as possible.

Buying gear with the sound you like is a good option but that means stopping at what someone else (the manufacturer) tuned for you.

 

[thon]

Buying gear with the sound you like is a good option but that means stopping at what someone else (the manufacturer) tuned for you.

In case of speakers it actually means stopping of what your room adds to the actual sound of the speakers (at least when the room is not treated accordingly).

 

[MbphotoX]

Not really, because you're missing a key piece of data: how the headphone actually interacts with your ear canal and eardrum.

Standard headphone measurements only tell you how they perform on a measurement rig's coupler. That's useful for comparing headphones measured on the same rig, but it doesn't tell you what's happening at your eardrum.

Here's the thing: the air trapped in your ear canal has its own stiffness, and it couples with the stiffness of the headphone driver. That interaction is unique to you. Unless you know your personal HRTF and how a specific headphone system couples with it, you're basically aiming in the dark when you EQ.

Above 2kHz especially, it's the wild west. Everyone's ear canal interacts differently with each headphone.

That said, headphones with low acoustic impedance (low driver stiffness) tend to minimize these individual differences, so they behave more consistently across different ears.(Electrostatic headphones for example)

View attachment 508871
Here's how few closed back headphones measure next to the eardrum of different individuals.

That explains why I've never been bothered by the so-called "Beyer-Peak" that people love to criticise without ever having tried Beyerdynamic headphones..


My hearing caps out at 14-16kHz, but is perfectly fine around 10..
yet, the Beyer Peak had never bothered me, not on the DT770, not on the DT990 edition, nor on the DT1990 PRO (I prefer the balanced pads)
I don't hear a "massive 10dB peak" there..
which led me to believe that my hearing was bad, but when I tested it with different headphones, it was perfectly fine..

so, apparently, the Beyer Peak really depends on your personal "measuring rig" for listening to music.