HyperX Cloud III Wired equalizing help needed

[Miblo]

Hello everyone, I'm new to the forum and I have a couple questions regarding the sound equalization of my set of HyperX Cloud III headphones.

Although i do realise that this model isn't exactly made for audiophiles or people looking for an hi-fi listening experience, I recently got this pair and was pretty happy about the general use experience ( mainly due to comfort, build quality and considering the rather convenient price point i found them at ), especially when taking into account the much cheaper headset i was coming from.

However, I started noticing some annoying flaws with the overall sound, especially at some frequencies ( particularly barely noticeable sub-bass, some muddieness with the mids in general and weak-ish highs ), which seem to be common issues with this specific model's sound, and was looking for ways to improve it. I used Equalizer APO with Peace GUI to tweak the frequency response to compensate for the parts most lacking, but not being much of an expert I never seem to get it quite right. For some reason, especially when listening to voices or playing videogames, the audio seems a bit muffled and I can't distinguish the sounds all too well.

Here are the settings I ended up with :

I'm currently using the usb dongle provided with the headphones, which is supposed to make it sound better than my motherboard's default audio card, and i've updated the firmware to the latest version, even though i disabled pretty much every single setting of the headphones proprietary software since I feared it would compromise the sound too much.

Are there some specific settings i'm getting wrong that are messing up the audio? Or are there any things that I should know to create an equalizing profile that's better than the current one? And if the main flaws of the headset don't seem to be fixable in any way, should I look for another pair and which one ( considering the use cases being general media, music and gaming ) ?

Any tips or response of any kind will be greatly appreciated!

Thanks

 

[twsecrest]

If you plug your HyperX Cloud III headphones into the motherboard's 3.5mm headphone jack, how does the sound compare to the USB toggle?
What is the make and model of the motherboard?

 

[kemmler3D]

Or are there any things that I should know to create an equalizing profile that's better than the current one?

Good news: Looks like people have developed settings to get this closer to the Harman Target, which is as close as you can easily get to a "flat" (as in accurate) response with headphones. There is room for tweaking if you don't like the sound but it's probably the best starting point:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HyperX/comments/1hwduh9/if_you_own_hyperx_cloud_iii_read_this_ngenuity

The thread has instructions on how to apply it, but basically you copy those settings, put them in a text file, then add that text file as an "include" in EQAPO. You should revert / disable the changes you've made in the Peace GUI when you do that.

The other good news is that frequency response is overwhelmingly more important to sound quality than most other factors with most headphones. As long as you can't hear noticeable distortion, tweaking EQ can get you really far. EQ won't necessarily make your headphones into a $2000 set, but it can get you closer than you might expect.

And welcome to ASR!

 

[twsecrest]

I'm currently using the usb dongle provided with the headphones, which is supposed to make it sound better than my motherboard's default audio card,

I doubt that the USB dongle is better that any motherboard's on-board audio, might be better than some, but not all other motherboard's on-board sound card.

 

[Miblo]

If you plug your HyperX Cloud III headphones into the motherboard's 3.5mm headphone jack, how does the sound compare to the USB toggle?
What is the make and model of the motherboard?

The motherboard is an ASUS TUF B650 Plus WiFi so the audio card should be an Realtek 7.1 Surround Sound High Definition Audio CODEC ( or Realtek ALC S1200A ). By plugging the headset directly into the mobo jack the sounds seems to have noticeably increased in volume and it's a little better than before but not by a great margin, but i assume it's better off like this so i think i'll keep using the jack, thanks for the suggestion!

The thread has instructions on how to apply it, but basically you copy those settings, put them in a text file, then add that text file as an "include" in EQAPO. You should revert / disable the changes you've made in the Peace GUI when you do that.

The other good news is that frequency response is overwhelmingly more important to sound quality than most other factors with most headphones. As long as you can't hear noticeable distortion, tweaking EQ can get you really far. EQ won't necessarily make your headphones into a $2000 set, but it can get you closer than you might expect.

And welcome to ASR!

That's great, i'll check these settings out and report the changes and improvements as i try them.

Thanks for the replies!

 

[twsecrest]

A sound card might improve audio quality, over the on board audio, like a used Sound Blaster Z-SE off eBay.

 

[Miblo]

Hello, I tried out the profiles included in the reddit post linked in chat which redirected me to the AutoEQ database, where an equalized profile for this headset was posted by RTtings.

Here are the settings suggested by the site and the graph provided for those interested :

This EQ profile is way different from the sound natively provided by the out-of-box product but, despite it supposedly being the closest you hypotetically could get to the target Harman curve with this model, the overall sound is ( at least to my untrained ears ) totally off. The bass and sub-bass region are well balanced, but the mids are even muddier than before and highs just sound off despite me not being able to pinpoint the problem with them precisely.

With this preset, the soundstage sounded even more closed and muffled ( even for a closed-back model ) and the voices became much less clear. Moreover, the -7.1 dB pre-amp was great for avoiding clipping, but it killed the volume completely, making the headset sound much quieter than I'm used to, even at max system volume ( i usually use 70/80% tops ).

Since i was not satisfied with the result, I tweaked the settings and tried looking at other users different profiles to see whether it would help adapting it to my preferences and to increase the volume, and ended up with these results :

I completely removed the negative gain on the 6.6 kHz frequency, added/increased a negative one to the mids at 155 Hz to try and regain clarity with the voices and made other small changes to the other settings, and now it sounds far better. I was able to increase the pre-amp value up to -2.5 dB, which seems to be the sweetspot even with the high gain values added, since I noticed the audio never gets high enough to cause any clipping, but just to be safe I enabled the "prevent clipping option", so it should be fine.

However, I fear that these changes, even though they're closer to my likings, stray way too much from the "ideal" curve and still could be improved more, but I admit i lack the necessary knowledge to improve it further.

Where should I go from here and how should I approach the situation? And should I just get accustomed to the more technically accurate response curve or is it correct to try and adapt it to what I currently find better?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Redacted]

I've generally found motherboard DACs to pick up more noise than USB DACs, but many people must have much better MBs than me!
I went the Equa.APO and peace route for a while, trying my various headphones and the recommend EQ files, but in the end I just removed it all from my PC. In every case I tried, I preferred the sound using my media player (FB2K) in exclusive WASAPI mode (event driven). It bypasses all the windows gubbins and gives the DAC the actual bit-depth/sample-rate of my FLAC files, and thus no EQ to the headphones. If I wanted to tweak, there's enough graphic EQ in FB2K - but I leave it flat.

I have a large music collection, and there are so many recordings that sound EQ'd completely differently, that I'd end up almost with a preset for every band, or even every album! Most of the time my non-EQ phones sound fine.

 

[Miblo]

I have a large music collection, and there are so many recordings that sound EQ'd completely differently, that I'd end up almost with a preset for every band, or even every album! Most of the time my non-EQ phones sound fine.

Though I think it mostly depends on the headphones used and how good the sound is without any tweaking, i definitely feel the same towards the frustration of having to over-fixate on EQ profiles calibration because every one of them sounds great with some songs but horrible with all the others, it's been giving me headaches too these days and sometimes I turn the equalizer off and take a breath of relief even if the sounds slightly worsens.

I made this post originally just because I thought I could get, with some help from experts from this forum, to a profile which could be both delicate enough not to destroy the original "personality" of the headphones' base sound but also different enough to compensate its lacks and biggest flaws, but i guess it can't do miracles, or at least not without some drawbacks.

About the different media player use mode, i quite litterally know nothing about it and wouldn't even know where to start so can't really say anything about it except for trying to learn a bit more about it, so thanks for providing this new perspective on the matter.

 

[Redacted]

Everyone has differently shaped ears, that make any given headphones sound different, person to person. It's much like how speakers can sound different in different rooms or different positions. All of ASR accepts that about speakers but some folk can be a bit precious about headphones... Maybe I'm just lucky with the shape of my ears and my inexpensive phones! Also lucky with my room and not needing EQ there (or bass and treble controls that we are not allowed to describe as tone controls by the nit-picky philosophy police).