Mixed results with eq'ing headphones

[vco1]

This weekend I had my first experience with eq'ing headphones. More or less prompted by the discussions on ASR.

The soft- and hardware I use are an rPi 4 with HifiBerry digi2 pro and DSP add-on running HifiBerryOS, connected via coax to a Topping DX7Pro. Headphones I started with were the Meze 99 Classics.

I used the Oratory profile for these headphones and manually entered the peq settings.

While I could definitely hear a change in sound, it wasn't really satisfactory all over the board. Compared to the non-eq'd sound, it was definitely less dark. However, the mids were a bit too much upfront to my liking. Sometimes giving me the impression they were coming through a phone line (I'm exaggerating of course, but you'll get my point hopefully). Bringing down the gain of one or 2 of the filters mostly fixed this.

More serious though was that I had the impression that the sound was somewhat distorted. Keep in mind that I mostly listen to electronic music, so it's not always easy to judge what the original sound is supposed to be. Still, the feeling that something was 'wrong' remained.

As far as I know, there is no option in HifiBerryOS to lower the overall gain. A setting I see in a lot of these eq profiles. However, in a thread on HifiBerry's forum they say there's no need for this, as there should be more than enough headroom.

Since I'm new to this kind of tweaking the sound, it could be I missed something here and there.

Any tips, suggestions, advice would be helpful. So far I'm thinking I'm just adding a source of distortion in an otherwise clean system.

 

[flipflop]

The unit-to-unit variation of these headphones is through the roof:

Meze 99 Classics.pdf

Shared with Dropbox

www.dropbox.com

Meze 99 Classics – In-Ear Fidelity

crinacle.com

Meze Audio 99 Classics (over-ear headphones)

Headphones Measurement Blog

clarityfidelity.blogspot.com

https://www.stereophile.com/images/ifmeasure/MezeClassic99.pdf

https://www.docdroid.net/enYZsTS/a-...-around-ear-and-on-ear-headphones-pdf#page=13 (Low Anchor)

It's therefore not reasonable to assume that the frequency response of the Meze 99 Classics measured by oratory would be similar to the FR of your headphones.
My advice is to acquire a new pair of headphones from a reputable company and then try again.


If your equalization software doesn't have a preamp setting, you should create the EQ profile using only filters with negative gain.

 

[vco1]

I do have several other headphones. Just thought the 99's were a nice starting point. I was wrong apparently.

 

[staticV3]

@vco1 my recommendation regardless of the headphone brand: collect every reputable frequency response measurement you can find. Make EQ presets out of them using REW or the AutoEQ python script.
A/B them all until you've found the one that sounds best.
Never settle on just one source of measurements.

Handy programs for this are: REW, Webplotdigitizer, Cupscale Foolhardy Remacri, Equalizer APO, Sublime Text, AutoEQ Python.

If you have a Windows PC and would like to give this a try, then I could prepare the presets for you and send them over.
The one you like best you could then copy over to your Pi.

 

[ZolaIII]

@vco1 show us the PEQ you used and precisely describe what you want to achieve!
As much as I have seen measurements they need only one parametric EQ filter and a lo self. Also how loud you want to listen? They tend to iron up a bit on loud levels (85~86 dB). Highs will however stay edgy (less but still).