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Tilt Tone Control for Headphones / Speakers

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Robbo99999

Robbo99999

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I don't know a single gamer who would need to use a tilt effect though. Maybe there are, but how many ?

A serious gamer who really cares about latency would probably discard everything that could affect CPU, GPU and/or latency, possibly including EAPO itself.

Anyway, if there is a latency penalty but that penalty is inferior to the screen's refresh rate, then once again, "it's all good". Even for a 144 Hz display, the penalty would have to be bigger than 7ms to even become remotely noticeable. And I doubt a single GEQ or PEQ filter has such a penalty.

My guess is that only for musicians that could make a difference. It's as good a guess as the guy who posted in the other forum's topic.

Here, this one is not a gif.

View attachment 144077
Ok man, stop polluting this thread with your gifs/pics, it's not constructive & not appreciated.

To be honest it sounds like you don't know much about gaming, I'm one of the most "successful" players in BF1 for example, and I use Harman Curve EQ for Virtual 7.1 Surround, and the Latency penalty is 0.0ms as you can see down in the Analysis Panel:
latency.jpg
A latency penalty for sound in gaming would be important to consider, because our reaction time to sound cues is less than it is for visual cues, so your 144Hz screen comment is not relevant. Anyway, that's a tangent......if you do find out what the millisecond penalty would be on a certain system then post it back up sometime, otherwise that's enough.
 

Thalis

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Hi @Jose Hidalgo

I have downloaded MS 1.22 but I an getting "Wrong CheckPNGFiles value (1 or 0 only) in Settings.ini" error. I can't find the line with that syntax in the Settings.ini..... did I miss out something in other places?
 

Jose Hidalgo

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@Robbo99999 : maybe if you were a little less aggressive ? You know, you can't control what others post in a given thread, including pics and gifs. You are among the ones that post lots of pics BTW (REW screens for instance). Plus the fact that YOU use a Harman EQ curve doesn't mean that other gamers do too. I'm willing to bet that a huge part of them doesn't even know what a Harman curve is. But nevermind.

@Thalis : wrong thread buddy, Robbo is about to tell you that you are "polluting" his thread too. Let's leave him with his thread. ;)
 
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Robbo99999

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Hi folks, I found a more linear tone control than the one I introduced in the first post of this thread. I found it over on miniDSP forums, someone had mathematically worked out the most linear (straight line) tone control represented by parametric filters. It's three High Shelf Filters acting together (you'd set the Gain to the same value to each one): 63Hz Q0.5 / 632Hz Q0.5 / 6324Hz Q0.5

(I'll update the first post of this thread with this new finding).
 

ADU

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Posted this in another topic. But this is what I use as a tilt control for my DT-770's. It's just a simple two point variable graphic EQ in Equalizer APO's Configuration Editor. I adjust the amount of tilt when needed by simply selecting the point at 20 kHz (with a dragbox), and moving it higher or lower, usually with the up/down arrow keys on my keyboard, which work in 1 dB steps.

index.php


If your headphones have too much bass (instead of too much treble, like the DT-770), then you'd want to leave the point at 20 kHz set at 0 dB, and just move the point at 20 Hz lower. Otherwise you'd have to include a Preamp control to prevent clipping in the higher frequencies... which shouldn't really be necessary with the above setup.
 
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Robbo99999

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Posted this in another topic. But this is what I use as a tilt control for my DT-770's. It's just a simple two point variable graphic EQ in Equalizer APO's Configuration Editor. I adjust the amount of tilt when needed by simply selecting the point at 20 kHz (with a dragbox), and moving it higher or lower, usually with the up/down arrow keys on my keyboard, which work in 1 dB steps.

index.php


If your headphones have too much bass (instead of too much treble, like the DT-770), then you'd want to leave the point at 20 kHz set at 0 dB, and just move the point at 20 Hz lower. Otherwise you'd have to include a Preamp control to prevent clipping in the higher frequencies... which shouldn't really be necessary with the above setup.
That would be perfectly fine too. Did I read somewhere that Graphic EQ function of EqualiserAPO has a latency penalty in contrast with parametric EQ which induces virtually zero latency? That might be the only down side if audio latency is important for the use case.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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Hi folks, I found a more linear tone control than the one I introduced in the first post of this thread. I found it over on miniDSP forums, someone had mathematically worked out the most linear (straight line) tone control represented by parametric filters. It's three High Shelf Filters acting together (you'd set the Gain to the same value to each one): 63Hz Q0.5 / 632Hz Q0.5 / 6324Hz Q0.5
It certainly is accurate, for a parametric solution. Nice.

fdhdfh.jpg


Here's an example with 3 x 3 dB gain (total filter amplitude being 9 dB or +/- 4.5 dB).
We stay within +/-1dB of the straight line, except below 30 Hz.

Its beauty lies in its simplicity (only 3 HSQ filters).
It would be easy to be even more accurate by adding more filters : 5, 7, etc. Although that probably wouldn't be necessary.

With that said, unless latency is crucial (and it's definitely not for general listening purposes), like @ADU said, a Graphic EQ will be even more accurate. That's what I use in Mega Switcher's Tilt filter, and it's perfectly fine. I could change it to this HSQ filter, but so far I haven't had any complaints.
 
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Robbo99999

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It certainly is accurate, for a parametric solution. Nice.

View attachment 340197

Here's an example with 3 x 3 dB gain (total filter amplitude being 9 dB or +/- 4.5 dB).
We stay within +/-1dB of the straight line, except below 30 Hz.

Its beauty lies in its simplicity (only 3 HSQ filters).
It would be easy to be even more accurate by adding more filters : 5, 7, etc. Although that probably wouldn't be necessary.

With that said, unless latency is crucial (and it's definitely not for general listening purposes), like @ADU said, a Graphic EQ will be even more accurate. That's what I use in Mega Switcher's Tilt filter, and it's perfectly fine. I could change it to this HSQ filter, but so far I haven't had any complaints.
Yep, good way to illustrate it. And in most practical use cases the variation from perfect linear target would be less than that too, simply because when used you would probably only be having around 1dB max per filter to fine tune tonality.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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It's true.
In my app people can use up to 6 dB max amplitude (up to 2 dB per filter in your case). Here's an excerpt from the manual.
But I generally don't go further than 3 dB in my listening sessions (1dB per filter in your case).

Tilt.jpg


Also, my Tilt filter is centered around 1 KHz. No special reason for that, other than it's what I found in some high-end equipments and apps.
Centering it around 1 KHz gives it just a little more presence around that frequency (I say "more" and not "less" because in most sessions I use the red tilt, not the green one). I'd say max difference is around +0.2 dB @ 1 KHz in a normal use case (3 dB amplitude).

I could easily center it around 632,4 Hz, which as you can see in this graph is the perfect geometrical center in the 20-20000 Hz zone.
I have thought about doing so in the past, but I didn't find any obvious reason besides having a perfect straight line instead of two segments.

Let's not forget that reality is not logarithmic, so having a "perfect 20-20000 Hz straight line" doesn't really matter.
We use logarithmic graphs for ease of representation. But we tend to look at them too much. :)
 
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Robbo99999

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Yes, interesting point re "straight line" in relation to the logarithmic x-axis. I thought about this for a while and came to the conclusion that it relates to the speaker research done by Harman, in that a gradual slope was desired albeit along with a bass hump (and indeed that's depicted with logarithmic x-axis):
index.php

So a perfectly linear tilt tone control is an innocuous way to change the tonality across the board without meddling with any specific "individual" characteristics of your speaker. A linear tone control is flat (straight line) and the research of Harman as you can see in the graph are also effectively straight lines apart from the bass hump, so the linear tone control won't "spoil" the shape of your ideal speaker curve.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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Actually we could go even further, to the 1933 Fletcher-Munson curves that most if not all modern research (including Harman and others) is based upon.

eqlou2.gif

There is of course no ideal Tilt filter, because that will always depend on:
  • The volume at which a given listener is listening to his music. The same listener's ears "equal loudness response" will vary with volume as proven by Fletcher-Munson, so an "ideal" Tilt filter at volume A will become less "ideal" at volume B for the same listener, and vice-versa.
  • The specificities of any given listener's ears (ear canal shape and diameter for instance), that makes every listner more or less receptive to some specific frequencies. So for any given volume, an "ideal" Tilt filter for listener A will be less "ideal" for listener B, and vice-versa.
Ultimately there will never be an ideal solution, neither in the logarithmic world or in the linear world.
It's a funny thought experiment though. :)
 
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Robbo99999

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I think you're more talking about a Loudness Adjustment Control, which is valid. In my usage I'm more talking about gently tweaking the overall tonality of an already existing EQ or for tweaking tonality based on differences of "recorded tonality" between different albums - as related to Circle of Confusion in the recording industry. To be honest though, I just use a Linear Tone Control to fine tune some already existing detailed headphone EQ's, but I did also use it to fine tune an EQ of mine for my JBL speakers. Yes, so I personally don't use it as a Loudness Tone Control and I don't use it to combat Circle of Confusion (albeit you could do). I find that with the right EQ then everything sounds pretty much good or ok.
 

Jose Hidalgo

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Rest assured that I'm not talking about a loudness adjustment control (which is another can of worms :p). Here we are talking about the same thing.

My point was/is that "gently tweaking the overall tonality of an elready existing EQ" also technically depends on the volume at which you're listening to music, and of the specificities of your own ear. That's all. Like said, it's an endless debate. Feel free to resume your topic now. :)
 
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Robbo99999

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I agree that the overall tonality of an EQ will depend on the playback volume, and that is indeed something that a loudness adjustment control is supposed to "fix". However I have no use for that as I tend to listen at roughly the same levels.
 

renkitch

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This may or may not be the original intended reason, and it may have been mentioned before, but I have a strong feeling that 'Tilt' control, back in the vinyl days, was useful to correct an over-tilted RIAA curve that the engineers may have added during pressing, which may not align with your Tilt filter embedded in the phono preamp (to match the RIAA curve). This may also include a Tilt preference you have, or to match the speakers you have. I use a Tilt filter to drop a flat speaker response into a slightly more natural/silky sounding response - by using a single knob. I don't use vinyl - haven't done since the early 90's.
 

jhenderson0107

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Apologies if this was already mentioned, but the swiss-army-knife DEQ2496 implements tilt in the digital domain with just a few front-panel button presses:

1705454725190.png
 
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