This is just some 5128 diffuse field target variation by AutoEQ. It does not necessarily have anything to do with Crinacles personal preferences.
I don't think you can EQ a headphone or IEM based on you "knowing" what an instrument sounds like or recording stuff on a smartphone (no idea how that last mechanism would work). You can't exactly know how a particular instrument for example is supposed to sound on a track because the artists & engineers will influence how it sounds and how it's laid down on the track (it's not the same every time), there can't be any references here for you to latch onto that will enable you to EQ a headphone. The best you can do is to EQ based on measurements (which theoretically gets you closer to an Anechoic Flat approximation (sort of)), and then to tweak the bass or overall tonality until it sounds balanced in spectrally dense music.
It's valid to follow that up with personal eq across the whole frequency range. Personal fit and unit variations is a big a factor. And, you will notice through personal EQ that mastering is more consistent than you thought.
Bass EQ that I mentioned fits into that Personal EQ you mentioned, as you might have more bass leakage with your headphone due to anatomy/fit and also just for preference. Some EQ's I've done for my headphones in the past I've also EQ'd broad specific areas after listening to various reference tracks of mine, for instance a broad peak filter around 7kHz for one of my headphones and also a similar one at around 1.5kHz to reduce shoutiness, but it's harder to use those specific broad filters as it's very subjective when you're getting that specific. In reality, I've found it's far easier to tune bass level to balance in with the rest, and the 105Hz Q0.71 Low Shelf that Oratory uses is very useful in that regard as it targets the bass without introducing muddiness. Another really good way I've found is to also tweak overall tonality using a Linear Tone Control through the whole frequency range (think a seesaw straight line motion hinged at 1kHz) - you can hit an almost perfect linear tone control by using the 3 following parametric High Shelf Filters with Q0.5: 63Hz/632Hz/6324Hz, you set the same dB level for each of those (positive or negative depending on if you want to brighten or darken the headphone respectively), only 0.1 or 0.2dB increments required on those to notice changes in the tonality.
The amount of bands I personally use varies, sometimes a single broad one is sufficient. That doesn't have to make it a low effort, because the are numerous uncertainties affecting individual eardrum response. That disputes certain knowledge that more bands makes the FR more linear, at it's final destination. (For the same reason I don't obsess over FR details, or do sine sweeps, only if I hear something wrong to begin when listening to actual music content) On a less linear set, or having a non-typical head and ear shape more bands may be needed. Either way you can always start with a single broad adjustment, indeed addressing bass first, and add further bands, if needed. I'd advise trying different cutoff frequencies than 105Hz, because the effect of FR inconsistency and/or small leakage can vary substantially, per measurements on headphonetestlab and Rtings.
It's also very interesting that Dr. Olive mentions very early on that FR response doesn't describe everything important about a headphone and the two things he mentions as not being described by FR are distortion and spatial effects. I don't think I could count the number of times here at ASR, in reviews and member posts, and elsewhere that spatial effects are attributed to FR. So that really stood out for me.
You can find convolution filters on the AutoEQ GitHub: https://github.com/jaakkopasanen/AutoEq/tree/master/results/crinacle
I got shipment notification on Fri 26th. I did not tip. Moral of the story: never tip.
It is and you have it in both iterations of this IEM. My comment was that if you need fine tuning, then use EQ in your player, etc. where you do critical listening. But otherwise, the IEM is more than good enough for use as is.
So because "spatial effects" currently cannot be defined very well or correlated with other measured quantities, they should be ignored and not talked about? In speakers as well? Strange argument.
I'm still Bad Luck Brian.
Can I ask when you put your order in? I put it in within a few hours of it going up, assume most of the people with notifications were within first hour or two.
I ordered mine around 2:30pm on the 19th on Amazon. Mine's currently on a plane heading out of China.
May 20, 2023 01:15AM local time according to Shenzenaudio records.
