How to equalize your headphones: A Tutorial - Page 8

You should never equalize by song and especially not on a per-song basis. That is the perfect way to get a very inaccurate response. With the sine wave generator, it shouldn't be too hard to hear approximately where the loudest frequencies are in the peaks and remove them.

Keep in mind that some songs are just mixed and mastered poorly, and nothing will save them. IMO, a flat response sounds the best with most music most of the time, not all music all of the time. That is impossible regardless of what your headphone's FR is.

The microphone would not have the same acoustic impedance or frequency response as your eardrum.

I am not sure what you are listening for when you are listening for resonance, but resonance itself isn't something you can actually hear per se, only its effects, that is, an increase in volume at certain frequencies.

When I say "resonance" I'm thinking of something more along the lines of "a resonance due to the mismatched acoustic termination of the ear canal".

You can do that with Electri-Q.

I've been performing more detailed tests on my Etymotic ER4Ss using SineGen, and I have to say: these IEMs have one of the most jagged and uneven frequency responses I have ever seen. And Etymotic claims they are neutral! After more than an hour of tweaking, I cannot seem to find an EQ curve that sounds quite right, despite SineGen clearly revealing where the peaks in the response are. Here is the response that I have right now:



As you can see, this is terrible. No wonder nobody can stand the ER4s! There is a fairly broad peak centered at around 3400 to 3800hz. I cannot tell exactly where because the tone is so fatiguing to listen to. It is interesting that the official literature claims the peak is centered around 2500Hz. Does the insertion depth and type of tip used affect the perception of this peak? The amplitude is about 5db up. Testing is ongoing. There is a very large peak centered around 9700-10100hz at 9db and another at around 12800 to 13200hz at 6.5 or 7db.

Turning the EQ off results in a wretched response that is not fit to be listened to by any human being. I can hardly even believe I used to think these were good! Take a look at Etymotic's graph showing the listener's perceived response:



It looks relatively flat, but the reality according to my ears is far, far from flat. It is downright awful. Going back to my equalized Lambdas after listening to this is like being comforted by a dear friend after a dreadful and emotionally scarring ordeal.