Quote:
Originally Posted by
Br777 
as far as bass goes, i simply cant say with certainty what neutral bass is.. to me this is different for everyone, so i suppose it does come down to personal preference.
the other peaks are interesting, particularly your peak around 3khz where i put my large dip. when i do the frequency roll, this area clearly has a peak, which i can hear as sibilance when i play music, whereas you clearly hear a dip, or thats what i would assume from looking at your graph above.. who knows what's behind this discrepancy..
I am curious as to why you dont have your global gain adjusted down to -3 given that your added peaks could create potential distortion otherwise?
the other major spike i put in at 8300 was due to a near dead spot, which i can hear much more clearly when using "sine gen" software.. i cant say whether this is unique to my cans or not.
i just replicated your settings as exactly as i could using easy-q, then i used mine, and switched back and forth playing a rolling frequency file.. to my ears mine was clearly flatter (lets exclude the bass section for now) , while yours had at least 1 major hump.. i am not saying i'm right you're wrong, just that clearly for one reason or another you and I are hearing or preferencing differently.
If I make my bass the same as yours - with yours i hear vocals, symbals, and snares pushed farther forward... sibilance on some vocals, and snares, but not much. It's not bad, but its a bit fatiguing b/c of the sibilance...aside from that it actually doesnt sound a LOT different than mine except for differences in bass if i use my bass settings.
to each their own I guess
You don't automatically alter the global gain unless you are doing drastic boosting outside the safe range and causing audible distortion. When you EQ within a certain range of safe parameters, you shouldn't have change your global gain. You can see this principle working in products like the ARC System, where there's a built-in limit to how much correction the ARC applies--it knows not to push beyond a certain boundary. Also, it depends on each driver's physical limitations--some drivers handle it better than others.
As I already mentioned in the other thread about accuracy/neutrality (http://www.head-fi.org/t/564465/misconception-of-neutral-accurate), there is the equal loudness contour: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/hearing.html (I suggest you do the test in that link and test your own loudness contour)
Our ear's sensitivity to different frequency regions is not the same, and when you listen to a log sweep, you're not supposed to hear even amplitude across the entire sweep. What you should hear should be similar to the Fletcher-Munson curve. The most optimal volume to test audio at is roughly 80~85 dB because that's when the ear perceives the flattest curve when compared to other volume levels (but it's still not actually flat--that is impossible). This is the average Hollywood has used to mix the audio of their movies for decades now, after doing extensive audience testing and research. That average level is where audiences found the sweet spot--not too loud, but still viscerally satisfying.
If you EQ your headphone to sound flat across all frequencies during a log sweep, then you're overdoing it. For example, the sibilance range is supposed to sound kind of bright compared to other frequency ranges, because it's the most sensitive range of our hearing. If you EQ it to sound equally loud as other frequency ranges during a log sweep or frequency interval tests, then you are in fact, making that frequency range too dead, and you're going to lose all the bite and attack of instruments like distorted guitar, brass, and other instruments that are supposed to sound bright and biting.
The LCD-2 is one of the least sibilant and fatiguing headphones I've ever heard that still has plenty of detail, and in fact, in Rev.1, it is a bit soft in the ranges I EQ'd (and you can see that Audez'e addressed this in Rev.2, and it's also why some people originally felt the LCD-2 is a bit dark). If I compare the LCD-2 to other headphones and my reference studio monitors (Klein + Hummel O 300D's, with acoustic treatment and ARC System), it's clear that Rev.1 is a few dB's soft in those ranges, as other devices reproduced the instruments I mentioned with adequate bite, but without being annoyingly sibilant.
I wonder a bit about your idea of what sibilance means to you. You see, being able to hear traces of sibilance and actually having it being overwhelming and painful are two very different things. This reminds me a bit of a past encounter with a neighbor. He would get into a rage if he could hear me playing music or my instruments, and come banging on my door and threatening to call the police. But when I asked him if he realized the difference between being able to hear something and that something actually being annoyings/unbearably loud, he got quiet. I told him he's free to call the police and then have them go to his apartment and measure the volume level of the sounds he could hear coming from my apartment, and if that volume level during normal acceptable hours is well within the limits of the law regarding noise and public disturbance, then he doesn't have a leg to stand on, and he needs to stop harassing me. I also asked him if he goes into a rage whenever he's able to hear sounds coming from other apartments like laughter, vacuum cleaner, hair dryer, or if he also gets pissed off if he could hear the rain outside the window, or the sound of cars rolling by, or the tweeting of birds. If the sounds he hears coming from my apartment is no louder than all those typical sounds he hears in daily life, then why is he singling me out and getting pissed off? He needs to separate his inherent emotional response to "somebody else playing music I can hear through my wall" from the fact that the said sounds are not actually at disturbing levels and no louder than other sounds of daily life.
I don't know if you get what I'm saying, but it's similar to the idea of sibilance. Just because you're hearing the singer's "S" and "Z" pronunciations with that trace of sibilance, doesn't mean it's automatically too aggressive and painfully loud. It's only when the sibilances become annoying loud and painful is there an actual problem. We are supposed to hear traces of sibilance in many situations, and the question is, how aggressive is the level of sibilance, not whether or not sibilance exists. In many productions, the mastering is often a bit brighter than other productions. This is not a reflection on the audio gear itself, but the taste of the audio engineers who worked on the recording. If you tweak your headphone so that you never hear sibilances in all recordings, then it's like purposely smearing a layer of dust on your window pane so the overall brightness is cut down in everything you see outside the window during a sunny day, forgetting the fact that sometimes, the sun is supposed to glare in your eyes--that is perfectly natural, and it only means your window pane is clean and clear enough to allow you to see the glare at its full intensity.
I'm one of those people who is very sensitive to sibilance and I have sold headphones because they reproduced sibilances too aggressively, but the LCD-2 is FAR from being too aggressive in its reproduction of sibilance. It's one of the very best headphones I've ever heard in my whole life when it comes to being not overly bright/sibilant but still have plenty of details.
I wish you lived close to me, so I can invite you over and demonstrate some tests between headphones and speakers using my test tracks that spotlight specific situations and potential problems.
Edited by Lunatique - 9/15/11 at 12:56am
I figured you'd want it lower for more audible sub-bass, or higher for more mid-bass impact.
